Station Amusements in New Zealand, Lady Mary Anne Barker [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

flat, tumbled-down heap o' clothes, gets on its back (for no face could I see), so as to be doing something, and not losing time, and begins licking. Not very far off there was a lean horse standing, but he didn't seem to like to come through the slip-rail o' the paddock fence.

"In coorse I couldn't stand gaping there all day, so I went and stooped down to the man, who was lying flat on his face, with his arms straight out. He wasn't sensibleless (Palmer's favourite word for senseless), for he opened his eyes, and said, "For God's sake, mate, take me in." "So I will, mate," I makes reply "and welcome you are. Can you get on your legs, think you?" With that he groans awful, and says, "My legs is friz." Well, I looks at his legs, and sees he was dressed in what had been good moleskins, and high jack riding-boots, coming up to his knees; but sure enough they was as hard as a board, and actially, if you'll believe me, ma'am, there was a rim o' solid hice round the tops of his boots. As for standing, he couldn't do it: his legs was no more use to him than they was to me, and he was a tall, high fellow besides. Cold as it was, I felt hot enough by the time I had lugged that poor man inside my place, and got him up on my bunk. He could speak, though his voice was weak as weak could be, and he helped me as well as he could by catching hold with his arms, but his legs was stone dead. I had to get the tommy (_anglice_-tomahawk), and _chop_ his boots off, and that's the gospel truth, ma'am. I broke my knife, first try, and the axe was too big. He told me, poor fellow, that two days before, as he was returning from prospecting up towards the back ranges, his horse got away, and he _couldn't_ catch him. No: he tried with all his might and main, for in his swag, which was strapped to the D's of his saddle, was not only his blanket, but his baccy, and tea, and damper, and a glass o' grog. The curious thing, too, was that the horse didn't bolt right away, as they generally do: he jest walked a-head, knowing his master was bound to follow wherever he led, for in coorse he had hopes to catch him every moment. That ere brute, he never laid down nor rested,--jest kep slowly moving on, as if he was a Lunnon street-boy, with a bobby at his heels. Through creeks and rivers and swamps he led that poor fellow. His boots got chuck full o' cold water, and when the sun went down it friz into solid hice; and that misfortnit man he felt his legs--which was his life, you see, ma'am--gradially dyin' under him. Yet he was a well-plucked one, if ever there was such a party on this airth. He told me he had took _five_ mortial hours to come the last mile, the horse walkin' slowly afore him, and guiding him like. And how do you think he did it, with two pillars of hice for legs? Why he lifted up just one leg and then the other with both his hands, and put them afore him, and took his steps that way."

Here honest Ned, his eyes glistening, and his ugly little face glowing with emotion through its coating of sunburn, paused, as if he did not like to go on.

I was more touched and interested than I could avoid showing, and cried, "Oh, _do_ tell me, Palmer, what became of the poor fellow! Did he die?"

Ned cleared his throat, and moved so as to get between me and the light from the door, as he said huskily, "He came very nigh to it, ma'am. I never did set eyes on such a decent patient chap as that man was. I did the very wust thing I could a' done, the town doctors told me, for I brought him into the hut, instead o' keeping him outdoors and rubbing his poor black legs with snow. 'Stead o' that, I wrapped him up warm in my own blankets, after I had chipped his boots and the hice off of 'em, and I made up a roarin' fire. Good Lord, how the poor fellow groaned when he begun to get warm! I gave him a pannikin full o' hot tea, with a drop o' grog in it, and that seemed to make him awful bad. At last he said, with the sweat from sheer agony pouring down his face, "Look here, matey: couldn't you hump me out in the snow again? for it aint nigh so bad to bear it cold as it is to bear it hot." Not a bad word did he say, ma'am, and he tried not to give in more nor he could help; but he was clean druv wild with the hanguish in his legs.

"Presently I remembers, quite sudden like, that a bush doctor, name of Tomkins, was likely to be round by Simmons, cos' o' his missus. So I got on my 'oss in a minnit, and I rides off and fetches him, for sure enough he was there; and though Simmons' missis wasn't to say over her troubles, she spoke up from behind the curtain of red blanket she had put up in her tidy little hut, and bade old Tomkins go with me. May God bless her and hers for that same, say I! Well, ma'am, when Tomkins come back with me and saw the poor fellow (he was fair shoutin' with the pain in his legs by then), he said nothin' could be done. "They'll mortify by morrow mornin'," says he, "and then he'll die easy." So with that he goes back with the first light next day, to Simmons. Sure enough, the poor fellow did get a bit easier next day, and I felt clear mad to think he was goin' to die before my very eyes. "Not if I can help it!" I cries, quite savage like. But he only smiled a patient smile, and said, "God's will be done, mate. He knows best, and I aint in any pain to speak of, now."

