The Squatter's Dream

“Well, not so bad, considering there hasn’t been a bull bought these ten years. It’s first-class fattening country; I dare say you saw that if you noticed any mobs as you came along.” Jack nodded. “When the country is real good cattle will hold their own, no matter how they’re bred. There ain’t much the matter with the cattle – a few stags and rough ones, of course, but pretty fair on the whole. I expect you’re hungry after your journey. The hut-keeper will bring in tea directly.”

In a few moments that functionary appeared, with a pair of trousers so extremely dirty as to suggest the idea that he had been permanently located upon a back block, where economy in the use of water was a virtue of necessity. Rubbing down the collection of slabs which did duty for a table with a damp cloth, he placed thereon a tin dish, containing a large joint of salt beef, a damper like the segment of a cart-wheel, and a couple of plates, one of which was of the same useful metal as the dish. He then departed, and presently appeared with a very black camp-kettle, or billy, of hot tea, which he placed upon the floor; scattering several pannikins upon the board, one of which contained sugar, he lounged out again, after having taken a good comprehensive stare at the new comer.

“We smashed our teapot last muster,” said the manager, apologetically, “and we can’t get another till the drays come up. This is a pretty rough shop, as you see, but I suppose you ain’t just out from England?”

“I have been in the bush before,” said Jack, sententiously. “Are the flies always as bad here?”

“Well, they’re enough to eat your eyes out, and the mosquitoes too – worse after the rains; but they say it’s worse lower down the river.”

“Worse than this! I should hardly have thought it possible,” mused Jack, as the swarming insects disputed the beef with him, and caused him to be cautious of shutting his mouth after enclosing a few accidentally. The bread was black with them, the sugar, the table generally, and every now and then one of a small black variety would dart straight into the corner of his eye.

When the uninviting meal was over, Jack walked outside, and, lighting his pipe, commenced to consider the question of the purchase of the place. With the sedative influences of the great narcotic a more calmly judicial view of the question presented itself.

He was sufficiently experienced to know that, whereas you may make a homestead and adjuncts sufficiently good to satisfy the most exacting Squatter-Sybarite, if such be wanting, you can by no means build a good run if the country, that is, extent and quality of pasture, be wanting. A prudent buyer, therefore, does not attach much value to improvements, scrutinizing carefully the run itself as the only source of future profits.

“It is a beastly hole!” quoth Jack, as he finished his pipe, “only fit for a black fellow, or a Scotchman on his promotion; but from what I saw of the cattle as I came along (and they tell no lies) there is no mistake about the country. They were all as fat as pigs, the yearlings and calves, as well as the aged cattle. I never saw them look like that at Marshmead, or even at Glen na Voirlich, which used to be thought the richest spot in our district. There is nothing to hinder me clearing out the whole of the herd and having ten or fifteen thousand ewes on the place before lambing time. There is no scab and no foot-rot within a colony of us. With fair luck, I could have up a woolshed in time to shear; and a decent lambing, say 70 per cent., would give me – let me see, how many altogether after shearing?”

Here Jack went into abstruse arithmetical calculations as to the numbers, sexes, ages, and value of his possible property, and, after a very rapid subtraction of cattle and multiplication of sheep, saw himself the owner of fifty thousand of the last-named fashionable animals, which, when sold at twenty-five shillings per head, or even twenty-seven and sixpence (everything given in), would do very well until he should have visited Europe, and returned to commence operations upon a scale even more grand and comprehensive.

“I think I see my way,” he said to himself, finally, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “Of course one must rough it at first; the great thing in these large stock operations is decisiveness.”

He accordingly decided to go to bed at once, and informed Mr. Hawkesbury, the overseer, that he should be ready as soon as they could see in the morning, and so betook himself to a couch, of which the supporting portion was ingeniously constructed of strips of hide, and the mattress, bed-clothing, curtains, &c., represented by a pair of blankets evidently akin in antiquity, as in hue, to Bob the cook’s trousers.

Accepting his host’s brief apologies, Jack turned in, and Mr. Hawkesbury, having disembarrassed himself of his boots, pulled a ragged opossum-rug over him, and lay down before the fire-place, with his pipe in his mouth.

The coach and mail travelling, continued during two preceding days and nights, had banged and shaken Jack’s hardy frame sufficiently to induce a healthy fatigue. In two minutes he was sound asleep, and for three or four hours never turned in his bed. Then he woke suddenly, and with the moment of consciousness was enabled to realize Mr. Gulliver’s experiences after the first flight of the arrows of the Liliputians.

