In Bad Company and other stories

They can be procured, also wearing apparel, boots, and all other necessaries, at the station store; failing that, at the 'township,' invariably found within easy distance of any large station.

Besides the 'men's hut' comes next in rank the 'shearers' hut,' dedicated to those important and (at shearing time) exclusive personages; the sheep-washers', the rouseabouts' huts, all necessary different establishments; as also the 'travellers' hut,' set apart for the nomadic labourer or 'swagman,' who sojourning but for a night is by the unwritten law of Bushland provided with bread and meat, cooking utensils, water, and firewood gratis.

Then, at a certain distance, the woolshed – with half an acre of roofed, battened yards and pens – the 'big house,' the stable, the horse-yard, the stock-yard, the milking-yard, with perhaps half-a-dozen additional nondescript constructions.

It may easily be imagined that such buildings, scattered and disjointed as they were, had much more the appearance of a village than of a single establishment owned, managed, and supported by one man (or one firm), and absolutely subject to his orders and interest.

'Might as well stop here to-night,' said Stoate; 'it's twenty-five mile to Coolah Creek for to-morrow, and the road heavy in places. Look at it! There's a bloomin' township to belong to one man, and us travellin' the country looking for work!'

'It took a lot of labour to put up all the huts and places, not to count in the shed and yards, you bet,' said his companion, who had been silent for the last half-hour, 'and many a cheque was drawed afore the last nail was drove in. I know a chap that's made a small fortune out of Mr. Templemore's contracts, and that's got a farm to show for it to-day. What's wrong with that?'

'Why, don't you see? Suppose the State had this first-rate block of country, cut it up in fair-sized farms, advanced the men the money to put up their places and crop it the first year, see what a population it would keep. Keep in comfort, too,' he continued, as he refilled his pipe and made ready for a leisurely smoke. 'Let me see, there's fifty thousand acres of freehold on this North Yalla-doora run, besides as much more leased. Divide that into nice-sized farms, that'd give us a thousand fifty-acre lots, or five 'underd 'underd-acre ones. See what a crowd of families that'd keep.'

'And suppose there come a dry season,' queried Bill rather gruffly, 'how about the families then? I've seen the sheep dyin' by hundreds on this very place – and the whole forty thousand 'd 'a died in another month if rain hadn't come. But I'm gettin' full up of this Union racket. Small farms in a dry country's foolishness. Where are we goin' to camp? Look at the grass on that flat! And I've seen it like a road.'

'It ain't bad near the creek,' said his companion. 'You can let the horses go while I go up to the overseer and get a bit of ration.'

'There's no call to do that. See that bag? My old woman's put bread and beef enough in that for a week anyhow, besides bacon, and tea, and sugar.'

'That's all right,' answered Stoate airily, 'but we may as well get fresh mutton for nothing. They always give travellers a pound or two here, and a pannikin of flour. It comes in handy for cakes.'

'Well, I'm d – d!' said Hardwick, unable to contain his wrathful astonishment. 'D'ye mean to tell me as you're a-goin' to beg food from this squatter here and take his charity after abusing him and all belonging to him and schemin' to ruin 'em? I call it dashed, dirty, crawling meanness, and for two pins I wouldn't travel the same side of the road with you, and so I tell you, Janus Stoate.'

There was a snaky glitter in Stoate's small, black eyes as he met for an instant the bold gaze of the Australian; but, with characteristic cunning, he turned it off with a half laugh.

'Why, Bill, what hot coffee you're a-gettin', all over a little joke like this 'ere. Now I feel as I've a right to be fed on the road when I and my feller-workers bring our labour to the door – in a manner of speakin'. We've no call to think ourselves under obligation to the squatters for their "miserable dole," as our Head Centre calls it. It's only our due when all's said and done.'

'Miserable dole,' growled Bill, now engaged in taking off his pack. 'That's a dashed fine name to give free rations, to the tune of half-a-dozen sheep a night, and a couple of bags of flour a week, which I know Tambo did last shearing. A lot of chaps going about the country askin' for work, and prayin' to God they mayn't find it – and abusin' the people that feed 'em on top of it all. I wonder the squatters don't stop feedin' travellers, and that's all about it. I would if I was boss, I know, except the old men.'

'How about the sheds and the grass when the weather gets dry?' asked Stoate, with a sidelong glance of spite.

