Such Is Life Part 14

If the unmannerly reader wishes to know why I was bound to a stage of exactly thirty miles, I have no objection to state that, knowing the geography of Riverina as well as if I had laid out the whole territory myself, I was aware of a sandhill composed of material unstable as water; an unfavourable place for a bucking horse, and a favourable place for a man to dismount head foremost if the worst came; and that sand-hill was my destination.

CHAPTER II

When I undertook the pleasant task of writing out these reminiscences, I engaged, you will remember, to amplify the record of one week; judging that a rigidly faithful a.n.a.lysis of that sample would disclose the approximate percentage of happiness, virtue, &c., in Life.

But whilst writing the annotations on Sept. 9th (which, by the way, gratuitously overlap on the following day), I saw an alpine difficulty looming ahead. At the Blowhard Sand-hill, on the night of the 10th, I camped with a party of six sons of Belial, bound for Deniliquin, with 3,000 Boolka wethers off the shears. Now, anyone who has listened for four hours to the conversation of a group of sheep drovers, named, respectively, Splodger, Rabbit, Parson, Bottler, Dingo, and Hairy-toothed Ike, will agree with me as to the impossibility of getting the dialogue of such dramatis personae into anything like printable form.

The bullock drivers were bad enough, but these fellows are out of the question.

Then it occurred to me that a wider scope of observation might give in perhaps fewer pages, a fairer estimate of that ageless enigma, the true solution of which forms our all-embracing and only responsibility.

I therefore concluded to skip one calendar month, dipping again into my old diary at Oct. 9th in the same year, namely, '83

After this, I shall pick out of each consecutive month the 9th day for amplification and comment, keeping not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. This will prospect the gutter of Life (gutter is good) at different points; in other words, it will give us a range of seven months instead of seven days.

The thread of narrative being thus purposely broken, no one of these short and simple a.n.a.lyses can have any connection with another--a point on which I congratulate the judicious reader and the no less judicious writer; for the former is thereby tacitly warned against any expectation of plot or denouement, and so secured against disappointment, whilst the latter is relieved from the (to him) impossible task of investing prosaic people with romance, and a generally hap-hazard economy with poetical justice.

Go to, then.

TUES. OCT. 9. Goolumbulla. To Rory's.

This record transports you (saving reverence of our 'birth stain') something more than a hundred miles northward from the scene sketched in Chap.I, thus unveiling a territory blank on the map, and similarly qualified in the ordinary conversation of its inhabitants.

The Willandra Billabong, which in moderately wet seasons relieves the Middle Lachlan of some superfluous water, and in epoch-marking flood-times reluctantly debouches into the Lower Darling, divides the country between those rivers into two unequal parts. Roughly speaking-- the black-soil plains (which are chiefly light red) lie to the south of this almost imperceptible depression, whilst on the north-- sometimes close by, sometimes out of sight, and sometimes thirty miles away-- the irregular scrub--frontier denotes an abrupt change of soil, though the uniform level is maintained.

Here you enter upon a region presenting to the rarely clouded sky an unbroken foliage-surface, with isothermal zones rigidly marked by their indigenous growths. A tract of country until yesterday bare of surface water for lack of occupation, and lacking occupation for dearth of surface water. Which goes to show that regularity of rainfall is not ensured by copious growth of timber.

However, a hundred miles back in that leafy solitude,--just where the line of water conservation, creeping northward from the Lachlan, here and there touched the line creeping southward from the Darling,-- I was standing in the veranda of the barracks, on Goolumbulla station, when the narangies' pagan henchman announced, "Brekfit leddy, all li."

During the meal, Jack Ward, the senior narangy, made some remark implying that certain cattle, on a certain occasion, had scented water from a fabulous distance. Whereupon Andrews, the storekeeper, interrogated deponent with some severity, driving him down, down, to three hundred yards' range, where he made a final stand.

But the two junior narangies supported Ward in the endowment of cattle with the faculty in question; and, as a matter of course, each young fellow supplemented his limited experience by a number of instances, all alike distinguished by that want of proper hang which makes the judicious grieve.

