From Squire to Squatter: A Tale of the Old Land and the New

“Not much I don’t; but he bit me on the finger, miss. I was a swagsman then, and was gathering wood, as we were to-night, when I got nipped, and my chum tightened a morsel of string round it to keep the poison away from the heart, then he laid the finger on a stone and chopped it off with his spade. Fact what I’m telling you. But the poison got in the blood somehow all the same. They half carried me to Irish Charlie’s hotel. Lucky, that wasn’t far off. Then they stuck the whiskey into me.”

“Did the whiskey kill the poison?” said Archie.

“Whiskey kill the poison! Why, young sir, Charlie’s whiskey would have killed a kangaroo! But nothing warmed me that night; my blood felt frozen. Well, sleep came at last, and, oh, the dreams! ’Twere worse ten thousand times than being wi’ Daniel in the den o’ lions. Next day nobody hardly knew me; I was blue and wrinkled. I had aged ten years in a single night.”

“I say,” said Harry, “suppose we change the subject.”

“And I say,” said Craig, “suppose we make the beds.”

He got up as he spoke, and began to busy himself in preparations for Etheldene’s couch. It was easily and simply arranged, but the arrangement nevertheless showed considerable forethought.

He disappeared for a few minutes, and returned laden with all the necessary paraphernalia. A seven-foot pole was fastened to a tree; the other end supported by a forked stick, which he sharpened and drove into the ground. Some grass was spread beneath the pole, a blanket thrown carefully over it, the upturned saddle put down for a pillow, and a tent formed by throwing over the pole a loose piece of canvas that he had taken from his saddle-bow, weighted down by some stones, and the whole was complete.

“Now, Baby,” said Craig, handing Etheldene a warm rug, “will you be pleased to retire?”

“Where is my flat candlestick?” she answered. Gentleman Craig pointed to the Southern Cross. “Yonder,” he said. “Is it not a lovely one?”

“It puts me in mind of old, old times,” said Etheldene with a sigh. “And you’re calling me ‘Baby’ too. Do you remember, ever so long ago in the Bush, when I was a baby in downright earnest, how you used to sing a lullaby to me outside my wee tent?”

“If you go to bed, and don’t speak any more, I may do so again.”

“Good-night then. Sound sleep to everybody. What fun!” Then Baby disappeared.

Craig sat himself down near the tent, after replenishing the fire – he was to keep the first watch, then Bill would come on duty – and at once began to sing, or rather ‘croon’ over, an old, old song. His voice was rich and sweet, and though he sang low it could be heard distinctly enough by all, and it mingled almost mournfully with the soughing of the wind through the tall trees.

“My song is rather a sorrowful ditty,” he had half-whispered to Archie before he began; “but it is poor Miss Ethie’s favourite.” But long before Craig had finished no one around the log fire was awake but himself.

He looked to his rifle and revolvers, placed them handy in case of an attack by blacks, then once more sat down, leaning his back against a tree and giving way to thought.

Not over pleasant thoughts were those of Gentleman Craig’s, as might have been guessed from his frequent sighs as he gazed earnestly into the fire.

What did he see in the fire? Tableaux of his past life? Perhaps or perhaps not. At all events they could not have been very inspiriting ones. No one could have started in life with better prospects than he had done; but he carried with him wherever he went his own fearful enemy, something that would not leave him alone, but was ever, ever urging him to drink. Even as a student he had been what was called “a jolly fellow,” and his friendship was appreciated by scores who knew him. He loved to be considered the life and soul of a company. It was an honour dearer to him than anything else; but deeply, dearly had he paid for it.

By this time he might have been honoured and respected in his own country, for he was undoubtedly clever; but he had lost himself, and lost all that made life dear – his beautiful, queenly mother. He would never see her more. She was dead, yet the memory of the love she bore him was still the one, the only ray of sunshine left in his soul.

And he had come out here to Australia determined to turn over a new leaf. Alas! he had not done so.

“Oh, what a fool I have been!” he said in his thoughts, clenching his lists until the nails almost cut the palms.

He started up now and went wandering away towards the trees. There was nothing that could hurt him there. He felt powerful enough to grapple with a dozen blacks, but none were in his thoughts; and, indeed, none were in the forest.

He could talk aloud now, as he walked rapidly up and down past the weird grey trunks of the gum trees.

