While the Billy Boils, Henry Lawson [hardest books to read .txt] 📗

“Come, come now! man alive!” exclaimed the doctor, impatiently. “You must be mad. You know you are not in a fit state to go out. Let the wardsman help you to undress.”

“No!” said Macquarie. “No. If you won’t take my dog in you don’t take me. He’s got a broken leg and wants fixing up just⁠—just as much as⁠—as I do. If I’m good enough to come in, he’s good enough⁠—and⁠—and better.”

He paused awhile, breathing painfully, and then went on.

“That⁠—that there old dog of mine has follered me faithful and true, these twelve long hard and hungry years. He’s about⁠—about the only thing that ever cared whether I lived or fell and rotted on the cursed track.”

He rested again; then he continued: “That⁠—that there dog was pupped on the track,” he said, with a sad sort of a smile. “I carried him for months in a billy, and afterwards on my swag when he knocked up.⁠ ⁠… And the old slut⁠—his mother⁠—she’d foller along quite contented⁠—and sniff the billy now and again⁠—just to see if he was all right.⁠ ⁠… She follered me for God knows how many years. She follered me till she was blind⁠—and for a year after. She follered me till she could crawl along through the dust no longer, and⁠—and then I killed her, because I couldn’t leave her behind alive!”

He rested again.

“And this here old dog,” he continued, touching Tally’s upturned nose with his knotted fingers, “this here old dog has follered me for⁠—for ten years; through floods and droughts, through fair times and⁠—and hard⁠—mostly hard; and kept me from going mad when I had no mate nor money on the lonely track; and watched over me for weeks when I was drunk⁠—drugged and poisoned at the cursed shanties; and saved my life more’n once, and got kicks and curses very often for thanks; and forgave me for it all; and⁠—and fought for me. He was the only living thing that stood up for me against that crawling push of curs when they set onter me at the shanty back yonder⁠—and he left his mark on some of ’em too; and⁠—and so did I.”

He took another spell.

Then he drew in his breath, shut his teeth hard, shouldered his swag, stepped into the doorway, and faced round again.

The dog limped out of the corner and looked up anxiously.

“That there dog,” said Macquarie to the hospital staff in general, “is a better dog than I’m a man⁠—or you too, it seems⁠—and a better Christian. He’s been a better mate to me than I ever was to any man⁠—or any man to me. He’s watched over me; kep’ me from getting robbed many a time; fought for me; saved my life and took drunken kicks and curses for thanks⁠—and forgave me. He’s been a true, straight, honest, and faithful mate to me⁠—and I ain’t going to desert him now. I ain’t going to kick him out in the road with a broken leg. I⁠—Oh, my God! my back!”

He groaned and lurched forward, but they caught him, slipped off the swag, and laid him on a bed.

Half an hour later the shearer was comfortably fixed up.

“Where’s my dog!” he asked, when he came to himself.

“Oh, the dog’s all right,” said the nurse, rather impatiently. “Don’t bother. The doctor’s setting his leg out in the yard.”

I met him in the Full-and-Plenty Dining Rooms. It was a cheap place in the city, with good beds upstairs let at one shilling per night⁠—“Board and residence for respectable single men, fifteen shillings per week.” I was a respectable single man then. I boarded and resided there. I boarded at a greasy little table in the greasy little corner under the fluffy little staircase in the hot and greasy little dining-room or restaurant downstairs. They called it dining-rooms, but it was only one room, and them wasn’t half enough room in it to work your elbows when the seven little tables and forty-nine chairs were occupied. There was not room for an ordinary-sized steward to pass up and down between the tables; but our waiter was not an ordinary-sized man⁠—he was a living skeleton in miniature. We handed the soup, and the “roast beef one,” and “roast lamb one,” “corn beef and cabbage one,” “veal and stuffing one,” and the “veal and pickled pork,” one⁠—or two, or three, as the case might be⁠—and the tea and coffee, and the various kinds of puddings⁠—we handed them over each other, and dodged the drops as well as we could. The very hot and very greasy little kitchen was adjacent, and it contained the bathroom and other conveniences, behind screens of whitewashed boards.

I resided upstairs in a room where there were five beds and one washstand; one candlestick, with a very short bit of soft yellow candle in it; the back of a hairbrush, with about a dozen bristles in it; and half a comb⁠—the big-tooth end⁠—with nine and a half teeth at irregular distances apart.

He was a typical bushman, not one of those tall, straight, wiry, brown men of the West, but from the old Selection Districts, where many drovers came from, and of the old bush school; one of those slight active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats, Crimean shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots⁠—“larstins,” they called them. They could dance well; sing indifferently, and mostly through their noses, the old bush songs; play the concertina horribly; and ride like⁠—like⁠—well, they could ride.

He seemed as if he had forgotten to grow old and die out with this old colonial school to which he belonged. They had careless and forgetful ways about them. His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and he’d come to Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes. He had a portmanteau, a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a tin bog. I sat beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance, and he