A practical knowledge of the subject, founded on irrefragable proofs, led me to side with Andrews; and it was thus that I came to quote a case in point, with all the advantage of local reference.

It will be necessary to lay the facts before you:--

In Feb., '81--two years and eight months before the date of this record-- I had drawn up to Goolumbulla homestead with six tons of wire.

The manager, Mr. Spanker, in his fine, off-hand way, asked me to just dump it down carelessly in five or six places over the run, as the contractor would be using it at once. He would pay me for the extra mileage; and Dan O'Connell would show me where to sling it off.

I objected to the mileage agreement, inasmuch as carting over raw ground was a very different thing from travelling on a track. I wanted 1 a day for the extra time--a fair current rate, and easily counted.

Mr. Spanker, in reply, had no objection to paying by the day; but, as my account came to 42, and as it had taken me twelve weeks to do the two hundred and thirty miles from Hay, and as the contractor had been cursing me steadily for the last four weeks--well, if I asked him anything about it, he thought that ten s.h.i.+llings came nearer the mark, and was almost as easily counted.

Finally, with that pliancy of temper which keeps me down in the world, I a.s.sented to these terms; whereupon Spanker, with characteristic perversity, called it fifteen.

Next day, following Andrews' directions, I took the faint track of the ration cart for seven or eight miles, and found a tank without any trouble. (Remember that this is a recital of what happened long before the date of our record.) Early next morning, Dan O'Connell joined me, and we crawled along for another five or six miles, on a still fainter track, marked only by a few trips of the contractor's wagonette. In the afternoon we struck a line of bored posts, and dumped twenty coils. In due time, I unyoked, and Dan led me to a new tank, half-full of horribly alkaline water.

Thence, after arranging to meet me in the morning, he cut across to his own boundary hut, six or eight miles away.

Next day, still following the line of posts, we dropped the rest of the wire; and, before Dan left me, I made him repeat again and again his directions for finding a gilgie, which he knew to be full of first-cla.s.s water, and which I ought to strike about sunset.

Next day I would reach the station in good time, thus completing a loop journey of thirty-odd miles in four days.

Dan had impressed me as a person likely to be of considerably more account in the estimation of his Maker than of his fellow-products; and, having previously studied men of the same description, I now accepted this involuntary sentiment as the only way of accounting for something not unfamiliar in his voice and bearing. A man of average stature, with a vast black beard, and guileless blue eyes, set off by a powerful Armagh accent. Evidently un.o.bservant, uncritical, and utterly dest.i.tute of devil in any form, it seemed that the Spirit of the Bog had followed him into the bush, preserving his noxious innocence and all-round inept.i.tude in their pristine integrity.

Naturally, he had taken a slight local colour, but this seemed to express the limit of his susceptibility to altered conditions.

Yet he twice startled me by the breadth and exactness of his information-- once when America was mentioned, and he glanced at the character and policy of each President, from Was.h.i.+ngton to Van Buren; and again, when he spoke of the Ma.s.sacre of Cawnpore, almost as if he had been there at the time. Also, an unconscious familiarity with the Bible and Shakespear was noticeable in his conversation, though he was evidently a Catholic of the Catholics.

When I complimented him on his erudition, he remarked, with amusing incompatibility of dialect and manner, 'Mebbe it's thrue fur ye.

Me father hed consitherable mains, so he hed; an' A har'ly ivver done a han's turn, furbye divarsion, to A come out here.' However, you will now understand why I made him repeat his topographical notes half a dozen times before I let him go.

Just at sunset I struck the partly-plain patch of sixty or eighty acres, where the gilgie ought to be. I unyoked with despatch, then left the bullocks, and rode round, looking for a clump of mallee, which would indicate the immediate neighbourhood of the water. No use. I could find no mallee anywhere. Night came on--richest starlight, though, of course, dark in the scrub--and still I objurgated round, and purposely scattered the bullocks to search for themselves, and anathematised in all directions, and consigned the whole vicinity to the Evil One, for lack of that clump of mallee. Hour after hour pa.s.sed; the bullocks from time to time trying to clear off for the distant Lachlan, and I spending half my time in using them as divining rods, and the other half in execrating back and forward in search of that mallee.