"By and bye I hears a rumbling and a creaking, and cracking of whips; and when I looks out, what do I see but the bullock-dray from Simmons' coming up the flat. It was the only thing on wheels within forty mile, and Simmons had brought it his own self to see if we couldn't manage to get the poor fellow down to the nighest town. I won't make my yarn no longer than I can help, ma'am, so I'll only mention that we made a lot o' the strongest mutton broth you ever tasted; we slung a hammock of red blankets in the dray, and we got the poor fellow down by evening to a gentleman's station. There they made us kindly welcome, did all they could for him, and transhipped the hammock into a pair-horse dray, which went quicker and was easier. We got on as fast as we could every step of the way, and by midnight that poor fellow was tucked into a clean bed in the hospital at Christchurch, with both his legs neatly cut off just above the knee, for there wasn't a minute to lose."

I was almost afraid to inquire how the sufferer fared, for Ned's eyes were fairly swimming with unshed tears; but he smiled brightly, and said, "The ladies and gentlemen in the town, they set up a _subscribetion_, and bought the poor chap a first-rate pair o' wooden legs, and he could even manage to ride about after a bit; and instead o' wandering about looking for country, or gold, or what not, he settled down as a carrier, and throve and did well. And I was thinking, ma'am, as how I'd like to return thanks for that poor fellow's wonderful recovery, for I've never had a chance of going to Church since, and its nigh upon two years ago that it happened."

"So you shall, Ned: so you shall!" we said with one voice. And so at our first Church gathering at our dear little antipodean home, F----, who acted as our minister, paused in the beautiful Thanksgiving Service, after he had read solemnly and slowly the simple words, "Especially for Thy late mercies vouchsafed to ----," and Ned Palmer chimed in with an "Amen,"--misplaced, indeed, but none the less hearty, and delightful to hear.


Chapter X: Swaggers.

Dr. Johnson did not know the somewhat vulgar word which heads this paper. At least he did not know it as a noun, but gives "swagger: v.n., to bluster, bully, brag;" but the Slang Dictionary admits it as a word, springing indeed from the thieves' vocabulary: "one who carries a swag." Neither of these books however give the least idea of the true meaning of the expression, which is as fully recognised as an honest word in both Australia and New Zealand as any other combination of letters in the English language. A swagger is the very antithesis then of a swaggerer, for, whereas, the one is full of pretension and abounds in unjust claims on our notice, the swagger is humility and civility itself. He knows, poor weary tramp, that on the favourable impression he makes upon the "boss," depends his night's lodging and food, as well as a job of work in the future. We will leave then the ideal swaggerer to some other biographer who may draw glowing word-pictures of him in all his jay's splendour, and we will confine ourselves to describing the real swagger, clad in flannel shirt, moleskin trowsers, and what were once thick boots, but might now be used as sieves.

Nothing astonished me so much in my New Zealand Station Life as these visitors. Even Sir Roger de Coverley himself would have looked with distrust upon most of our swagger-guests, and yet I never heard of an instance in our part of the country where the unhesitating, ungrudging hospitality extended by the rich squatters to their poorer compatriots was ever abused. I say "in our part," because unfortunately, wherever gold is discovered, either in quartz or riverbed, the good old primitive customs and ways die out of themselves in a few weeks, and each mammon-seeker looks with distrust on a stranger. Only fifty or sixty miles from us, as the crow might fly across the snowy range, where an immense Bush clothes the banks of the Hokitika river right down to its sand-filled mouth on the West Coast, the great gold diggings broke out seven or eight years ago, and changed the face of society in that district in a few days. _There_ a swagger meant a man who might rob or murder you in your sleep after you had fed and lodged him; or--under the most favourable circumstances supposing him to be a "milder mannered man,"--a "fossicker," who would not hesitate to "jump your claim," or hang about when you are prospecting, to watch how much of the colour you found, and then go off stealthily to return next day at the head of a "rush" of a thousand diggers.

Even before the famous Maungatapu murders in 1866, swaggers were looked upon with distrust on the West Coast, and after that date hardly any one travelled in those parts without carrying a small revolver in his breast-pocket. Nothing is more tantalising than an allusion to a circumstance which is not well-known; and as I feel certain that very few of my readers have ever heard of what may be called the first great crime committed in the Middle Island, a brief account