“My foolish pride has been my curse,” he said bitterly. “But should I allow it to be so? The thing lies in a nutshell I have never yet had the courage to say, ‘I will not touch the hateful firewater, because I cannot control myself if I do.’ If I take but one glass I arouse within me the dormant fiend, and he takes possession of my soul, and rules all my actions until sickness ends my carousal, and I am left weak as a child in soul and body. If I were not too proud to say those words to my fellow-beings, if I were not afraid of being laughed at as a coward! Ah, that’s it! It is too hard to bear! Shall I face it? Shall I own myself a coward in this one thing? I seem compelled to answer myself, to answer my own soul. Or is it my dead mother’s spirit speaking through my heart? Oh, if I thought so I – I – ”

Here the strong man broke down. He knelt beside a tree trunk and sobbed like a boy. Then he prayed; and when he got up from his knees he was calm. He extended one hand towards the stars.

“Mother,” he said, “by God’s help I shall be free.”

When the morning broke pale and golden over the eastern hills, and the laughing jackasses came round to smile terribly loud and terribly chaffingly at the white men’s preparation for their simple breakfast, Craig moved about without a single trace of his last night’s sorrow. He was busy looking after the horses when Etheldene came bounding towards him with both hands extended, so frank and free and beautiful that as he took hold of them he could not help saying:

“You look as fresh as a fern this morning, Baby.”

“Not so green, Craig. Say ‘Not so green.’”

“No, not so green. But really to look at you brings a great big wave of joy surging all over my heart. But to descend from romance to common-sense. I hope you are hungry? I have just been seeing to your horse. Where do you think I found him?”

“I couldn’t guess.”

“Why in the water down yonder. Lying down and wallowing.”

“The naughty horse! Ah, here come the others! Good morning all.”

“We have been bathing,” said Archie. “Oh, how delicious!”

“Yes,” said Harry; “Johnnie and I were bathing down under the trees, and it really was a treat to see how quickly he came to bank when I told him there was an alligator taking stock.”

“We scared the ducks though. Pity we didn’t bring our guns and bag a few.”

“I believe we’ll have a right good breakfast at Findlayson’s,” said Craig; “so I propose we now have a mouthful of something and start.”

The gloom of that deep forest became irksome at last; though some of its trees were wondrous to behold in their stately straightness and immensity of size, the trunks of others were bent and crooked into such weird forms of contortion, that they positively looked uncanny.

Referring to these, Archie remarked to Craig, who was riding by his side:

“Are they not grotesquely beautiful?”

Craig laughed lightly.

“Their grotesqueness is apparent anyhow,” he replied. “But would you believe it, in this very forest I was a week mad?”

“Mad!”

“Yes; worse than mad – delirious. Oh, I did not run about, I was too feeble! but a black woman or girl found me, and built a kind of bark gunja over me, for it rained part of the time and dripped the rest. And those trees with their bent and gnarled stems walked about me, and gibbered and laughed, and pointed crooked fingers at me. I can afford to smile at it now, but it was very dreadful then; and the worst of it was I had brought it all on myself.”

Archie was silent.

“You know in what way?” added Craig.

“I have been told,” Archie said, simply and sadly.

“For weeks, Mr Broadbent, after I was able to walk, I remained among the blacks doing nothing, just wandering aimlessly from place to place; but the woods and the trees looked no longer weird and awful to me then, for I was in my right mind. It was spring – nay, but early summer – and I could feel and drink in all the gorgeous beauty of foliage, of tree flowers and wild flowers, nodding palms and feathery ferns; but, oh! I left and went south again; I met once more the white man, and forgot all the religion of Nature in which my soul had for a time been steeped. So that is all a kind of confession. I feel the better for having made it. We are all poor, weak mortals at the best; only I made a resolve last night.”

“You did?”

“Yes; and I am going to keep it. I am going to have help.”

“Help!”

“Yes, from Him who made those stately giants of the forest and changed their stems to silvery white. He can change all things.”

“Amen!” said Archie solemnly.

