Night had come, the warm caressing night of early summer after the fierce heat of the day. The headlights stabbed the darkness lighting up the track for two hundred yards and revealing the startled amazed rabbits. They jumped, crouched down, or raced ahead of the on-coming, whirring monster; and Bony, watching, never for one second saw fewer than fifty of them. Remembering the poison-cart incident, he turned in his seat and remarked to Jeff:
“The rabbits are very thick about here.”
“Yes, they’re bad this side of the range, and worse on the farther side,” Jeff agreed, also remembering the poison-cart incident. “Poisoncarts though are useless on big areas of open country. We’ve had three good years, and during that time they’ve had splendid chances to breed up. Now we’re due for a drought, and King Drought will kill them off. I’ve seen rabbit plagues so many times, and I’ve seen so many thousands of pounds wasted in trying to do what nature does for nothing that I no longer worry about them. The work of a thousand poison-carts would be like dipping a bucket of water from the Indian Ocean.”
“But it is legally compulsory to use them,” interjected Sergeant Morris.
“You’re right, Morris, you’re right,” Jeff admitted, with a mocking sigh. “Someone once said the law was an ass. Whoever he was, he was a wise man. In last week’s paper a man serving a sentence for arson was released because it was proved he was innocent. And he received a free pardon from the fool law. I am wondering what he was pardoned for.”
“For wrongfully occupying gaol space, I expect,” Morris laughed.
Chapter Eleven
Stars and Shadows
THE CAR BEGAN TO CLIME; the song of the engine was like the low hum of a child’s top; and now, when the track twisted round the slopes of the hills boulder-strewn and supporting a growth of stunted wattle and mulga, it seemed to the travellers that constantly they rushed towards a black precipice, and always at the last second, the precipice fled ahead once more, a further intervening stretch of the track being revealed to them. The blackness of the hills at first lay on one side towering above them; and on the other side a lighter shadow was more menacing, for it was the emptiness of a void, and a little later the hill shadows closed on both sides, leaving but a narrow margin of star-studded sky above.
Half an hour later the glare of several fires came into view, and when the headlights swung round in a wide arc in taking the curve the ruddy glow of the fires vanished and there leapt into reality the figures of several scantily clad blackfellows standing facing them, and to one side a huddled collection of squatting gins, outside a few ragged humpies built of tree-boughs and discarded sheets of corrugated iron. Young Jeff stopped the car before a substantial stone house, now occupied by two stockmen, wherein he had first seen the light of day. It was Jeff Stanton’s first home, Range Hut.
“Good night, boss!” a voice said, and there standing beside the car was a little wiry white-haired and white-bearded aboriginal.
“Good night, Moongalliti!” Stanton replied affably. “The trucks pass short time ago?”
“Ya-as, boss. Tree—one—two—tree. Gettin’ plurry crowd on this track, eh?”
Father Ryan chuckled. Several younger bucks loomed behind the patriarch.
“Only two, Moongalliti,” Stanton corrected.
“The two station trucks and Dot and Dash,” a young man said in clear English.
“Ya-as. Dot and Dash. Him tree.”
“Humph! That you, Ludbi?”
“Yes, boss.”
“When are you going back to the homestead? I’ve work to be done, and I want you and Harry.”
“We go bimeby,” old Moongalliti said importantly.
“We’re going to-morrow, boss,” the more civilized Ludbi informed them with greater precision.
“Ya-as, to-morrow, boss,” Moongalliti instantly agreed. “’Nother blackfeller come—long—way away. Beeg feller corrob-oree. We go homestead to-morrow. Cook ’em up tucker—marloo—bungarra. Plenty blackfeller—plenty tucker—beeg feller corroboree.”
“Sounds cannibalistic,” growled Sergeant Morris.
“Well, look here, Moongalliti: you understand you throw-um spear your beeg corroboree, I come and use-um beeg waddy,” Stanton said sternly.
“Na-na, boss. Blackfeller all right. Plenty good feller. You gibbit flour, eh?”
“I’ll see. On the way in, you keep all them dogs at heel, or I’ll be throwing out some poison baits.”
