Selected Stories Page 3

  It was a big bottle, and all my pockets were small; but I got it into the pocket he’d betted against. It was a tight squeeze, but I got it in.

  Then we both laughed, but his laugh was nastier than usual, because it was meant to be pleasant, and he’d lost two drinks; and my laugh wasn’t easy—I was anxious as to which of us would laugh next.

  Just then I noticed something, and an idea struck me—about the most up-to-date idea that ever struck me in my life. I noticed that Stiffner was limping on his right foot this morning, so I said to him:

  “What’s up with your foot?” putting my hand in my pocket.

  “Oh, it’s a crimson nail in my boot,” he said. “I thought I got the blanky thing out this morning; but I didn’t.”

  There just happened to be an old bag of shoemaker’s tools in the bar, belonging to an old cobbler who was lying dead drunk on the verandah. So I said, taking my hand out of my pocket again:

  “Lend us the boot, and I’ll fix it in a minute. That’s my old trade.”

  “Oh, so you’re a shoemaker,” he said. “I’d never have thought it.”

  He laughs one of his useless laughs that wasn’t wanted, and slips off the boot—he hadn’t laced it up—and hands it across the bar to me. It was an ugly brute—a great thick, iron-bound, boilerplated navvy’s boot. It made me feel sore when I looked at it.

  I got the bag and pretended to fix the nail; but I didn’t.

  “There’s a couple of nails gone from the sole,” I said. “I’ll put ’em in if I can find any hobnails, and it’ll save the sole,” and I rooted in the bag and found a good long nail, and shoved it right through the sole on the sly. He’d been a bit of a sprinter in his time, and I thought it might be better for me in the near future if the spikes of his running-shoes were inside.

  “There, you’ll find that better, I fancy,” I said, standing the boot on the bar counter, but keeping my hand on it in an absentminded kind of way. Presently I yawned and stretched myself, and said in a careless way:

  “Ah, well! How’s the slate?”

  He scratched the back of his head and pretended to think.

  “Oh, well, we’ll call it thirty bob.”

  Perhaps he thought I’d slap down two quid.

  “Well,” I says, “and what will you do supposing we don’t pay you?”

  He looked blank for a moment. Then he fired up and gasped and choked once or twice; and then he cooled down suddenly and laughed his nastiest laugh—he was one of those men who always laugh when they’re wild—and said in a nasty, quiet tone:

  “You thundering, jumped-up crawlers! If you don’t (something) well part up I’ll take your swags and (something) well kick your gory pants so you won’t be able to sit down for a month—or stand up either!”

  “Well, the sooner you begin the better,” I said; and I chucked the boot into a corner and bolted.

  He jumped the bar counter, got his boot, and came after me. He paused to slip the boot on—but he only made one step, and then gave a howl and slung the boot off and rushed back. When I looked round again he’d got a slipper on, and was coming—and gaining on me, too. I shifted scenery pretty quick the next five minutes. But I was soon pumped. My heart began to beat against the ceiling of my head, and my lungs all choked up in my throat. When I guessed he was getting within kicking distance I glanced round so’s to dodge the kick. He let out; but I shied just in time. He missed fire, and the slipper went about twenty feet up in the air and fell in a waterhole.

  He was done then, for the ground was stubbly and stony. I seen Bill on ahead pegging out for the horizon, and I took after him and reached for the timber for all I was worth, for I’d seen Stiffner’s missus coming with a shovel—to bury the remains, I suppose; and those two were a good match—Stiffner and his missus, I mean.

  Bill looked round once, and melted into the bush pretty soon after that. When I caught up he was about done; but I grabbed my swag and we pushed on, for I told Bill that I’d seen Stiffner making for the stables when I’d last looked round; and Bill thought that we’d better get lost in the bush as soon as ever we could, and stay lost, too, for Stiffner was a man that couldn’t stand being had.

  The first thing that Bill said when we got safe into camp was: “I told you that we’d pull through all right. You need never be frightened when you’re travelling with me. Just take my advice and leave things to me, and we’ll hang out all right. Now—”

  But I shut him up. He made me mad.

