Brian Penton

by Inheritors (v1. 0) (lit)

  Budge jumped on to a stump. “Men,” he yelled, “think what you're doing. Some of you may be killed.”

  “We're done for anyway, if we let the scabs past,” Coyle said.

  “We're not done for while the vital spark is in us,” Budge said, “but whatever happens to the scabs won't profit you or your wives and kids when you've got a heartful of lead. Look around, mates, it might be the last sight of the earth you're getting. Life's something you don't get two bites at.”

  “Aw, shut your mouth, Budge,” Larry said, but he turned in his saddle to look at the valley where Budge pointed, insubstantial, inaccessible, behind the dust and the yellow shimmer of heat. “It's like Coyle says,” he muttered, tugging his beard sideways, “you can't lose more than you've lost, so what's the use talking.”

  “But nothing's lost,” Budge insisted. “Suppose we lose this strike—we'll still have our lives and our ideals. We can go somewhere else and start again where there are no squatters. South America wants settlers. They'll give us land. It's a republic there already. They've thrown off the yoke. They'll take us like brothers. . .”

  “The right kind of brothers for you,” Coyle said. “Dirty dagoes.” But Larry's imagination leapt at an eleventh hour hope. South America. A new life thousands of miles away. Was it possible?

  “Like the Owenites in America I told you of,” Budge was saying. “All men are mates there. Nobody owns the land. Greed and hatred are forgotten. Why shouldn't we do the same? Be patient a bit longer, mates, and if we lose this strike through the iniquity of the bosses, come to South America where such evil powers have been driven away.”

  Coyle laughed. “Come to Jesus, you mean.” And seeing how Larry still hung on Budge's words demanded, “What d'we want, cadging land from dagoes when we already got land here that's ours by a right it only needs the guts to take. We ain't cowards to give up our swag to Cabell on the offchance of smoodging charity from strangers.”

  “That's right,” Berry said reluctantly. “This is our country, win or lose.”

  “To hell with South America,” the mob growled.

  But Coyle could not get them any farther along the road. They sat down in the thin shade of the roadside and watched the dust slowly smoking towards them.

  Coyle gave up ranting and joined Larry, who had ridden apart from the rest. He sat with his chin on his chest, chewing his nails. As Coyle came up and slapped the rump of his horse he started.

  “Thinking of running off with Brother Budge to Paraguay?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “You couldn't, you know.” He leant his vicious wedge of a face close to Larry's. “You've been here forty years and you've never cleared out, though I'll bet there wasn't a day you didn't think of it. What kept you? Because you're tied to your ma's apron strings? Ah no, it's your old man you're leg-roped to, and not with filial love, neither.”

  The horses pricked their ears and faced up the road towards a jingle of trace chains. The dust was scarcely half a mile beyond the bend of the road now. Some of the men rose.

  “What I reckon,” Goggs said, “if there's a lot of traps we oughtna do nothing.”

  Nobody paid him any attention. He got off his horse and kicked it savagely, gratuitously in the belly.

  “Oh, no,” Coyle went on in a low voice, hurriedly, “love don't tie you up but hatred does. When you get your knife in a man you can't think of nothing else eating, drinking, or sleeping. You might get as far away as Pyke's Crossing, but you couldn't get away from the thought that he was still walking the earth and filling up on the best of everything. That'd stick in your throat and poison every breath you drew until—he didn't walk the earth no more. Ah, no, Larry,” he said, catching hold of Larry's arm as he tried to turn away, “I'm telling you something for your own good. If you clear out on us now you'd curse yourself for a yellow bastard to the end of your days for chucking away a chance to even up your own and your ma's score.”

  “Who's chucking any chance away?”

  “That's the way to talk.” Coyle patted him on the back. “Besides, see here. We've got four hundred men with a hundred rifles and revolvers, and soon there'll be a lot of dust. Who'd know where a bullet came from?”

  “Ach,” Larry said impatiently, “nobody'll shoot him. If you was to put the muzzle up against his heart and pull the trigger you wouldn't hurt him. He's always won. He always will.”