'That's easy enough, if a chap's a d – d scoundrel; but suppose he's caught and gets five years in Berrima Gaol, he'd wish he'd acted more like a white man and less like a myall blackfellow. But stoush all this yabber. You boil the billy, while I get out the grub and hobble the horses. I feel up to a good square feed.'

So did Mr. Stoate, apparently, as he consumed slice after slice of the cold corned beef and damper which Jenny had put up neatly in Bill's 'tucker bag,' not disdaining divers hunks of 'brownie,' washed down with a couple of pints of 'billy tea,' after which he professed that he felt better, and proceeded to fill and light his pipe with deliberation.

By this time the hobbled horses had betaken themselves through the abundant pasture of the river flat, and their bells sounding faint and distant, Bill declared his intention of heading them back, in case they should try to make off towards the home they had left. He returned in half an hour, stating that they were in a bend and blocked by a horseshoe lagoon.

Both men addressed themselves to the task of putting up the small tent which Bill carried, and bestowed their swags therein, after which Mr. Stoate proposed that they should go over to the men's hut, and have a bit of a yarn before they turned in.

Bill remarked that they had to be up at daylight, but supposed that an hour wouldn't matter. So the wayfarers strolled over to a long building, not far from the creek bank, which they entered without ceremony. They found themselves in the presence of about twenty men, in the ordinary dress of the station hand, viz. tweed or moleskin trousers and Crimean shirt. Some had coats, but the majority were in their shirt sleeves. There were mostly of ages between twenty and forty, differing in nationality, speech, and occupation.

England, Ireland, Scotland, and Australia were represented. A Frenchman, two Germans, a coloured man (American), besides a tall, well-made Australian half-caste, who spoke much the same English as the others, but had a softer voice, with rather slower intonation.

At one end of the large room was an ample fireplace, with a glowing wood fire, around which several men were sitting or standing, mostly smoking. Others were seated at the long, solid dining-table reading, for in one corner stood some fairly well-filled bookshelves. One man was writing a letter.

A few were lying in their bunks, rows of which were on either side of the room. A certain amount of quiet conversation was going on. There was no loud talking, swearing, or rude behaviour of any sort, and in spite of the bare walls and plain surroundings an air of comfort pervaded the whole.

Stoate was greeted by several of the younger men, one of whom was disposed to be facetious, as he exclaimed —

'Hulloa, my noble agitator, what brings you here? Goin' to call out the shearers, and play the devil generally, eh? You've come to the wrong shop at North Yalla-doora – we're all steady-going coves here.'

'I suppose you're game to stand up for your rights, Joe Brace, and not afraid of getting your wages raised, if the Union does that for you?'

'If it does,' rejoined Joe sarcastically; 'and who's to go bail for that, I'd like to know? You and your crowd haven't done any great things so far, except make bad blood between masters and men – when everything was peace and goodwill before, as the parson says.'

'Well – what's that? Yer can't get nothin' in the world without fightin' for it – I reckon we're going to have a bit of war for a change. Yes, war, and a dashed good thing too, when men have to take orders from their feller-men, and be worked like slaves into the bargain.'

'Brayvo, Janus, old man!' replied the other, with mock approval. 'I see what it's come to. You're to be a delegate with a pot hat and a watch-chain, and get four pound a week for gassin', while us fools of fellers does the hard graft. That's your dart, to sit alongside of Barraker and the rest of the people's try-bunes – ain't them the blokes that stands up and says, like Ben Willett, as we're trod on, and starved, and treated worse than nigger slaves?'

'So you are, if you only knew it. Look at all this here country-side in the hands of two or three men, as sucks your blood, and fattens on it!'

'The boss here ain't too fat, if that's what's the matter, and we're not a very hungry-lookin' crowd, boys,' said the speaker, looking round. 'We've got good wages, good food, a book or two to read, and a table to write our letters at. You've been loafin' in Melbourne, Janus, and got oppressed there – spent all your money, forgot to buy a decent rig-out (them's last year's boots as you have on), come on the roads to beg from station to station, and abuse them as feeds you, after your belly's full. What do you say, Paddy?'

The man whom he addressed folded up the sheet upon which he had been writing, and rising from the form on which he sat, stood before the fire, displaying an athletic figure, and determined countenance, lighted up by a pair of glancing blue eyes, which proclaimed his nationality.

