by Steele Rudd
One morning when Dan was digging potatoes for dinner—splendid potatoes they were, too, Dad said; he had only once tasted sweeter ones, but they were grown in a cemetery —he found the kangaroos had been in the barley. We knew what that meant, and that night made fires round it, thinking to frighten them off, but didn’t—mobs of them were in at daybreak. Dad swore from the house at them, but they took no notice; and when he ran down, they just hopped over the fence and sat looking at him. Poor Dad! I don’t know if he was knocked up or if he didn’t know any more, but he stopped swearing and sat on a stump looking at a patch of barley they had destroyed, and shaking his head. Perhaps he was thinking if he only had a dog! We did have one until he got a bait. Old Crib! He was lying under the table at suppertime when he took the first fit, and what a fright we got! He must have reared before stiffening out, because he capsized the table into Mother’s lap, and everything on it splashed except the tin-plates and the pints. The lamp fell on Dad, too, and the melted fat scalded his arm. Dad dragged Crib out and cut off his tail and ears, but he might as well have taken off his head.
Dad stood with his back to the fire while Mother was putting a stitch in his trousers. “There’s nothing for it but to watch them at night,” he was saying, when old Anderson appeared and asked “if I could have those few pounds.” Dad asked Mother if she had any money in the house? Of course she hadn’t. Then he told Anderson he would let him have it when he got the deeds. Anderson left, and Dad sat on the edge of the sofa and seemed to be counting the grains on a corn-cob that he lifted from the floor, while Mother sat looking at a kangaroo-tail on the table and didn’t notice the cat drag it off. At last Dad said, “Ah, well!—it won’t be long now, Ellen, before we have the deeds!”
We took it in turns to watch the barley. Dan and the two girls watched the first half of the night, and Dad, Dave and I the second. Dad always slept in his clothes, and he used to think some nights that the others came in before time. It was terrible going out, half-awake, to tramp round that paddock from fire to fire and from hour to hour, shouting and yelling. And how we used to long for daybreak! Whenever we sat down quietly together for a few minutes we would hear the dull thud! thud! thud!—the kangaroo’s footstep.
At last we each carried a kerosene tin, slung like a kettle-drum, and belted it with a waddy—Dad’s idea. He himself manipulated an old bell that he had found on a bullock’s grave, and made a splendid noise with it.
It was a hard struggle, but we succeeded in saving the bulk of the barley, and cut it down with a scythe and three reaping-hooks. The girls helped to bind it, and Jimmy Mulcahy carted it in return for three days’ binding Dad put in for him. The stack wasn’t built twenty-four hours when a score of somebody’s crawling cattle ate their way up to their tails into it. We took the hint and put a sapling fence round it.
Again Dad decided to go up country for a while. He caught Emelina after breakfast, rolled up a blanket, told us to watch the stack, and started. The crows followed.
We were having dinner. Dave said, “Listen!” We listened, and it seemed as though all the crows and other feathered demons of the wide bush were engaged in a mighty scrimmage. “Dad’s back!” Dan said, and rushed out in the lead of a stampede.
Emelina was back, anyway, with the swag on, but Dad wasn’t. We caught her, and Dave pointed to white spots all over the saddle, and said—“Hanged if they haven’t been ridin’ her!”—meaning the crows.
Mother got anxious, and sent Dan to see what had happened. Dan found Dad, with his shirt off, at a pub. on the main road, wanting to fight the publican for a hundred pounds, but couldn’t persuade him to come home. Two men brought him home that night on a sheep-hurdle, and he gave up the idea of going away.
After all, the barley turned out well—there was a good price that year, and we were able to run two wires round the paddock.
One day a bulky Government letter came. Dad looked surprised and pleased, and how his hand trembled as he broke the seal! “THE DEEDS!” he said, and all of us gathered round to look at them. Dave thought they were like the inside of a bear-skin covered with writing.
Dad said he would ride to town at once, and went for Emelina.
“Couldn’t y’ find her, Dad?” Dan said, seeing him return without the mare.
