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Australian Tales/Learning Colonial Experience

Learning "Colonial Experience"
There were three of us, Dougald McAlister, Jack Thwaites, and myself. The place was called in the grandiloquent language of the bush, "The Dinkledoodledum Station" (I like these old native names), because it was situated in the Dinkledoodledum Creek. Dinkledoodledum--as any philologist can guess by the sound of it--means the Valley of the Rippling Streamlets; but alas! never a rippling streamlet did our eyes behold during our stay in the inhospitable valley.

The station had just been purchased by Thwaites' brothers--is not his name now synonymous with gold, from the Great Glimmera to the Adelaide Desert?--and had been overstocked by its former proprietor. Along the Glimmera banks, where jovial but family-burdened Boschman kept his boundaryriding habitation, the ground was as bare as a billiard-table, and the travelling sheep that called the Great Glimmera their "feeding track," were only too glad to escape beyond the Dinkledoodledum boundary into the pleasant paths of Whistlebinkie. Let it not, however, be imagined that our station was always in this condition. On the contrary, it had been renowned as a place flowing with milk and honey. It was reported that Clibborn had made his fortune out of it; that Wallum had retired to independence and hot grog after twelve months of it; and that Thwaites was in a fair way to do exceedingly well if he could but "hold on" to it.

Unluckily, what with the former proprietor's mania for feeding two sheep to every three acres (one sheep to every five acres was about the Dinkledoodledum standard) and a succession of bad seasons, the "holding on" was hard work. Economy was absolutely needful, and McAlister, Jack and I practised it healthily. Mutton and damper all the week, and damper and mutton on Sundays, was the order of the day, and we carried it out to the letter. No epicurean feasts of beef or of pork disgraced the frugality of our board. Never to our table came the feeble fowl or the enervating kitchen-garden vegetable. We had no milk, for our dairy cattle were starving; no eggs, for our poultry refused to lay; no pumpkin pie, for our soil was too poor to grow even that harmless esculent. Yet on Spartan fare we led Spartan lives, and were happy.

Oh, that bark hut! Never shall I forget the first day when I, a slim and somewhat effeminate youth, with London smoke not yet cleared from my throat, beheld its dilapidated walls. "You will sleep here," said Jack, pointing to a skillion which seemed to have been used as a sheep-pen, so marked was the "spoor" of those beasts. "With all my heart," said I, as that organ sank within me--down, down, down, until I could feel it palpitating in the very tips of my riding-boots. But I did not regret my acquiescence. How many nights in that humble shelter have I listened to the skirr of the wild cats, and watched the one bright star that pertinaciously peeped through the chinks of the bark sheets. How many nights have I lighted my lonely pipe, and wrestled alone with my own particular angel, even as Jacob wrestled at Pennel. Happy Jacob! would I owned thy cunning of wrist and elbow. How many nights have I trimmed the reed in the pannikin of tallow, and read the half-dozen books I possessed until I could read no more. How many nights have I slept the unutterably sweet slumber of virtuous weariness, until my Jack, bursting in with clanking spurs, would rouse me with his "All aboard!" Aye, old skillion, I have had some happy hours in thee; so peace to thy ashes, for, sooth to say, thou art now but fit for burning.

It is proper to boast of the Australian summer. Those who have lived in tents, camped by rocky waterholes, kept dew-sprinkled watch beneath the yellow moon, and ridden through fiery noons hard upon the tails of the head-long herd, can with justice boast of the wild intoxication of that burning ether. I have known it, I! Not the draught which the great spirit gave to eager Faust maddens so gloriously. Australian summer, dost thou say? I am with thee. With open shirt ballooned behind thee, with streaming hair and bloody spurs, urge, urge the straining steed across the level plain! No tree mars the prospect of immensity. In front, the flying emu, and behind--naught but the whistling air! The grey grass spins, the grey plain reels, the cloudless sky glows molten brass above. It comes--the hot wind of the desert! Bitter--fierce from the sand--hills of the scorching north, it sweeps upon thee! Ride! Ride!

There are fifty miles of grass before thee, and the blood of an Emperor's battle steed beats beneath thy saddle-flaps. What are fears, griefs, loves? Throned upon the rocking saddles of our stretching barbs, we laugh at fate. Stand in thy stirrups now, and shout! Ha! ha! Tell me what draught of love or wine compares with this--the champagne nectar of a hot-wind gallop!

But the time to enjoy our hut was in the winter--the wild, wet winter that lashed the groaning gums, and scoured to white rage the risen river. All the hot summer wooed us to the air. Through parching noons and dewy nights we rode and revelled. Then camped the cattle by the shrinking swamp, and the wild horses came down to drink at the famished springs. Then we went expeditions in the balmy moonlight, and roused the drowsy township with the clattering echoes of our hurrying hoofs. Then came Harry of the Gap, Tom of the Scano, and Dare-devil Dick, of Mostyn's Folly, to "foregather" with us. Then were Homeric days, musical with chanted melody, and fierce with the recklessness of horsetaming youth. Then were our hearts great within us, and in that glowing atmosphere, beneath that burning sun, our bright blood bounded, and we lived!

But in gray, chill winter the bark hut, so long deserted, repaid our ingratitude by generous kindness. Creeping, all wet, and weary with travel, splashed with mire, and torn by prickly scrub, to its friendly shelter, it glowed warm welcome, its rough but honest sides laughing in the beams of the roaring logs till they were nigh to crack again. How cheery were those evenings. How we ate the ewe mutton, and laughed at the mishaps of the day; how we smoked, and toasted our toes and "yarned;" three sworn comrades, singing the songs of our native Britain to the accompaniment of the whistling Austral wind.

The hut was not commodious. When duly camped within it, indeed, we had but scant room. When McAlister had flung his lazy length upon the lounging chair (a wool bale stretched upon the racktoothed iron skeleton of some long-forgotten patent) and I had usurped the cane-bottomed American importation, there was but one place for Thwaites, and that the table top. Thwaites would roost there, like some intelligent bird, and chant the lays of his native country. We called him the "Little Warbler." Thwaites was a young man of military tendencies. He had belonged in the old country to the Diggleshire Yeomanry Cavalry (who received the thanks of their Lord-Lieutenant and county, you may remember, for their conduct in the great insurrection of the cider-sellers against the patent bottling process), and in our excursions into the bush he was perpetually waving a brass-headed whip which he affected, and with wild cries of "St. George and Diggleshire!" charging the brush fences. Paddy, his big-boned horse, put him down badly one afternoon, and he gave up this method of exhilaration. McAlister, who owned that sense of dry humour which is a fungoid growth peculiar to Scotland, would artfully excite Thwaites to wrath by the assumption of anti-Hanoverian tendencies, and induce in him a violent outburst of loyalty, and frequent reference to a lady of whom he habitually spoke as "My gracious sovereign, whom God preserve." McAlister himself was not without his prejudices, for on one occasion I distinctly remember that we removed the table, and fought over the merits of poor Mary Queen of Scots. I had ventured to hint that her conduct in the matter of Bothwell was not quite incapable of impeachment, and McAlister challenged me to trial by battle. In justice to the soundness of a reasoning which has sent so many honest men to Hades, I will presume that my cause was a bad one, for I received a very sound and cornplete drubbing.

One of poor Thwaites's duties was to "keep the books," and once a week he would labour painfully, but religiously at his task. The, "books" could not have been very difficult to "keep," I think, but somehow or other we never could keep them. I am now inclined to think that our system was too comprehensive, for, as we put everything down in a volume called a day-book, (lucus a non lucendo, I suppose, for we never wrote anything in it until night), and transferred it bodily to a ledger, our accounts were pretty mixed. After I had been there a month, Thwaites mounted his horse solemnly and mysteriously one morning, and rode off one hundred and twenty miles to his brother. Two days afterwards he returned, dusty but calm, and big with intelligence of importance. After supper, he said to me gravely, "you have been in a bank, haven't you?" I replied that I had for a month or so, until my ravages among the well kept books were presumed to have permanently affected the brain of Napoleon Smith, the manager. "Then," said Jack, "since you've been used to banking, my boy, my brother thinks that you can keep the books." I was ready for any hazardous experiment in those days, and I consented. I think on the whole I did pretty well, though three rams (half-bred Leicesters, and as strong as bullocks), got into Derwent Joe's account, and could not be got out again by any financial operation I could devise, while I was always dropping boots and things in "carrying over." Jack would endeavour sometimes to see how I was getting on, but he told me one day that he couldn't understand why I should keep four plugs of Barrett's twist in the Long Swamp Paddock, and put our married couple's wages to the debit of Weathers and Weaners. I really don't think he understood much about it.

In the Long Swamp Paddock, by the way, lived one Long Tom, who was an oddity. He was nearly seven feet high and thin as a harpoon. He had been a sailor, digger, explorer, stockman, everything but a quiet stop-at-home. For the last ten years, however, he had rested in the hut by the Long Swamp, and the place was known as Long Tom's Waterhole; indeed, Long Tom and his dog were better known at the stations round about, than the name of the Chief Secretary of the Colony. His dog was one of the biggest impostors--for a dog--that I have ever met. He was called Old Moke, and was supposed to be of marvellous sagacity; he was a stumpy-tailed, long-bodied, shambling beast, who worked just when he chose, and as he chose. Long Tom, when riding to muster, would remark that if we didn't get the sheep soon, he would have to put "Old Moke on 'em," as though the act was equivalent to working a miracle, or dissolving Parliament. By-and-by Old Moke was "put on." "Moke!" Tom would remark in tones of conscious superiority, "get away forward!" We would hear a howl, and see a streak of white lightning slip out from under the belly of Tom's horse. Moke had obeyed the summons. By-and-by, in the depths of the forest, faint barks would be heard, and Tom would grow uneasy. He would whistle. Still the barking would continue, and presently, with a rushing sound, a flock of ewes would fly past us bewilderedly. Tom would shift in his saddle, and we would grin.

Presently McAlister gallops up, raging. "Call off your cursed dog, Tom!" he shouts. "Hi, Moke!" roars Tom. "Moke! Moke! Sink, and burn, and-and-andthe dog. Moke! Hi! Moke!" Then would Long Tom, vomiting fury, gallop madly into the bush, some agonised howls would be heard, and old Moke would be seen no more until supper, when he would meet us at the hut wagging his delusive stump defiantly. Yet everybody around believed in the beast. Old Moke was a sort of religion at the Dinkledoodledum, and to express doubt of his immense value would be heresy of the deepest dye. One would meet stockmen going home with puppies, squeaking at their heels. "Any good?" one would ask, nodding at the black and white mass. "Good! I believe you. That's one of old Moke's," would be the proud reply. Alas! old Moke--honest impostor, thou and thy crack-brained master are both gone! Gone, let us hope, old dog, to a place where the faults of both of ye will be as lightly dealt with as in the pleasant days of old.