'I say that this strike business is all d – d rot, run by a lot of sneaks for their own ends. They're the vermin that fatten on the working-men, that are fools enough to believe their rubbish – not the squatters, who've mostly worked hard for what they've made, and spent it free enough, more power to them! Where's there a man on North Yalla-doora that's got anything to complain of? We're well paid, well fed, well cooked for, eh, Jack? and as comfortable in our way as the boss is in his. More indeed, for we've got a shingled roof, and his is box-bark. The travellers' hut's shingled, so is the rouseabouts'. He's never had time to have his own place done up, though he lives like a gentleman, as we all know.'

'Yer 'arf a gentleman yerself, ain't yer, Mister O'Kelly?' replied Stoate sneeringly. 'No wonder yer don't take no interest in the workers – the men that makes the wealth of this country, and every other. Yer the makin's of a first-class "scab," and if the chaps here was of my mind you'd be put out of every hut on the river.' Before the last word was fully out, O'Kelly made a couple of steps forward with so vengeful a glare in his blue eyes that Stoate involuntarily drew back – with such haste also, that he trod on the foot of a man behind him and nearly fell backward.

'You infernal scoundrel!' he cried; 'dare to take my name into your ugly mouth again, and I'll kick you from here to the woolshed, and drown you in the wash-pen afterwards. I've done a man's work in Australia for the last five years, though I wasn't brought up to it, as some of you know. I've nothing to say against the men who gave me honest pay for honest work, and whose salt I've eaten. But skulking crawlers like you are ruining the country. You're worse than a dingo —he don't beg. You come here and whine for food, and then try to bite the hand that feeds you. Didn't I see you at the store to-night, waiting for grub, like the other travellers?'

'No, yer didn't then,' snarled Stoate.

'Well, I have before this, and more than once. I expect you're loafing on your mate, who's a decent fellow, and the sooner he parts company with a hound like you, the better. But this is our hut, and out you go, or I will, and that's the long and short of it. Come on, Joe!'

'The public's not on for a sermon to-night, Janus, old man,' said the young fellow before mentioned. 'Paddy's got his monkey up, and it'll be bloody wars if you don't clear. Yer mate's a cove as we'd like to spend the evenin' with, but the votin's agin yer, Janus, it raly is.'

'I came in with Stoate,' said Bill, 'and in course I'm here to see it out with him, man to man. But this is your hut, and not ours, mate, so we'd better get back to our camp – good-night all!'

CHAPTER II

The sun-rays were slowly irradiating 'the level waste, the rounded grey' which accurately described the landscape, in the lower Riverina, which our travellers had reached after a fortnight's travel, and where the large and pastorally famous sheep station of Tandāra had been constructed. Far as the eye could range was an unbroken expanse of sea-like plain, covered at this spring time of year with profuse vegetation – the monotony being occasionally relieved by clumps of the peculiar timber growing only amid the vast levels watered by the Darling. The wilga, the boree, and the mogil copses were in shape, outline, and area so curiously alike, that the lost wanderer proverbially found difficulty in fixing upon any particular clump as a landmark. Once strayed from the faint irregular track, often the only road between stations thirty or forty miles apart – once confused as to the compass bearings, and how little hope was there for the wayfarer, especially if weary, thirsty, and on foot! The clump of mogil or wilga trees, which he had toiled so many a mile in the burning afternoon to reach, was the facsimile of the one left, was it that morning or the one before? More than once had he, by walking in a circle, and making for apparently 'creek timber' at variance with his original course, found himself at the same clump, verified by his own tracks, and the ashes of his small fire, as the one which he had left forty-eight hours ago.

Reckless and desperate, he takes the course again, feeling weaker by two days' hard walking – footsore, hungry – above all, thirsty, to the verge of delirium. Let us hope that he falls in with a belated boundary rider who shows him an endless-seeming wire fence, which he commands him to follow, till he meets the jackaroo sent with a water-bag to meet him. If this good angel (not otherwise angelic-seeming) 'drops across' him, well and good; if not so, or he does not 'cut the tracks' of a station team, or the lonely mailman going a back road, God help him! Soon will the crows gathering expectant round a pair of eagles, telegraph to the sharp-eyed scouts of the wilderness that they may ride over and see the dried-up, wasted similitude of what was once a man.

