An Outback Marriage, Banjo Paterson [top ten books of all time .TXT] 📗

the cattle in. Look lively now, you tallow-faced crawlers. Come on, Mister. Did you bring any square-face with you?”

“We brought a drop o’ rum,” replied Charlie.

“Ha! That’ll do. That’s the real Mackay,” said the veteran, slouching along at a perceptibly quicker gait.

“But, look, see here now, Mister!” he continued, anxiously, “you didn’t let Ah Loy get hold of it, did you? He’s a real terror, that Chow of mine. Did you see him when you came in?”

“Yes, we saw him. He couldn’t speak any English, seemingly.”

“That’s him,” said the old man. “That’s him! He don’t savvy much English. He knows all he wants, though. He can lower the rum with any Christian ever I see. It don’t do to let him get his hands on a bottle of anythink in the spirit line. It’ll come back half-empty. Now then, cook,” he roared, seating himself at the rough slab table, and drumming on it with a knife, “let’s have some grub, quick, and you’ll get a nip of rum. This new boss b’long you, you savvy. All about station b’long him. I go buffalo-shooting. Me stony broke. Poor fellow me! Been fifteen years in this God-forgotten country, too,” he said reminiscently, placing his elbows on the table, and gazing at the wall in front of him. “Fifteen years livin’ mostly with the blacks and the Chineyman, and livin’ like a black or a Chineyman, too. And what have I got to show for it? I’ve got to hump my bluey out of this, and take to the road like any other broken-down old swagman.”

“It’s a bit rough,” said Charlie. “How did you come to grief?”

“Oh, I came out here with a big mob of cattle,” said the old man, filling his pipe, as Ah Loy placed some tin plates, a tin dish, and a bottle of Worcester sauce on the table, and withdrew to the kitchen for the provender. “I lived here, and I spent nothing, and I let ’em breed. I just looked on, and let ’em breed. Oh, there was no waste about my management. I hadn’t an overseer at two pounds ten a week, to boss a lot of flash stockmen at two pounds. I jest got my own two gins and three good black boys, and I watched them cattle like a blessed father. I never saw a stranger’s face from year’s end to year’s end. I rode all over the face of the earth, keepin’ track of ’em. I kep’ the wild blacks from scarin’ ’em to death, and spearin’ of ’em, as is their nature to, and I got speared myself in one or two little shootin’ excursions I had.”

“Shooting the blacks?” interpolated Gordon.

“Somethin’ like that, Mister. I did let off a rifle a few times, and I dessay one or two poor, ignorant black feller-countrymen that had been fun’ my cattle as full of spears as so many hedgehogs⁠—I dessay they got in the road of a bullet or two. They’re always gettin’ in the road of things. But we don’t talk of shootin’ blacks nowadays These parts is too civilised⁠—it’s risky. Anyhow, I made them blacks let my cattle alone. And I slaved like a driven nigger, day in and day out, brandin’ calves all day long in the dust, with the sun that hot, the brandin’ iron ’ud mark without puttin’ it in the fire at all. And then down comes the tick, and kills my cattle by the hundred, dyin’ and perishin’ all over the place. And what lived through it I couldn’t sell anywhere, because they won’t let tick-infested cattle go south, and the Dutch won’t let us ship ’em north to Java, the wretches! And then Mr. Grant’s debt was over everything; and at last I had to chuck it up. That’s how I got broke, Mister. I hope you’ll have better luck.”

While he was delivering this harangue, Carew had been taking notes of the establishment. There was just a rough table, three boxes to sit on, a meat safe, a few buckets, and a rough set of shelves, supporting a dipper and a few tin plates, and tins of jam, while in the corner stood some rifles and a double-barrelled gun. Saddlery of all sorts was scattered about the floor promiscuously.

Certainly the owner of No Man’s Land had not lived luxuriously. A low galvanised-iron partition divided the house into two rooms, and through the doorway could be seen a rough bunk made of bags stretched on saplings.

As the old man finished speaking, Ah Loy brought in the evening meal⁠—about a dozen beautifully tender roast ducks in a large tin dish, a tin plate full of light, delicately-browned cakes of the sort known as “puftalooners,” and a huge billy of tea. There were no vegetables; pepper and salt were in plenty, and Worcester sauce. They ate silently, as hungry men do, while the pigs and cattle-dogs marched in at the open-door, and hustled each other for the scraps that were thrown to them.

“How is it the pigs have no tails?” asked Carew.

“Bit off, Mister. The dogs bit them off. They’ve got the ears pretty well chawed off ’em too.”

Just then a pig and a dog made a simultaneous rush for a bone, and the pig secured it. The dog, by way of revenge, fastened on to the pig, and made him squeal like a locomotive engine whistling. The old man kicked at large under the table, and restored order.

“You ain’t eatin’, Mister,” he said, forking a duck on to Carew’s plate with his own fork. “These ducks is all right. They’re thick on the lagoon. The Chow only had two cartridges, but he got about a dozen. He lays down and fires along the water, and they’re floatin’ very near solid on it. But here’s the cattle comin’ up.”

Looking out of the door, they saw about two hundred cattle coming in a long, stringing mob up the plain, driven by four black figures on horseback. As they drew near the