When Thwaites had gone to bed in the corner--he was a most determined sleeper--McAlister and I would pitch another log on the fire and prepare for enjoyment. Carefully filling our pipes, we placed the grease-pannikin on a mark made exactly in the centre of the table, and "yarned." By "yarning," dear reader, I don't mean mere trivial conversation, but hard, solid talk. McAlister was a man of more than ordinary natural talents, and had he been placed in other circumstances, would have cut a figure. It was not easy to argue with him, and some of our discussions lasted until cock-crow. The arguments not unfrequently merged into story-telling, and in that department my memory served me in good stead. I had been a sickly brat in my infancy, and having unfettered access to the library of a man who owned few prejudices for moral fig-leaves, had, with the avidity for recondite knowledge which sickly brats always evince, read many strange books. I boiled down my recollections for McAlister, and constituted myself a sort of Scherezade for his peculiar benefit. He would smoke and I would fix my eyes on a long strip of bark which hung serpentwise from the ridge pole, and relate. I think if that strip of bark had been removed, my power of narration would have been removed with it. In this fashion we got through a good deal of Brantome, several of the plays--or rather plots of the plays--of Wycherley, Massinger, and Farquahar, and most of Byron. We rambled over the Continent with Gil Blas, discussed the Alchemists, strolled up and down Rome with Horace, and investigated the miracles of the early Saxon churchmen in company of a lot of queer fellows who lived somewhere about the time of the Venerable Bede. We talked Candide and Dr. Lardner's Encyclopædia; we saw Hogarth with Ireland's descriptions; we quarrelled bitterly over Tom Paine's Age of Reason, and made friends again over the pathetic adventures of one Moll Flanders, a friend of Daniel Defoe.

Oh, cheery bark hut, despite all miseries of rough ways and rougher weather, despite all hideousness of lamb-cutting and sheep-slaughtering, despite the figs of tobacco that would get mixed up with my record of maiden-ewes and two-toothed wethers, despite rain, storm, and tough mutton, I recall thy memory with unfeigned regret. Thither "never came the trader, never waved a European flag;" no smiling bill-discounters ever invaded thy sacred precincts; no severe duns, rightly claiming that which is, alas! their own, and that which I am unable to pay them, ever darkened thy hospitable doorway; no folio documents, demanding instant official attention, were ever brought by the merry black-boy to thy rude letter-box; no monstrous civilisation with its luxurious necessities overshadowed, Upas-like, thy imperfect roof. A glorious barbarism was thine, a jovial freedom born the cares of the morrow was the charter of thy liberties. I disliked thee once, and grumblingly did abuse thy hospitable shelter, but I have since found other roofs less pleasant than thine, have since--pent within stucco and inurned in marble mockery of grandeur--yearned for the careless fortune of thy uncultured surroundings, cried often in vain amid the uncomfortable comfort of the city.

"Give me again my hollow tree, my crust of bread and liberty."


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Australian Tales/Pretty Dick

Pretty Dick
A hot day. A very hot day on the plains. A very hot day up in the ranges, too. The Australian sun had got up suddenly with a savage swoop, as though he was angry at the still coolness of early morning, and was determined to drive the cattle, who were munching complacently in the long, rich grass of the swamp, back up under the hill among the thick she-oaks. It seemed to be a settled thing on the part of the sun to get up hotter and hotter every morning. He even went down at night with a red face, as much as to say, "Take care, I shall be hotter than ever to-morrow!"

The men on the station did not get into smoking humour until he had been gone down at least an hour and, as they sat on a bench and a barrel or two, outside the "men's hut" on the hill, they looked away across the swamp to that jagged gap in the ranges where he had sunk, and seeing the red flush in the sky, nodded at one another, and said, "We shall have a hot day to--morrow." And they were right. For, when they had forgotten the mosquitoes and the heat, and the many pleasant things that live in the crevices between the slabs of the hut, and gone to sleep, up he came again, hotter than ever, without the least warning, and sent them away to work again.

On this particular morning he was very hot. Even King Peter, who was slowly driving up the working bullocks from the swamp, felt his old enemy so fierce on his back, that he got up in his stirrups and cracked his whip, until the hills rang again, and Strawberry, and Punch, and Doughboy, and Damper, and all (except that cynical, wicked Spot, who hated the world, and always lived away by himself in a private clump of she-oak) straightened their tails and shook their heads, and galloped away up to the stockyard in mortal terror. The horses felt the heat, and King Peter's brother, who was looking for them on the side of the Stony Mount, had a long ride up and down all sorts of gullies before he found them out, and then they were unusually difficult to get together. The cockatoos knew it was hot, and screamed themselves away into the bush. The kangaroos, who had come down like gigantic shadows out of the still night, had all hopped away back into the scrub under the mountains, while the mist yet hung about the trees around the creek-bed. The parrots were uneasy, and the very station dogs got under the shadow-lee of the huts, in case of a hot wind coming up. As for the sheep--when Pretty Dick's father let them out in the dawn, he said to his dog, "We shan't have much to do to-day, old woman, shall we?" At which Lassie wagged her tail and grinned, as intelligent dogs do.

But who was Pretty Dick?

Pretty Dick was the seven-years-old son of Richard Fielding, the shepherd. Pretty Dick was a slender little man, with eyes like pools of still water when the sky is violet at sunset, and a skin as white as milk--that is, under his little blue and white shirt, for where the sun had touched it, it was a golden brown, and his hands were the colour of the ripe chestnuts his father used to gather in England years ago. Pretty Dick had hair like a patch of sunlight, and a laugh like rippling water. He was the merriest little fellow possible, and manly, too! He understood all about milking, did Pretty Dick: and could drive up a refractory cow with anybody. He could chop wood, too--that is, a little, you know, because he was not very strong, and the axe was heavy. He could ride, not a buck-jumper--that was his ambition--but he would take Molly (the wall-eyed mare) into the home station for his father's rations, and come out again quite safely.

He liked going into the station because he saw Ah Yung, the Chinaman cook, who was kind to him, and gave him sugar. He had all the news to bear too. How another mob of travelling sheep were coming through the run; how the grey mare had slipped her foal; how the bay filly had bucked off Black Harry and hurt his wrist; how Old Tom had "got the sack" for being impudent to the overseer, and had vowed to fire the run. Besides, there was the paper to borrow for his father, Mr. Trelawney's horses to look at, the chat with the carpenter, and perhaps a peep at the new buggy with its silver-mounted harness (worth, "oh, thousands of pounds!") Pretty Dick thought perhaps, too, he might go down to the house, with its garden and cool verandah, and bunches of grapes; might get a little cake from Mary, the cook or even might be smiled upon by Mrs Trelawney, the owner's young wife, who seemed to Dick to be something more a lady--to be a sweet voice that spoke kindly to him and made him feel as he would feel sometimes when his mother would get the Big Bible, that came all the way from England, and tell him the story about the Good Man who so loved little children.

He liked to go into the station, because everyone was so kind to him. Everyone loved Pretty Dick: even old Tom, who had been a "lag," and was a very wicked man, hushed the foul jest and savage oath when the curly head of Pretty Dick came within hearing, and the men always felt as if they had their Sunday clothes on in his presence. But he was not to go into the station to-day. It was not ration-day; so he sat on the step of his father's hut door, looking out through a break in the timber-belt at the white dots on the plain, that he knew to be his father's sheep.

Pretty Dick's father lived in the Log Hut, on the edge of the plains, and had five thousand sheep to look after. He was away all day. Sometimes, when the sheep would camp near home, Pretty Dick would go down with some fresh tea in a "billy," for his father, and would have a very merry afternoon watching his father cut curious notches in his stick, and would play with Lassie, and look about for 'possums in the trees, or, with craning neck, cautiously inspect an ant-hill. And then when evening came, and Lassie had got the sheep together--quietly without any barking you know--when father and son jogged homewards through the warm, still air, and the trampling hoofs of the sheep sent up a fragrance from the crushed herbage round the folding ground, Pretty Dick would repeat long stories that his mother had told him, about "Valentine and Orsen," and "Beauty and the Beast," and "Jack the Giant Killer;" for Pretty Dick's mother had been maid in the rector's family, in the Kentish village at home, and was a little above Pretty Dick's father, who was only a better sort of farm-labourer. But they were all three very, happy now in their adopted country. They were all alone there, these three--Pretty Dick, and mother and father--and no other children came to divide the love that both father and mother had for Pretty Dick. So that when Pretty Dick knelt down by his little bed at night, and put his little brown hands together, and said, "God bless my dear father and mother, and God bless me and make me a good boy," he prayed for the whole family, you see. So, they all three loved each other very much--though they were poor people--and Pretty Dick's mother often said that she would not have any harm happen to Pretty Dick for Queen Victoria's golden crown. They had called him Pretty Dick when he was yet a baby, on board the "Star of Peace" emigrant ship, and the name had remained with him ever since. His father called him Pretty Dick, and his mother called him Pretty Dick, and the people at the home station called him Pretty Dick; and even the cockatoo who lived on the perch over Lassie's bark-kennel, would call out "Pretty Dick! Pretty Dick! Pretty Dick!" over and over again.

Now, on this particular morning, Pretty Dick sat gazing between the trunks of the gum-trees into the blue distance. It was very hot. The blue sky was cloudless, and the sun seemed to be everywhere at once. There was a little shade, to be sure, among the gum-tree trunks, but that would soon pass, and there would be no shade anywhere. The little fenced-in waterhole in the front of the hut glittered in the sunlight like a piece of burnished metal, and the tin milk-pail that was turned topsy-turvy on the polepaling, was quite dazzling to look at. Daisy, the cow, stood stupidly under the shade of a round, punchy little she-oak close by, and seemed too lazy even to lie down, it was so hot. Of course the blow-flies had begun, and their ceaseless buzz resounded above and around, making it seem hotter than ever, Pretty Dick thought.