Chapter Twenty Three

At Findlayson’s Farm – The Great Kangaroo Hunt – A Dinner and Concert

Gentleman Craig was certainly a strange mortal; but after all he was only the type of a class of men to be found at most of our great universities. Admirable Crichtons in a small way, in the estimation of their friends – bold, handsome, careless, and dashing, not to say clever – they may go through the course with flying colours. But too often they strike the rocks of sin and sink, going out like the splendid meteors of a November night, or sometimes – if they continue to float – they are sent off to Australia, with the hopes of giving them one more chance. Alas! they seldom get farther than the cities. It is only the very best and boldest of them that reach the Bush, and there you may find them building fences or shearing sheep. If any kind of labour at all is going to make men of them, it is this.

Two minutes after Craig had been talking to Archie, the sweet, clear, ringing notes of his manly voice were awaking echoes far a-down the dark forest.

Parrots and parrakeets, of lovely plumage, fluttered nearer, holding low their wise, old-fashioned heads to look and listen. Lyre-birds hopped out from under green fern-bushes, raising their tails and glancing at their figures in the clear pool. They listened too, and ran back to where their nests were to tell their wives men-people were passing through the forest singing; but that they, the cock lyre-birds, could sing infinitely better if they tried.

On and on and on went the cavalcade, till sylvan beauty itself began to pall at last, and no one was a bit sorry when all at once the forest ended, and they were out on a plain, out in the scrub, with, away beyond, gently-rising hills, on which trees were scattered.

The bleating of sheep now made them forget all about the gloom of the forest. They passed one or two rude huts, and then saw a bigger smoke in the distance, which Bill told Archie was Findlayson’s.

Findlayson came out to meet them. A Scot every inch of him, you could tell that at a glance. A Scot from the soles of his rough shoes to the rim of his hat; brown as to beard and hands, and with a good-natured face the colour of a badly-burned brick.

He bade them welcome in a right hearty way, and helped “the lassie” to dismount.

He had met “the lassie” before.

“But,” he said, “I wadna hae kent ye; you were but a bit gilpie then. Losh! but ye have grown. Your father’s weel, I suppose? Ah, it’ll be a while afore anybody makes such a sudden haul at the diggin’ o’ gowd as he did! But come in. It’s goin’ to be anither warm day, I fear.

“Breakfast is a’ ready. You’ll have a thistle fu’ o’ whiskey first, you men folks. Rin butt the hoose, my dear, and see my sister. Tell her to boil the eggs, and lift the bacon and the roast ducks.”

He brought out the bottle as he spoke. Both Harry and Archie tasted to please him. But Craig went boldly into battle.

“I’m done with it, Findlayson,” he said. “It has been my ruin. I’m done. I’m a weak fool.”

“But a wee drap wadna hurt you, man. Just to put the dust out o’ your wizzen.”

Craig smiled.

“It is the wee draps,” he replied, “that do the mischief.”

“Well, I winna try to force you. Here comes the gude wife wi’ the teapot.”

“Bill,” he continued, “as soon as you’ve satisfied the cravins o’ Nature, mount the grey colt, and ride down the Creek, and tell them the new chums and I will be wi’ them in half an hour.”

And in little over that specified time they had all joined the hunt.

Black folks and “orra men,” as Findlayson called them, were already detouring around a wide track of country to beat up the kangaroos.

There were nearly a score of mounted men, but only one lady besides Etheldene, a squatter’s bold sister.

The dogs were a sight to look at. They would have puzzled some Englishmen what to make of them. Partly greyhounds, but larger, sturdier, and stronger, as if they had received at one time a cross of mastiff. They looked eminently fit, however, and were with difficulty kept back. Every now and then a distant shout was heard, and at such times the hounds seemed burning to be off.

But soon the kangaroos themselves began to appear thick and fast. They came from one part or another in little groups, meeting and hopping about in wonder and fright. They seemed only looking for a means of escape; and at times, as a few rushing from one direction met others, they appeared to consult. Many stood high up, as if on tiptoe, gazing eagerly around, with a curious mixture of bewilderment and fright displayed on their simple but gentle faces.

They got small time to think now, however, for men and dogs were on them, and the flight and the murder commenced with a vengeance. There were black fellows there, who appeared to spring suddenly from the earth, spear-armed, to deal terrible destruction right and left among the innocent animals. And black women too, who seemed to revel in the bloody sight. If the whites were excited and thirsty for carnage, those aborigines were doubly so.