He arose swiftly, and muttering direful maledictions upon the Warroo, and all inhabitants of its borders from source to mouth, frontage and back, myall, salt-bush, and cotton-bush, pulled on his garments and looked around.

It yet wanted three hours to daylight. Mr. Hawkesbury was sleeping like an infant. He could see the moon through a crack in the bark roof, and hear the far hoarse note of the night-bird. Taking his railway rug, he opened the door, which creaked upon its Egyptian hinge, and walked forth.

“Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest.”

And so on, as Longfellow has it in mournful Evangeline. The forest was not exactly black, being partly of the moderately-foliaged eucalyptus, and having a strip of the swaying, streaming myall, of a colour more resembling blue than black. Still there were shadows sufficiently darksome and weird in conjunction with the glittering moonbeams to appeal to the stranger’s poetic sympathies. The deep, still waters of the lagoon lay like dulled silver, ever and anon stirred into ripples of wondrous brilliancy by the leaping of a fish, or the sinuous trail of a reptile or water rodent. All was still as in the untroubled æons ere discovery. In spite of the squalid surroundings and the sordid human traces, Nature had resumed her grand solitude and the majestic hush of the desert.

“All this is very fine,” quoth Jack to himself. “What a glorious night; but I must try and have a little more sleep somehow.” He picked out a tolerably convenient spot between the buttressed roots of a vast casuarina, which from laziness rather than from taste had been spared by the ruthless axes of the pioneers, and wrapping himself in his rug lay down in the sand. The gentle murmur of the ever-sounding, mournful-sighing tree soon hushed his tired senses, and the sun was rising as he raised himself on his elbow and looked round.

It was a slightly different sleeping arrangement from those to which he had been long accustomed. Nor were the concomitants less strange. A large pig had approached nearer than was altogether pleasant. She was evidently speculating as to the weak, defenceless, possibly edible condition of the traveller. Jack had not been conversant with the comprehensively carnivorous habits of Warroo pigs. He was, therefore, less alarmed than amused. He also made the discovery that he was no great distance from a populous ant-hill, of which, however, the free and enlightened citizens had not as yet “gone for him.” Altogether he fully realized the necessity for changing front, and, rising somewhat suddenly to his feet, was about to walk over to the hut when the rolling thunder of horses at speed, rapidly approaching, decided him to await the new sensation.

Round a jutting point of timber a small drove of twenty or thirty horses came at a headlong gallop in a cloud of dust, and made straight for the stockyard in the direct track for which Jack’s bedroom was situated. Standing close up to the old tree, which was sufficiently strong and broad to shield him, he awaited the cavalry charge. They passed close on either side, to the unaffected astonishment of an old mare, who turned her eyes upon him with a wild glare as she brushed his shoulder with her sweeping mane. Dashing into the large receiving-yard of the old stockyard, they stopped suddenly and began to walk gently about, as if fully satisfied with themselves. Following fast came two wild riders, one of whom was a slight half-caste lad, and the other, to Jack’s great surprise, a black girl of eighteen or twenty. This last child of the desert rode en cavalier on an ordinary saddle with extremely rusty stirrup-irons. Her long wavy hair fell in masses over her shoulders. Her eyes were soft and large, her features by no means unpleasing, and her unsophisticated teeth white and regular. Dashing up to the slip-rails, this young person jumped off her horse with panther-like agility, and putting up the heavy saplings, thus addressed Mr. Hawkesbury, who, with Jack, had approached: —

“By gum, Misser Hoxbry, you give me that horrid old mare to-day I ride her inside out, the ole brute.”

“What for, Wildduck?” inquired the overseer; “what’s she been doing now?”

“Why, run away all over the country and break half-a-dozen times, and make me and Spitfire close up dead. Look at him.” Here she pointed to her steed, a small violent weed, whose wide nostril and heaving flank showed that he had been going best pace for a considerable period. “That boy, Billy Mortimer, not worth a cuss.”

Having volunteered this last piece of information, Wildduck pulled off the saddle, which she placed, cantle downward, against the fence, so as to permit the moistened padding to receive all drying influences of sun and air; then, dragging off the bridle to the apparent danger of Spitfire’s front teeth, she permitted that excitable courser to wander at will.