How hot father must be! Pretty Dick knew those terrible plains well. He had been across them two or three times. Once in the early spring when it was pleasant enough with a cool breeze blowing, and white clouds resting on the tops of the distant mountains, and the broad rolling levels of short, crisp, grass-land sweeping up from their feet to the horizon unceasingly. But he had been across there once in the summer, when the ground was dry and cracked, when the mountains seemed so close that he almost thought that he could touch them with his hand, when the heavens were like burning brass, and the air (crepitant with the ceaseless chirping of the grasshopper) like the flame of a heated furnace. Pretty Dick felt quite a fresh accession of heat as he thought of it, and turned his face away to the right to cool himself by thinking of the ranges. They were deep in the bush, past the creek that ran away the other side of the Sandy Rises; deep in the bush on the right hand, and many a weary stretch of sandy slope, and rough-grassed swamp, and solemn wood, and dismal, deserted scrub, was between him and them. He could see the lofty purple peak of Mount Clear, the highest in the range, grandly rising above the dense level tops of the gum-tree forests, and he thought how cool it must be in its mighty shadow. He had never been under the mountain. That there were some strange reaches of scrub, and sand, and dense thickets, and tumbled creeper-entwined rock in that swamp-guarded land, that lay all unseen under the shadow of the hills. He knew, for he had heard the men say so. Had he not heard how men had been lost in that awesome scrub, silent and impenetrable, which swallowed up its victims noiselessly? Had he not heard how shepherds had strayed or slept, and how, at night, the sheep had returned alone, and that search had been in vain, until perhaps some wandering horseman, all by chance, had lighted upon a rusty rag or two, a white skull, and perhaps a tin pannikin with hopeless scratchings of name and date? Had he not been told fearful things about those ranges? How the bushrangers had made their lair in the Gap, and how the cave was yet visible where their leader had been shot dead by the troopers; how large sums of stolen money were buried there, hidden away behind slags and slabs of rock, flung into fathomless gullies, or crammed into fissures in the mountain side, hidden so well that all the searching hands and prying eyes of the district had not yet discovered them? Did not Wallaby Dick tell him one night about the Murder that had been done down in the flat under the large Australian moon--when the two swagmen, after eating and drinking, had got up in the bright, still night, and beaten out the brains of the travelling hawker, who gave them hospitality, and how, the old man being found beside his rifled cart, with his gray hairs matted with blood, search was made for the murderers, and they were taken in a tap-room in distant Hamilton, bargaining with the landlord for the purchase of their plunder?

What stories had he not heard of wild cattle, of savage bulls, red-eyed, pawing, and unapproachable? What hideous tales of snakes, black, cold, and deadly, had not been associated in his mind with that Mountain Land? What a strange, dangerous, fascinating, horrible, wonderful place that Mountain Land must be, and how much he would like to explore it! But he had been forbidden to go, and he dismissed, with a childish sigh, all idea of going.

He looked up at his clock-the sun. He was just over the top of the big gum-tree--that meant ten o'clock. How late! The morning was slipping away. He heard his mother inside singing. She was making the bread. It would be very hot in the hut when the loaf was put in the camp-oven to bake. He had nothing to do either. He would go down to the creek; it was cool there. So he went into the hut and got a big piece of sweet cake, and put it in the pocket of his little jumper.

"Mother," said Pretty Dick, "I am going down to the creek."

"Take care you don't get lost!" said she, half in jest, half in earnest.

"Lost! No fear!" said Pretty Dick.

--And when he went out, his mother began to sing again.

It was beautifully cool down by the creek. Pretty Dick knew that it would be. The creek had come a long way, and was tired, and ran very slowly between its deep banks, luscious with foliage, and rich with grass. It had a long way to go, too, Pretty Dick knew where it went. It ran right away down to the river. It ran on into the open, desolate, barren piece of ground where the road to the station crossed it, and where its bright waters were all red and discoloured with the trampling of horses and cattle. It ran by the old stockyard, and then turned away with a sudden jerk, and lost itself in the Five Mile Swamp, from whence it re-appeared again, broader and bigger, and wound along until it met the river.

But it did not run beyond the swamp now, Dick knew, because the weather had been so hot, and the creeks were all dried up for miles around--his father said--all but this one. It took its rise in the mountains, and when the rainfall was less than usual, grew thinner and thinner, until it became, what it was now, a slender stream of water, trickling heavily between high banks--quite unlike the dashing, brawling, black, bubbling torrent that had rushed down the gully in flood-time.

Pretty Dick took off his little boots, and paddled about in the water, and found out all kinds of curious, gnarled roots of old trees, and funny holes under the banks. It was so cool and delicious under the stems and thick leaves of the water frondage that Pretty Dick felt quite restored again, and sang remembered scraps of his mother's songs, as he dodged round intervening trees, and slipped merrily between friendly trunks and branches. At last he came out into the open. Here his friend, the creek, divided itself into all sorts of queer shapes, and ran here, and doubled back again there, and twisted and tortured itself in an extraordinary manner, just out of pure fun and frolic.

There was a herd of cattle camped at this place, for the trees were tall, and big, and spreading. The cattle did not mind Pretty Dick at all, strange to say. Perhaps that was because he was on foot. If he had been on horseback now, you would have seen how they would have stared and wheeled about, and splashed off into the scrub. But when Pretty Dick, swinging a stick that he had cut, and singing one of his mother's songs, came by, they merely moved a little farther away, and looked at his little figure with long, sleepy eyes, slowly grinding their teeth from side to side the while. Now the way began to go up-hill, and there were big dead trees to get over, and fallen spreading branches to go round; for the men had been felling timber here, and the wasted wood lay thick upon the ground. At last Pretty Dick came to the Crossing Place. The Crossing Place was by the edge of the big swamp, and was a notable place for miles round. There was no need for a crossing place now though, for the limpid water was not a foot deep.

Pretty Dick had come out just on the top of a little sandy rise, and he saw the big swamp right before him, speckled with feeding cattle, whose backs were just level with the tall rushes. And beyond the big swamp the ranges rose up, with the sunlight gleaming here and there upon jutting crags of granite, and with deep cool shadows in other places, where the noble waving line of hills sank in, and made dark recesses full of shade and coolness. The sky was bluer than ever, and the air was heavy with heat; and Pretty Dick wondered how the eagle-hawk that was poised--a floating speck above the mountain top--could bear to swoop and swing all day long in that fierce glare.

He turned down again, and crossing the creek, plunged into the bush. There was a subtle perfume about him now; not a sweet, rich perfume like the flowers in the home station garden, but a strange intoxicating smell, evolved from the beat and the water, and the many coloured heath blossoms. The way was more difficult now, and Pretty Dick left the bank of the creek, and made for the open space--sandy, and bunched with coarse clumps of grass. He went on for a long time, still upwards, and at last his little feet began to tire; and, after chasing a dragon-fly or two, and running a long way after a kangaroo rat, that started out from a patch of broom and ran in sharp diagonal lines away to hide itself in among the roots of a she-oak, he began to think of the piece of sweet cake in his pocket. So when, after some little time, emerging from out a dense mass of scrub, that scratched and tore at him as though it would hold him back, he found himself far up the hills, with a great gully between him and the towering ranges, he sat down and came to the conclusion that he was hungry. But when he had eaten his sweet cake, he found that he was thirsty too, and that there was no water near him. But Pretty Dick knew that there was water in the ranges so he got up again, a little wearily, and went down the gully to look for it. But it was not so easy to find, and he wandered about for a long time among big granite boulders, and all kinds of blind creeks, choked up with thick grass and creeping plants, and began to feel very tired indeed, and a little inclined to wish that he had not left the water-course so early. But he found it at last--a little pool, half concealed by stiff, spiky, rush grass, and lay down, and drank eagerly. How nice the first draught was! But at the second, the water felt warm, and at the third, tasted quite thick and slimy. There had been some ducks paddling about when he came up, and they flew away with a great quacking and splashing, that almost startled him. As soon as they had disappeared though, the place was quite still again, and the air grew heavier than ever. He felt quite drowsy and tired, and laid himself down on a soft patch of mossy grass, under a tree; and so, after listening a little while to the humming of the insects, and the distant crackling of mysterious branches in the forest, he put his little head on his little arm, and went fast to sleep.

How long he slept Pretty Dick did not know, but he woke up, suddenly with a start, and a dim consciousness that the sun had shifted, and had been pouring its heat upon him for some time. The moment he woke he heard a great crashing and plunging, and started up just in time to see a herd of wild cattle scouring off down the side of the range. They had come up to drink while he was asleep, and his sudden waking had frightened them. How late it must be! The place seemed quite changed. There was sunlight where no sunlight had been before, and shadow where had been sunlight. Pretty Dick was quite startled at finding how late it was. He must go home, or mother would be frightened. So he began to go back again. He knew his way quite well. No fear of his losing himself. He felt a little tired though, but that would soon wear off. So he left the little pool and turned homewards. He got back again into the gully, and clambered up to the top, and went on sturdily. But the trees did not seem familiar to him, and the succession of dips in the hills seemed interminable. He would soon reach the Big Swamp again, and then he could follow up the creek. But he could not find the Swamp. He toiled alone, very slowly now, and at last found the open plot of ground where he had stopped in the morning But when he looked at it a little, it was not the same plot at all, but another something like it, and the grim ranges, heavy with shadow, rose all around him.

