Gripped By Drought Page 7

  CHAPTER V

  THE CAMP

  I

  SLIM JIM WEBSTER’S philosophy was well-nigh perfect in a world where the virtue of generosity is carried almost to a fault. He did not believe in working that he might eat, because to eat did not mean having to work.

  During but two periods of the year did Slim Jim labour: at the annual lamb-marking and at the annual shearing. On Atlas the lamb-marking averaged four weeks of the fifty-two, whilst the shearing extended from five to seven weeks. The remainder of the year was lived as a Darling River Pirate, a life of unlimited freedom and boundless leisure, of walking without haste from station homestead to station homestead along one side of the river and down along the other side, with interposed breaks now and then of a week or a few days at work when a rest from constant travelling could be appreciated.

  “Why work?” was Slim Jim’s pertinent inquiry. “I carry my swag up the river on the east side, camp where I like, fish when I like, call on a station cook for tucker when I like, sell a fish out of the river to a township pub or a squatter for a few plugs of tobacco, do the same when coming down the west bank, and engage as a lamb-markers’ cook and a wool-presser for money enough for me ’olidays. And at the end of twelve months I am just as well off as you blokes–who work all the year round. Work! Coo! Only suckers work!”

  Thirty years as a Darling River Pirate had enabled Slim Jim to become thoroughly acquainted with every squatter and station cook from Wentworth to Burke, as well as every fishing-hole in that thousand-mile river course. To the squatters he was a man possessing two good points: he could cook well with the primitive utensils of a shifting camp, and he could be relied on to turn up on time if engaged for the lamb-marking six months previously.

  Visualize, please, a man weighing fourteen stone, measuring six feet in height, possessing a face like a multi-split tomato, and a voice with the carrying power of a foghorn. His day at the lamb-marking camps of Atlas started when the alarm-clock rang at half-past five. A greater autocrat than the overseer, who was boss of the camp, Slim Jim occupied a tent in which were stacked the stores, and when he had dressed in spotless white drill trousers and cotton shirt, and had buttoned up a ragged overcoat, he stepped out into the brilliantly starlit, frost-gripped night, rolled toward the uprights and crossbeam which marked the fire-site, seized a rod and raked among the domed heap of white ash till he had bared the still glowing embers of wood billets he had so carefully buried in the depth of the fire before going to bed. Upon these embers he tossed an armful of twigs left in readiness, and, when the twigs caught fire, added log after log till, presently, a huge column of flame brought out of the darkness the white shapes of half a dozen tents expertly erected on frames.

  Quite near was a round, galvanized iron tank of water, and from it he filled a pint billy-can which he hung over the fire, low, and in the centre of the flame column. In a minute it was boiling. Then Slim Jim removed his overcoat, and when he had made himself tea he sat on a box and sipped from the blackened billy-can whilst he smoked his first pipeful of strong, ink-black tobacco.

  Himself refreshed, he examined his bread dough. Removing first a sheet of iron weighted by a log, he rolled away a sheepskin, when there was disclosed a round hole, and within the hole a large bucket covered with a cloth. When the cloth was removed it could be seen that the dough in the bucket was “ripe”. For fifteen minutes he punched this dough on a table built of a door laid over a rough bough frame, and when the dough had been once more placed in the bucket he set it near the fire, and carefully protected the far side from the cold night air with the sheepskin.

  From another tent, which was his larder, he removed the mincemeat balls he had made up the night before, and placed them in two large iron camp-ovens, beneath and on which he shovelled red embers. Above several shovelfuls of red wood coals he hung the wire-netted grill, which he proceeded to cover with about ten pounds’ weight of mutton chops, which also had been cut in readiness the evening before.

  Like the shroud of a ghost the eastern sky was shimmering whitely. Slim Jim was a kind cook. He set against the back of the fire two four-gallon petrol-tins of water before setting out on the long boarded table beneath the tarpaulin roof loaves of yeast bread, tins of jam, bottles of sauce, and heaped plates of slab brownie, or eggless cake. In the big iron boiler, half filled with boiling water, he made the oatmeal burgoo.