“That one pull my arm off close up,” she remarked, “all along that ole devil of a mare. I’ll take it out of her to-day, my word! Who’s this cove?”

“Gentleman come up to buy station,” answered Hawkesbury; “by and by, master belong to you; and if you’re a good girl he’ll give you a new gown and a pound of tobacco. Now you get breakfast, and ride over to Jook-jook – tell’m all to meet us at the Long Camp to-morrow.”

“Kai-i!” said the savage damsel, in a long-drawn plaintive cry of surprise, as she put her fingers, with assumed shyness, up to her face, and peered roguishly through them; then, hitching up her scanty and tattered dress, she ran off without more conversation to the hut.

“Good gracious!” said Jack to himself, “I wonder what old Elsie and Geordie Stirling would think of all this; Moabitish women and all the rest of it, I suppose. However, I am not here for the present to regulate the social code of the Lower Warroo. Have you got the tribe here?” he said, aloud.

“No, Wildduck ran away from a travelling mob of cattle,” answered Hawkesbury. “She’s a smart gin when she’s away from grog, and a stunner at cutting out on a camp.”

That day passed in an exhaustive general tour round the run. Mounted upon an elderly stock-horse of unimpeachable figure, with legs considerably the worse for wear, and provided with a saddle which caused him to vow that never again would he permit himself to be dissociated from his favourite Wilkinson, Jack was piloted by Mr. Hawkesbury through the “frontage” and a considerable portion of the “back” regions of Gondaree. It was the same story: oceans of feed, water everywhere, all the cattle rolling fat. Nothing that the most hard-hearted buyer could object to, if troubled with but a grain of conscience. Billowy waves of oat grass, wild clover (medicago sativa), and half-a-dozen strange fodder plants, of which Redgrave knew not the names, adorned the great meadows or river flats; while out of the immense reed-beds, the feathery tassels of which stirred in the breeze far above their heads, came ever and anon, at the crack of the stock-whip, large droves of cattle in Indian file, in such gorgeous condition that, as our hero could not refrain from saying, a dealer in fat stock might have taken the whole lot to market, cows, calves, bullocks and steers, without rejecting a beast.

Leaving these grand savannahs, when they proceeded to the more arid back country there was still no deterioration in the character of the pasturage. Myall and boree belts of timber, never known to grow upon “poor” or “sour” land, alternated with far-stretching plains, where the salt-bush, the cotton-bush, and many another salsiferous herb and shrub, betokened that Elysium of the squatter, “sound fattening country.” John Redgrave was charmed. He forgot the dog-hole he had left in the morning, the fleas, the pigs, the evil habiliments of Bob the cook, the uninviting meal, all the shocks and outrages upon his tastes and habits; his mind dwelt only upon the great extent and apparently half-stocked condition of Gondaree. And as they rode home by starlight the somewhat perilous stumbles of the old stock-horse only partially disturbed a reverie in which a new wool-shed, a crack wash-pen, every kind of modern “improvement,” embellished a model run, carrying fifty thousand high-caste merino sheep.

He demolished his well-earned supper of corned beef and damper that night with quite another species of appetite; and as he deposited himself in an extemporized hammock, above the reach of midnight marauders, he told himself that Gondaree was not such a bad place after all, and only wanted an owner possessed of sufficient brains to develop its great capabilities to become a pleasant, profitable, and childishly safe investment.

Wildduck’s mission had apparently been successful. The old mare was making off from the men’s hut in a comparatively exhausted state, while a chorus of voices, accented with the pervading British oath, told of the arrival of a number of friends and allies. High among the noisiest of the talkers, and, it must be confessed, by no means reticent of strong language, rose the clear tones and childlike laughter of the savage damsel. In the delicate badinage likely to obtain in such a gathering it was apparent that she could well hold her own.

“My word, Johnny Dickson,” she was saying to a tall, lathy stripling, whose long hair protected the upper portion of his spine from all danger of sunstroke, “you get one big buster off that roan mare to-day; spread all over the ground, too. Thought you was goin’ to peg out a free-selection.”

“You shut up, and go back to old man Jack, you black varmint,” retorted the unhorsed man-at-arms amid roars of laughter. “You ain’t no great chop on a horse, except to ride him to death. I can back anything you’ll tackle, or ere a black fellow between this and Adelaide. I’m half a mind to box your ears, you saucy slut.”

