The Pioneers
Page 21
CHAPTER XXI
In the Wirree, Farrel was never known as anything but the Schoolmaster.Everybody called him that--even Deirdre when she spoke of him.
They had gone to live in a cottage on the outskirts of the township. TheSchoolmaster had taken up his old trade, though it was understood he hadbeen droving with Conal for Maitland the greater part of the time he hadbeen away. Deirdre had wandered with him wherever he went, and it was onher account he was anxious to get back to steadier and more settled waysof life, it was said. Before long two or three of the brown-skinnedWirree children were trotting to the cottage for lessons every day.
The south had heard a great deal of Sam Maitland, head of the well-knownfirm of Maitland & Co., stock-dealers, of Cooburra, New South Wales.
There had been a bad season in the north-west for a couple of years.Maitland had bought up poor beasts and sent them to fatten in the south.Conal had been driving them through Wirreeford at intervals of two orthree months, taking the fattened beasts back on the return journey overthe border after he brought down the starvers.
All the week the township slept peacefully in the spring sunshine. Whena clear, young moon came up over the plains in the evenings, it drenchedthem with wan, silver light.
But on Friday morning at dawn, the cattle came pouring into the town,with a cracking of whips, barking of dogs, yelling and shouting of menand boys. With a rush and a rattling of horns, they charged alongbetween the rows of huddled houses, swinging from one side to the otherof the track, wild and fearful-eyed, with lowered heads, long strings ofglistening saliva dripping from their mouths. They seemed to besearching for the opportunity to break and head out to the hills again;But ringed with cracking whips, brushing horses, snapping dogs, theywere turned into the sale-yards.
The one street of Wirreeford had been cobbled for some distance oneither side of the sale-yards because the cattle and horses made a seaof mud about them when the spring rains had soaked into the soft earth.The stores and shanties were full on sale days.
Drovers, rough-haired, hawk-eyed men, with faces seared and seamed withthe dust of the roads, hands burnt, and broken with barcoo, slouchedalong the streets, or stood watching their cattle, yarning in desultoryfashion, leaning over the rails of the drafting yards. They smoked, orchewed and spat, in front of the shanties, and at night sprawled overthe table at the Black Bull, playing cards or tossing dice.
A mob that had travelled a long way was often yarded the night beforethe sales. When the selling for the day was over, the beasts that hadcome down from the hills were driven out along the Rane road, and gotunder Way for the northern markets; but sometimes they were left in theyards, lowing and bellowing all night, while the stockmen who were goingto take charge of them spent the evening at the Black Bull, or Mrs. MaryAnn's.
The township was full of the smell of cattle and dogs, and of the muddy,slowly-moving river that had become a waste-butt for the houses.
In the early spring, breezes from the ocean with a tang of salt in themblew right through the houses, and later, when the trees by the riverblossomed, and bore masses of golden down, a warm, sweet, muskyfragrance was wafted to their very doors. It overlaid the reek of thecattle yards, the fumes of rank spirits and tobacco that came from theshanties. And in the long glimmering twilights when the light fadedslowly from the plains and the wall of the hills changed from purple toblue and misty grey, they were caught up into the mysterious darkness ofthe night--those perfumes of the lightwood and wattle trees inblossom--and rested like a benediction in the air.
From their shabby, whitewashed wattle-and-dab hut on the outskirts ofthe town the Schoolmaster and Deirdre could watch the twilight dying onthe plains and breathe all the fragrance of the trees by the river whenthey were in bloom. The plains spread in vivid, undulating green beforethe cottage to the distant line of the hills, and the grass was full ofwild flowers, all manner of tiny, shy, and starry, blue, and white, andyellow flowers.
Deirdre had watched Davey bring cattle down from the hills across theplains. She had seen him riding off runaways. Once a heifer had brokenand careered over the plains before the cottage. Davey had chased afterher at breakneck speed, and, rising in his stirrups, had swept hisstock-whip round her, letting it fall on her plushy hide with rippingcracks. He had flogged the beast, driving her with strings of oaths, hisdog, a black and tan fury, yelping and snapping at her nozzle, until theblood streamed from it, and with a mutinous bellow she turned back tothe mob again.