  The stars were being quickly washed out by the dawning day. The camp was pitched, as now could be seen, on the bank of a waterless creek lined with box trees. Galahs, parakeets, and finches became active in their daily search for food, whilst five hundred yards further up the creek the baaings of many sheep drifted from a maze of low-built yards. It was two minutes to seven when Slim Jim looked at the clock in his tent.

  Now with a grin of perverse pleasure he took up two short pieces of bar-iron and began a tattoo on a headless oil-drum used sometimes for carting water. The quietude of that sylvan scene was shattered by pandemonium. The galahs fled away over the plain beyond the creek with screeches of protest, the parakeets fled up along the creek, and the many finches ceased their food hunt to crouch motionless till the storm of sound subsided.

  First to emerge from one of the tents was the horse-tailer. He should have been after the musterers’ horses long before this, riding the chaff-fed night horse; but no amount of pleading and argument would induce Slim Jim to call him at daybreak. The cook’s contention was that his alarm-clock would wake any ordinary man within five hundred yards, and if the horse-tailer, who slept in a tent a bare forty yards distant, could not hear the vicious bell, well he, Slim Jim, was not paid to call him. Two minutes later the tailer was being whirled away on the night horse, which lived only for these morning gallops.

  When the uproar of thumping iron sticks on an empty oil-drum ceased, it was continued by the dozen dogs chained to near-by trees. A man staggered out into the crisp morning air, rubbing his eyes and blenching from the cold. During normal periods of the year he was the Atlas bullock-drover. For three minutes and twenty-two seconds he cursed the dogs–in lieu of the cook–with a string of words very seldom repeated.

  2

  “You’re a nartist!” Slim Jim said admiringly, standing with his back to the fire.

  “The ruddy dogs yelpin’ like that gets on me quince,” stated Fred, the bullock-drover, with emphasis. “This water fer us?”

  “Yus. Nice warm water to sponge yer tender dial with. Just fancy, now! ’Ot water for measly station ’ands. Coo!”

  Fred, a long lank man of forty or so who slouched in his walk so that his middle appeared to follow his head and his feet follow his middle, glared at the cook, opened his mouth, concealed by a bushy, unkempt ginger moustache-then succumbed to mental lethargy, not being properly awake, and refrained from addressing Slim Jim as he had addressed the dogs. Slim Jim, who had expected another artistic treat, felt let down.

  The other men–fifteen all told–hovered about in the warmth of the fire, loth to leave it to wash, even with the warm water provided.

  “For Gawd’s sake, get out of me bleedin’ way!” Slim Jim roared, moving unnecessarily about his fire. “Come on, now! You’ll never get to work to-day. ’0o wants burgoo? Come on, you burgoo-eating Scotchmen! Now, Fred!”

  “None of yer pig-feed fer me..”

  “Naw! You’re a good Aussie, you are. Chops for you with the blood drippin’ out of ’em. Well, ’ere yer are. Now, Mister Andrews?”

  “Porridge, please.”

  “Porridge! Wot’s that? Oh, yer means burgoo! Naw–nar! You ain’t in a droring-room nar. Burgoo it is. ’Ere y’are. Git that down yer swan neck. Now then, next! Oh! yous want yer chops well done, eh? Orl right. ’Ere’s yours done to a cinder. Take ’em away. Morning, Mister Noyes! Will you partake of par–no, burgoo–this morning? Yes? Mud on the liver this morning, eh? Well, you’re here for Kerlonial experience, and, by Gawd, you’re a-getting of it! Ah! ’Ow do, Mister MacDougall? No need to ask if you’ll ’ave any
burgoo. Men a bit dopy. Slept in too long. Work ’em ’ard to-day, Mister MacDougall. Exercise is wot they want. Kerlonial experience! Give ’em Kerlonial Hexperience. That’s wot they’re ’ere for.”

  There were but few better sheepmen in New South Wales than Angus MacDougall. Descended undoubtedly from Scottish ancestors, he was short and dapper, ungainly on his feet, bow-legged, long-armed, and round-shouldered. There was nothing braw about this Australian Scotsman, not even in his speech.

  “Plenty of gab this morning, Jim,” he said in a soft, drawling voice, which did not disguise long acquaintance with command of men.