  At this moment the procession of coaches, carts, and buggies, escorted by four mounted troopers, James, and Custard, came round the bend. They were moving slowly. Cabell was saving the horses for a last dash past the shearers' camp. He was riding in front with Cash.

  The men roared, “Here they are,” then ran stumbling, jostling each other down the road. A flight of cockatoos rose from the trees, like a handful of torn paper thrown into the air, circled, and fled screaming. High above the squeak of the axles, the shout of the men, the cracking of whips, Larry heard his father's voice threatening, “Back you dogs,” and two shots whistled overhead. He glanced at Coyle, grinned sheepishly, and fell to brooding again without any interest in the scampering, yelling mob of his comrades, soon lost in the dust.

  Coyle shook him. “Wake up, Larry. Ain't you coming?”

  He looked around. All the shearers were gone except Budge, sitting on the stump with his wispy head in his hands, and Goggs intently fumbling at his saddle. “What you think of that?” Goggs volunteered indignantly, “Me bloody surcingle's bloody well gone and bust on me.”

  Larry watched him vaguely, then tore his arm from Coyle and walked his horse into the middle of the road. Coyle trotted after.

  With a stampede of hoofs the coaches emerged from the dust four hundred yards away. Cabell was belting the horses of the leading coach with his whip, every now and then swinging the lash at the shearers on horseback who were trying to get at the horses to pull them in. The coaches swung crazily from side to side in the ruts. A man had got on to the footboard of one and was half-way through the window trying to reach the passengers inside to drag them out. A trooper was beating him on the back with the flat of his sword. Volleys of sticks and stones poured on the trooper. His cap was gone and his cheek was covered with blood, as though somebody had smashed a tomato over his eye.

  Larry, in the middle of the road, dully watched the horses come with frightened, upflung heads. He saw his father, whip in one hand, revolver in the other, galloping straight at him, waving him out of the way. Holding his ground before that juggernaut approach, his confused wits were lighted by a spurt of complacent satisfaction in disobeying his father's urgent command. “Thinks he'll make me move. Well, he can go round ME this time.” His horse shied and tried to turn, backed a few steps, jibbing violently. He cursed it and buried his spurs. Shaking its head it began to trot forward, crabwise and pigrooting. As soon as he felt the horse moving under him he was revitalized with a kind of irresponsible abandon. He sank his spurs again and again, whipped his hat off and thrashed the horse's rump with it. The horse sprang into a gallop straight for the racing coaches. Thirty yards off he saw the black barrel of his father's revolver and the grimace on his face as he yelled, “Out of the way you son of a bitch” and raised his hand. Larry jabbed in the spurs again and shut his eyes, thinking no more, but conscious of a rush of warm, grateful blood, like a man who has taken a dangerous jump and found it not so hard. Riding blind, with the wind whipping his ear-drums as he counted “One! Two! Three!” waiting for the shot, he had a sensation of dreamlike flying. But Cabell had raised the whip, not the revolver, and brought it down screaming as Larry opened his eyes and thought, “If he doesn't shoot now I'll break his neck. He can't turn on that crock.” The lash curled round his belly, ripping the shirt across his back, and flicked the horse's eyes. It threw up its blinded head and seemed to rear on air, came down heavily on stiff legs, stumbled, twisted in the dust, and rushed on again, too maddened by fear and pain to feel the pull on the left rein as Larry tried to turn it back towards his father. They passed,
smashing boot against boot, flank against flank, each glimpsing the uncovered teeth of the other, a look of astonishment and outrage on Cabell's face, of stupid bewilderment on Larry's. “You'll have to do it all again,” was his first chagrined thought as he saw the road clear for twenty yards ahead of him, then the leaders of the coach, with open, foaming jaws, and the driver on the box, cursing, leaning back on the reins, with terrified face, trying to pull them in. “What's the use? I couldn't touch him.” Still spurring the torn ribs of his horse he closed his eyes again and flew on, opening them to a vision of horses pawing the air above him in the instant before he struck and fell in a grinding, shrieking cataclysm of overturned coach and fallen, kicking horses.

