The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

  ‘You have been fighting, they tell me,’ she said, her voice shaking.

  My father’s face was crow-picked and swollen. One eye was almost closed. The girl’s lips were apart and her eyes were frightened at what she saw.

  ‘I locked horns with The Groper a bit,’ said my father apologetically and he looked at the ground.

  ‘It was over me, they say,’ said the girl.

  ‘A man must fight for his woman,’ said my father and tried to smile at her.

  The girl caught her breath and she repeated, ‘his woman’ as if the words were new to her.

  ‘I mean no offence,’ said my father hurriedly. ‘I like you well.’

  ‘I do not mind,’ she said softly. ‘A man needs a woman to stick up for, and you have none.’

  ‘Yes, that’s how it is,’ said my father. ‘I get lonesome—the plains an’ that . . .’

  He looked out into the night as if the loneliness was there waiting for him and he would look at it again.

  The girl looked too and she said, ‘It is dark at night.’

  ‘Yes, it is dark at times,’ and it was not only the night that he meant.

  ‘You got hurt for me,’ she said gently, looking at his face.

  ‘He was a hard, tough man,’ said my father.

  He straightened the bags he was preparing for his bed.

  ‘I’ll be moving on tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t like you going.’

  ‘No,’ said my father, confused.

  ‘Again you come back, I’ll be gone too,’ she said.

  ‘Gone!’ exclaimed my father staring at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I get tired an’ that here.’

  ‘I bin often goin’ to say,’ said my father taking a breath, but he stopped and looked helplessly into her dark eyes. ‘I get lonesome,’ he ended lamely.

  ‘And I do too,’ she said.

  My father placed his hand on the strong trunk of a grey box as if for support.

  ‘Will you marry me and come away in my wagon?’ he asked desperately as if a fear was upon him and only she could remove it.

  She stared at him, then clutched his hand.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I have some rings here,’ he said shakily. ‘They wear them an’ that.’

  He climbed into his van and returned with a tin box. He opened it beneath her bent head and the firelight shone on the rings it contained.

  ‘Take one,’ said my father.

  She took one with a red stone and it was not the firelight that lit her face as she slipped it on her finger.

  ‘Look,’ she said and she held her hand up to the light, but it was her face that held my father’s eyes.

  They heard voices and she turned and looked back in the direction of the hotel.

  ‘They’re coming,’ she said quickly. She looked anxiously at his face. ‘I wanted to bathe your face,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said my father.

  She lifted his hand and pressed it against her cheek then darted away from him. He stood motionless, the box of rings in his hand, his face rapt and still.

  He watched her go, and it was my mother that ran away from him beneath the trees.

  Blow Carson, I Say

  When night came I heard him again. I swore and lit my pipe then walked to the door of my hut and looked towards the river.

  The red gums that fringed its banks made twisted scrolls on the sky’s edge. The stars were coming out and I could smell the breath of the lignum and reeds that spread back from the river in a protecting barricade of shadowy growth.

  Plovers cried going across the sky. I listened but he was silent. I waited a few minutes then went back into the hut.

  Surely, he won’t cross the river again, I thought.

  He was an old scrub bull that roamed the timbered hills beyond the Murray. He had snaily horns and was a dull brindle colour. I had one of Carson’s shorthorns running with my herd. I only paid a tenner for him but Carson said he was a champion. Carson was always telling me he was a champion.

  ‘He’s a champion, I’m telling you,’ he used to say.

  The old scrub bull used to spend a lot of time trumpeting challenges across the river at the champion, but I did not think he would ever swim across to fight it out.

  I had driven him back a week before and that morning I gave him Larry Dooley across the bend after I had found the two facing each other in a clearing.

  I drove him through the reed beds at a gallop. Near the river the water became deeper and I drew rein. He slowed down then and began to bellow. I cracked the stockwhip and yelled at him. He moved forward, a low, sullen rumble coming from his throat.

  He was a big bull and he sank deep in the mud. He plunged violently as his hind legs failed to find a solid footing. A spray of muddy water shot above the reeds and splashed against his sides. A frightened waterhen shot from a clump of lignum and hurtled across the river with its extended feet scratching furrows on the smooth water.

  He suddenly slid into deep water between the submerged river banks. It curved in a tumbling roll around his chest. He lifted his head till the level plane of forehead and nose was parallel with the surface and struck out for the other bank. I watched him wade ashore with water streaming down his flanks and mixing with the mud clinging to his legs.

  Next morning I saddled up and rode along a pad skirting the reeds. Even then it must have been touching a hundred. Just above the ground the air shimmered in waves and in the distance cattle had the appearance of being submerged in water.

  I heard the old bull trumpeting across the river. He lowed menacingly then sucked in his breath in a high-pitched challenge. I rode towards the bend and saw him standing on the opposite bank. He was silent now and stood with his head rigidly still, the muzzle pulled in towards his neck. His tail was held away from his hindquarters. His stillness was an alive and ominous thing.

  On my side billows of dust were rising from beyond the reeds beside which I had reined my horse. The young shorthorn was expressing defiance of the old bull’s challenge by savagely pawing the brown earth and tossing the dust into the air. It fell upon his shoulders and spilled to the torn ground. He buried his short horns into the soil and flung lumps of grass and earth above his head. A deep, menacing rumble came from his salivering mouth.