“Ha, ha,” yelled the girl, “you ride? that’s a good un! You not game to get on the Doctor here to-morrow, not for twenty pound. You touch me! Why, ole Nanny fight you any day, with a yam-stick. I fight you myself, blessed if I don’t.”

“What’s all this?” demanded Mr. Hawkesbury, suddenly appearing on the scene. “Have any of you fellows been bringing grog on the place? Because it’s a rascally shame, and I won’t have it.”

“Well, sir,” said one of the stockmen, “one of the chaps had a bottle, quite accidental like, and the gin got a suck or two. That’s what set her tongue goin’. But it’s all gone now, and nothing broke. Which way do we go to-morrow?”

“Well, I want to muster those Bimbalong Creek cattle, and then put as many as we can get on the main camp, just to give this gentleman here (indicating Jack) a sort of idea of the numbers. Daylight start, remember, so don’t be losing your horses.”

“All right,” said the self-constituted spokesman, the others merely nodding acquiescence; “we’ll short-hobble them to-night – they can’t get away very far.”

Considerably before daylight beefsteaks were frying, horses were being gathered up, and a variety of sounds proclaimed that when bent upon doing a day’s work the dwellers around Gondaree could set about it in an energetic and business-like fashion. There was not a streak of crimson in the pearly dawn-light, as the whole party, comprising more than a dozen men and the redoubtable Wildduck, rode silently along the indistinct trail which led “out back.” There was a good deal of smoking and but little talk for the first hour. After that time converse became more general, and the pace was improved at a suggestion from Mr. Hawkesbury that the sooner they all got to the scene of their work the better, as it was a pretty good day’s ride there and back.

“So it is,” answered a hard, weather-beaten-looking, grizzled stockman. “I never see such a part of the country as this. If it was in other colonies I’ve been to they’d have had a good hut, and yards, and a horse-paddock at Bimbalong this years back. But they wouldn’t spend a ten pound note or two, those Sydney merchants, not for to save the lives of every stockman on the Warroo.”

“That wouldn’t be much of a loss, Jingaree,” said the overseer, laughing, while a sort of sardonic smile went the round of the company, as if they appreciated the satire; “and I shouldn’t blame ’em if that was the worst of it. But it’s a loss to themselves, if they only knew it. All they can say is, plenty of money has been made on old Gondaree, as bad as it is. I hope the next owner will do as well – and better.”

“Me think ’um you better git it back to me and ole man Jack,” suggested Wildduck, now restored to her usual state of coolness and self-possession. “Ole man Jack own Gondaree water-hole by rights. Everybody say Gondaree people live like black fellows. What for you not give it us back again?”

“Well, I’m blowed,” answered the overseer, aghast at the audacious proposition; “what next? No, no, Wildduck. We’ve improved the country.” Here the stockmen grinned. “Besides, you and old man Jack would go and knock it down. You ain’t particular to a few glasses of grog, you know, Wildduck.”

“White fellow learn us that,” answered the girl, sullenly, and the “chase rode on.”

In rather less than three hours the party of horsemen had reached a narrow reed-fringed watercourse, the line of which was marked by dwarf eucalypti, no specimens of which had been encountered since they left the homestead.

Here they halted for a while upon a sand-ridge picturesquely wooded with the bright green arrowy pine (callitris), and, after a short smoke, Mr. Hawkesbury proceeded to make a disposition of forces.

“Three of you go up the creek till you get to the other side of Long Plain, there’s mostly a mob somewhere about there. You’ll see a big brindle bullock; if you get him you’ve got the leading mob. Jingaree, you can start; take Johnson and Billy Mortimer with you. Charley Jones, you beat up the myall across the creek; take Jackson and Long Bill. Four of you go out back till you come to the old Durgah boundary; you’ll know it by the sheep-tracks, confound them. Waterton, you come with me, and Mr. Redgrave will take the Fishery mob. Wildduck, you too, it will keep you out of mischief, and you can have a gallop after the buffalo cows’ mob, and show off a bit.”

“All right,” answered the sable scout, showing her brilliant teeth, and winding the stock-whip round her head with practised hand she made Spitfire jump all fours off the ground, and proceed sideways, and even tail foremost (as is the manner of excitable steeds), for the next quarter of a mile.

