The Sands of Windee Page 6

  The look and the tone of command utterly astonished young Jeff. It was as though he discovered a complete stranger in a man he had known ever since his return from college. Dash got up and moved his chair to the farther wall, and when he again seated himself and fell to rolling a cigarette young Jeff was stripping off his wet underclothes with shaking hands. The tall man’s features relaxed into their habitual lines, and his voice, when he spoke again, was pitched to its usual mildness.

  “Of course you must go home, old boy,” he said, blowing smoke towards the curtains. “We are giving the Fosters a tin-kettling to-night. The boss and Miss Stanton are going. All hands are going. Dot and Dash are going. You are going. Before we left this morning Miss Stanton asked me to remind you of it.”

  “Damn the tin-kettling! The silly_____”

  “The police are lookin’ for you, Dash,” announced Dot from the suddenly opened door. “An’ breakfuss is ready.”

  “I will submit to be interviewed by the police,” agreed Dash, rising elegantly from the rather rickety chair. But before he left he said to young Jeff: “Hurry up and dress, old lad, and we will have a beer before coffee. I really think that beer before coffee is preferable to a liqueur after coffee. But as for getting drunk,” he added significantly, “it must not occur again. Your position to-day will not allow of it. Please understand that thoroughly.”

  “Day, Dash!” snapped Sergeant Morris when he and the tall man met in the passage. “Got a’ phone message just now from Mr Stanton saying that the car is giving trouble. It was to come in for Father Ryan and me. We’re headed for Fosters’ tin-kettling. Mr Stanton suggested that you would give us a lift.”

  “Delighted, my dear sir, delighted,” Dash murmured without enthusiasm. “I wish to purchase a shirt, and Dot, I believe, desires to don a new pair of gabardine trousers. We’ll be ready to start in an hour.”

  “Good! I’ll hunt up Father Ryan. Young Jeff going out?”

  “Oh yes! He is dressing now.”

  The sergeant’s eyes narrowed.

  “Fat head, I suppose?” he growled.

  “A gentleman never has a fat head,” replied Dash, in a mildly reproving tone.

  “Humph!” And Sergeant Morris was gone.

  Five minutes later Dot and Dash and young Jeff sat down to breakfast, of which young Jeff consumed two pieces of toast and two cups of coffee. At the hour of departure Dot and Dash, who had purchased their goods from a storekeeper who made no bones about serving them that day, stood beside the truck awaiting their passengers, one of whom was then settling a stiff liquor-bill with Mr Bumpus.

  Father Ryan, who lodged with the sergeant and his wife, toddled along when young Jeff made his appearance, and smiled broadly at each of them in turn. To young Jeff he said, in his faint Irish brogue: “You’re fined five pounds, young feller.”

  “You fined me that amount last time I was in,” the young man objected seriously.

  “Of course I did, me bhoy. You were drunk last time you came to town. You were drunk last night, for when I looked into the parlour you were trying to play the piano with your feet. The next time it will be ten pounds. I shall expect your cheque,” and his reverence dug the young man playfully in the ribs.

  Father Ryan was the only representative of God left in Mount Lion. He was known and revered by bushmen as far away as Marble Bar in Western Australia as the greatest little man within the continent. No matter what denomination a man professed, if any, he went to Father Ryan with his income-tax forms or difficult letters that required answering, or to defend him in the police-court—for Father Ryan was a very able advocate when Sergeant Morris prosecuted on the d. and d. charge; whilst the women took to him their babies when they were sick, and their male relatives when they had the toothache.

  When a man from Windee or one of the smaller neighbouring stations went into Mount Lion to spend there a week or a fortnight, during which he was nearly always drunk, for there was no other form of amusement, he was known as a “cheque-man”. Some there were who spent their money recklessly and cut out their cheques in a state bordering on delirium tremens; others, a minority, were more conservative, more sober, and less helpless when the day came for them to return to the semi-desolation of the bush for a further twelve months.

  In the bigness of his heart Father Ryan loved all these lonely men, many of whom were without family or family ties. He knew the stagnancy of their existence and the mental depression with which the bush afflicts them, and he forgave them their lapses into very occasional drunkenness as did his Master. He placed them all in one of two classes, which he called “Gentlemen” and “Drunks”.