  He wasn't even dazed. His horse went down and he fell sideways but his boot caught in the stirrup, and when the horse sprang up and pounded its way clear of the coach-horses, struggling in the tangle of their harness, with the coach and the coachmen and baggage on top, it dragged him clear and ten yards from the mêlée before his boot came off. For ten seconds he lay sprawled in the dust, gasping, before the men ran up, their animus suspended a moment, to look expectantly at his blood-spattered face. He rose and shook himself.

  They cheered. “Good old Larry.”

  “Reckless fool,” Berry said, brushing him down.

  The coachman crawled into the road and shook his fist. “Just ye wait till yer da catches ye.”

  “To hell with his da. We'll put a head on him.”

  But they went for their lives as soon as Cabell galloped up, pulling his horse on to its haunches, and laid about him with the whip. Cash was beside him. He grabbed hold of the hand in which Cabell gripped his revolver. In silence they struggled, till Cash wrenched the revolver away and threw it into the bush, but he continued to hold Cabell as he shouted to Larry, “Run, or he'll do you in.”

  In his father's contorted face Larry saw the uselessness of running away. He felt in his belt. The revolver Coyle had given him was gone. It lay in the dust near the overturned coach. He moved towards it looking back, but before he reached it his father broke free and rode at him, clubbing the heavy handle of his whip. Larry groped quickly for a stone and flung it as Cash threw all the weight of his big hack against the shoulder of Cabell's, forcing it round. Cabell fell half out of the saddle and dropped his whip and the stone hit Cash fair in the centre of the forehead. He slumped over the horse's neck and it galloped away with him, pigrooting with fright, towards the station. James went after it. At the same moment one of the troopers rode on Larry from behind and stretched him out with a blow across the head from the flat of his sword. He fell face down with his arms out.

  “They've killed him,” Berry shouted. The men rallied and ran forward, driving Cabell and the troopers with stones.

  Cabell was unarmed, the troopers hopelessly outnumbered, but they managed to keep the strikers off until Custard got the carts and buggies which had escaped the collision on the move again. They withdrew them, pursued by the shearers on horseback while the mob dragged the scabs out of the wrecked coaches. There were twenty of these, all badly shaken and scared. Confronted by four hundred angry men they made no difficulties about returning to the camp and signing the union pledge, especially as they were offered free board and lodging and, from Paddy Doolan, “a pound a week for life” if they helped to win the strike.

  Chapter Six: Larry Tries Again

  Larry came to with a bad heachache, but he was hardly aware of it, for he awakened to the bleak prospect of a renewed fight with his father. He was the hero of the camp. The shearers believed that he had ridden into the coach deliberately to stop it. The fuss they made irritated him: in his heart he damned himself for a coward. He could not look Coyle in the eye, but if Coyle had reproached him Larry would have knocked him down.

  “You better not hang round,” Coyle merely said. “Better get your horse and mizzle over the border before the Johns come down.”

  “Who said I'd run away.”

  “You might as well. Your old man's won.”

  The shearers pooh-poohed. They were very pleased with themselves. “We taught him a thing or two,” Goggs said. “He knows the kind of men he's up against now.”

  “A fat lot you've all got to crow about,” Coyle said contemptuously, “after having the tripe scared out of you by fifteen traps. You think because you've roped in a few scabs you've won the strike. What about the ones that got past? They'll start shearing the day after to-morrow.” “We'll talk to them in the morning,” Berry said. “We'll go up first thing.”

  “They're working men like ourselves. They'll understand,” Budge said.

  “Talk!” Coyle sneered. “You won't get five yards past the gate. By tomorrow the Johns will be rested and drawn up on the slope ready to shoot the first man over the fence.”

  “Jesus, d'you reckon?” Goggs said.

  Coyle looked at Larry. “Of course, if we hit quick and hard to-night, while they're busy licking the blood off and don't expect us, we might make up for mistakes. If we did something to put the fear of God in every squatter—but what's the use of talking.”

  “What's in your mind?” Larry said, eyeing him darkly.

