Such Is Life Part 64

"Go ahead."

"Look out now"----

"Right." But your voice is not what it ought to be, and the soles of your boots are rattling on the flat part of the stirrup-irons.

The chap draws the handkerchief from the colt's eyes, and walks backward.

The colt catches sight of your left foot, and skips three yards to the right.

In doing so, he catches sight of the other foot, and skips to the left.

Then everything disappears from in front of the saddle--the wicked ears, now laid level backward--the black, tangled mane--the s.h.i.+ning neck with the sweeping curve of a circular saw--the clean, oblique shoulders--they have all disappeared, and there is nothing in front of the saddle but a precipice. There is something underneath it, though.

How distinctly you note the grunting of the colt, the thumping of his feet on the ground, and the gratuitous counsel addressed to you in four calmly critical voices:--

"Lean back a bit more, Tom, and give with him."

"Don't ride so loose if you can help it, Tom."

"Hold yourself well down with the reins, and stick to him, Tom."

"Stick to him, Tom, whatever you do."

Ay! stick to him! Stick to the lever of a steam hammer, when the ram kicks the safety-trigger! Stick to the two-man tug-of-war rope, when an Irish quarryman, named Bamey, has hold of the other end! Stick to him, quotha! Easier said than done--is it not? And yet you've been riding all manner of horses, on and off (mark the significance of that expression) since you were a mere kiddie. However, you have stuck to him for a good solid sixty seconds; now, one of your knees has slipped over the pad, and your stirrup is swinging loose. Good night, sweet prince.

And away circles the colt, slapping at the bit with his front feet, whilst your historic saddle s.h.i.+nes in the sun, and the stirrup-irons occasionally meet high in the air. And away in chase go two of the chaps on their bits of stuff. Meanwhile, you explain to the other two that the spill serves you right for riding so carelessly; and that, though your soul l.u.s.ts to have it out with the colt, a stringent appointment in the towns.h.i.+p will force you to clear as soon as you can get your saddle. Such is life.

Satan approached, carrying his negatively gifted rider, at a free, flying canter; his gregarious instinct prompting him to join my horses.

His tawny skin was streaked with foam, and his off flank slightly stained from the repeated puncture of Jack's spur. Ten yards from where I had pulled up, he suddenly sulked, and stood.

"Good morning, Jack."

"Well, I be das.h.!.+ Did n't know you from a crow! Reckoned some member o' Parliament, or bishop, or somebody, had bin swappin' horses with you.

You are comin' out! Oh, I say! Nosey give me the letter, with the three notes in it; but I couldn't make head or tail of it about the saddle. No more could n't Moriarty."

"I'll explain all that to you some time. How are you getting on with Satan?"

"Bad," replied Jack humbly. "You can easy enough steady him down, but then, the swine, he wants a spell; an' when he gits a spell, you jist got to steady him down agen. Always got some new idear in his head. There!"-- hastily rooting the horse's side with his spur--"he's goin' to laydown, an' make chips o' the saddle. Up! you swine"--and, lying backward, he reached down to grip the sensitive membrane connecting the swine's hind-leg with his body. The maddened beast shot past me like a yellow streak for another ten yards; then, with a flaring bound and a snort that was between a whistle and a shriek, spun half-round in the air, and alighted rigidly on his front feet, his ears between his knees, and his neck and back describing a vertical semicircle, with the saddle and Jack on the centre of its forward curve.

"Jist his style," continued Jack dejectedly. "Never be worth a dash for general"----I lost the next word or two, for the young fellow's face was buried in the ma.s.s of silver mane, as the horse reared rampant to the balancing point; and the next word, again, was dislocated by a blow from the crupper buckle, just below the speaker's shoulder-blade.

"An' Magomery wants a person to make a lady's hack out o' sich an outlawr as him!" he continued, in hopeless protest, whilst the 'outlawr'

exerted his iron muscles to the utmost, and the saddle creaked like a basket.

"Nummin' good horse, too; on'y spoiled with--Jist look at that!" Satan had suddenly gathered his lithe, powerful limbs, and was tearing across toward the adjacent pine-ridge, spinning round, every thirty yards, in two or three terrific bucks. "I don't want to sawr his mouth," shouted Jack over his shoulder, in polite apology--"I'll see you agen by-'n'-by----

"Away on the evergreen sh.o.r.e, probably," I soliloquised, resuming my journey.

But, turning in the saddle, and pus.h.i.+ng up my gla.s.ses out of the way, I watched the receding contest. I saw Jack wrench the horse aside from the timber; whereupon the animal reared rather too rashly, and just saved himself from falling backward by dropping on his quarters and flapping down on one side. When his broadside touched ground, Jack was standing beside him; and when he leaped to his feet, Jack was in the saddle. Exeunt fighting.

Toby, with his bare feet and brown, good-humoured face, was the only person visible on the station premises as I rode up.