A terrible fear came into poor little Pretty Dick's heart, and he seemed to hear his mother say, quite plainly, "Take care you don't get lost, Pretty Dick!" Lost! But he put the feeling away bravely, and swallowed down a lump in his throat, and went on again. The cattle-track widened out, and in a little while he found himself upon a jutting peak, with the whole panorama of the Bush at his feet. A grand sight! On the right hand towered the Ranges, their roots sunk deep in scrub and dense morass, and their heads lifted into the sky, that was beginning to be streaked with purple flushes now. On the left, the bush rolled away beneath him--one level mass of treetops, broken here and there by an open space of yellow swamp, or a thin line of darker foliage, that marked the meanderings of some dried-up creek. The sun was nearly level with his face, and cast a long shadow behind him. Pretty Dick felt his heart give a great jump, and then go on beating quicker and quicker. But he would not give in. Lost!--Oh no, he should soon be home, and telling his mother all the wonders of the walk. But it was too late! He must make haste. What was that!--somebody on horseback. Pretty Dick shaded his eyes with his little hand, and peered down into the valley. A man with a white puggarree on his hat, was moving along a sort of cattletrack. Joy!--It was Mr. Gaunt, the overseer. Pretty Dick cooeed. No answer. He cooeed again,--and again, but still the figure went on. Presently, it emerged from the scrub, and the poor little fellow could see the rays of the setting sun gleam redly, for an instant on a bright spur, like a dying spark. He gave a despairing shout. The horseman stopped, looked about him, and then glancing up at the fast clouding heavens, shook his horse's bridle, and rode off in a hand-gallop. Poor Pretty Dick. He knew that his cry had been unheard--mistaken, perhaps, for the scream of a parrot, the cry of some native bear, or strange bird, but in his present strait, the departure of the presence of something human, felt like a desertion. He fairly gave way, and sat down and cried. By-and-by he got up again, with quite a strange feeling of horror, and terror, and despair; he ran down the steep side of the range in the direction in which Mr. Gaunt had gone, and followed his fast fading figure, calling and crying with choked voice. Presently he lost him altogether, and then he felt his courage utterly fail. He had no idea of where he was. He had lost all power of thought and reason, and was possessed but by one over-powering terror, and a consciousness that whatever he did, he must keep on running, and not stop a moment. But he soon could run no longer. He could only stagger along from tree to tree in the gloomy woods, and cry, "Mother! Mother!" But there was no mother to help him. There was no human being near him, no sound but the hideous croaking of the frogs in the marshes, and the crackling of the branches under his footsteps. The sun went down suddenly behind the hills, and the air grew cool at once. Pretty Dick felt as if he had lost a friend, and his tears burst forth afresh. Utterly tired and worn out, he sat down at the foot of a tree, and sobbed with sheer fatigue. Then he got up and ran round and round, like some hunted animal, calling, "Mother! Mother!"

But there was no reply. Nothing living was near him, save a hideous black crow who perched himself upon the branch of a withered tree and mocked him, seeming to the poor boy's distorted fancy to say, "Pretty Dick! Pretty Dick! Walk! walk! walk!"

In a burst of passionate, childish despair, he flung a piece of stick at the bird, but his strength failed him, and the missile fell short. This fresh failure made him cry again, and then he got up and ran-stumbling, and falling, and crying-away from the loathsome thing. But it followed him, flapping heavily from tree to tree, and perched quite close to him at last, croaking like an evil presence--"Pretty Dick! Pretty Dick! Walk! walk! walk!"

The sweet night fell, and the stars looked down into the gullies and ravines, where poor Pretty Dick, all bruised, bleeding, and despairing, was staggering from rock to rock, sick at heart, drenched with dew, hatless, shoeless, tear-stained, crying, "Mother! mother! I am lost! Oh, mother! mother!"

The calm, pitiless stars looked down upon him, and the broad sky spread coldly over him, and the birds flew away terrified at him; and the deadly chill of loneliness fell upon him, and the cold, cruel, silent night seemed to swallow him up, and hide him from human sympathy.

Poor Pretty Dick! No more mother's kisses, no more father's caresses, no more songs, no more pleasures, no more flowers, no more sunshine, no more love--nothing but grim Death, waiting remorselessly in the iron solitude of the hills; in the sad-eyed presence of the speechless stars. There, among the awful mystery and majesty of nature, alone, a terrified little human soul, with the eternal grandeur of the forests, the mountains, and the myriad voices of the night, Pretty Dick knelt trembling down, and lifting his little, tear-stained face to the great, grave, impassable sky-sobbed.

"Oh take me home! Take me home! Oh! please, God, take me home!"

The night wore on--with strange sounds far away in the cruel bush, with screamings of strange birds, with gloomy noises, as of the tramplings of many cattle, with movements of leaves and snapping of branches, with unknown whirrings as of wings, with ripplings and patterings as of waterfalls, with a strange heavy pulsation in the air, as though the multitudinous life of the forest was breathing around him. He was dimly conscious that any moment some strange beast--some impossible monster, enormous and irresistible, might rise up out of the gloom of the gullies and fall upon him;--that the whole horror of the bush was about to take some tangible shape and appear silently from behind the awful rocks which shut out all safety and succour. His little soul was weighed down by the nameless terror of a solitude which was no solitude,--but a silence teeming with monsters. He pictured the shapeless Bunyip lifting its shining sides heavily from the bottomless blackness of some lagoon in the shadow of the hills, and dragging, all its loathsome length to where he lay. He felt suffocated; the silence that held all these indistinct noises in its bosom, muffled him about like a murderous cloak; the palpable shadow of the immeasurable mountains fell upon him like a gravestone, and the gorge where he lay was like the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He screamed to break the silence, and the scream rang around him in the woods, and up above him in the mountain clefts, and beneath him in the mute mystery of the glens and swamps,--his cry seemed to be re-echoed again and again by strange voices never heard before, and repeated with indistinct mutterings and moanings in the caverns of the ranges. He dared not scream a second time lest he should wake some awful sound whose thunder should deafen him.

All this time he was staggering on,--not daring to look to right or left, or anywhere but straight on--traight on always. He fell, and tore his hands, and bruised his limbs, but the bruises did not hurt him. His little forehead was cut by a sharp stone, and his bright hair was all dusty and matted with blood. His knees shook and trembled, and his tongue clove to his mouth. He fell at every yard, and his heart seemed to beat so loud, that the sound filled the air around him.

His strength was leaving him; he tottered from weakness; and, at last, emerging upon a little open platform of rock, white under the moon, he felt his head swim, and the black trunks, and the masses of fern-tree leaves, and the open ground, and the silent expanse of bush below him, all turned round in one crimson flash; and then the crimson grew purple-streaked, and spotted with sparks, and radiations, and bursting globes of light and colour, and then the ranges closed in and fell upon him, and he was at once in his little bed at home--oh, so-fast--asleep!

But he woke at last, very cold and numbed, and with some feeling that he was not himself, but that he had been dreaming of a happy boy named Pretty Dick, who went away for a walk one afternoon many years ago. And then he felt for the blankets to pull them up about his shoulders, and his little fingers grasped a prickly handful of heather, and he woke with a terrible start.

Moonlight still, but a peaceful, solemn, sinking moon. She was low down in the sky, hanging like a great yellow globe over the swamp that rose from far beneath him, straight up, it seemed to a level with his face. Her clear cut rim rested on the edge of the morass now. He could almost touch her, she looked so close to him; but he could not lift his little arm so high, and besides, he had turned everything upside down before he went to sleep, and the moon was down below him and the earth up above him! To be sure! and then he shut his eyes and went to sleep again.

By-and-by it dawned. The birds twittered, and the dew sparkled, and the mists came up and wreathed themselves all about the trees, and Pretty Dick was up in the pure cool sky, looking down upon a little figure that lay on an open space among the heather. Presently, slowly at first, and then more quickly, he found out that this little figure was himself, and that he was in pain, and then it all came back with one terrible shock, and he was Lost again.

He could bear to think of it now, though. His terror, born of darkness, had fled with the uprising of the glorious golden sun. There was, after all, no reason to be afraid. Boys had been lost before, and found again. His father would have missed him last night, and the station would be speedily roused. Oh, he would soon be found! He got up very painfully and stiffly, and went to look for water. No difficulty in that; and when he had drunken, and washed his face and hands, he felt much better. Then he began to get hungry, and to comfort himself with the thought that he would soon be found. He could almost hear the joyful shout, and the welcome, and the questioning. How slowly the time went on! He tried to keep still in one place, for he knew now that his terror-driven feet had brought him to this pass, and that he should have kept still in the place where he saw Mr. Gaunt the night before.

At the recollection of that bitter disappointment, and the thought of how near he had been to succour, his tears began afresh. He tried hard to keep his terrors back--poor little fellow,--and thought of all kinds of things--of the stories his mother told him--of the calf-pen that father was putting up. And then he would think of the men at the station, and the remembrance of their faces cheered him; and he thought of Mrs. Trewlawney, and his mother. O--suppose he should never see his mother again! And then he cried, and slept, and woke, and forgot his fears for awhile, and would listen intently for a sound, and spring up and answer a flancied shout, and then lie in a dull, stupid despair, with burning eyes, and aching head, and a gnawing pain that he knew was Hunger. So the hot day wore out. The same beat as yesterday, the same day as yesterday, the same sights and sounds as yesterday--but oh! how different was yesterday to to-day,--and how far off yesterday seemed. No one came. The shadows shifted, and the heat burnt him up, and the shade fell on him, and the sun sank again, and the stars began to shine,--and no one came near Pretty Dick. He had almost forgotten, indeed, that there was such a boy as Pretty Dick. He seemed to have lived years in the bush alone. He did not know where he was, or who he was. It seemed quite natural to him that he should be there alone, and he had no wish to get away. He had lost all his terror of the Night. He scarcely knew it was night, and after sitting on the grass a little longer, smiling at the fantastic shadows that the moonlight threw upon the ground, he discovered that he was hungry, and must go into the hut for supper. The hut was down in the gully yonder he could hear his mother singing-so Pretty Dick got up, and crooning a little song, went down into the Shadow.

They looked for him for five days. On the sixth, his father and another came upon something, lying, half-hidden, in the long grass at the bottom of a gully in the ranges, A little army of crows flew heavily away. The father sprang to earth with a white face. Pretty Dick was lying on his face, with his head on his arm.

God had taken him home.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Australian Tales/Pretty Dick


text: Index:Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers.djvu


text:
User talk:124.183.102.39

Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:124.183.102.39


text:
Australian Tales/Poor Joe

Poor Joe
He was the ostler at Coppinger's, and they called him Poor Joe. Nobody knew whence he came; nobody knew what misery of early mutilation had been his. He had appeared one evening, a wandering swagman, unable to speak, and so explain his journey's aim or end. Able only to mutter and gesticulate, making signs that he was cold and hungry, and needed fire and food. The rough crowd in Coppinger's bar looked on him kindly, having for him that sympathy which marked physical affliction commands in the rudest natures. Poor Joe needed all their sympathies: he was a dwarf, and dumb.

Coppinger (bluff, blasphemous, and good-hearted soul) dispatched him, with many oaths, to the kitchen, and when the next morning the deformed creature volunteered in his strange sign-speech to do some work that might "pay for his lodging," sent him to help the ostler that ministered to King Cobb's coach-horses. The ostler, for lack of a better name, perhaps, called him "Joe," and Coppinger, finding that the limping mute, though he could speak no word of human language, yet had a marvellous power of communication with horseflesh, installed him as tinder-ostler and stable-helper, with a scat at the social board, and a wisp of clean straw in King Cobb's stable.

"I have taken him on," said Coppinger, when the township cronies met the next night in the bar.

"Who," asked the croniest, bibulously disregarding grammar. "Poor Joe," said Coppinger.