  “First we ought to raid the shed and get those scabs. Then we ought to burn the shed to stop him shearing. That for a start.”

  “That's arson. That's criminal,” Berry said quickly.

  “You're right, Berry,” Goggs said. “It's trespassing too.”

  The rest assented. “We done enough to-day.”

  “And you, Larry? You think you done enough too?”

  Larry twisted his beard till the flesh came up in white ulcers on his chin. “I'll go with you.”

  “You're mad,” Berry said. “You're just talking.”

  “Who said so?” Larry fired. “I'll burn his bloody shed for him.”

  They shook their heads. “The less you tempt the devil in your father the better,” Berry said. “He came near finishing you off to-day.”

  “Anybody'd think he wasn't a man, an old man, and half-blind at that,” Larry shouted. “What're you scared of?”

  They shifted and muttered ashamedly.

  “Sure, he's only mortal man,” Doolan said. “Didn't ye see that other fellow holding him with one hand like a babe?”

  “Sure. That's right. We had him beat there.” They began to cheer up and taste the excitement of the fight again.

  Coyle watched till they were going well, then stood up. “Come on, Larry. We'll go alone. They're all talk.”

  Larry rose slowly and followed him.

  “Wait a minute,” Berry said. “If you're going we'll come with you.” The men shifted again. “Aye, we'll come.”

  Berry and Wagner and two or three others joined them. Budge groaned and joined them too. Paddy Doolan crept out of the firelight and stood close behind Larry looking round nervously at the darkness. Then everybody stood up, and Goggs said he'd go too, but shouldn't somebody watch the prisoners and if they insisted he'd risk having his throat cut and stay. But he changed his mind when Coyle began to organize a raiding party and called for volunteers to watch in the garden for alarms at the homestead, with nothing more dangerous to do than whistle three times when they heard a stir and run for their lives. He was assigned for the job with Paddy Doolan, and from the rest Coyle chose himself, Larry, Wagner, Berry and Budge (“Just so you won't feel tempted to whiddle after,” he told Budge), to creep into the shearing-shed, saturate the walls with tar and kerosene, and set fire to it before rushing the hut where the scabs were. They were to bail the scabs up and signal for thirty men who had surrounded the hut to close in and hustle them back to camp. If the scabs resisted they were to take one man and make a quick example of him.

  “How?” Budge wanted to know.

  “Wait and see,” Coyle said, enjoying with his bitter smile Budge's helpless misery.

  It was close on eleven o'clock by the time they were ready to start. The night was starless and stifling. Sheet lightning illuminated the f
at clouds but did not penetrate the solid blackness of the earth. The lights in the homestead shone through a halo.

  The raiders lay along the fence in the dry grass waiting for Cabell and the policemen to turn in. They were tramping about the veranda making up beds. Half an hour crawled by while Larry chewed the end of his beard and Budge listened to the thunder in the hills, “marching nearer with the rain,” he told himself hopefully. The only light left was in Cabell's room. They heard him come out on to the veranda and knew that he was looking down at the camp where the fires were dying peacefully. Then he returned to his room, the light went out, and the homestead slept.

  A faint stir in the air started the trees whispering and showered sparks from Berry's pipe. Thin threads of fire zigzagged across the grass. Berry smothered them hastily.

  Coyle nudged Larry. “Time to go.”

  They climbed the fence and followed the dark shape of Larry, who went ahead slowly, whistling now and then to call in the dogs which came sniffing at a familiar smell and wagged their tails as soon as they recognized him. Here, at the foot of the slope where the homestead lot ended, Goggs and Doolan hid themselves. Two hundred yards farther on, a hundred yards from the shed and the hut, the men who were to wait for the signal lay down in the grass and the others went on, stepping high lest the swish of grass on their boots disturb anybody on guard in the hut. The wind came in a sudden, violent gust, beating the grass flat, hissing in the trees, and blinding them with dust, and under cover of the noise they reached the shed and circled it to make sure that no one was watching.

  At the door they stopped and Larry went ahead to find the tar and kerosene stored in the shed for disinfecting wounds in the sheep.