Such Is Life, Joseph Furphy [online e book reading txt] 📗

shadow? Isn’t it well known that if you’re disobedient to your parents, something’ll happen to you? Isn’t it well known that Sabbath-breaking brings a curse on a man that he can’t shake off till he reforms? Now you stole that horse in the dirtiest way; and stealing⁠—well, anything except grass or water⁠—brings as heavy a curse as anything you can do. Mark my words.”

“The Jackdaw of Rheims is a case in point,” remarked Willoughby aside to me.

“Well,” said Price emphatically, and qualifying every word that would bear qualification, “so fur as workin’ on Sundays goes, I’m well sure I allus worked on Sundays, an’ I’m well sure I allus will; an’ I’m well sure ’ere ain’t no cuss on me. Why, I dunno what the (complicated expletive) a cuss is! I’ll get a blanket fer to lay on,” he added; “this ground’s sorter damp.” And he went across to his wagon.

“He’s got a curse on him as big as Mount Macedon, and he doesn’t know it,” muttered Thompson.

“Bearing out the prophecy,” said I aside to Willoughby, “that the sinner, being a hundred years old, shall be accursed.”

“You ought to show him a bit more respect, Mosey,” remarked Cooper gravely.

“Well, to tell you the truth,” replied Mosey frankly, “I got no patience with the ole bunyip. Can’t suffer fools, no road.”

“Well, I don’t want to be shovin’ in my jor, but I’d take him to be more rogue than fool,” suggested Bum.

“Time he was thinkin’ about repentin’, anyhow,” observed Dixon.

“Now, really Thompson⁠—do you believe in these special malisons?” asked Willoughby, as Price rejoined the company. “Are you so superstitious? I shouldn’t have thought it.”

“I’ve good reason to believe in them,” replied Thompson. “You asked me this morning why I didn’t have two teams. Now I’ll tell you the reason. It’s because I’m not allowed to keep two teams. I’ve got a curse on me. Many a long year ago, when I finished my second season, I found myself at Moama, with a hundred and ten notes to the good, and the prospect of going straight ahead, like the cube root⁠—or the square of the hypotenuse, is it? I forget the exact term, but no matter. Well, the curse came on me in this way: Charley Webber, the young fellow I was travelling with, got a letter from some relations in New Zealand, advising him to settle there; so he offered me his plant for two-thirds of its value⁠—fifty notes down and fifty more when he would send for it. Sheer good-nature of him, for he knew he could have the lot if he liked. But there’s not many fellows of Charley’s stamp. So I paid him the fifty notes and we parted. He was to send me his address as soon as he reached New Zealand; but he never got there. The vessel was wrecked on some place they call the North Spit; and Charley was one of the missing. Never heard of him from that day to this.”

“Good (ensanguined) shot!” remarked Mosey. “I wish that same specie of a curse would come on me.”

“My (ensanguined) colonial!” assented Dixon and Bum, with one accord.

“Well, nobody knows anything about the geography of New Zealand,” continued Thompson, “and I purposely forgot the address of Charley’s people. Any honest man would have hunted them up, but that wasn’t my style; I wasn’t a wheat-sample; I was a tare. Compromised with my conscience. Thought there was no time to lose in making an independence⁠—making haste to be rich, and considering not that’s there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip, as Solomon puts it. I said to myself, ‘That’s all right; I’ll pay it some time.’ Now see the consequence⁠—”

“Just two years after I bid the poor fellow goodbye-two years to the very day, and not very lucky years neither⁠—I found myself in the middle of the Death Track, with flour for Wilcannia; one wagon left behind, and the bullocks dropping off like fish out of water; bullocks worth ten notes going as if they weren’t worth half-a-crown. It was like the retreat from Moscow. Finally, I lost fourteen on the trip⁠—exactly the number I had got dishonestly. As for the second wagon, I gave it to Baxter for fetching the load the last fifty mile. I thought this might clear away the curse, so I didn’t fret over it. I felt as if Charley had got satisfaction. But I wasn’t going to get off so cheap. Two years afterward⁠—you remember, Dixon?⁠—I bought that thin team and the Melbourne wagon from Pribble, the contractor. Dixon, here, was driving for Pribble at that very time, and he can tell you how Dick the Devil cleaned me out of my fine old picked team and the new wagon, leaving me to begin afresh with the remains of Pribble’s skeletons and my own old wagon. Then a year or two afterward, I went in debt to buy that plant of Mulligan’s⁠—him that was killed off the colt at Mossgiel⁠—and that same winter the pleuro broke out in my lot, and they went like rotten sheep till fourteen were gone; and then, of course, the plague was stopped. Not having any use for Mulligan’s wagon, I swapped her for a new thirty-by-twenty-four wool-rag, and a Wagga pot, good for eight or ten mile on a still night; and, within a month, Ramsay’s punt went down with my wagon; she’s in the bottom of the Murrumbidgee now, with eight ton of bricks to steady her, and the tarpaulin and bell to keep her company. She’ll be fetching the most critical planks out of a steamer some of these times, and I’ll get seven years for leaving her there. Afterward, when I was hauling logs for pontooning, on the Goulburn, I kept buying up steers and breaking them in, till I had two twelves; and one day I left sixteen of them standing in yoke while I went looking round for a good log; and suddenly I heard a