The sympathetic world of Bullocktown approved the epithet, and the deformed vagabond, thus baptized, was known as Poor Joe ever after.

He was a quiet fellow enough. His utmost wrath never sufficed to ruffle a hair on the sleek backs of King Cobb's horses. His utmost mirth never went beyond an ape-like chuckle, that irradiated his pain-stricken face, as a stray gleam of sunshine lights up the hideousness of the gargoyle on some old cathedral tower.

It was only when "in drink" that Poor Joe became a spectacle for strangers to wonder at. Brandy maddened him, and when thus excited his misshapen soul would peep out of his sunken fiery eyes, force his grotesque legs to dance unseemly sarabands, and compel his pigeonbreast to give forth monstrous and ghastly utterances, that might have been laughs, were they not so much like groans of a brutish despair that had in it a strange chord of human suffering. Coppinger was angry when the poor dwarf was thus tortured for the sport of the whisky-drinkers, and once threw Frolicksome Fitz into the muck midden for inciting the cripple to sputter forth his grotesque croonings and snatches of gruesome merriment. "He won't be fit for nothin' to-morrer," was the excuse Coppinger made for his display of feeling. Indeed, on the days that followed these debauches, Poor Joe was sadly downcast. Even his beloved horses failed to cheer him, and he would sit, red-eyed and woe-begone, on the post-and-rail-fence, like some dissipated bird of evil omen.

The only thing he seemed to love, save his horses, was Coppinger, and Coppinger was proud of this simple affection. So proud was he, that when he discovered that whenever Miss Jane, the sister of Young Bartram, from Seven Creeks, put her pony into the stable, the said pony was fondled and slobbered over and caressed by Poor Joe, he felt something like a pang of jealousy.

Miss Jane was a fair maiden, with pale gold hair, and lips like the two streaks of crimson in the leaf of the white poppy. Young Bartram, owner of Seven Creeks Station (you could see the lights in the house windows from Coppinger's) had brought her from town to "keep house for him," and she was the beauty of the country side. Frolicksome Fitz, the pound-keeper, was at first inclined to toast an opposition belle (Miss Kate Ryder of Ryder's Mount), but when returning home one evening by the New Dam, he saw Miss Jane jump Black Jack over the post-and-wire into the home station paddock, he forswore his allegiance.

"She rides like an angel," said pious Fitz, and the next time he met her he told her so.

Now this young maiden, so fair, so daring, and so silent, came upon the Bullocktown folk like a new revelation. The old Frenchman at the Melon Patch vowed tearfully that she had talked French to him like one of his countrywomen, and the school master, Mr. Frank Smith (duly certificated under the Board of Education) reported that she played the piano divinely, singing like a seraph the while. As nobody played (except at euchre) in Bullocktown, this judgment was undisputed. Coppinger swore, slapping with emphasis his mighty thigh, that Miss Jane was a lady, and when he said that he said everything. So, whenever Miss Jane visited the township, she was received with admiration. Coppinger took off his hat to her, Mr. Frank Smith walked to the station every Sunday afternoon to see her, and Poor Joe stood afar off and worshipped her, happy if she bestowed a smile upon him once out of every five times that he held her tiny stirrups.

This taming of Poor Joe was not unnoticed by the whisky-drinkers, and they came in the course of a month or so to regard the cripple as part of the property of Miss Jane--as they regarded her dog for instance. The schoolmaster, moreover, did not escape tap-room comment. He was frequently at Seven Creeks. He brought flowers from the garden there. He sent for some new clothes from Melbourne. He even borrowed Coppinger's bay mare "Flirt," to ride over to the Sheep-wash, and Dick the mail-boy, who knew that Coppinger's mare was pigeon-toed, vowed that he had seen another horse's tracks besides her's in the sand of the Rose Gap Road.

"You're a deep 'un, Mr. Smith" said Coppinger. "I found yer out sparking Miss Jane along the Mountain Track. Deny it if yer can?"

But Frank Smith's pale cheek only flushed, and he turned off the question with a laugh. It was Poor Joe's eyes that snapped fire in the corner.

So matters held themselves until the winter, when the unusually wet season forbade riding parties of pleasure. It rained savagely that year, as we all remember, and Bullocktown in rainy weather is not a cheerful place. Miss Jane kept at home, and Poor Joe's little eyes, wistfully turned to the Station on the hill, saw never her black pony cantering round the corner of Archie Cameron's hayrick.

A deeper melancholy seemed to fall on the always melancholy township. Coppinger's cronies took their "tots" in silence, steaming the while, and Coppinger himself would come gloomily to the door, speculating upon evil unless the leaden curtain lifted.

But it did not lift, and rumour of evil came. Up the country, by Parsham and Merrydale, and Black Adder's Gully, there were whole tracts of grass-land under water. The neighbouring station of Hall's, in the mountains, was a swamp. The roads were bogged for miles. Tim Doolan was compelled to leave his dray and bullocks Tom and Jerry's, and ride for his life before the advancing waters. The dams were brimming, at Quartzborough, St. Rey reservoir was running over. It was reported by little McCleod, the sheep-dealer, that the old bridge at the Little Glimmera had been carried away. It was reported that Old Man Horn, whose residence overlooked the river, had fastened a bigger hook to a larger pole (there was a legend to the effect that Old Man Horn had once hooked a body from the greedy river, and after emptying its pockets, had softly started it down stream again), and was waiting behind his rickety door, rubbing his withered hands gleefully. Young Bartram rode over to Quartzborough to get McCompass, the shire engineer, to look at his new dam. Then the coach stopped running, and then Flash Harry, galloping through the township at night, like the ghost-rider in Bürger's ghastly ballad, brought the terrible news; THE FLOODS WERE UP, AND THE GLIMMERA BANK AND BANK AT THE OLD CROSSING-PLACE HAD BROKEN.

"It will be here in less than an hour," he shouted, under Coppinger's red lamps; "make for the high ground if you love your lives;" and so wet, wild-eyed, and white, splashed off into the darkness, if haply he might warn the poor folk down the river of the rushing death that was coming upon them.

Those who were there have told of the horrors of that night. How the muddy street, scarce reclaimed from the river-bed, was suddenly, full of startled half-dressed folk. How Coppinger's was crowded to the garret. How the schoolmaster dashed off, stumbling through the rain, to warn them at Seven Creeks. How bullies grew pale with fear, and men hitherto mild of speech and modest of mien, waxed fiery-hot with wrath at incapacity, and fiercely self-assertive in relegating fools to their place in the bewildered social economy of that general overturn. How the roaring flood came down, bearing huge trees, fragments of houses, grotesquely terrible waifs and strays of house-hold furniture upon its yellow and turbid bosom, timid women grew brave, and brave men hid their faces for a while. How Old Man Horn saved two lives that night. How Widow Rae's cottage, with her light still burning in the windowsill, was swept off, and carried miles down stream. How Archy Cameron's hayrick stranded in the middle of the township. How forty drowned sheep were floated into the upper windows of the "Royal Mail". How Patey Barnes's cradle, with its new-born occupant sucking an unconscious thumb, was found jammed in the bight of the windlass in Magby's killing-yard. How all this took place has been told, I say, by, those who were present, and needs no repeating. But one thing which took place shall be chronicled here. When the terror and confusion were somewhat stilled, and Coppinger, by dint of brand and blankets, had got some strength and courage into the half-naked, shivering creatures clustered in his ark, a sudden terrible tremor went through the crowd, like an electric current. In some mysterious way, no one knew how originating, or by what fed and fostered, men came to hear that Bartram's Dam was breaking. That is to say, that in ten minutes or less, all the land that lay between Coppinger's and the river, would be a roaring waste of water--that in less than ten minutes the Seven Creeks Station, with all its inmates, would be swept off the face of the earth, and that if Coppinger's escaped it would be a thing to thank God for.

After the first sharp agony of self-apprehension, one thought came to each - Miss Jane.

"Good God," cries Coppinger, "can nobody go to her?" Ten men volunteered to go.

"It's no good," said faint-hearted Riley, the bully of the bar.

"The dam'll burst twice over 'fore you can reach the Station."

It was likely.

"I'll go myself," cries brave old Coppinger; but his wife clung to his arm, and held him back with all the weight of her maternity. "I have it," says Coppinger; "Poor Joe'll go. Where is he?"

No one had seen him. Coppinger dashed down the stairs, splashed through the yard into the stable. The door was open, and Blackboy, the strongest of King Cobb's horses, was missing. Coppinger flashed round the lantern he held. The mail-boy's saddle had disappeared, and faintly mingling with the raging wind and roaring water, died the rapid strokes of a horse pat.

Poor Joe had gone.

The house was already flooded out, and they were sitting (so I was told) with their arms round each other, not far from where poor Bartram's body was found, when the strange misshapen figure, bestriding the huge horse, splashed desperately through the water, that was once the garden.

"Rescue," cried Frank, but she only, clung to him the closer.

Poor Joe bit his lips at the sight of the pair, and then, so Frank Smith averred, flung him one bitter glance of agony, and dropping his deformed body from the back of the reeking horse, held out the bridle with a groan.

In moments of supreme danger one divines quickly. Frank placed his betrothed upon the saddle, and sprang up behind her. If ever Blackboy was to prove his metal, he must prove it then, for already the lightning revealed a thin stream of water trickling over the surface of the dam.

"But what is to become of you?" cried Miss Jane.

Poor Joe, rejecting Frank's offered hand, took that of Miss Jane, patted it softly, and let it fall. He pointed to Coppinger's red light, and then to the black wall of the dam. No man could mistake the meaning of that trembling finger, and those widely-opened eyes. They said "Ride for your lives ride!" plainer than the most eloquent tongue owned by schoolmaster could speak.

It was no time for sentiment, and for the schoolmaster there was but one life to be saved or lost that night. He drove his heels into the good horse's sides, and galloped down the hill. "God bless you Joe" cried Miss Jane. Poor Joe smiled, and then, falling down on his knees, waited, straining his ears to listen. It was not ten minutes, but it seemed ten hours, when, through the roar, he heard a distant shout go up. They were saved. Thank God! And then the dam burst with a roar like thunder, and he was whirled away amid a chaos of tree trunks.

They found his little weak body four days afterwards, battered and bruised almost out of recognition but his great brave soul had gone on to judgment.

title: Australian Tales/Poor Joe


text:
Australian Tales/Gentleman Georges Bride/Chapter 1

Gentleman George's Bride
When it was known at Bullocktown that old Keturah Gow was going to be married to Gentleman George, there was some laughter and much shaking of heads.