The threat raised a squeal from an invisible gin. “We keep orl dogs tied, Mithther Stanton. You no poison ’em. Poor dog—poor dog!”
“Very well, Mary, do as I say. When you get to homestead Mrs Poulton wants your help with the washing.”
“And don’t you forget, Mary,” Mrs Poulton warned her; at which Mary laughed much more soundfully than many a white woman, and the other gins as well as the bucks joined her as though it were a great joke.
Young Jeff, geared in low, let out the clutch, and they slid away amid a chorus of “Good night, boss!” and sped forward over the zigzagging track with the hill shadows continuing to hug them.
“They do mix up the language, for sure,” Mrs Poulton confided to the sergeant. “Marloo in their own language means kangaroo, and bungarra is a bushman’s word for goanna. There’s going to be some cuts and bruises at the end of that corroboree. There always is.”
“It wouldn’t be a corroboree without a fight,” the policeman opined.
“Indeed it wouldn’t. And that white-whiskered devil is the worst of the lot. Do you know what he did to Gunda because she ran away with Toff?”
“No. She’s Moongalliti’s new wife, isn’t she?”
“Yes, poor thing! Promised him when she was a baby like I might promise you an unweaned kitten,” the lady explained a little indignantly. “Anyway, a young buck from Queensland named Toff came down and she ran away with him. When old Moongalliti discovered it he sent Ludbi and Warn and Watti after them. Ludbi can track, you know. He tracked them nearly to the Queensland border, even though they kept to the high stony tablelands. Toff got away, but they brought back Gunda, who was judged by the old man. And what do you think? He ordered them to hold her down, and then got Ludbi to drive his spear underneath her knee-cap. For weeks she went about with a forked stick for a crutch. She’ll never be able to run any more, poor thing.”
The sergeant added some condemnatory words to Mrs Poulton’s, but Jeff Stanton began to chuckle, and the others were compelled to join in with him.
“The blacks know how to deal with disobedient wives, Mrs Poulton,” he said, still chuckling.
“I think it is a shame. Poor thing! You ought to lock up that old devil, Mr Morris.”
“I never interfere with ’em unless they go a-murdering,” was the sergeant’s viewpoint. “Anyway, I’ll bet Gunda thinks a lot more now of her husband.”
Mrs Poulton sighed with evident perplexity. Then she admitted with a seemingly lighter heart: “Well, yes. She told me when I asked her if she didn’t hate Moongalliti that’ ole feller him no good husband, but he good to poor little Gunda. He give me puppy-dog. Me orl right now.’”
When the car slid out on the northern plain of slightly undulating country, with here and there small areas covered thickly with flat, smooth pebbles, Bony was thinking of Ludbi’s tracking powers, and wondering why he and the others were so loath to track about Marks’s abandoned car. There was something very strange in that, and he decided that after the corroboree he must make friends with them, in a fashion that only his being a half-caste made feasible.
The farther north they proceeded the more numerous became the clusters of trees which the headlights revealed, until the scrub was as thick as that which lay between the homestead of Windee and Mount Lion. Every eight to twelve miles they were stopped by a gate, which Bony got out to open and shut after the car had passed through. Mile after easy flowing mile was indicated by the ivory-faced speedometer until they saw in front a small red light and later the three trucks were
revealed drawn up beyond the last gate. A match was struck and held against a cigarette, and for a second the round chubby face of Dot was shown them. And then they were halted behind the third truck, that owned by the strangely assorted partners. The drivers came back and stood near Jeff Stanton, who asked them if there had been any trouble on the road. On being assured that the trip had been uneventful, he said:
“Well, go on and pull up behind the cart-sheds. Tell the fellows to make no noise, for I suppose we must conform to the regulations.”
Engines hummed. They saw the first truck get away, and two minutes after—to avoid the dust—the second, and, after a further interval of a minute or so, that driven by Dash. Young Jeff made no start for a full five minutes, since Marion reminded him that Mrs Poulton and she were wearing clothes easily ruined by dust.