  “Yus, I’m feeling good,” Slim Jim admitted. “These nice fresh mornings livens me up. You don’t see me rubbing me eyes and looking like I been on the booze for a month. You see––“

  Angus, who had placed two meat chops on a huge slice of bread, carried this in one hand, with the plate of porridge in the other, across to an empty ration-case, and began his breakfast as though he had forgotten the existence of the cook. After the first serving the men became less lamb-like. Fred the bullock-drover, said:

  “Gimme some chops, and gimme less yabber, you river pirate!” Three evil-looking teeth became bared in what was supposed to be a smile of affability.

  “Wot, just woke up?” ejaculated the astounded Slim Jim, whilst loading into an enamelled plate four of the fattest chops which he knew would find approval.

  After this, conversation became more general. Whilst Slim Jim was by no manner of means tactful in his speech, he was thoroughly appreciated as a cook. When one man liked his meat underdone, he was sure to have his taste suited. Another man, who liked his meat well done, invariably was offered meat well cooked.

  A rumble of hoofs announced the arrival of the musterers’ horses. A cloud of fine dust swerved outward when the bunch of horses raced into the roughly built stockyards, the tailer’s horse right on the heels of the last of them. The men began to stack their utensils on the end of Slim Jim’s cooking-table, then to separate, some walking across to the sheep-yards; others, the musterers, carving their lunches from loaves of bread and cold roasts of mutton set out for them.

  Angus and Noyes went into short conference, the overseer directing the jackeroo, who was boss of the musterers, where to drive the sheep in the pass-out yards, and which paddock to muster that day for sheep that would be dealt with on the morrow.

  In his ungainly manner Angus MacDougall walked to the yards whilst the horsemen were saddling their hacks. Within the yards were some five thousand ewes with their lambs. The uproar increased with the coming of the markers. Two horsemen galloped out wide of the yards, and the gates of the pass-out yards were opened wide. A stream of dun-coloured wool poured outward in a long column, finally halted by the two riders and their dogs until the flock of some three thousand began to mill in a huge bunch, whereupon three riders urged them gently across the southern plain to the mulga timber. Four other men were riding north on jogging mounts, blue tobacco clouds floating out behind them in the clear air like ladies’ blue silken scarfs.

  At the gates at the end of a runway Angus began to draft the two thousand ewes with their lambs. Men “yowled” and waved their hats to force the sheep into the runway; and, when they reached the drafting gates, Angus saw to it that the lambs entered one yard and their mothers a second yard.

  The bleatings of lambs parted from their mothers, and the baaing of the mothers for their lost lambs, became intensified. Men climbed into the yard containing the hundreds of lambs, each seizing a lamb and holding it with its rump resting on a rail. A knife between his teeth, Angus MacDougall moved up and down the line of lambs presented to him, followed by Andrews wielding ear-markers and tar-brush. These two wore dungaree overalls. Very soon after the start of the day’s work the overalls became streaked and spotted with the crimson blood.

  It was an easy day, this day. Only fifteen hundred lambs winced at the sear of the knife.

  3

  At about the same time that Angus MacDougall started work, Frank Mayne left the homestead in the big station car on his first trip of inspection since his return from Europe. Beside him sat his wife, with Little Frankie, coated and capped and gloved, sitting on her lap. In the tonneau of the car were stored a hamper and thermos flasks containing milk and coffee. Quickly Ethel Mayne’s face was stung by the cold, frosty air, whilst the child glowed with health and fidgeted with vigour.

  With his eyes half closed–it is remarkable how habit so quickly reasserts itself–Mayne drove the car at a fair speed along the track twisting over the river flats. The flats were wide, grey-brown in colour, utterly bare of vegetation, save in sheltered places beneath the spreading branches of the gnarled box trees. Here, protected from the frost, the wild carrot, parsnip, and spinach were shooting up, forming distinct circular green carpets.

  After a little more than a mile they came to a gate in a wire fence, beyond which the river flats abruptly gave place to red sand-dunes on which grew the drought-defying mulga and pine trees. This day his own gate-opener, Mayne was obliged to open it and close it again after he had driven the car through.