Keturah was a woman of hard middle age. Scotch by birth, and Presbyterian by religion, she had come to Australia as the nurse of Flora McLeod, now Mrs. Marrable, of Seven Creeks, and had lived twenty years in the bush. The man whom she was about to marry was named George Harris. No one knew whence he came, or how long he had lived in the colonies. He had no religion worth mentioning, and no accomplishment save that of horsemanship. His age was three-and-twenty, or thereabouts and being impatient of temper, handy with his fists, prodigal of his money, and possessed of a certain gipsy beauty of face and figure, the intelligent stockmen called him 'Gentleman George.'

In vain did the gossips of Bullocktown animadvert upon the match. In vain did Longbow borrow Muniford's spring-cart and Coppinger's grey mare for the express purpose of making a pilgrimage to the Gap, and warning Neil Gow, the shepherd, of the misery which awaited his sister. 'She must just gang her ain gate,' said crippled Neil, wagging the stump of his arm in a feeble circle as though he would fain have waved the hand that was wanting. 'I've said a' I can, I'll say nae mair.' 'Shall I speak to her?' asked Longbow. 'As ye please,' quoth Neil; 'but Kitty's the deevil's temper, and maybe she'll claw oot ye're e'en, man!' So Longbow sighed and shot ducks. In vain did Mrs. Marrable implore the headstrong old woman to reconsider her determination. 'The fellows a ne'er-do-well, Keturah--John says he is: he only wants your money (for Keturah had saved some £200 during her servitude). He's a bad man.' Keturah only sighed and vowed that all the world was prejudiced against puir Geordie. In vain did John Marrable--not without a hearty English curse or two--command Gentleman George not to make a fool of himself and to let the old woman alone. 'If she's minded to marry me,' said the young man, with a droop of his thickly-lashed lids, 'It isn't for you to interfere, sir--excuse me. I suppose a man can marry anyone he likes.' 'I suppose he can, confound him,' replied honest John Marrable. In vain did Coppinger, the publican, suggest--over a nobbler of P.B.--that George was throwing himself away. 'You'll have the whole township laughing at you, George.' ' Shall I?' returns George, fiercely, and catching Alick, the blacksmith, in the very dead waste and middle of a grin, forthwith pitched him into the sandy street. 'Folks won't laugh at me twice, I'll pound it,' said he, and Alick--his mouth full of sand--reechoed the sentiment with spluttering humility. So the pair were married in due form, and the wedding feast was held at the 'Saw-pits.'

The 'Saw-Pits' was a public-house situated half-way between the Gap (where, under the shadow of the hills, nestled Neil Gow's hut), and the distant Glimmera, on whose farther bank smoked the chimneys of Coppinger's and drowsed the world of Bullocktown. The High Road was wont to run through Bullocktown and bend abruptly westward to avoid crossing the chain of water-holes called the Great Glimmera River; but three floods and a new Postmaster-General, with a turn for economy, had altered all that. The mail-carrying coaches had been directed to take the shortest cut, and a bridge had been built, in order that they might do so with convenience. The building of this bridge had established a colony of sawyers, and the bridge completed, the mill was converted into a tavern. Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Where is liquor, there flock the bushmen. It is thus that townships are formed.

The keeper of the 'Saw-pits' was one Trowbridge, who with his two daughters had migrated from Bullocktown. Neil Gow was a great crony of his, and despite the orders of Marrable (who, when a public-house was established on his run, thought the end of the world was come) frequently rode the bob-tailed pony through the sweet summer night, and 'hung him up'to Trowbridge's verandah-post. Trowbridge and the one-armed boundary rider had often seriously conversed on the subject of Keturah's approaching marriage, and it had been agreed that the wedding feast should be held at the 'Saw-pits.'

'She may do what she likes, lad,' said Trowbridge 'and if the match turns out ill, neither thou nor I will be to blame. But if we don't make every mother's son of 'em as drunk as a fiddler's bitch, my name ain't Tom Trowbridge!'

The laudible purpose of the publican seemed likely to be fulfilled. Before the wedding party arrived, the 'Saw-pits Hotel' was crowded. Trowbridge's Sunday shirt had come to torment him before the time, and Alick anticipated the daily period of his intoxication by full three hours. In the hollows round about the creek were camped tilt-waggons galore, and in the half-acre of mud that did duty for the stableyard of the 'Saw-pits,' the brand new buggy of Jim Porter, the lucky reefer, lay stranded like a skeleton-wreck upon a bleak, inhospitable shore. Festoons of such wild flowers as were procurable, decorated the front of the hostelry, and wreathed themselves lovingly about the transparent beauties of Hennessy and Otard, while in the long room, where dancing was to be undergone, the air was pungent with the exhilarating odour of smashed gum-leaves. To these preparations arrived presently, in a cloud of dust, the bridal party.

Let the classical reader recall the triumphs of old Rome, the glittering spears, the hollow-clanging shield, the sound of the trumpets, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. First, galloping furiously, a crowd of horsemen, bearded and long-haired, cracking their whips like pistol-shots, and filling the air with Homeric laughter. Then a mass of vehicles, bumping, jolting, leaping, filled with men in white shirts, and women with yellow shawls. Then were stockriders, some with led horses, in order that the swift pace of the morning might be preserved on the homeward journey. Now behind, now before, in the midst of this fury and clamour, borne along, and overwhelmed by dust and friendship, clattered the triumphal car--a hooded buggy lent by Coppinger, to which were attached four grass-fed nags, postillioned by the two sons of Archy Fletcher, youths to whom, in the matter of rapidity of locomotion, Jehu, the son of Nimshi, would have appeared but as a farmer's wife, jogging with egg-laden panniers to market. From the buggy--jerked to a swaying standstill in the most approved bush method when the fore legs of the leaders threatened the skillion window of the inn--descended, to shouts that rent the hot heaven, the happy pair.

Gentleman George was dressed in the height of bush fashion. A cabbage-tree hat, so browned and battered that it boasted the colour of a well-smoked meerschaum, adorned his handsome bullet-head. A short linen coat served but to enhance the purity of a white shirt, from the falling collar of which fluttered the ends of one of those gaily-coloured kerchiefs known to London costermongers as 'Kingsmen.' Round his supple waist was girded a red silk sash, and tightly-fitted breeches of creamy whiteness met, and defied boots, so marvellously black, so astonishingly wrinkled, that Mr. Rapersole, bootmaker and parish clerk, had forgotten an Amen in gazing at them. As this hero walked, the rowels of huge German-silver spurs, loosely fastened by one broad semicircular strap, click-clacked upon the boards in the musical manner so dear to the stockman's soul. Keturah, now Mrs. Harris, was none the less imposing in her attire. She wore a purple shot-silk dress, on the shifting surface of which played rays of crimson and gold, as shoot the colours of the prism across a mass of molten metal. From beneath this marvel two white boots played in and out--not so much like Sir John Suckling's mice as like plump mill-rats newly escaped from a flour-bag. Keturah wore a red velvet bonnet adorned with blue and white flowers; her shawl, fastened by a plaid brooch, was a glowing yellow with a green border, and her hands swelled in all the magnificent mockery of mauve kid gloves. Yet, with all this, her honest brown face shone with an honesty of purpose and a hopefulness of future happiness that rendered it almost beautiful.

She hung lovingly on her husband's arm, smiling up at him, nor removing her eyes from his face but to gaze proudly at the cheering crowd. He walked rather quickly, and his lips tightly compressed, and his black eyes set forward steadily, seemingly wrought up to endure the scene, but anxious to be quit of it. She seemed to say, 'See what a noble husband I have won!' He seemed to say, 'I guess your thoughts, but my marriage is none of your business.'

'He's a temper, Jenny,' said Susie Barnes.

'My word!' assented Jenny.

'She aint such a bad-looking bit of stuff after all,' said Jim Porter. 'I'd rather marry her than break my leg, blowed if I wouldn't.'

So the wedding feast began.

It is not for my feeble pen to detail the glories of that day. The little township--buried as it was beneath the shadow of the purple hills, and yet preserving in itself all the petty malice, the local jealousy, the blatant conceit of larger towns--gave loose on this one occasion to the wildest merriment. Local feuds were forgotten, personal hatreds forgiven or suspended. Even Mr. McTaggart, a rabid Orangeman from Derry, forbore to attack Mr. Michael Murphy, a rabid Ribbandman from Clare, and going out into the solitude of the bridge, drank in silence his favourite toast of 'Here's the Pope in the devil's belly, and Martin Luther pitching red hot priests at him!' a toast which was wont to cause Mr. Murphy's 'bhlood to bhoil, bhoys,' and to bring about wrathful combats. Fighting Fitz, the poundkeeper, who was at daggers drawn with Dick Mossop, Scabby Barton's overseer, on account of a brindled poley bullock branded P.W. over T.S. on the off rump, with a notch in both ears, and a star on the forehead, consented to be friends again, and even offered to sell Dick a certain bay mare in defiance of the Impounding Act. Rapersole, of course, could not be kept from politics, and insisted on putting what he was pleased to call 'supposititious' cases in such numbers that Neil Gow, vowing him a bletherin' bumbee's byke, took him by the collar, and flourishing the stump of his arm menacingly, deposited him in an empty buggy. The breakfast was an immense success. Tom Trowbridge presided, having formally asked permission to lay aside his unaccustomed coat, and carved a noble round of beef with the air of a gold stick in waiting. But a round of beef was not the only viand. There was mutton broth and cow-heel, and an ox's head decorated with flowers, and rump steaks, and sweetbreads, and a haggis, and lamb's head, and sheep's trotters, and cold saddle of mutton, and preserved peaches, and tins of jam, and sago pudding, and plum duff, and bottled ale, and tea, and sweet cake, and brandy, and rum, and one bottle of champagne for the ladies.

'My eyes that's a merry tightener!' said Chirrup, the mail-boy. 'Could you eat any more, Archy?' 'No fear!' said Archy, ruefully, 'them blessed puff-tillooners did my business.' After the breakfast and the speeches--you should have heard Rapersole's!--and the digestive smoke, drinking and dancing commenced, Trowbridge doing his best to carry out his promise to Neil Gow and vindicate his self-impugned title to his name. Some notion of the result may be gleaned from a glance at his bill, duly paid by Mrs. Keturah Harris two days afterwards.