  “Why, you—! What the sheol did you do?”

  “Do?” he says. “I got away with the swags, didn’t I? Where’d they be now if it wasn’t for me?”

  Then I sat on him pretty hard for his pretensions, and paid him out for all the patronage he’d worked off on me, and called him a mug straight, and walked round him, so to speak, and blowed, and told him never to pretend to me again that he was a battler.

  Then, when I thought I’d licked him into form, I cooled down and soaped him up a bit; but I never thought that he had three climaxes and a crisis in store for me.

  He took it all pretty cool; he let me have my fling, and gave me time to get breath; then he leaned languidly over on his right side, shoved his left hand down into his left trouser pocket, and brought up a boot-lace, a box of matches, and nine-and-six.

  As soon as I got the focus of it I gasped:

  “Where the deuce did you get that?”

  “I had it all along,” he said, “but I seen at the pub that you had the show to chew a lug, so I thought we’d save it—nine-andsixpences ain’t picked up every day.”

  Then he leaned over on his left, went down into the other pocket, and came up with a piece of tobacco and half-asovereign. My eyes bulged out.

  “Where the blazes did you get that from?” I yelled.

  “That,” he said, “was the half-quid you give me last night. Half-quids ain’t to be thrown away these times; and, besides, I had a down on Stiffner, and meant to pay him out; I reckoned that if we wasn’t sharp enough to take him down we hadn’t any business to be supposed to be alive. Anyway I guessed we’d do it; and so we did—and got a bottle of whisky into the bargain.”

  Then he leaned back, tired-like, against the log, and dredged his upper left-hand waistcoat pocket, and brought up a sovereign wrapped in a pound-note. Then he waited for me to speak; but I couldn’t. I got my mouth open, but couldn’t get it shut again.

  “I got that out of the mugs last night, but I thought that we’d want it, and might as well keep it. Quids ain’t so easily picked up nowadays; and, besides, we need stuff mor’n Stiffner does, and so——”

  “And did he know you had the stuff?” I gasped.

  “Oh yes, that’s the fun of it. That’s what made him so excited. He was in the parlour all the time I was playing. But we might as well have a drink!”

  We did. I wanted it.

  Bill turned in by-and-by, and looked like a sleeping innocent in the moonlight. I sat up late, and smoked, and thought hard, and watched Bill, and turned in, and thought till near daylight, and then went to sleep, and had a nightmare about it. I dreamed I chased Stiffner forty miles to buy his pub, and that Bill turned out to be his nephew.

  Bill divvied up all right, and gave me half-a-crown over, but I didn’t travel with him long after that. He was a decent young fellow as far as chaps go, and a good mate as far as mates go; but he was too far ahead for a peaceful, easy-going chap like me. It would have worn me out in a year to keep up to him.

  When the Sun Went Down

  JACK DREW sat on the edge of the shaft, with his foot in the loop and one hand on the rope, ready to descend. His elder brother, Tom, stood at one end of the windlass and the third mate at the other. Jack paused before swinging off, looked up at his brother, and impulsively held out his hand:

  “You ain’t going to let the sun go down, are you, Tom?”

  But Tom kept both hands on the windlass-handle and said nothing.

  “Lower away!”

  They
lowered him to the bottom, and Tom shouldered his pick in silence and walked off to the tent. He found the tin plate, pint-pot and things set ready for him on the rough slab table under the bush shed. The tea was made, the cabbage and potatoes strained and placed in a billy near the fire. He found the fried bacon and steak between two plates in the camp-oven. He sat down to the table but he could not eat. He felt mean. The inexperience and hasty temper of his brother had caused the quarrel between them that morning; but then Jack admitted that, and apologised when he first tried to make it up.

  Tom moved round uneasily and tried to smoke: he could not get Jack’s last appeal out of his ears—“You ain’t going to let the sun go down, Tom?”