Two miles brought them to the out-station named Nullawil. Bony glimpsed a house beyond a line of pepper-trees and several whitewashed huts and outhouses and then he was descending amidst a small crowd of men each of whom bore a glinting petrol-tin and a stick wherewith to beat it. Sensing an eager spirit of joyous expectancy, he felt a tin thrust under his arm and a short bar of iron slid into his hand, and heard Jeff Stanton say:
“Padre, escort Mrs Poulton, please. Marion, your arm! the rest follow on in twos and don’t beat your tins until the right moment.”
Chapter Twelve
The House of Bliss
THE ORIGIN of tin-kettling is obscure, and to-day it is practised in Australia with more or less ritual—in the farming areas no ritual whatever. In Central Australia, however, where the huge holdings of land are held by city monopolists and oversea shareholders, women and marriages are rare. Tin-kettling a newly-wed pair is an event accompanied by a ceremonial of almost religious inflexibility, whilst with our modern motor transport a distance of eighty miles is but an evening’s jaunt. The beating of tinware is merely an adjunct to a house-warming party and the whole affair is often arranged by the bridal couple and the visiting friends beforehand.
On this occasion there followed Stanton and his daughter nearly thirty people. Father and daughter led the procession through the gate in the wicket fence and halted before the main veranda steps, whereupon Jeff called in a loud voice:
“Awake, ye sleepers in the House of Bliss! We are an-hungered and athirst.”
No welcome was there. The house remained in complete darkness. The seconds slowly passed before the leading couple started to circle the house. Whereupon terrific din broke out from wildly-beaten tins—din that continued until the procession again halted at the veranda steps, when the echo of it was continued by numerous chained dogs and a great flock of awakened galahs roosting in the all-pervasive scrub.
“Show us a glimpse of the House of Bliss!” Stanton shouted.
Still no light appeared. Still the sleepers slept. Again Stanton led his procession of ear-splitting beaters round the house. The dogs yelped and howled, and the birds rose from their perches and fled. For the third time they came to the veranda steps, and for the third time Stanton called:
“Open, ye dwellers in the House of Bliss!”
And then a light sprang up in one of the rooms. A window was thrown open, and a voice raised in pretended anger came to them:
“Enough! Who are you who should disturb the slumbers of those within the House of Bliss?”
“We are friends of the bride and friends of the groom. We are in need of refreshment and desire to rest,” was Stanton’s reply.
“Gladly then will you all be admitted.”
The window was closed. Light after light sprang up in room after room, until there was not a dark room in the house. Suddenly the main door was thrown open. A brilliant petrol lamp was brought out and suspended from the veranda roof, and then the veranda fly-netted door was flung back and a man and a woman, both dressed in white, stood looking down on them.
“Enter, friends of the bride!” entreated the woman.
“And of the groom!” cried the man.
“Enter our House of Bliss!” they invited together, and stood back whilst Stanton and Marion mounted the three steps. On the veranda a young man not yet thirty, slim, wiry, fair and good-looking, the born horseman indicated in his stance, and a young woman, small and dark and vivaciously pretty, waited to receive them. The men shook the hands of both with genuine good-fellowship, and the two ladies kissed and petted the bride with real affection.
Bony was the last to be greeted. Dressed in a well-fitting grey suit and wearing spotless linen, his European cast of face and blue eyes expressed understanding sympathy when he bowed to host and hostess with infinite grace.
“This is Bony,” Stanton said by way of introduction. “Meet Harry and Edith Foster.”
Bony found himself being regarded by the keen appraising eyes of Foster, and then the overseer’s hand was thrust towards him, and Foster said:
“I’m glad to meet you, Bony. I’ve heard how you trained the grey gelding, and I’m always glad to make a friend of a good horseman.”
“And will you train a horse for me like you trained the grey gelding, Bony?” inquired the bride.
“It would please me much, if a horse can be found as teachable as Grey Cloud,” was Bony’s smiling consent. The girl’s big brown eyes were unsmiling, although her mouth smiled. Her looks and bright chatter doubtless would make a strong appeal to many men. Bony, however, was unaffected. There was absent from Edith Foster that inward light that made of Marion Stanton a lovely woman.
She and her husband led their guests into the house. The petrol-tins were stacked on the veranda. The ladies disappeared with the bride, and the groom conducted the gentlemen to the long dining-room, at whose farther end several adjoining tables supported great dishes of sandwiches, buttered scones, cakes and rank on rank of bottles and glasses.