In the consumption of such items as those mentioned above did the day wear out; and Trowbridge nobly fulfilled his promise. Of the sixty or seventy persons present, but a very insignificant number went home sober. Indeed, had it not been for the coquetry of Jenny Joyce, who, riding her father's bay horse, Walkover, dared any of the young men to give her five minutes' start and catch her before she reached the Bluff, there is no saying what might have happened. Eight or nine of the best-mounted followed laughing Jenny, but no one got within arm's length of her supple waist save Harry Scallan, and they do say that she checked her nag to let him snatch the kiss he had begged for in vain. However, Harry never confessed the fact; but as Dick Mossop, his rival, broke his horse's knees at Mount Hopeless, but half-way to the Bluff, and Jenny became Mrs. Scallan a month afterwards, Harry could afford to be generous. Two or three horse-accidents happened that day. Jim Porter saddled his new buggy-horse, and attempting to ride him, despite the advice of Gentleman George himself, was bucked ignominiously, and his collar-bone ingloriously fractured. Lucy Sperrin's grey pony kicked Chirrup in the stomach and hurt him badly. 'Serves him right for fossicking round me,' Miss Lucy had said. 'I told him the mare was handy with her heels.' Poor Cooke--Mad Cooke, who wore a silver plate on his head, to the wonder of Bullocktown--must needs bring out his old stock-horse and witch the world with noble horsemanship. 'Heigh, boys! Heigh, boys!' he would cry while at full gallop. 'There's none of ye can go up the hills like Ballie!'And indeed no one attempted to do so, all standing aghast at the feats Ballie performed upon the side of the steep hill that shadowed the inn, until poor Ballie put his foot into a hole, or slipped on a rolling stone, and his master came to earth with a fresh brain concussion--the third in his short mad life-time.

Amid such sports the hot, sweet day wore out to cool evening. The pure perfume of grass, and earth scented the air. The red sun sunk in glory behind the ragged shoulder of the bluff. A purple mist slowly enveloped the hills the laughing jackasses, merry fellows, set up a tremendous chattering; the frogs began to babble in the marshes, the sheep to move off their camps, the cattle to make for water. The wedding-day was over, and as, amidst a hurricane of cheers, Gentleman George handed his wife to the spring-cart that was to bear them to their home in the Swamp Hut, the great stars came slowly out and looked with tender eyes upon this hopeful, ill-dressed bride.

A week afterwards frolicsome Fitz, wandering in search of prey wherewith to feed his ravenous Pound, met jolly Polwheal, the butcher, coming from the Swamp Hut.

'Have you seen the bride' asked Fitz.

'Ay, and a comely wench she's grown. She looks a young 'oman, Fitz.'

'Does she?' says Fitz, 'That's rum, too.'

Polwheal laughed, 'you're not a felosopher, Fitz! Don't you know,' he added, borrowing a metaphor from his own profession, 'that a working bullock, if you get him fat after a spell, makes the best beef.' In regard to the appearance of Keturah Harris, Mr. Polwheal was right. She had become a very comely woman. The lines in her face had faded, her spare figure had rounded, her withered arms had fattened, her grey eyes had a youthful sparkle, and her step a youthful lightness; she seemed a younger woman by twenty years. If you passed by the Swamp Hut, at any hour of the day, you could hear her singing, and the good-tempered woman who brought you out a pannikin of tea, or asked you to have a slice of sweet cake, was a very different being from 'old Ketty,' of the home station, the shrewish-tongued and withered maiden who was the terror of wandering swagmen. Bullocktown wondered at the change, and were not disinclined to roughly jest upon the subject with Gentleman George. That worthy, however, went about his business of stock-riding in silence, and seemed determined by honest attention to his business to merit the kindness shown him by Mrs. Marrable, and deserve the 'married couple' billet which John Marrable had bestowed upon him.

The astute reader will no doubt have come to the conclusion that this conduct of Gentleman George was but assumed for his own ends; and the astute reader will be right. Gentleman George had not the least intention of passing his life as a stockrider to Mr. Marrable and as the young husband of an old woman. He had married Keturah for her money, and intended, as soon as he could obtain that money, to take himself off. Until he was in a position to do this securely, it was his interest to be kind and gentle, and the scoundrel was kind and gentle accordingly. I trust, however, that the astute reader who has discovered this will not consider Mr. Harris a very great villain. For a young man to marry an old woman for her money, is not such a very rare thing, nor have there been wanting cases in the best society where the lady has been deserted afterwards. I admit, however, that to perpetrate such an offence for two hundred pounds does show a coarseness of intellect. If Keturah had been possessed of two hundred thousand pounds now, the case would have been different, and good society might have admitted Mr. Harris to its bosom without a pang. Yet men can but act according to their opportunity, and I am sure that had Gentleman George seen his way to marry a lady with two hundred thousand, or even one hundred thousand pounds, he would have left poor Keturah alone.

There is no necessity to protract the story at this period. In six months George had got possession of the endorsed deposit receipt of the Bank of Australia, Quartzborough, for £201 8s. 0d., had kissed his wife, told her he was going to look after the mare and foal last seen in Ponsonby's paddock. Once clear of the hut he saddled his own nag Peppercorn, secured his swag already 'planted' on the river bank, set out a smart canter for Quartzborough; drew the money, and slept that night at Hamilton, doing ninety-five miles in eleven and-a-half hours.

Poor Keturah was like a mad woman. At first she thought that some accident had befallen him, then that he was detained at a neighbouring station. She would fain have roused all the station to look for him. She ran to her mistress raging and upbraided her for not suffering the dam to be dragged. Then she began to suspect, then to weep, then to vow revenge. 'He's left ye missis,' said the wife of the other boundary-rider. 'He's a bad lot. Ye'd better forget him.'

'I'll no forget him, the black villain,' said the deserted woman. 'I'll pray to God on my bended knees that I may meet him, and if he's a heart o' flesh I'll wring it.'

'Come, Ketty,' said her mistress, some days after, 'It's no use greeting, woman. The fellow's gone.'

'Let him go,' said Ketty. 'I'll find him oot. Ef he's on his dying, bed, I'll find him oot, and dinna let him ask me to raise a finger to save him.'

'I must take her away,' said Mrs. Marrable to her husband. 'She can't bear the sneers and looks of the folk about.'

'All right, take her with you to town when you go,' said, John Marrable.

Thus it came to pass that having been twenty years in the bush, Keturah Harris became Upper nurse in the family of Mr. Thomas Marrable, of the firm of Marrable and Davis, softgoods-men.


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 CHAPTER III

A STRANGE HAPPENING

" d'ye think of that?" gasped Lanky, when he felt able to speak.

"They're the kindest gentlemen I ever met," laughed Frank; "we only asked for a lift to town, and they've gone and made us a present of the whole rig."

"Say, mebbe they forgot something back there?" suggested the other, scratching his head as he tried to solve the mystery connected with the panic of the two occupants of the buggy, and their precipitate flight down the road over which they had so recently come, and in the direction of Clifford.

"One thing seems sure; they ran as if frightened," said Frank, seriously.

"Now what are we going to do about it?" queried his chum. "Have we got the nerve to get in here and drive away with another man's rig? Say, I bet you they took us for a couple of highwaymen trying to hold them up! They never even let me finish what I was going to say. I remember now I did hold out my hand after that driver let fly at Rh


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24 me with his old whip. Perhaps they thought I was aiming a pistol!"

Lanky's voice took on a vein of awe. Evidently the peculiar adventure had made a deep impression on the tall boy.

"That was just what I thought," remarked Frank.

"And if we take the buggy now they'll get us arrested for stealing it. I'm tired enough to want to ride, but I guess I'm not that leg weary. Come on, Frank, and let's get along. This sort of thing gets on my nerves. Let's cut for home."

"Wait. I haven't quite done figuring it out yet. I've got a sort of notion that there's something crooked about those two chaps," returned the other, declining to move, even when Lanky pulled at the sleeve of his coat.

"Crooked! Whatever do you mean by that? It's us that look like pirates, holding two honest farmers up on the king's highway. Crooked! See here, Frank, open up and let me see what notion you've got surging around in that brain of yours."

"How do you know they were honest farmers? Did they look like it? You heard them shouting out to each other as they galloped down the road, dodging as if they expected to have a shower of bullets follow after them? Well, stop and think of it, did it sound like the language of two honest tillers of the soil?" demanded Frank, as he turned his


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Rh around so that they faced each other again.

"Now, you're just hitting the nail right on the head. You make me think, and my dad says that's the best thing that can ever happen to any boy. They seemed to have too large a vocabulary of tough words to be just plain countrymen. Crooked! That sounds like rascals, thieves perhaps! Oh! I see now what you're getting at, Frank. You mean that perhaps those fellows who ran away have stolen this rig somewhere, and were afraid we might be officers about to arrest them!"

"Fine head you've got, my boy. That's just what I meant. And I'll tell you what came into my mind like a flash. You remember that we saw Chief Hogg, the head of the Columbia police, and two of his men, on the road when we were rowing up the river this evening?" and Frank's voice pointed the question with emphasis.

Lanky slapped his hand down on the other's arm. "Sure you're the greatest one ever to guess things! Of course that's what they were up to. Got a tip over the 'phone from some town above that these horse thieves might be expected along, and came out to meet 'em part way. In that case, I agree with you that we ought to accept the chance of a ride."

He climbed into the buggy as he spoke. Frank meanwhile seemed to be feeling under the seat as if


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26 bent on learning whether there could be anything there that should be investigated.

"Look here what I've found," he said, presently.

"An old leather bag, I declare. So one of them was on his travels, eh? What's that you're doing, Frank? Say, hold on, do you think it's wise to open a man's bag that way, and squint inside? What ails you?" and Lanky bent down, trying to see better, as he heard his companion utter an exclamation of surprise.

"The bag's got a lot of stuff in it, watches and things!" Frank said, in a low voice.

"Whew!" ejaculated his chum, glancing around nervously as he spoke; "say, this thing's getting thicker all the time! It isn't horse stealing after all. Frank, I remember now hearing my dad talking about the robbery of a jewelry store up at Fordham only two days ago. Do you think them men could have been the ones, and this is the boodle?"

Lanky was so excited that he lost all control of rules of grammar. Even his voice had taken on a husky tone, and his hands were trembling violently as he clutched the arm of his chum.

"I honestly believe that's just what it means. You see they were afraid of being held up at any minute, and the shock frightened them. But they may come back! If they suspected that it was only a couple of schoolboys here, they'd chase us off."


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Rh "Then for goodness sake jump in, and let's whip up the horse. They might be mad enough to do something terrible to us," whispered Lanky, excitedly.