Meanwhile the men had dismounted, Archie and Harry among the rest, and were firing away as quickly as possible. There is one thing to be said in favour of the gunners; they took good aim, and there was little after-motion in the body of the kangaroo in which a bullet had found a billet.

After all Archie was neither content with the sport, nor had it come up as yet to his beau ideal of adventure from all he had heard and read of it. The scene was altogether noisy, wild, and confusing. The blacks gloated in the bloodshed, and Archie did not love them any the more for it. It was the first time he had seen those fellows using their spears, and he could guess from the way they handled or hurled them that they would be pretty dangerous enemies to meet face to face in the plain or scrub.

“Harry,” he said after a time, “I’m getting tired of all this; let us go to our horses.”

“I’m tired too. Hallo! where is the chick-a-biddy?”

“You mean Miss Winslow, Harry.”

“Ay, Johnnie.”

“I have not seen her for some time.”

They soon found her though, near a bit of scrub, where their own horses were tied.

She was sitting on her saddle, looking as steady and demure as an equestrian statue. The sunshine was so finding that they did not at first notice her in the shade there until they were close upon her.

“What, Etheldene!” cried Archie; “we hardly expected you here.”

“Where, then?”

“Following the hounds.”

“What! into that mob? No, that is not what I came for.”

At that moment Craig rode up.

“So glad,” he said, “to find you all here. Mount, gentlemen. Are you ready, Baby?”

“Ready, yes, an hour ago, Craig.”

They met horsemen and hounds not far away, and taking a bold détour over a rough and broken country, at the edge of a wood, the hounds found a “forester,” or old man kangaroo. The beast had a good start if he had taken the best advantage of it; but he failed to do so. He had hesitated several times; but the run was a fine one. A wilder, rougher, more dangerous ride Archie had never taken.

The beast was at bay before very long, and his resistance to the death was extraordinary.

They had many more rides before the day was over; and when they re-assembled in farmer Findlayson’s hospitable parlour, Archie was fain for once to own himself not only tired, but “dead beat.”

The dinner was what Harry called a splendid spread. Old Findlayson had been a gardener in his younger days in England, and his wife was a cook; and one of the results of this amalgamation was, dinners or breakfasts either, that had already made the Scotchman famous.

Here was soup that an epicure would not have despised, fish to tempt a dying man, besides game of different kinds, pies, and last, if not least, steak of kangaroo.

The soup itself was made from the tail of the kangaroo, and I know nothing more wholesome and nourishing, though some may think it a little strong.

While the white folks were having dinner indoors, the black fellows were doing ample justice to theirs al fresco, only they had their own cuisine and menu, of which the least said the better.

“You’re sure, Mr Craig, you winna tak’ a wee drappie?”

If the honest squatter put this question once in the course of the evening, he put it twenty times.

“No, really,” said Craig at last; “I will not tak’ a wee drappie. I’ve sworn off; I have, really. Besides, your wife has made me some delightful tea.”

“Weel, man, tak’ a wee drappie in your last cup. It’ll cheer ye up.”

“Take down your fiddle, Findlayson, and play a rattling strathspey or reel, that’ll cheer me up more wholesomely than any amount of ‘wee drappies.’”

“Come out o’ doors then.”

It was cool now out there in Findlayson’s garden – it was a real garden too. His garden and his fiddle were Findlayson’s two fads; and that he was master of both, their present surroundings of fern and flower, and delicious scent of wattle-blossom, and the charming strains that floated from the corner where the squatter stood were proof enough. The fiddle in his hands talked and sang, now bold or merrily, now in sad and wailing notes that brought tears to even Archie’s eyes. Then, at a suggestion of Craig’s, Etheldene’s sweet young voice was raised in song, and this was only the beginning of the concert. Conversation filled up the gaps, so that the evening passed away all too soon.

Just as Findlayson had concluded that plaintive and feeling air “Auld Robin Gray,” a little black girl came stealthily, silently up to Etheldene, and placed a little creature like a rabbit in her lap, uttering a few words of Bush-English, which seemed to Archie’s ear utterly devoid of sense. Then the black girl ran; she went away to her own camp to tell her people that the white folks were holding a corroboree.

The gift was a motherless kangaroo, that at once commenced to make itself at home by hiding its innocent head under Etheldene’s arm.