  When once again the car sped forward and had crossed the belt of dunes, they emerged on flat red-sand country harder than the flats, and studded with fifteen-foot scrub, beneath which, sheltered from the frosts, the tussock-grass was sprouting and the wild barley already was three inches high. The river country now left behind was banished from mind by this totally different class of land. In a good year, when herbage covered the river flats, the wide-spaced trees and the unbroken carpet of green made a picture not unlike an English park; but in this mulga country, where grass was still absent on the unprotected parts, the shorter scrub gave it the aspect of a boundless orchard of plum-trees.

  A run of twelve miles brought them to the second gate, and when they had passed through, Ethel asked:

  “What station is this, Frank?”

  “Atlas,” he replied and, looking at her, smiled with the pride of possession.

  Little Frankie, now between them, was content to croon a baby tune, to the accompaniment of the purring engine. Ethel fell back on her meditative silence, whilst her husband became fully occupied in mentally noting the condition of the country and planning improvements to fences and buildings.

  If his wife guessed correctly precisely what did occupy Mayne’s mind, he never thought to guess of what she was thinking. Actually she was going back to the house-warming dinner, recalling every action and word made and spoken by two people. Since the dinner those two people had been constantly in her thoughts.

  Of Ann Shelley, Ethel’s first impression remained. There were occasions when Ethel Mayne was remarkably honest with herself and, without consciously colouring her judgment of Ann Shelley, she frankly admitted that she admired Ann’s well-moulded figure and beautifully formed features, made lovelier by the transparent purity of her mind.

  What was it in Ann Shelley Mayne’s wife disliked? She disliked the cool, steady gaze of the wide-spaced fearless grey eyes. The personality of this Australian woman, like her colouring, was the antithesis of Ethel Mayne’s. The wife’s nature was to gain a point by devious paths, by subtlety; it was Ann’s nature to reach a point by proceeding straight to it. Ethel was, or could be, an apt disciple of the great Machiavelli; whilst Ann would not bother to waste time, or think it worth while to plan or scheme to obtain anything by subterfuge.

  Ethel recognized at the first moment of their meeting that she and Ann Shelley were as clay and sand. It was merely that which aroused her antipathy, whereas a less self-centred woman would have assessed the advantage of being the subtler of the two. In beauty she felt she was not inferior; in brainpower she decided she was Ann’s superior. Certainly she was superior to Ann in cultural attainments and experience; and, in consequence, having nothing to fear, she decided to tolerate her romantically powerful neighbour.

  Presently she was aroused from her meditation by Mayne pointing out several kangaroos that were t
aking long, loping jumps away from the passing car. They were the first kangaroos she had seen outside a zoo, but she could see no beauty in their physical grace or movement; and once more she relapsed into silence.

  She thought of Alldyce Cameron, and already recognized the significance of thinking overmuch of this man; but she was not a woman to banish thought or memory of anything she knew was not healthy to think about or remember; rather she preferred to analyse her impressions and her feelings, for the scorching fire of deep emotion never yet had been presented to her for analysis.

  The picture of the man gazing steadily at her whilst he stood just inside the door of the drawing-room was indelibly photographed on her mind. That she was tremendously impressed by Cameron she honestly admitted. Never before had she met a man so vitally alive, so magnetic, so masculine. Turning back the leaves of the book of life, she found in it no man better-looking than he, and but one only who came near the standard Alldyce Cameron set. His culture was evident, even before he spoke, and Ethel Mayne considered that culture was ingrained by birth and education.

  All this she could dispassionately examine and dissect. What she could not analyse was the peculiar colouring of the lights at her first sight of him, the lightness of spirit his impact on her life had caused, and the reason why her mind constantly conjured his picture, especially his mouth and chin. This she could not analyse because such experiences never before had entered her life; for, despite her upbringing by clever, ambitious parents, despite her life lived on that social stratum wherein few illusions remain after the twentieth year, she failed to recognize that, despite her cold and stately physical aspect, she was but a butterfly in imminent danger of being scorched, if not consumed, by fire.

  “What are you thinking about?” Mayne asked abruptly.

  Without hesitation she replied:

  “I was thinking of Ann Shelley. Does she live alone at Tin Tin?”