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

woman I met at Pike’s pub. I lived with her three weeks and left her there. I haven’t seen her this six years.”

“Did you and she have some er⁠—differences, then?” said Carew.

“Differences? No I We had fights⁠—plenty fights. You see, it was this way. I hadn’t long got these two gins; and just before the rains the wild geese come down in thousands to breed, and the blacks all clear out and camp by the lagoons, and kill geese and eat eggs and young ones all day long, till they near bust. It’s the same every year⁠—when the wild geese come the blacks have got to go, and it’s no use talkin’. So I was slavin’ away here⁠—out all day on the run with the cattle⁠—and one night I comes home after being out three days, and there at the foot of the bunk was the two gins’ trousers and shirts, folded up; they’d run away with the others.

“So I goes after ’em down the river to the lagoons, and there was hundreds of blacks; but these two beauties had heard me coming, and was planted in the reeds, and the other blacks, of course, they says, ‘No more’ when I arst them. So there I was, lonely. Only me and the Chinaman here for two months, ’cause his gin had gone too. So one day I ketches the horses, and off I goes, and travels for days, till I makes Pike’s pub, and there was this woman.

“It seems from what I heard afterwards that she’d just cleared out from some fellow she’d been livin’ with for years⁠—had a quarrel with him. Anyhow, I hadn’t seen a white woman for years, and she was a fine lump of a woman, and I got on a bit of a spree for a week or so, you know⁠—half-tight all the time; and it seems some sort of a parson⁠—a mish’nary to the blacks⁠—chanced along and married us. She had her lines and everything all right, but I don’t remember much about it. So then I’m living with her for a bit; but I don’t like her goin’s on, and I takes the whip to her once, and she gets snake-headed to me, and takes up an axe; and then one day comes a black from this place and he says to me, he says, ‘Old man,’ he says, ‘Maggie and Lucy come back.’ So then I says to my wife, ‘I’m off back to the run,’ I says, ‘and it’s sorry I am that ever I married you.’ And she says, ‘Well, I’m not goin’ out to yer old run, to get eat up with musketeers.’ So says I, ‘Please yourself about that, you faggot,’ I says, ‘but I’m off.’ So off I cleared, and I never seen her from that day till this. I married her under the name of Keogh, though. Will that make any difference?”

This legal problem kept them occupied for some time; and, after much discussion, it was decided that a marriage under a false name could hardly be valid.

Then weariness, the weariness of open-air, travelling, and hard work, settled down on them, and they made for the house. On the verandah the two gins lay sleeping, their figures dimly outlined under mosquito nets; the dogs crouched about in all sorts of attitudes. Considine turned in all standing in the big rough bunk, while Carew and Gordon stretched their blankets on the hard earth floor, made a pillow of their clothes, and lay down to sleep, after fixing mosquito nets. Gordon slept as soon as he touched the blankets, but Carew tumbled and tossed. The ground was deadly hard. During the journey Frying Pan had got grass for their beds; here he had not been told to get it, and it would have looked effeminate to ask for grass when no one else seemed to want it. The old man heard him stirring and rolling, and sat up in his bunk. “What’s up, Mister?” he said kindly. “D’you find it a hard camp?”

“Not too easy,” said the Englishman. “Always seems to be a deuced hard place just under your hip, don’t you know?”

“I’ll put you right in a brace of shakes,” said Considine. “I’ve got the very thing to make a soft bed. Half a minute now, and I’ll get it for you.”

He went out to the back of the house, and returned with a dry white bullock-hide, as rigid as a sheet of iron. This he threw down at Carew’s feet.

“Here y’are, Mister; put that under you for a hipper, and you’ll be all right.”

Carew found the hide nearly as hard as the bare floor, but he uttered profuse thanks, and said it was quite comfortable; to which the old man replied that he was sure it must be, and then threw himself back on his bunk and began snoring at once. But Carew lay long awake.

XVIII The Wild Cattle

Carew awoke next morning to find that it was broad daylight, and the horses had been run in, caught, and saddled, all ready for a start to the run. Breakfast was soon disposed of, and the cavalcade set out. Naturally, the old man had heaps of questions to ask about his inheritance, and made the Englishman ride alongside while he questioned him.

“If I go to England after this money, Mister, I suppose they won’t be handin’ me out ten years for perjury, same as they done for Roger Tichborne, eh? I won’t have no law case, will I?”

“Shouldn’t think so. You’ve been advertised for all over the place, I believe.”

“Ha! Well, now they’ve got me they mightn’t like me, don’t you see? I never took no stock in them unclaimed-money fakes. I never see any money goin’ beggin’ yet, long as I’ve lived, but what some chap had his hands on it quick enough. But I s’pose it’s all right.”

“It’s me wife I’m troublin’ about. I’m no dandy, Goodness knows, but if