No such tragedy was likely to be enacted in the case of our two shearers. They were fairly mounted. They had food and water to spare. Bill was an experienced bushman, and both men had been along this track before. So they followed the winding trail traced faintly on the broad green sheet of spring herbage, sometimes almost invisible – or wholly so, where an old sheep camp had erased the hoof-or wheel-marks – turning to the right or the left with confident accuracy, until they 'picked up' the course again. Wading girth-deep through the subsidiary watercourses – billabongs, cowalls, and such – bank high in this year of unusual rain and plenty (they are synonymous in riverine Australia, 'arida nutrix'), and scaring the water-fowl, which floated or flew in countless flocks.

That gigantic crane, the brolgan (or native companion), danced his quadrille in front of them, 'advance, retire, flap wing, and set to partner,' before he sailed away to a region unfrequented by the peaceful-seeming but dangerous intruder. Crimson-winged, French grey galah parrots fluttered around them in companies, never very far out of shot; the small speckled doves, loveliest of the columba tribes, rose whirring in bevies, while the

swift-footed 'emu' over the waste

Speeds like a horseman that travels in haste.

To the inexperienced European traveller beholding this region for the first time, all-ignorant of the reverse side of the shield, what a pastoral paradise it would have seemed! Concealed from his vision the dread spectres of Famine, Death, Ruin, and Despair, which the shutting-up of the windows of Heaven for a season, has power to summon thereon.

This was a good year, however, in pastoral parlance. Thousands of lambs born in the autumnal months of April and May were now skipping, fat and frolicsome, by the sides of the ewes, in the immense untended flocks. They had been but recently marked and numbered, the latter arithmetical conclusion being obtained by the accurate if primitive method of counting the heaps of severed tails, which modern sheep-farming exacts from the bleeding innocents. The percentage ranged from ninety to nearly a hundred, an almost abnormally favourable result.

How different from the famine years of a past decade, still fresh in men's minds, when every lamb was killed as soon as born 'to save its mother's life,' and in many stations one-half of the ewes died also, from sheer starvation; when immense migratory flocks, like those of the 'mesta' of their Spanish ancestors, swept over the land, destroying, locust-like, every green thing (and dry, too, for that matter), steering towards the mountain plateaux, which boast green grass and rill-melodies, the long relentless summer through – that summer which, on lower levels, had slain even the wild creatures of the forest and plain, inured from countless ages to the deadly droughts of their Austral home.

When the kangaroos by the thousand die,

It's rough on the travelling sheep,

as 'Banjo' sings.

This station, when reached, presented a different appearance from North Yalla-doora. The prairie-like plain, far as the eye could reach, was bisected by a wide and turbid stream, flowing between banks, now low and partly submerged, now lofty and precipitous; occasionally overhanging as if cut away by the angry waters, in one of the foaming floods which, from time to time, alternated with seasons when the shallow stream trickled feebly over the rock-bars in the river-bed.

The buildings were large, but less complete in appearance than those of Yalla-doora. An air of feverish energy pervaded the whole establishment, which seemed to denote that time was more valued than finish, for the pressing work in hand. The windings of the river could be distinctly marked by the size of the great eucalypts which fringed the banks, refusing to grow away from its waters. How often had they been hailed with joy by the weary wayfarer, athirst even unto death, who knows that his trials are over, when from afar he sights the 'river timber.' And now, the signs of the campaign were visible. Men rode in at speed from distant parts of the immense area known as Tandara 'run.' From the far horizon came nearer and yet nearer the lines of unladen waggons, with long teams of lagging horses or even bullocks, from twelve to twenty in number.

Far from fat and well-liking were these necessary beasts of draught, but sure to leave the station frolicsome and obese after a few weeks' depasturing upon the giant herbage which for a hundred leagues in every direction waved in vast meads like ripening corn. An assemblage of tents and hastily constructed shelters on a 'point' of the river proclaims the 'camp' or temporary abode of the expectant shearers and rouseabouts, wool-pressers, ordinary hands, and general utility men, upon every large run at shearing time, but more especially on so exceptionally important a property as that of Tandara.

'By George! there's a big roll up on Steamer Point this time,' said Bill. 'I've shorn here twice, and never seen as many afore. There won't be stands for half of 'em when the roll's called.'

'No more there will,' said Stoate, as he looked in the direction of the populous camp, where much talk and argument seemed to be going on. 'And them that wrote and got their names put down months back won't have a rosy time of it neither.'