  When a “Gentleman” cheque-man came to town Father Ryan demanded half a sovereign for his benevolent fund, and got it. On the arrival of a “Drunk” cheque-man he bailed him up and demanded three, four, or five pounds for his benevolent fund, according to the degree of doctoring it would require to send the man back to his job or find him another. And the “Drunk” invariably paid up.

  When, therefore, a bushman was no longer a cheque-man, when, likely enough, he was a pitiful, palsied wretch, turned out of the hotel “broke”, faced with the multi-coloured demons because the booze supply was stopped, Father Ryan was prepared to pick him up, take him to his lodgings in defiance of Sergeant Morris, and, aided and abetted by Mrs Morris, wean him gently from John Barleycorn, build up the food-starved body, finally take him to one of the stores and rig him out with new ready-made clothes and despatch him, per mail-car, back to his job.

  No one ever had observed Father Ryan to frown. His face was beaming, as it invariably was, when he fined young Jeff, and it was still beaming when, later in the day, the opportunity occurred to reprove the young man for his folly in a manner wholly distinct from that of the ranting “wowser”. Young Jeff found himself addressed and advised by a worldly-wise man, a true sportsman, and a pal.

  On the way back to Windee, Dash drove the truck with Father Ryan beside him and the sergeant at the farther end of the seat, whilst young Jeff and Dot sat behind on the floor.

  “An’ how’s the’ roos coming in, Dash?” inquired Father Ryan conversationally.

  “Just now, they’re a failure, your reverence,” the tall man told him. “You will understand, of course, that the kangaroos no longer have their winter coats, and that it’s not yet sufficiently warm to get them in paying numbers at the watering-places.”

  “Ah yes, that is so,” admitted the little priest. “What a pity it is that the poor things have to be shot!”

  “I agree. Sometimes I regard myself as a murderer. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was any sport in getting them, any equality between them and the hunter.”

  “Sport!” ejaculated Dot from the rear. “There is no real sport in any kinda huntin’. There’s gents go a-huntin’ elephants with big-bore rifles wot represents hundreds of thousands of dollars in experimenting and plant to make ’em; and there’s huntin’ in England where thousands of pounds are spent on hossflesh and dorgs to chase a poor little mangy fox. An’ they calls theirselves sportsmen! The feller I calculate is a sportsman is like a cousin of mine.’ Im and some of his pals were sitting over a camp fire one night in ole Arizonee, when a mountain lion shoves’ is head out of a clos’t-by bush, and my cousin, ’e says, calm like: ‘Hey, Ted, here’s a lion. Lend us yer tobacco-knife.’”

  Dot raised chuckles all round. The sergeant was interested enough to inquire what happened next.

  “Waal, my cousin ’e up and orf after thet lion full of beans; but the lion seed him a-comin’, and was so surprised at takin’ a bird’s-eye view at a human without a gun that ’e skedaddled into Wyoming.”

  “Your cousin must have been a character,” young Jeff laughed. He was recovering rapidly from his liver complaint.

  “He was thet, you bet!” Dot admitted, vainly trying to roll a cigarette. “A bit casual like in his ways, though. Killed four fellers in various arguments, and ended by committing suicide.”

  �
�Oh! How did he do that?” inquired Father Ryan.

  “Waal, yer reverence, it was like this’ere,” Dot explained without blinking an eyelid. “As I said, me cousin was terrible casual. It come on slow like, his casualness. An’ then one day ’e was too casual on the draw. He sure was. He was thet casual and thet full of holes thet ’e never even said, ‘So long!’”

  Chapter Ten

  Nature and the Rabbit

  OF THE HANDS at Windee, only three did not intend to go to the tinkettling: Mr Roberts, who was overwhelmed by work; the cook, Alf the Nark (so-called because of his chronic temper); and Bony, who, not having met the Fosters, did not consider himself entitled to be present. The men’s quarters during the afternoon were a scene of great preparation, for Harry Foster was a popular overseer, and they intended honouring his bride and him by wearing their best clothes. They borrowed a flat-iron from Mrs Poulton, the “Government House” cook, and Ron, the Englishman, was kept ironing shirts and soft collars for an hour or more.

