Joe Wilson and His Mates Part 24

He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand, sneaked up to the door, and s.n.a.t.c.hed it open. There was no one there.

Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn't see the cat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently the cat answered him and came in from somewhere--she'd been outside the window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed against his hairy s.h.i.+n. Dave could generally bring a cat that way.

He had a weakness for cats. I'd seen him kick a dog, and hammer a horse--brutally, I thought--but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any one else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave was round, he'd see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair surplus. He said once to me, 'I can understand a man kicking a dog, or hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can't understand a man hurting a cat.'

He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her he'd meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled down again.

We had some books of the 'Deadwood d.i.c.k' school. Dave was reading 'The Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch', and I had 'The Dismembered Hand', or 'The Disembowelled Corpse', or some such names. They were first-cla.s.s preparation for a ghost.

I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and saw Dave's frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on the wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes.

And that door was opening again--slowly--and Dave had locked it! I never felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.

'You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,' I said, as he caught hold of the door--like one grabs a craw-fish.

'I'll swear I didn't,' said Dave. But he'd already turned the key a couple of times, so he couldn't be sure. He shut and locked the door again. 'Now, get out and see for yourself,' he said.

I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.

Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.

I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck him. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the door.

'What are you doing that for?' I asked.

'If there's a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of his funny business, we'll hear him if he tries to come in while we're asleep,' says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves with the 'Haunted Gulch' and 'The Disembowelled Corpse', and after a while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell from the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous clatter. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did Dave--the cat went over the part.i.tion. That door opened, only a little way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick, skipped to the door, and clutched at the k.n.o.b as if it were a nettle, and the door wouldn't come!--it was fast and locked! Then Dave's face began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire, and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way slow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and found it locked.

'It muster gone by the winder,' whispered Dave. I noticed that he said 'it' instead of 'he'. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only needed that to scare me bad.

We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.

Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the floor, laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of them, and started to roll up his swag.

'What are you going to do, Dave?' I asked.

'I'm going to take the track,' says Dave, 'and camp somewhere farther on. You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.'

I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on the tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making any noise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.

'That comes of camping in a deserted house,' said Dave, when we were safe on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned homestead, or even near it--probably because a deserted home looks ghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.

It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.

We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on the sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been a landslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once we got it started we knocked the wet bark off 'manuka' sticks and logs and piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a little drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks and the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through the night pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, 'I'm going back to that house.'

'What for?' I said.

'I'm going to find out what's the matter with that crimson door. If I don't I'll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so long as I live.'

So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough by daylight--after a little watching and experimenting. The house was built of odds and ends and badly fitted. It 'gave' in the wind in almost any direction--not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough to throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as to bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-frame was of sc.r.a.ps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang of it; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swung to--the frame easing just a little in another direction. I suppose it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about by accident. The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind must have accounted for the variations of the door's movements--and maybe the draught of our big fire had helped.

Dave scratched his head a good bit.

'I never lived in a house yet,' he said, as we came away--'I never lived in a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a good tent.'

A Wild Irishman.

About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town called Pahiatua, which meaneth the 'home of the G.o.ds', and is situated in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last--I don't remember which--upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.

Pahiatua was not the home of my G.o.d; and it rained for five weeks.

While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper--which, I anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after paying board) to take me away somewhere--I spent many hours in the little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon, he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called 'The Flour of Wheat', and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger--no matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober--I'd ask him if he knew the 'Flour of Wheat', and hear what he had to say.

I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue--it can't be done in writing.

'There's the little red Irishman,' said the shoemaker, who was Irish himself, 'who always wants to fight when he has a gla.s.s in him; and there's the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and fights at a spree than half-a-dozen little red ones put together; and there's the cheerful easy-going Irishman. Now the Flour was a combination of all three and several other sorts. He was known from the first amongst the boys at Th' Canary as the Flour o' Wheat, but no one knew exactly why. Some said that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not F-l-o-u-r, and that he was called that because there was no flower on wheat. The name might have been a compliment paid to the man's character by some one who understood and appreciated it--or appreciated it without understanding it. Or it might have come of some chance saying of the Flour himself, or his mates--or an accident with bags of flour. He might have worked in a mill. But we've had enough of that. It's the man--not the name. He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger. He worked hard, drank hard, fought hard--and didn't swear. No man had ever heard him swear (except once); all things were 'lovely' with him. He was always lucky. He got gold and threw it away.

'The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something. The date doesn't matter: there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and n.o.body, that knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the trouble--provided he was there at the time. I heard all this from a man who knew him in Australia. The relatives that he was sent out to were soon very anxious to see the end of him. He was as wild as they made them in Ireland. When he had a few drinks, he'd walk restlessly to and fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery, and muttering, as though in explanation to himself--

'"Oi must be walkin' or foightin'!--Oi must be walkin' or foightin'!--Oi must be walkin' or foightin'!"

'They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was done; and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree, they put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.

'There's no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up on the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub. kept by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow) at a place called "Th' Canary". I remember the first time I saw the Flour.

'I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th' Canary, and one evening I was standing outside Brady's (the Flour's cousin's place) with Tom Lyons and Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat with a swag on his back.

'"B' G.o.d, there's the Flour o' Wheat comin' this minute," says Dinny Murphy to Tom, "an' no one else."

'"B' G.o.d, ye're right!" says Tom.

'There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back, drinking and dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny--

'"Dinny, I'll bet you a quid an' the Flour'll run against some of those new chums before he's an hour on the spot."

'But Dinny wouldn't take him up. He knew the Flour.

'"Good day, Tom! Good day, Dinny!"

'"Good day to you, Flour!"

'I was introduced.

'"Well, boys, come along," says the Flour.

'And so we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then he went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced to dance too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn't please the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down--fair an' flat on his back.

'"Take that," he says. "Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an' lay there! You can't dance. How dare ye stand up in front of me face to dance when ye can't dance?"