Dad cleared his throat, but didn’t answer. Mother asked him.
“Yes, I found her,” he said, slowly, “dead.”
The crows had got her at last.
He wrapped the deeds in a piece of rag and walked.
There was nothing, scarcely, that he didn’t send out from town, and Jimmy Mulcahy and old Anderson have many and many times since then borrowed our dray.
Now Dad regularly curses the deeds every mail-day, and wishes to Heaven he had never got them.
Chapter IV.
When the Wolf was at the Door.
THERE had been a long stretch of dry weather, and we were cleaning out the waterhole. Dad was down the hole shovelling up the dirt; Joe squatted on the brink catching flies and letting them go again without their wings—a favourite amusement of his; while Dan and Dave cut a drain to turn the water that ran off the ridge into the hole—when it rained. Dad was feeling dry, and told Joe to fetch him a drink.
Joe said: “See first if this cove can fly with only one wing.” Then he went, but returned and said: “There’s no water in the bucket—Mother used the last drop to boil th’ punkins,” and renewed the fly-catching. Dad tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was all on fire. “So it is, Dad!” said Joe, slowly but surely dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb.
Dad scrambled out of the hole and looked. “Good God!” was all he said. How he ran! All of us rushed after him except Joe—he couldn’t run very well, because the day before he had ridden fifteen miles on a poor horse, bare-back. When near the fire Dad stopped running to break a green bush. He hit upon a tough one. Dad was in a hurry. The bush wasn’t. Dad swore and tugged with all his might. Then the bush broke and Dad fell heavily upon his back and swore again.
To save the cockatoo fence that was round the cultivation was what was troubling Dad. Right and left we fought the fire with boughs. Hot! It was hellish hot! Whenever there was a lull in the wind we worked. Like a wind-mill Dad’s bough moved—and how he rushed for another when one was used up! Once we had the fire almost under control; but the wind rose again, and away went the flames higher and faster than ever.
“It’s no use,” said Dad at last, placing his hand on his head, and throwing down his bough. We did the same, then stood and watched the fence go. After supper we went out again and saw it still burning. Joe asked Dad if he didn’t think it was a splendid sight? Dad didn’t answer him—he didn’t seem conversational that night.
We decided to put the fence up again. Dan had sharpened the axe with a broken file, and he and Dad were about to start when Mother asked them what was to be done about flour? She said she had shaken the bag to get enough to make scones for that morning’s breakfast, and unless some was got somewhere there would be no bread for dinner.
Dad reflected, while Dan felt the edge on the axe with his thumb.
Dad said, "Won’t Missus Dwyer let you have a dishful until we get some?”
“No,” Mother answered; “I can’t ask her until we send back what we owe them.”
Dad reflected again. “The Andersons, then?” he said.
Mother shook her head and asked what good was it sending to them when they, only that morning, had sent to her for some?
“Well, we must do the best we can at present,” Dad answered, “and I’ll go to the store this evening and see what is to be done.”
Putting the fence up again in the hurry that Dad was in was the very devil! He felled the saplings—and such saplings!—trees many of them were—while we, “all of a muck of sweat,” dragged them into line. Dad worked like a horse himself, and expected us to do the same. "Never
mind staring about you,” he’d say, if he caught us looking at the sun to see if it were coming dinner-time—“there’s no time to lose if we want to get the fence up and a crop in.”
Dan worked nearly as hard as Dad until he dropped the butt-end of a heavy sapling on his foot, which made him hop about on one leg and say that he was sick and tired of the dashed fence. Then he argued with Dad, and declared that it would be far better to put a wire-fence up at once, and be done with it, instead of wasting time over a thing that would only be burnt down again. “How long,” he said, “will it take to get the posts? Not a week,” and he hit the ground disgustedly with a piece of stick he had in his hand.
“Confound it!” Dad said, “haven't you got any sense, boy? What earthly use would a wire-fence be without any wire in it?”
Then we knocked off and went to dinner.