  Sergeant Morris spent the afternoon with Father Ryan and the two Stantons in an easy-chair on the wide veranda of the big house. From where he sat he could see the men’s quarters, but throughout the afternoon failed to see Bony, with whom he badly wanted to speak. To preserve the detective’s incognito he decided against seeking him out too openly, and waited to see him before making an excuse to leave the house.

  Marion and Mrs Poulton brought them tea about three o’clock, and when they arranged the things on a side-table Father Ryan could not but applaud the fact that the snobbery of wealth was entirely absent from the menage. In truth, Mrs Poulton, fat, small, greying, and sixty, was far more a companion-housekeeper than a kitchen cook. She had entered the service of the late Mrs Stanton shortly after Marion was born, and when Mrs Stanton died she undertook the whole of the house-work, the care of the children, and the domestic management of Jeff Stanton. The boss of Windee owed her a debt that he recognized he could never repay.

  Mrs Poulton was dressed in her Sunday black, wearing stiff linen cuffs on her wrists and an enormous cameo brooch at the throat of her high-collared bodice. Marion wore a frock of pink charmeuse, and the kindly old priest felt whilst watching her that indescribable glow of content which is felt under such circumstances by a lover of beautiful things after having lived for years in the harsh ugliness of a prison—or a decaying Australian bush town.

  As for Sergeant Morris, Mount Lion and a district as large as Wales claimed all his interest as policeman and administrator. In his odd or spare time he was a registrar of births and deaths, and married or buried Protestants if they preferred his unordained services to the ordained services of a Roman Catholic priest. These latter duties, however, were not onerous, since the whole of the people under his jurisdiction could have occupied quite comfortably the Government benches in the House of Commons.

  The secret of Father Ryan’s wide popularity rested on the fact that first and foremost he was a very human, sympathetic man. His calling never obtruded. A product of Maynooth, Ireland, he shed his political enthusiasms entirely and moulded his religious tenets in conformity with the conditions and the outlook of his parishioners and friends.

  Dinner had been served at one o’clock that day, and after tea taken at half-past six he went with Jeff Stanton to watch the men leave for Nullawil. The two-ton trucks were drawn up outside the men’s quarters, and when the two men joined the throng of hands arranging their own seating accommodation, Father Ryan was warmly greeted.

  “I want you to pile on to Ron’s truck,” Jeff told them; and then, addressing himself to the driver of the second truck, went on: “Keep behind Ron and pick up the outside men who have centred at Range Hut. Both of you stop at the night-paddock gate this side of Nullawil, and wait for me. Have you got plenty of petrol-tins?”

  They assured him with grins that they had, and a few seconds later the trucks pulled out on the eighty-mile journey. They watched the dust rise behind them and listened to the shouts and laughter ever growing fainter in the wonderful still air of early evening.

  “They won’t be shouting to-morrow,” Jeff observed grimly, when he and the padre turned towards the house. “Not one of us will do a hand’s turn. I’ll be paying out wages for nothing and spending money on seventy gallons of petrol and several gallons of oil.”

  “’Tis yourself should admit that the smiles and laughter ye’ve seen and heard this day are sufficient payment.”

  “Perhaps I should. Father,” owned Jeff with twinkling eyes. “They’re good lads when treated as men, as I have always treated ’em. You’ve got to give me credit there.”

  “Indeed I do, Jeff,” the little priest said, giving his companion a sly dig in the ribs with his elbow. “I give you credit, too, with having a little more intelligence than most employers. In that you are one with Mr Henry Ford. You never suffer strikes because you do treat your hands as men, and you are both millionaires. Why, here comes Miss Marion in trouble.”

  “Dad, why isn’t Bony going?” she inquired.

  “Not gone? By gad, I don’t remember seeing him go on the trucks, now you mention it!”

  “No, there he is coming across from the horse-yards. Ask him, Dad! He could come with us. I’m sure he would like to go.”

  Stanton, turning, saw Bony, and throwing back his head, roared in a voice almost to be heard in Mount Lion.