  Tom found himself glancing at the sun. It was less than two hours from sunset. He thought of the words of the old Hebrew—or Chinese—poet; he wasn’t religious, and the authorship didn’t matter. The old poet’s words began to haunt him: “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath—Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”

  The line contains good, sound advice; for quick-tempered men are often the most sensitive, and when they let the sun go down on the aforesaid wrath that quality is likely to get them down and worry them during the night.

  Tom started to go to the claim, but checked himself, and sat down and tried to draw comfort from his pipe. He understood his brother thoroughly, but his brother never understood him—that was where the trouble was. Presently he got thinking how Jack would worry about the quarrel and have no heart for his work. Perhaps he was fretting over it now, all alone by himself, down at the end of the damp, dark drive. Tom had a lot of the old woman about him, in spite of his unsociable ways and brooding temper.

  He had almost made up his mind to go below again, on some excuse, when his mate shouted from the top of the shaft:

  “Tom! Tom! For Christ’s sake come here!”

  Tom’s heart gave a great thump, and he ran like a kangaroo to the shaft. All the diggers within hearing were soon on the spot. They saw at a glance what had happened. It was madness to sink without timber in such treacherous ground. The sides of the shaft were closing in. Tom sprang forward and shouted through the crevice:

  “To the face, Jack! To the face, for your life!”

  “The old workings!” he cried, turning to the diggers. “Bring a fan and tools. We’ll dig him out.”

  Afew minutes later a fan was rigged over a deserted shaft close by, where fortunately the windlass had been left for bailing purposes, and men were down in the old drive. Tom knew that he and his mates had driven very close to the old workings.

  He knelt in the damp clay before the face and worked like a madman; he refused to take turn about, and only dropped the pick to seize a shovel in his strong hands, and snatch back the loose clay from under his feet; he reckoned that he had six, or, perhaps, eight feet to drive, and he knew that the air could not last long in the new drive—even if that had not already fallen in and crushed his brother. Great drops of perspiration stood out on Tom’s forehead, and his breath began to come in choking sobs, but he still struck strong, savage blows into the clay before him, and the drive lengthened quickly. Once he paused a moment to listen, and then distinctly heard a sound as of a tool or stone being struck against the end of the new drive. Jack was safe!

  Tom dug on until the clay suddenly fell away from his pick and left a hole, about the size of a plate, in the “face” before him. “Thank God!” said a hoarse, strained voice at the other side.

  “All right, Jack?”

  “Yes, old man; you are just in time; I’ve hardly got room to stand in, and I’m nearly smothered.” He was crouching against the “face” of the new drive.

  Tom dropped his pick and fell back against the man behind him.

  “Oh, God! my back!” he cried.

  Suddenly he struggled to his knees, and then fell forward on his hand and dragged himself close to the hole in the end of the drive.

  “Jack!” he gasped, “Jack!”

  “Right, old man; what’s the matter?”

  “I’ve hurt my heart, Jack!—Put your hand—quick!…The sun’s going down.”

  Jack’s hand came out through the hole, Tom gripped it, and then fell with his face in the damp clay.

  They half carried, half dragged him from the drive, for the roof was low and they were obliged to stoop. They took him to the shaft and sent him up, lashed to the rope.

  Afew blows of the pick, and Jack scrambled from his prison and went to the surface, and knelt on the grass by the body of his brother. The diggers gathered round and took off their hats. And the sun went down.

  Hungerford

  ONE of the hungriest cleared roads in New South Wales runs to within a couple of miles of Hungerford, and stops there; then you strike through the scrub to the town. There is no distant prospect of Hungerford—you don’t see the town till you are quite close to it, and then two or three white-washed galvanized-iron roofs start out of the mulga.

  They say that a past Ministry commenced to clear the road from Bourke, under the impression that Hungerford was an important place, and went on, with the blindness peculiar to Governments, till they got to within two miles of the town. Then they ran short of rum and rations, and sent a man on to get them, and make enquiries. The member never came back, and two more were sent to find him—or Hungerford. Three days later the two returned in an exhausted condition, and submitted a motion of want-of-confidence, which was lost. Then the whole House went on and was lost also. Strange to relate, that Government was never missed.