Deirdre had watched him going home in the evening with his father, orsome of Cameron's men, at the heels of a mob, his eyes going straightout before him. He never looked her way or seemed to see her where shestood, at the gate of the whitewashed cottage within a hundred yards ofthe river.
She had been chasing Mrs. Mary Ann's geese from the river across thegreen paddock that lay between the shanty and the Schoolmaster's house,when Davey rode out of the township towards her, one evening. He wasdriving a score or so of weedy, straggling calves.
Deirdre stood by the roadside and waited for him, her eyes luminous inthe dusk. The wind had whipped her hair to the long tendrils it used tohang in when they raced each other along the roads from school.
"Davey!" she called, as he came towards her.
There was appeal in her voice.
But Davey stared at her as though he had not seen her, and passed on.
"You're a rude, horrible boy! And I hate you, hate you, hate you!" shecried passionately after him.
When they met again it was near the sale-yards, when the street wasthronged with people from the hills. She had seen his horse hitched tothe posts outside McNab's, and so was ready for him when they passed.The path was so narrow that they could not avoid brushing. But Deirdre'schin was well up and her eyes very steady when they met his under hishat brim. Such gloomy, morose eyes they were that she looked into. Shealmost exclaimed with surprise at them. Her mouth opened to speak. ButDavey was as intent on passing as she had been. His face had an ugly,sullen look, something of his father's dourness. After he had passed shestood still and watched him.
He crossed the road and went into the Black Bull.
The Schoolmaster saw him there in the evening. It was not often Farrelwas seen in the tap-room of the Black Bull, though there was always alighting of eyes, a shifting of seats in anticipation of a livelyevening when he appeared. He wondered what Davey Cameron was doingthere. His father had been crippled with rheumatism for a couple ofweeks and Davey had charge of his business. Farrel wondered if he hadbegun to swagger, to give himself airs on the strength of it.
He seemed on good terms with McNab and most of the men in the bar, buthis acknowledgment of Dan's greeting was off-hand and he went soon afterFarrel came in.
The Schoolmaster's eyes met McNab's; but McNab's eyes never met anyman's for very long. Perhaps he was afraid of the inner man a strangermight get glimpse of, afraid to let any one else see in his eyes thesecrets of that sly, spying soul of his.
Now that Farrel had only one eye, McNab feared him less, although whenthe concentrated light of the Schoolmaster's spirit poured from it in asingle beam, he fidgeted, showed craven and was glad to escape.
No one had the knack that Dan Farrel had of showing McNab to the Wirreefor what he was. The Schoolmaster could string McNab up before the eyesof the men in the bar on the thread of one of his whimsical humours andshow him dangling, all his crooked limbs writhing, his twisted facesimmering with wrath. He could pin McNab with a few, lightly-flung wordsand make a butt of him, where he stood before his rows of short-necked,black and muddied bottles. He would have him quivering with wrath,impotent against that bitter, blithe wit and the laughter it raised. Helaughed too--McNab. He was wise, as cunning as a dingo. Though his eyeswere baleful, and his hands shook as he poured the raw spirits from hisbottle into a mug beside him, he laughed.
"It's a mad game y're on with McNab," Salt Watson, one of the oldest ofthe Wirreeford men, said to the Schoolmaster one evening on his wayhome. "Give
it up, Dan! It's good enough to make the boys laugh, butyou've only to look at Thad's face when he smiles to know what he ispromising himself of it all."
The Schoolmaster had watched McNab's face when he smiled. He had learntall he wanted to. He knew what Salt meant.
For awhile he dropped out of the circle round Thad's bar. When he madeone of it, his laughter was less frequent, and he missed McNab when hislightly-flung arrows of wit whistled in the assembly. His spirits hadsuffered a depression. Some of the men thought the trouble with his eyeswas on his mind. He avoided encounters with McNab, though none of themhad any idea he was afraid of Thad. His one eye was more than a matchfor Thad's two any day, they knew.
There was no open quarrel between them. The Schoolmaster's duelling withMcNab had never been more than a laughing matter, a pricking, rapierfashion, in the intervals of card-playing and drinks. It had an air ofgood-fellowship. His humour had a quality of amiability, though nobodywas deceived by it, least of all Thad himself. There was always contemptand an underlying bitterness in it.