No one appeared in any humour to talk at the table. Mother sat silently at the end and poured out the tea while Dad, at the head, served the pumpkin and divided what cold meat there was. Mother wouldn't have any meat—one of us would have had to go without if she had taken any.
I don’t know if it was on account of Dan arguing with him, or if it was because there was no bread for dinner, that Dad was in a bad temper; anyway, he swore at Joe for coming to the table with dirty hands. Joe cried and said that he couldn’t wash them when Dave, as soon as he had washed his, had thrown the water out. Then Dad scowled at Dave, and Joe passed his plate along for more pumpkin.
Dinner was almost over when Dan, still looking hungry, grinned and asked Dave if he wasn’t going to have some bread? Whereupon Dad jumped up in a tearing passion. “D---n your insolence!” he said to Dan, “make a jest of it, would you?”
“Who’s jestin’?” Dan answered and grinned again.
“Go!” said Dad, furiously, pointing to the door, “leave my roof, you thankless dog!”
Dan went that night.
It was only upon Dad promising faithfully to reduce his account within two months that the storekeeper let us have another bag of flour on credit. And what a change that bag of flour wrought! How cheerful the place became all at once! and how enthusiastically Dad spoke of the farm and the prospects of the coming season!
Four months had gone by. The fence was up some time and ten acres of wheat put in; but there had been no rain, and not a grain had come up, or was likely to.
Nothing had been heard of Dan since his departure. Dad spoke about him to Mother. “The scamp!” he said, “to leave me just when I wanted help—after all the years I’ve slaved to feed him and clothe him, see what thanks I get! but, mark my word, he’ll be glad to come back yet.” But Mother would never say anything against Dan.
The weather continued dry. The wheat didn’t come up, and Dad became despondent again.
The storekeeper called every week and reminded Dad of his promise. “I would give it you willingly,” Dad would say, “if I had it, Mr. Rice; but what can I do? You can't knock blood out of a stone.”
We ran short of tea, and Dad thought to buy more with the money Anderson owed him for some fencing he had done; but when he asked for it, Anderson was very sorry he hadn’t got it just then, but promised to let him have it as soon as he could sell his chaff. When Mother heard Anderson couldn’t pay, she did cry, and said there wasn’t a bit of sugar in the house, nor enough cotton to mend the children’s bits of clothes.
We couldn’t very well go without tea, so Dad showed Mother how to make a new kind. He roasted a slice of bread on the fire till it was like a black coal, then poured the boiling water over it and let it “draw” well. Dad said it had a capital flavour—he liked it.
Dave’s only pair of pants were pretty well worn off him; Joe hadn’t a decent coat for Sunday; Dad himself wore a pair of boots with soles tied on with wire; and Mother fell sick. Dad did all he could—waited on her, and talked hopefully of the fortune which would come to us some day; but once, when talking to Dave, he broke down, and said he didn’t, in the name of the Almighty God, know what he would do! Dave couldn’t say anything—he moped about, too, and home somehow didn’t seem like home at all.
When Mother was sick and Dad’s time was mostly taken np nursing her; when there was nothing, scarcely, in the house; when, in fact, the wolf was at the very door;—Dan came home with a pocket full of money and swag full of greasy clothes. How Dad shook him by the hand and welcomed him back! And how Dan talked of “tallies,” “belly-wool,” and “ringers,” and implored Dad, over and over again, to go shearing, or rolling up, or branding—anything rather than work and starve on the selection.
That’s fifteen years ago, and Dad is still on the farm.
Chapter V.
The Night we Watched for Wallabies.
IT had been a bleak July day, and as night came on a bitter westerly howled through the trees. Cold! wasn’t it cold! The pigs in the sty, hungry and half-fed (we wanted for ourselves the few pumpkins that had survived the drought) fought savagely with each other for shelter, and squealed all the time like—well, like pigs. The cows and calves left the place to seek shelter away in the mountains; while the draught horses, their hair standing up like barbed-wire, leaned sadly over the fence and gazed at the green lucerne. Joe went about shivering in an old coat of Dad’s with only one sleeve to it—a calf had fancied the other one day that Dad hung it on a post as a mark to go by while ploughing.