  However, we found Hungerford and camped there for a day. The town is right on the Queensland border, and an interprovincial rabbit-proof fence—with rabbits on both sides of it—runs across the main street.

  This fence is a standing joke with Australian rabbits—about the only joke they have out there, except the memory of Pasteur and poison and inoculation. It is amusing to go a little way out of town about sunset, and watch them crack Noah’s Ark rabbit jokes about that fence, and burrow under and play leap-frog over till they get tired. One old buck rabbit sat up and nearly laughed his ears off at a joke of his own about that fence. He laughed so much that he couldn’t get away when I reached for him. I could hardly eat him for laughing. I never saw a rabbit laugh before; but I’ve seen a ’possum do it.

  Hungerford consists of two houses and a humpy in New South Wales, and five houses in Queensland. Characteristically enough, both the pubs are in Queensland. We got a glass of sour yeast at one and paid sixpence for it—we had asked for English ale.

  The post office is in New South Wales, and the policebarracks in Bananaland. The police cannot do anything if there’s a row going on across the street in New South Wales, except to send to Brisbane and have an extradition warrant applied for; and they don’t do much if there’s a row in Queensland. Most of the rows are across the border, where the pubs are.

  At least, I believe that’s how it is, though the man who told me might have been a liar. Another man said he was a liar, but then he might have been a liar himself—a third person said he was one. I heard that there was a fight over it, but the man who told me about the fight might not have been telling the truth.

  One part of the town swears at Brisbane when things go wrong, and the other part curses Sydney.

  The country looks as though a great ash-heap had been spread out there, and mulga scrub and firewood planted—and neglected. The country looks just as bad for a hundred miles round Hungerford, and beyond that it gets worse—a blasted, barren wilderness that doesn’t even howl. If it howled it would be a relief.

  I believe that Burke and Wills found Hungerford, and it’s a pity they did; but, if I ever stand by the graves of the men who first travelled through this country, when there were neither roads nor stations, nor tanks, nor bores, nor pubs, I’ll—I’ll take my hat off. There were brave men in the land in those days.

  It is said that the explorers gave the district its name chiefly because of the hunger they found there, which h
as remained there ever since. I don’t know where the “ford” comes in—there’s nothing to ford, except in flood-time. Hungerthirst would have been better. The town is supposed to be situated on the banks of a river called the Paroo, but we saw no water there, except what passed for it in a tank. The goats and sheep and dogs and the rest of the population drink there. It is dangerous to take too much of that water in a raw state.

  Except in flood-time you couldn’t find the bed of the river without the aid of a spirit-level and a long straight-edge. There is a Custom-house against the fence on the northern side. Apound of tea often costs six shillings on that side, and you can get a common lead pencil for fourpence at the rival store across the street in the mother province. Also a small loaf of sour bread sells for a shilling at the humpy aforementioned. Only about sixty per cent of the sugar will melt.

  We saw one of the storekeepers give a deadbeat swagman five shillings’ worth of rations to take him on into Queensland. The storekeepers often do this, and put it down on the loss side of their books. I hope the recording angel listens, and puts it down on the right side of his book.

  We camped on the Queensland side of the fence, and after tea had a yarn with an old man who was minding a mixed flock of goats and sheep; and we asked him whether he thought Queensland was better than New South Wales, or the other way about.

  He scratched the back of his head, and thought awhile, and hesitated like a stranger who is going to do you a favour at some personal inconvenience.

  At last, with the bored air of a man who has gone through the same performance too often before, he stepped deliberately up to the fence and spat over it into New South Wales. After which he got leisurely through and spat back on Queensland.

  “That’s what I think of the blanky colonies!” he said.

  He gave us time to become sufficiently impressed; then he said:

  “And if I was at the Victorian and South Australian border I’d do the same thing.”

  He let that soak into our minds, and added: “And the same with West Australia—and—and Tasmania.” Then he went away.