It was about midnight when I gave it best. I must have struck the wrong spot.

Now--would it be advisable to make a bee-line to the station at once, with the bullocks loose?--or to wait for morning and take the wagon with me?

The distance was eight or ten miles.

I was standing near the edge of the open scrub, with the reins over my arm.

The mare was famished and exhausted. The bells were almost silent, for the bullocks stood still in the agony of thirst. The weather was hot; and they had barely sipped the alkaline water at last camp.

I was absently observing one white bullock close by, when, with a low bellow, he suddenly darted forward eight or ten yards, and began drinking at the gilgie. That bellow was answered from all sides; and in two minutes his nineteen mates were sharing the discovery.

Meanwhile, I had let Fancy go amongst them, after putting on her bell, and taking off the saddle and bridle. I had done with her for the night.

And I knew that the water was good, for all the beasts stood on the brink, and drank without wetting their feet.

But how had the first bullock found the water, after he and his mates had pa.s.sed it a dozen times, and within a few yards?

This was worth investigating at once. So, before thinking about supper, I went to the exact spot where the beast had been standing, and there saw the stars reflected in the water. Of course, if it had been anything like a permanent supply, the sound of frogs or yabbies would have guided the beasts to it at once.

But even wild cattle can no more scent water than we can, though they make better use of such faculties as they possess.

I have tested the supposition deliberately and exhaustively, time after time; and this instance is cited, not controversially, but because it has to do with the present memoir.

However, next morning--after verifying the tracks of the thirsty bullocks so near the gilgie that it seemed a wonder they hadn't walked into it-- I looked for the clump of mallee. I don't believe there was a stick of it within miles; but there was a clump of yarran where it should have been.

A stately beefwood, sixty feet high, with swarthy column furrowed a hand-breadth deep, and heavy tufts of foliage like bundles of long leeks in colour and configuration--the first beefwood I had seen since leaving the homestead--stood close to the water, making a fine landmark; but Dan's sense of proportion had selected the adjacent bit of yarran; and--as I told the breakfast-party--he had never concerned himself to know the difference between yarran and mallee.

"Curious combination of a fool and a well-informed man," remarked Ward.

"Is he either of the two?" asked Broome. "My belief, he shams both."

"Easy matter to sham foolishness," obsened Williamson. "Not so easy to sham information."

"Any relation to the late Liberator?" I asked.

"Dan O'Connell's only his nickname," replied Andrews. "His proper name is Rory O'Halloran.'

"Rory O'Halloran!" I repeated. "I thought I had met him before, but could n't place him. And so Rory has found his way here?"

"Well, he was brought here," replied Andrews. "Twelve or fourteen years ago he turned up at Moogoojinna, down Deniliquin way, and froze to the station.

Then when Arbuthnot settled this place--five years ago now-- Spanker brought Rory with him, and he's been here ever since.

Got married at Moogoojinna, a year or two before leaving, to a red-hot Protestant, from the same part of the globe as himself; but she stayed at Moogoojinna for her confinement, and only came up four years ago, after Dan was settled in the Utopia paddock.

Good woman in her way; but she spends her time in a sort of steady fury, for she came to Moogoojinna with the idea of collaring something worth while.

So Spanker says; and he was there at the time. Seems she did n't want Dan, and Dan did n't want her, but somehow they were married before they came to an understanding. He's very good to her, in his own inoffensive way; and she leads him a dog's life. One kid. Likely you knew him on Moogoojinna.

According to his own account, he came straight through Vic., only stopping once, when he chummied for a few weeks with a squatter that took a fancy to him and treated him like a long-lost brother.

Grain of salt just there."

"Not necessarily," I replied. "I can verify his statement to the letter, for I was that land-cormorant." And I straightway unfolded to the boys an earlier page of Dan O'Connell's history----