  I was proud of that bull. Carson said he was a champion.

  ‘He’ll improve your herd out of sight,’ he said.

  But today I had no sympathy for him in his quarrel. I suddenly felt sorry for the old campaigner who was fast losing his right to the country he had ruled over for so long. Where he had wandered without hindrance, barbed wire fences now barred his way. Men were pushing their way farther and farther into the hills that sheltered him. One by one the sleek cows that had borne his progeny were rounded into cattle yards. Milling and crushing against each other, their lifted heads supported by the flanks of those snorting in front of them, they surged forward to escape the savage attacks of wall-eyed heelers. They blundered forward in droves, urged by shouting men along the stock route that lead to the railhead and to the trucks dirty with the smoke of cities.

  The old bull’s hocks still bore the teeth scars of dogs. The calloused ridge of a stockwhip cut slashed his flank. Carson had told me of the furious charge that shattered a six-foot post-and-rail fence and earned him the freedom he alone enjoyed.

  He warned me about him, too.

  ‘Don’t let him get with your herd. He’ll ruin your stock. Now, my bull, he’s a champion. . . .’

  I tied the horse to a Yellow Jack and crept towards the river. I crouched behind a log and watched the old warrior slide stiff-legged down the dusty bank. He waded through the shallow water then, snorting, launched himself forward.

  The champion waited for him. He moved his hindquarters, using his firmly placed front legs to pivot on so that he faced the old bull as he clambered up the bank.

  The old chap shuffled sideways towards him. The champi
on changed his position so that he stood at right angles to the older bull’s approach. Both their heads were drawn sharp down. When the scrubber was within a few yards of the shorthorn he stopped. They both stood very still, their small, black eyes gleaming with a cold, calculating fury.

  My champion shorthorn, I kept saying to myself. Don’t be a fool. Carson says he’s a champion, but if he gets one good rip he won’t be worth two bob. Hop in and stop them. But look at the old fellow’s horns, I kept saying to myself. He can’t do any harm with snaily horns like that. Anyway, the shorthorn has youth on his side.

  He had youth all right, the impetuous courage of youth. He suddenly lowered his head and, whipping into position, drove at the old bull’s shoulder, but quick as a dingo, the veteran leaped round and met the powerful head of the champion with his own.

  Head to head they dug their hooves into the ground and struggled to force each other back. With enormous shoulders bulged with straining muscle they pivoted around, their locked heads tearing the earth for a foothold, each striving for a quick evasive leap sideways that would leave them free to drive a rip to the other’s shoulder.

  I rose from behind the log and came closer to them. I was shaking a little as if it were friends of mine that fought together. I yelled, then repeated softly to myself: ‘Carson says he is a champion. Carson says he is a champion.’

  ‘You old beauty,’ I cried.

  The old bull had made a savage lunge forward. He drove the champion back with a swift rush. The shorthorn bellowed with surprise and rage. He leaped sideways, evaded a side toss that the old chap aimed at his shoulder, then hurled himself at the other’s exposed side. One of his shining horns slid into the thick flesh behind the warrior’s shoulder. The champion tossed his head, tearing his horn through flesh and muscle and then wrenched it free in a savage twist.

  The red blood gushed down the scrubber’s brindled hide. It stained with crimson the horn of the champion and trickled among the close-curled hair between his eyes.

  I had expected a roar of pain from the old chap, but save for a deep grunt when the horn sank home, he was silent. He twisted away in a quick leap and turned to face a rush from the champion. The impetus of the drive forced him back. His hindquarter scraped across the jagged end of a broken limb projecting from a stump. He bellowed with rage and stayed his backward run with a convulsive thrust of his back legs that scattered the dry leaves and sticks behind him. Step by step he forced the champion back.

  Suddenly with the skill learned in a hundred fights the old bull gave ground in a leap backwards. The champion, freed from pressure, blundered forward to lock horns again. But the old bull was not there. He had whirled to one side and bellowing savagely he now drove his lowered head at the champion’s exposed side. His thick-boned crown slid beneath the young bull’s body. He reefed his powerful neck upwards, lifting the shorthorn from his feet and throwing him floundering to the ground.

  He drove in again, sinking to his knees the better to bury his snaily horns in the other’s soft body.

  The champion bellowed and kicked in anguish. He rolled, half rose, fell again. Strands of tenuous saliva blew from his mouth. The silver threads clung like cobwebs to the old bull’s head. The old scrubber crushed his plated head against the champion’s ribs, shaking it to and fro in a savage mutilating of his fallen antagonist.

  The shorthorn rolled clear and, springing to his feet, fled with the old bull in pursuit.

  He did not chase him far. He stopped and pawed at the earth, tossing lumps of soil shoulder high and lowing triumphantly.

  I made a bee-line for my horse.

  Back over the river he goes, I said, but when I returned I reined the horse and looked at him. He was grazing quietly amongst several of my best heifers.

  I swung my stockwhip then slowly looped it again.