  “Dad!” Marion cried reproachfully.

  “Well, you don’t expect me to go gallivanting after a nig, do you?” Jeff demanded.

  Marion made no comment, but smiled at Father Ryan’s smile. The three awaited the approach of the half-caste, and when he had doffed his hat to Marion, Jeff said in his loud gruff voice:

  “Why-in-hell ain’t you gone to the tin-kettling?”

  “Well, as I am not acquainted with the overseer and his bride, I thought it would be presumptuous to go,” Bony quietly explained.

  Marion, regarding Father Ryan covertly, saw the priest’s blue eyes open wide with surprise at Bony’s cultivated voice, and was amused. Her father snapped:

  “That makes no difference. We have all got to go. Even I have got to go, although I don’t want to. Would you like to go?”

  Bony remained dubious. Marion suddenly smiled at him and said:

  “If you care to go, Bony, you will be quite welcome, I assure you. We can give you a seat in the car, and I wouldn’t like to think that you were left behind simply because you have only recently come to Windee.”

  “In that case, Miss Stanton, I shall be delighted.” The brown face was alight, and the gentle smile won Father Ryan as already it had won Marion. Old Jeff nodded agreeably, and Bony withdrew with bared head.

  “Rather a remarkable half-caste,” murmured the priest.

  “He’s a remarkable horse-breaker,” Stanton said.

  “He’s one of the nicest men I’ve met,” was Marion’s verdict; and then she laughed at the look in Jeff’s face, and added: “I really can’t marry him, Dad, because he has a wife and three children already.”

  “That’s a good thing!” Jeff growled, leading the way to the veranda.

  Twenty minutes later they all got into a car that represented Jeff Stanton’s single extravagance, a straight-eight Royal Continental. Young Jeff drove this superb car, and seated next him was Bony, who volunteered to open the many gates. Behind them sat Sergeant Morris with Mrs Poulton as companion, and in the rear Father Ryan sat between Jeff and his daughter.

  The sun had set and almost to the zenith the western sky was aflame with crimson, gold and purple. Thousands of galahs wheeled and fluttered about the two tall windmills built beside the great hole in the creek which was Windee’s permanent water supply, and their screeches were so vociferous that the excursionists found difficulty in making their own voices heard until they drew away from the homestead and slid on to the great salt-bush plain.

  Bathed in the magic fleeting twilight, the great car sped towards the range of hills cutting Windee in halves, and for a li
ttle while the members of the party were silent; for, almost as swiftly as they were carried to the couch of King Sol, so the purple and blue shades of the sky sank to the horizon, curved and humped by the ridges of the low hills.

  At the wheel young Jeff lounged as though he were handling the steering-wheel of a bath-chair; yet there was no hint of carelessness in the behaviour of the car, and he made it difficult for one to remember that most of his last night had been spent in wild drinking. Two miles out, he pulled up before a gate, and when through that, and Bony again in his seat, they had a run of fifteen miles across to the farther side of the paddock and the next gate.

  To anyone used to Australian tracks, to ride in Jeff Stanton’s car was an experience to remember. After their recent ride in the ton-truck owned by Dot and Dash, the sergeant and Father Ryan undoubtedly appreciated the difference. The old priest sighed and made himself a little more comfortable.

  “I wish,” he said with studied seriousness, “I wish I were a millionaire.”

  “I don’t. Why do you wish you were a millionaire?” Jeff inquired with his habitual grimness, which was so often assumed.

  “So that I could own a car like this one. May I be forgiven the sin of envy! But why do you not wish I were a millionaire?”

  “If you were, Padre, you wouldn’t be here,” Jeff told him simply. “Anyway I offered to present you with a car and you declined it.”

  “I know you did, Jeff, but if I had a car I’d have to be after drivin’ it, and I couldn’t be drivin’ it and sittin’ back looking at the scenery at the same time.”

  “Well, if that’s all, I’ll supply you with a driver.”

  “It’s kind of ye, Jeff, but I’d only be takin’ the man from productive work. No, I’ll be content just to wish I were a millionaire. There’s pleasure in wishing, and less pleasure in having.”