'Why not?' queried Bill. 'Ain't they done right to come and shear when they promised last year, and got the cove to keep places for them?'

'Oh, I didn't mean that, though I don't hold, mind you, with taking places such a dashed long time before shearin's on. It's hard on a chap, when he comes to a shed after travellin' three or four 'underd mile, to be told that all the stands is took up. But there'll be a big row all the same.'

'How's that?'

'Why, Drench the delegate told me, the last place we stopped at, that orders had come up that if the boss wouldn't give in to the Shearers' Union agreement the men were to be called off the board.'

'Hunter won't stand it,' said Bill. 'You take my word. He's always been a good employer; no man can deny that. Good wages, good rations, and pays cash on the nail when the men want it. Don't even give cheques, and that blocks the publican, because a chap can pay as he goes, and needn't hand his cheque over the bar counter. But I know what he'll say to the delegate, or any other man that tells him he's not to be boss in his own shed.'

'What'll that be?' asked Stoate, with a sidelong look, half of curiosity, half of concealed malice.

'He'll tell 'em to go to hell and mind their own business, and leave him to look after his; that he'll see the Union and every one connected with it d – d first before he'll give up the right to manage his own property in his own way.'

'We'll show him different – that is, the Union will,' said Stoate, correcting himself hastily. 'His property! Who made it? who dug the tanks and put up the fences, and shepherded the sheep afore they was paddocked? and built the blooming shed, as is an emblem of tyranny, to my thinking – when every man ought to have his five 'underd or a thousand ewes of his own, and a neat little place to shear 'em in? His property! I say it's our property. We made it – with the labour of our 'ands – and we ought to have the biggest say in the managin' of it.'

'What about buyin' the sheep and cattle, and the horses, and the payin' of wages this year?' said Bill. 'Suppose they come o' theirselves, "kinder growed," as the nigger gal says in that book about slavery in America, as Jenny read out to me last winter.'

'Wages be hanged!' retorted the disciple of Henry George and Bellamy. 'Our labour makes the fund out of which they pays their bloomin' wages, as they call 'em – infernal skinflints, as they are. It's dashed easy for them as gets the profits of our hard earnin's to dribble a trifle back, hardly enough to keep us in workin' order, like them team 'orses as is just turned out – a bite of chaff, and that's about all.'

'Well, only for the chaff, they'd be deaders the first dry season – down from weakness for a week or two, with their eyes picked out by the crows, and the ants eatin' 'em alive. I've seen the wild "brumbies" like that. I expect they ought to go on strike for stable keep, and three feeds of oats a day?'

'Men and 'orses is different – you can't compare 'em, in the way of their rights.'

'No; I know you can't,' answered Bill. 'The horses are a dashed sight the straightest crowd of the two. Howsomever, we shan't agree on them points, if we talk till Christmas. You take your way, and I'll take mine. But look here, Stoate, if there's goin' to be any of this burnin' and smashin' racket, as I've heard tell of, I'm not on. Mind that – don't you make any mistake! I've a bit of property of my own, as I've worked hard for, and I'm not goin' to hurt another man's savin's, Union or no Union, for all the Labour delegates in Australia, and so I tell you.'

Stoate did not speak for a few moments, then his eyes once more assumed the covert look of malice which they had worn before, as he said slowly —

'That means that you're not game to stand up for the rights of your horder, and you'll act the spy on the men as does.'

Bill's grey eyes blazed out with so sudden a light, as he made a half movement to jump off his horse, that Stoate involuntarily tightened his rein, and touched his leg-weary steed with the one spur of which he made constant use. But Bill resumed his saddle seat, and putting strong constraint on himself, replied: 'I'm that game as I'll give you a crack on the "point," as 'll stop your blowin' for a bit, if you'll get down and put your hands up. You're a light weight, and not very fit, or I'd knock some of the gas out'n yer now if you'd stand up to me. Not as you would – you're a deal better at talkin' than fightin', let alone workin'. But you and me's mates no more, mind that. You clear out with your moke, and make your own camp, and don't you come anigh me never again, or I'll give you what for, in a style you'll remember till the shearin' after next.' And so saying, Bill touched up his horse, and went off at a hand gallop, with his pack-horse – which by this time had learned to follow his companion steed – after him. Mr. Stoate regarded this action on the part of his whilom companion with baleful eye and resentful feeling, which at length found vent in these memorable words —