"Gosh, I didn't know you till I seen you side-on, when you was shuttin'

the Red Gate," he remarked. (The Red Gate was about a mile and a half distant). "I thought you was somebody comin' to buy the the station.

Magomery, he's buzznackin' roun' the run as usual," he continued, helping me to unsaddle. "Butler, he's laid up with the bung blight in both eyes.

All the other fellers is out. Mrs. Bodysark"--and his grin deepened-- "she 's all right. Moriarty, of course, he 's loafin' in the store; lis'n him now, laughin' fit to break his neck at some of his own gosh foolishness. I'll shove your horses in the padd.i.c.k. I say!

ain't they fell-away awful?"

"Yes; the season's telling on them. Now will you look after Pup, like a good chap? Here's his chain. I want to keep him fresh for travelling."

"Right. I don't wish you no harm, Collins; but I would n't mind if you was in heaven, s'posen you left me that dog."

I went across to the store, and looked in. Moriarty's laughing suddenly ceased, as his eye fell on me; and he respectfully rose to his feet.

"Wherefore that crackling of thorns under a pot? " I asked sternly, as I removed my belltopper and placed it on the counter. "Don't you see the spirits of the wise sitting in the clouds and mocking you?"

"Well, I'll be dashed!" he exclaimed admiringly. "You are coming out in blossom. Now you only want the upper half of your head shaved, and you could start a Loan and Discount bank, with a capital of half a million."

"Thanks, worthy peer," I replied, with dignity. "But, talking of finance, I trust you have n't forgotten the trifle that there is between us, and the terms of our agreement?"

"I'm not likely to forget. Take that chair. I've got such fun here."

He had sliced some corks into flat discs; into the centre of each disc he had stuck a slender piece of pine, about two inches in height, and spatulated at the upper end, like a paddle. Then to the flat part of each upright he had attached a blow-fly, by means of a touch of gum on the insect's back, and had placed in the grasp of each fly a piece of pine an inch long, cut into the shape of a rifle. The walking motion of the fly's feet twirled and balanced the stick in rather droll burlesque of musketry drill; and a dozen of these insects-at-arms, disposed in open order on the counter, were ministering to the young fool's mirth.

"Just you notice the gravity of the beggars," he laughed. "Not a smile on them. Solemn as Presbyterians. 'Tention! Present! Recover! Not a lazy bone in their bodies. I say, Collins: a person could make a perpetual motion, with a fly on a sort of a treadmill? Ah! but then it would n't pa.s.s muster unless it went of its own accord--would it? Perpetual motion's a thing I've been giving my attention to lately. You remember you advised me to study mechanics? Well, I 've been thinking of arranging a clock so as to wind itself up as it went on. That 's one idea. Another is a little more complicated. It 's a water-wheel, driving a pump that throws a stream into the race that feeds the water-wheel, so that you use the same water over and over again, and the whole concern's self-acting.

The idea came into my head like an inspiration. Mind, I'm telling you in confidence, for there 's a thousand notes hanging on to it."

"Moriarty," said I sadly; "you 're worse than ever. Try something else.

You're not a born mechanician."

"If I'm not, I'd like to know who the devil is?" replied the young fellow hotly. "Possibly, your own self? Was n't my father a foreman in one of the largest machine-shops in Victoria, in his day? I know what 's the matter with you. Jealousy."

"It must be so. Plato, thou reasonest well," said I hopelessly.

"But supposing you are a born mechanician, you have neither the theoretical nor the practical training. Do you know for instance, the use of the bra.s.s slide you often see on a carpenter's rule?"

"Of course I do! Why I could calculate with that slide before I was ten years old."

One to Moriarty. I should have remembered that his abnormal breadth across the temples qualified him to do a sum in his head, in ten seconds, that I could n't do on a slate in ten hours, nor for that matter, in ten years.

No accounts in Riverina were better kept than those of Runnymede.

"Good, so far," I replied benevolently. "But how much do you know of prismoidal formulae, or logarithmic secants?--not to speak of segmental ordinates, or the cycloidal calculus; or even of adiabatic expansion, or torsional resistance, or the hydrostatic paradox, or the coefficient of friction? Now, these things are the very A B C of mechanics, as you'll find to your utter confusion."

Moriarty's countenance fell; but happening to glance at the performing flies, he laughed himself weak and empty. "Just look at the beggars," he murmured, wiping his eyes.

"Business first," said I. "How about my scandal?"

"It's going grand!" replied Moriarty, beaming with new pleasure.

"I carried out your suggestions to the letter. First, I took Mooney and Nelson into my confidence; and we arranged to meet accidentally, one evening after dusk, under that willow beside her bed-room.

At last we sat down, with our backs against the weatherboard wall, and talked about"----

"Day, chaps," said a stranger, appearing at the door of the store.

"Got any pickles in stock, Moriarty?"

"Lots. Half-a-crown a bottle."