The party soon after broke up for the night, and next day but one, early in the morning, the return journey was commenced, and finished that night; but the sun had gone down, and the moon was shining high and full over the forest, before they once more reached the clearing.

Chapter Twenty Four

A New Arrival

Winslow made months of a stay in the Bush, and his services were of great value to the young squatters. The improvements he suggested were many and various, and he was careful to see them carried out.

Dams were made, and huge reservoirs were dug; for, as Winslow said, their trials were all before them, and a droughty season might mean financial ruin to them.

“Nevertheless,” he added one day, addressing Bob, “I feel sure of you; and to prove this I don’t mind knocking down a cheque or two to the tune of a thou or three or five if you want them.

“I’ll take bank interest,” he added, “not a penny more.”

Bob thanked him, and consulted the others that evening. True, Archie’s aristocratic pride popped up every now and then, but it was kept well under by the others.

“Besides, don’t you see, Johnnie,” said Harry, “this isn’t a gift. Winslow is a business man, and he knows well what he is about.”

“And,” added Bob, “the fencing isn’t finished yet. We have all those workmen’s mouths to fill, and the sooner the work is done the better.”

“Then the sheep are to come in a year or so, and it all runs away with money, Johnnie. Our fortunes are to be made. There is money on the ground to be gathered up, and all that Winslow proposes is holding the candle to us till we fill our pockets.”

“It is very kind of him,” said Archie, “but – ”

“Well,” said Bob, “I know where your ‘huts’ will end if you are not careful. You will give offence to Mr Winslow, and he’ll just turn on his heel and never see us again.”

“Do you think so?”

“Think so? Yes, Archie, I’m sure of it. A better-hearted man doesn’t live, rough and all as he is; and he has set his mind to doing the right thing for us all for your sake, lad, and so I say, think twice before you throw cold water over that big, warm heart of his.”

“Well,” said Archie, “when you put it in that light, I can see matters clearly. I wouldn’t offend my good old Uncle Ramsay’s friend for all the world. I’m sorry I ever appeared bluff with him. So you can let him do as he pleases.”

And so Winslow did to a great extent.

Nor do I blame Bob and Harry for accepting his friendly assistance. Better far to be beholden to a private individual, who is both earnest and sincere, than to a money-lending company, who will charge double interest, and make you feel that your soul is not your own.

Better still, I grant you, to wait and work and plod; but this life is almost too short for much waiting, and after all, one half of the world hangs on to the skirts of the other half, and that other half is all the more evenly balanced in consequence.

I would not, however, have my young readers misunderstand me. What I maintain is this, that although a poor man cannot leave this country in the expectation that anybody or any company will be found to advance the needful to set him up in the business of a squatter, still, when he has worked hard for a time, beginning at the lowermost ring of the ladder, and saved enough to get a selection, and a few cattle and sheep, then, if he needs assistance to heave ahead a bit, he will – if everything is right and square – have no difficulty in finding it.

So things went cheerily on at Burley New Farm. And at last Winslow and Etheldene took their departure, promising to come again.

“So far, lads,” said Winslow, as he mounted his horse, “there hasn’t been a hitch nowheres. But mind keep two hands at the wheel.”

Mr Winslow’s grammar was not of the best, and his sentences generally had a smack of the briny about them, which, however, did not detract from their graphicness.

“Tip us your flippers, boys,” he added, “and let us be off. But I’m just as happy as if I were a father to the lot of you.”

Gentleman Craig shook hands with Mr Winslow. He had already helped Etheldene into her saddle.

Archie was standing by her, the bridle of his own nag Tell thrown carelessly over his arm; for good-byes were being said quite a mile from the farm.

“I’ll count the days, Etheldene, till you come again,” said Archie. “The place will not seem the same without you.”

Craig stood respectfully aside till Archie had bade her adieu, then, with his broad hat down by his side, he advanced. He took her hand and kissed it.

“Good-bye, Baby,” he said.

There were tears in Etheldene’s eyes as she rode away. Big Winslow took off his hat, waved it over his head, and gave voice to a splendid specimen of a British cheer, which, I daresay, relieved his feelings as much as it startled the lories. The “boys” were not slow in returning that cheer. Then away rode the Winslows, and presently the grey-stemmed gum trees swallowed them up.