"Wait. Here's a newspaper, and I'm going to empty out everything that's in the old bag, and roll it up. Here, chuck that away alongside you on the seat," and as he spoke Frank pushed the package into the hands of his chum.

"I get on to the idea. You mean to fill the bag with stones, and leave it there under the seat. Then if they try to steal it again they'll get sold. But be quick about it Frank. Oh! I thought I heard some one speak, back here on the road! Jump up, and let's go along," whispered Lanky.

Frank confessed to more or less nervousness himself about that time. He realized that the men might recover from their recent panic, and return to investigate why no pursuit had been attempted.

"I guess I'll take your advice this time, Lanky, and climb in. Now cluck to the horse, and off we go," he remarked, suiting his actions to his words.

Lanky made all sorts of encouraging sounds with his lips, and also jerked the lines in the endeavor to encourage the horse to start into a run.

"What ails the beast?" he grumbled, as his labor seemed next door to wasted, for the horse would only


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28 start upon a slow moving run, that seemed like a snail's pace to the anxious lad.

"The poor beast is dead tired, that's the truth. Those scamps must have driven him a long way around, trying to escape. And I guess they were using the whip on him when we bounced out on them," remarked Frank.

"Just so, and that accounts for his having the whip so handy at that time. Say, he nearly took me in the eye with the lash; if I hadn't been such a good dodger he'd got me sure. Wish I had that whip right now!" mused Lanky, as the horse settled down into a jog-trot again.

"The fellow must have thrown it away when he jumped, expecting you were going to shoot. I didn't think to look for it. Finding that other stuff kind of took my mind off things, you see. Oh! well, this is some better than walking, you're bound to admit, partner?" Frank continued.

"It's all right, if only we don't get a sudden shove from them land pirates. I keep thinkin' I hear 'em sailing along in our wake all the while. Wish we'd just happen on some other craft cruising toward home."

"That's right, Lanky, talk like a regular old salt," said Frank. "Baseball is on a back seat just now, and boating has the floor. Every boy's heart in Columbia turns toward the Harrapin, with the


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Rh glorious Fourth just a day off, and all that fun coming on. We're all going to be water ducks, for a while at least. We want to forget about the victories we've won, and only keep the race ahead in mind. That's the one we want to get, you see. 'The mill will never run again with the water that is past,' or words to that effect."

"My idea to a fraction, Frank. Tip us your fin on that, messmate. Listen! wasn't that a shout behind us?" clutching hold of the other's sleeve instead of his hand.

"Don't be so nervous; that was only an honest watchdog barking over at Stroud's farmhouse beyond the maple grove. If those fellows did follow after us I don't believe they'd likely whoop out like that," remarked Frank, rebukingly.

"Why, what d'ye think they'd do?" demanded Lanky, uneasily.

"Oh, probably hold us up and take the rig away; or if they still believed that we were officers they might try to steal the bag out from under the seat. It could be done easily enough from behind the buggy, you know."

"Ouch! I felt something touch my leg then!" whispered Lanky, drawing himself up as far as he could, and thrusting his feet well forward.

"Imagination again, old fellow. That's a wonderful brain you've got. The bag is still safe under


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30 the seat, so you see no one grabbed you. I wonder if it would pay us to stop a minute."

"What for, Frank? I hope you haven't got any fool notion now that you want to try and capture those two burglars; because I wontwon't [sic] stand for it, never!"

"Shucks! what do you take me for? All I thought of doing was to cut a switch by the roadside, which we could use to send the old nag on a little faster; but since you are so shy about it we'll drop the subject. Give me the lines, and let's see if I can coax a little more speed out of Lazybones."

Lanky gladly released the reins; but it might be noticed that he did not allow his feet to trail under the buggy seat again. Imagination or not, he meant to keep clear of any entanglement in case one of those desperate men reached in to lay hold of that old leather traveling bag.

"Get up, Dobbin!" said Frank, slapping the lines on the back of the slow-going animal, and awakening him from his trance, so that for a dozen yards he actually set a smart pace; but only to fall back again into the regular jogging movement.

"He isn't lazy, but tired to death. Guess we better let the poor beast take his time, or he may drop in the shafts," grunted Lanky, noticing these things.

Every minute he was peering out from the upraised hood of the buggy.


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Rh "See anything, Sister Ann?" asked Frank, mockingly.

"I thought I did just then. Looked like a shadow alongside the road; but I guess I must have been mistaken," replied the other, in a tense voice.

"Cut it out, Lanky. You're like the youngster that took to seeing things in the night, all kinds of terrible monsters. It's nonsense, I tell you. Better be putting your mind on how it'll feel to row in that brand-new eight-oared shell to-morrow. As for me I can hardly wait for morning to come, to see that darling boat."

Frank was evidently desirous of quieting the nerves of his excited companion; and went about it in this way. They had passed over nearly half a mile since coming so unexpectedly into possession of the buggy, and ere long the outlying houses marking the confines of Columbia would be bobbing up in view.

"Frank!" suddenly whispered Lanky, hoarsely.

"Well, what's the matter now? Anybody been nipping you on the legs again." asked the one who held the reins, and with a touch of satire in his voice.

"There's a man!" continued Lanky.

"Where do you mean, ahead of us?" asked Frank, suddenly interested in spite of his pretense of unconcern.


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32 "Yes, standing under that tree there. I saw him move!"

The weary horse had dropped back into a shuffling walk, and Frank made no effort to coax or influence him to mending his ways, for he knew it was useless.

"Huh! a stump, more than likely!" he remarked, at the same time searching with his own eyes to see if what Lanky said might be true.

"Perhaps it was, but sure I thought the thing moved. Oh! yes, I'm seein' things all right; but who wouldn't after the funny way we came into possession of this fine outfit. I wonder now if we could get into town without anybody grabbing us? We're a fine pair of birds to be brought into the light, I don't think," and Lanky laughed harshly as he spoke aloud.

"There it is again, Frank," he immediately added, starting back, and pointing along the road.

The other had also noticed something that seemed to flicker, very like a lighted cigar, and at the same time he undoubtedly scented tobacco smoke, which betrayed the presence of some human being near by.

He started to pull in the horse, while Lanky lent valiant assistance, for he had instinctively clutched hold of the lines.

"Oh!" he mouthed, as he saw a dark figure striding forward.


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Rh Frank did not show signs of alarm, for he seemed to have partially guessed what was coming.

"Whoa!" he called to the horse that was only too willing to stop; and then the two boys heard a gruff voice, very full of authority, exclaiming:

"Hold up, there! Both of you are under arrest!"


text: The Boys of Columbia High on the River/Chapter 3


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 CHAPTER IV

SURPRISING CHIEF HOGG

gave a groan of disgust.

"That just finishes me! I thought sure we'd come to a bad end," he grumbled.

On the other hand Frank was chuckling as if more than a little amused.

"We surrender!" he exclaimed, quickly, elevating his hands to show that he was contemplating no manner of defense.

He knew the peculiar voice of the man who seemed acting as master of ceremonies, and was expecting that somebody would be rather surprised presently.

"Hey! Bill, light up that lantern, will you? Let's have a look at these smart birds before we take 'em into town!" observed this worthy; whereupon a second man, making his appearance beside the rig, struck a match, the flame of which he applied to the wick of a lantern.

"Here you are, Captain," he said, thrusting the light upward.

When the boys' captor took one look at the Rh


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Rh of the buggy which had been stopped on the road outside Columbia, he stared as though he had seen a ghost.

"What's this? what's this? I ought to know these fellows well enough!" he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his free hand.

It was Chief Hogg, the head of Columbia's police force, clad in all the regalia of his exalted office, and with a bright silver star upon his left breast.

"Hello, Chief! Do we look like a desperate pair of scoundrels? Is that why you are holding us up on the road to town?" asked Frank, laughingly.

"Well, boys, this is certainly one on me. You happened to say something that made us believe the men we wanted had shown up. But it is a mighty queer thing. This rig corresponds with the description to a dot, too," he went on, looking at both horse and vehicle, and shaking his head.

"Does it?" asked Frank.

"Where did you get that outfit, boys? It doesn't belong in Columbia, does it?" continued the officer, eagerly.

"Not that we know of. At least, we didn't get it there," was Frank's reply, and it acted like a dose of electricity upon the chief.

"Say you so, Frank? Then where did it come from?" he asked, hastily.

"They never waited to tell us, and we've been


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36 wondering ever since. Such kind chaps too; I never heard of their like. We asked for a ride, and they immediately handed the rig over to us, running back along the road as if afraid we might refuse to accept the loan," came the answer, in Frank's humorous fashion.

"What's this you're telling me? Some men were in the rig, and ran off when you asked for a ride? Is that it, Frank?" demanded the officer.

"Just as I am telling you, sir. We were up rowing near Rattail Island, and on the way down the river met with a mishap, so we had to abandon our boat. Being wet through we thought it would help out to get a lift to town, so we tackled the first rig going that way. The two men seemed alarmed at our stopping them, for they jumped out, one on each side, and put off toward Clifford at a good sprint."

Chief Hogg gave a low cry of satisfaction.

"Billy, this is the stolen rig, all right!" he observed, cheerfully, "But we've missed our men! That's a great pity, for the horse and buggy could go hang for all I care, if we only had laid hands on those robbers. We'll have to chase after them right away. Boys, will you put the rig up at headquarters?"

"But wait, we haven't told you all we know," continued Frank.

"Then go on, and hurry too, for we must be off.


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Rh They'll get too big a lead on us unless we start soon. What else happened?" asked the officer, impatiently.

"Why, I had a little suspicion that there was something wrong with those two timid chaps, to make them run away like that. So I felt around, and under the seat I found a leather bag!" said Frank, purposely speaking slow in order to work the stout chief up to the proper enthusiasm.

"A leather bag—yes, go on, Frank! Did you open it, boy?" queried the other.

"I did, and showed the contents to Lanky here, or rather told him what it held. It was half full of watches and jewelry, sir!"

"Good! Great! You've done a big thing to-night, boys, if you've recovered all that stolen property. Where did you put the leather bag, Frank; hide it in the bushes where it could be found again when wanted?" asked the police officer.

"No sir, I chucked it back again under the seat," replied the boy, composedly.

Chief Hogg began a hurried search. He even held the lantern back of the buggy to assist him in looking over the field.

"That was a very unwise move on your part, boy. The bag is gone!" he declared.

Lanky awoke to life at that.

"Didn't I say I felt somebody grab my shins, Frank? Mebbe you'll believe me next time, and not