  The shorthorn might be a champion, I said to myself, but so is this fellow. Blow Carson, I say.

  I turned my horse and made for the hut and I felt better somehow.

  Mary, Do You Know What?

  The little girl entered my tent with a timid eagerness. The little boy she led by the hand started when he saw my black face, but he came on very bravely for his three years, his eyes wide with doubt.

  He looked quickly at his sister, seeking in her face the fear that sobered his, but she was watching me with a strange reverence, awed by the magnificence of my silk robe.

  Her expression reassured him and he stood beside her, confronting me with a quick-beating heart and a face intensely serious.

  Outside I could hear the spruiker shouting, ‘Shabaka, the great Egyptian Soothsayer. Tells your fortune for threepence. Help the hospitals by spending here. All for charity.’

  ‘Will you both sit down?’ I said, addressing the little girl and pointing to the rug spread on the ground before my crossed legs.

  The little girl regarded the request as one of great importance and a necessary part of the ritual for she turned quickly to the little boy and, with hurried commands of, ‘Sit down, Dan. Sit down,’ she placed her hands on his shoulders and sought to press him into a sitting position as one would a sprung Jack-in-the-box.

  But the little boy was gazing at me in a hypnotised way and her pressure only succeeded in bending him at the hips like a half-closed pocket knife.

  So the little girl became most urgent in her entreaty and increased the weight upon his shoulders so that he crumpled at her feet, still gazing at my face with solemn contemplation.

  The little girl dropped quickly beside him, hurriedly arranged her thin and wiry legs and froze into stillness, her eyes steady on mine.

  They sat before me as before a deity, scarcely breathing. I began to speak.

  ‘You are a very kind and thoughtful little girl and some day you will grow up to be a beautiful woman,’ I said.

  She moved a little closer to me, her lips slightly apart, and noting her movement, the little boy did likewise.

  ‘You go to school and you are very good at your lessons . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘You have a little friend with whom you always play. She is in the same class as you and you like her very much and she likes you. And when you both become older and leave school, you will be working together.’

  ‘Her name is Mary,’ said the little girl excitedly.

  ‘And Mary is good at her lessons, too,’ I continued.

  The little girl reached out a hand and touched my robe and said, her voice shaking with eagerness, ‘Can I tell?’

  ‘Tell?’ I repeated, puzzled.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t quite understand.’

  ‘When you have a wish and tell it doesn’t come out,’ she said. ‘Can I tell Mary about this without it not coming true?’

  ‘You can tell her anything I say,’ I told her.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said gratefully.

  ‘You have a beautiful mother,’ I went on, ‘who loves you and looks after you.’

  The little girl’s eyes shone and she said softly, ‘I have, and she is a lovely mother and she is Dan’s mother too.’

  And she looked at the little boy with pride at their relationship. But the little boy was lost in the splendour of my presence and remained oblivious of her regard.

  ‘You have a little brother,’ I said.

  ‘It is Dan,’ she said.

  ‘And when he grows up he is going to be very good to his mother and his sister and you will be very proud of him.’

  The little girl reached over and took the little boy’s hand in hers thus proclaiming her faith in my prophecy and according Dan a place in her fortune.

  ‘He will be a big man and will be a good football player,’ I said.

  The little girl brushed a hanging lock of hair from off Dan’s forehead, her sudden knowledge of his destiny making her critical.

  ‘And you,’ I said, ‘will one day work in an office. But not for very long,’ I added, noting a look of distr
ess upon her face. ‘You are going to be something that you and your mother have often talked about and something that you want to be very much.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she whispered.

  ‘Would you like to ask any questions?’ I concluded.

  She looked at the ground, thinking deeply. She raised her head and said eagerly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Will Mary and I win the Siamese race?’ she asked.

  ‘If you both run very hard and don’t fall over you will,’ I said. ‘Any more?’

  She again became lost in thought. After a moment she said shyly, as if repeating the suggestion of a parent, ‘When I grow up will I be outstanding?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You are outstanding now. You will always be outstanding.’

  She smiled happily, then looked at the little boy, seeking inspiration for another question.

  ‘Perhaps Dan would like to ask a question,’ I suggested.

  ‘I don’t think Dan knows what a question is,’ she said.

  She lowered her head till it became on a level with the little boy’s round face.

  ‘Do you want to ask the nice man anything, Dan?’ she said. ‘You know. Like you ask for a piece.’

  But the little boy turned his gaze on me again, lost in the wonder of my black face and red gown.

  ‘It is no use,’ said the little girl. ‘He is too shy.’

  She remained silent a while. ‘I suppose I will have to go,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of any more questions.’

  She rose and, placing her legs wide apart, bent forward and thrust her hands beneath the little boy’s armpits. She lifted him with a struggle, bade me good-bye, and led him to the tent door, his head still turned, gazing at me until the loose canvas closed behind them.

  Outside, I heard the little girl’s voice raised in excited revelation.

  ‘Mary! Do you know what?’

  The Dog

  The dog dropped to its haunches and scratched itself vigorously behind the ear with its hind foot.

  ‘That there dog’s lousy,’ said the old man. ‘I always told you it were lousy.’ But his nephew was asleep.