“Say, Harry, wot’s it like to be tied up?” asked Ted, the tall, bearded, sun-blackened stockman.
“Great, man! You should try it.”
“Have to be callin’ you Mister now, Harry. Like they would down in the Mister Country,” drawled Jack Withers, and from long experience Foster knew that Jack was looking at him and not out of the window.
“Better not let the boss hear you,” he was advised, which raised a general laugh.
The ladies came in, and Father Ryan drew the bride’s arm through his and beamed at her with his twinkling eyes, and, taking her to where the groom was, he slipped his other arm through Foster’s and with them faced the company.
“People, look upon the most wonderful and beautiful thing in the world,” he said with softened voice. “Behold love, which is God!” And then, squeezing the arms he held, he said to the newly wed: “Neither of you is of my faith, but please accept the good wishes and blessing of an old man.”
Whereupon young Jeff started up the ageless refrain:
“For they are jolly good fellows!”
Listening, Bony was thrilled by the universal affection expressed by Marion’s sweet voice, Mrs Poulton’s lighter notes, old Stanton’s deep tones, and the roar of other voices, a few tuneful, most of them raucous. There was here none of the ridiculous and childish caste feeling of the cities. It was a gathering of simple human beings, united by sympathy and happiness, together inside a house, set many, many miles from the next human habitation.
Harry Foster’s eyes were bright with unshed tears and his voice trembled whilst he thanked them in unstudied homely phrases. The bride’s eyes remained bright and proud, and Bony decided that here was a hard, well-controlled woman, who undoubtedly would be the ruler. And he smiled at the thought of Gunda and of Moongalliti, her indomitable husband.
Father Ryan was escorted to the refreshment table, and the company were invited to “wade in and help yourselves”. The big room resounded to loud voices and laughter. Corks flew and bottle-tops fell to the table with tinkling thuds. The ladies were served by their escorts, and the feast went on merrily for half an hour, and the bride went to the door and calle
d for Mary.
And Mary, a great fat gin wearing a scarlet one-piece muslin dress, white silk stockings, and blue carpet slippers, ambled into the room with a huge tray, and ambled out again with a pile of used plates and glasses over the top of which she had difficulty in seeing her way.
For five minutes the talk was gradually becoming desultory, when Jeff Stanton asked Marion to play something. Smiling radiantly, she arose and crossed to the brand-new piano her father had given the newly wed; where, seeing her intention, Dash, dressed now as a London club man, opened the instrument and arranged her seat.
“Shall I turn over the music?” he asked softly, his eyes alight with the wonder and beauty of her.
“No. Not now, please. I’ll play a few pieces I know by heart. I wonder if Ted has brought his accordion.”
“I’ll ask him, if you wish.”
She nodded, her fingers fell on the notes, and she began to play a piece from “Lilac Time”. Presently the big stockman, with an exceedingly old but perfectly kept accordion under his arm, stood beside her, and, looking up at him, she smiled and saw the answering boyish grin with a tiny thrill of happiness.
The piece she was playing was brought to a close. The accordion player then seated himself near the piano, and when Marion began to play “Annie Laurie” he joined in with truly exquisite skill.
Listening raptly, the company found interest in Bony, who joined the accordion player and from his pocket took a long green box-leaf, and, holding it lengthwise between his fingers, began to blow on it. The high full tones he produced from the leaf, now as a hurricane wind through kangaroo grass, now as the hiss of rain on water, softened and beautified the coarser tones of the accordion, and when the tune was ended the applause was uproarious.
Bony whispered to his partners and they agreed to what he was proposing. Marion played a few preliminary notes and then the accordion broke into “The Prisoner’s Song”. Bony did not join in for several minutes and when eventually he did it was a little while before his leaf music was heard. The stockman began to play ever more softly. The leaf wailed ever more loudly. Now the accordion was silent, and presently the piano became silent, too, and for a while Bony played alone. The company sat with half-closed eyes, enthralled by the weird tones, haunting, repining notes that cried for light and freedom, the wailing voice of a hopeless prisoner.
The Sands of Windee Page 7