Every section of the party having “split and squandered” according to orders, which were, like those of a captain at cricket or football, unhesitatingly obeyed, Jack found himself proceeding parallel with the creek, with Mr. Hawkesbury as companion, followed by a wiry, sun-tanned Australian lad and Miss Wildduck aforesaid.

It was still early. They had ridden twenty miles, and the day’s work was only commencing. Always fond of this particular description of station-work, John Redgrave looked with the keen eye of a bushman, and something of the poet’s fancy, upon the scene. Eastward the sun-rays were lighting up a limitless ocean of grey plain, tinged with a delicate tone of green, while the hazy distance, precious in that land of hard outlines and too brilliant colouring, was passing from a stage of tremulous gold to the fierce splendour of the desert noon.

There was not a hill within a hundred miles. The level sky-line was unbroken as on the deep, or where the Arab camel kneels by the far-seen plumy palms. The horses stepped along briskly. The air was dry and fresh. The element of grandeur and unimpeded territorial magnificence told powerfully upon John’s sanguine nature.

“I don’t care what they say,” he thought. “This is a magnificent country, and I believe would carry no end of sheep, if properly fenced and managed. I flatter myself I shall make such a change as will astonish the oldest and many other inhabitants.”

Following the water, they rode quietly onward until, near a bend of the humble but enormously important streamlet, they descried the “Fishery,” of which Hawkesbury had spoken. This was a ruinous and long deserted “weir,” formed of old by the compatriots of Wildduck, for the ensnaring of eels and such fish as might be left disporting themselves in the Bimbalong after a flood of unusual height. At such periods the outer meres and back creeks received a portion of the larger species of fish which habitually reposed in the still, deep waters of the Warroo. Traces could still be seen of a labyrinth of artificial channels, dams, and reservoirs, showing considerable ingenuity, and distinct evidence of more continuous labour than the aboriginal Australian is generally credited with.

CHAPTER IV

“Ye seeken loud and see for your winninges.” —Chaucer.

“My word,” exclaimed Wildduck, jumping from her horse and gazing at the rare ruin of her fading race, “this big one fishery one time. Me come here like it picaninny. All about black fellow that time. Bullo – bullo.”

Here she spread out her hands, as if to denote an altogether immeasurable muster-roll of warriors.

“Big one corrobaree – shake ’em ground all about; and old man Coradjee too.”

Here she sank her voice into an awe-stricken whisper.

“Where are they all gone, Wildduck?” inquired Redgrave; “along a Warroo?”

“Along a Warroo?” cried the girl, mockingly. “Worse than that. White fellow shoot ’em like possum. That ole duffer, Morgan, shoot fader belonging to me.”

“Come, come, Wildduck,” said Hawkesbury, “we’re after cattle just now – never mind about old Mindai. It wasn’t one, nor yet two, white fellows only that he picked the bones of, if all the yarns are true.”

“You think I no care, because I’m black,” said the girl, reproachfully, as the tears rolled down her dusky cheeks. “I very fond of my poor ole fader. – Hallo! there’s cattle – come along, Waterton.”

“Changing the subject with a vengeance,” thought Redgrave, as the mercurial mourner, with all the fickleness of her race, superadded to that of her sex, looked back a laughing challenge to the stockman, and closing her heels upon the eager pony, was at top speed in about three strides. Looking in the direction of Spitfire’s outstretched neck, Redgrave and his companion could descry a long dark line of moving objects at a considerable distance on the plain, but whether horses, cattle, or even a troop of emu, they were unable to make out with certainty.

“Let’s back her up quietly,” said Hawkesbury. “She and Charley will head them; it’s no use bustin’ our horses. This is rather a flash mob, but they’ll be all right when they’re wheeled once or twice.”

Keeping on at a steady hand-gallop, they soon came up with a large lot of cattle going best pace in the wrong direction. The accomplished Wildduck, however, flew round them like a falcon, Spitfire doing his mile in remarkably fair time. Being ably supported by Waterton, the absconders were rounded up, and were ready to return and be forgiven, when Hawkesbury and Mr. Redgrade joined them.

“By Jove!” cried our hero, with unconcealed approval, “what grand condition all the herd seem to be in! Look at those leaders.” Here he pointed to a string of great raking five and six year old bullocks, whose immense frames, a little coarse, but well grown and symmetrical, were filled up to the uttermost point of development. “You don’t seem to have drafted them very closely.”