“My! it’ll be a stinger to-night,” Dad remarked to Mrs. Brown—who sat, cold-looking, on the sofa—as he staggered inside with an immense log for the fire. A log! Nearer a whole tree! But wood was nothing in Dad’s eyes.
Mrs. Brown had been at our place five or six days. Old Brown called occasionally to see her, so we knew they couldn’t have quarrelled. Sometimes she did a little housework, but more often she didn’t. We talked it over together, but couldn’t make it out. Joe asked Mother, but she had no idea—so she said. We were full up, as Dave put it, of Mrs. Brown, and wished her out of the place. She had taken to ordering us about, as though she had something to do with us.
After supper we sat round the fire—as near to it as we could without burning ourselves—Mrs. Brown and all, and listened to the wind whistling outside. Ah, it was pleasant beside the fire listening to the wind! When Dad had warmed himself back and front he turned to us and said:
“Now, boys, we must go directly and light some fires and keep those wallabies back.”
That was a shock to us, and we looked at him to see if he were really in earnest. He was, and as serious as a judge.
“To-night!” Dave answered, surprisedly—“why to-night any more than last night or the night before? Thought you had decided to let them rip?”
“Yes, but we might as well keep them off a bit longer.”
“But there’s no wheat there for them to get now. So what’s the good of watching them? There’s no sense in that.”
Dad was immovable.
“Anyway”—whined Joe—“I’m not going—not a night like this—not when I ain’t got boots.”
That vexed Dad. “Hold your tongue, sir!” he said—“you’ll do as you’re told.”
But Dave hadn’t finished. “I’ve been following that harrow since sunrise this morning,” he said, “and now you want me to go chasing wallabies about in the dark, a night like this, and for nothing else but to keep them from eating the ground. It’s always the way here, the more one does the more he’s wanted to do,” and he commenced to cry. Mrs. Brown had something to say. She agreed with Dad and thought we ought to go, as the wheat might spring up again.
“Pshah!” Dave blurted out between his sobs, while we thought of telling her to shut her mouth.
Slowly and reluctantly we left that roaring fireside to accompany Dad that bitter night. It was a night!—dark as pitch, silent, forlorn and forbidding, and colder than the busiest morgue. And just to keep wallabies from eating nothing! They had eaten all the wheat—every blade of it—and the grass as well. What they would start on next—ourselves or the cart
-harness—wasn’t quite clear.
We stumbled along in the dark one-behind the other, with our hands stuffed into our trousers. Dad was in the lead, and poor Joe, bare-shinned and bootless, in the rear. Now and again he tramped on a Bathurst-burr, and, in sitting down to extract the prickle, would receive a cluster of them elsewhere. When he escaped the burr it was only to knock his shin against a log or leave a toe-nail or two clinging to a stone. Joe howled, but the wind howled louder, and blew and blew.
Dave, in pausing to wait on Joe, would mutter:
“To hell with everything! Whatever he wants bringing us out a night like this, I’m damned if I know!”
Dad couldn’t see very well in the dark, and on this night couldn’t see at all, so he walked up against one of the old draught horses that had fallen asleep gazing at the lucerne. And what a fright they both got! The old horse took it worse than Dad—who only tumbled down—for he plunged as though the devil had grabbed him, and fell over the fence, twisting every leg he had in the wires. How the brute struggled! We stood and listened to him. After kicking panels of the fence down and smashing every wire in it, he got loose and made off, taking most of it with him.
“That’s one wallaby on the wheat, anyway,” Dave muttered, and we giggled. We understood Dave; but Dad didn’t open his mouth.
We lost no time lighting the fires. Then we walked through the “wheat” and wallabies! May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by one solitary pair of ears—from the row and scatter they made there was a million.
Dad told Joe, at last, he could go to sleep if he liked, at the fire. Joe went to sleep—how, I don’t know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet he seemed to be listening.