“She is that,” Dogger Smith agreed. “Some reckons she’s pretty hard, but itain’t my opinion. When she first took over the pub she had a fine way of getting rid of cheque-men after their money was cut out. She would go round the tables herself and she’d ask each feeder what he’d have. ‘Will you have goat or galah?’ she’d say. ’Course every one would say, ‘Goat please, Mrs. Nelson.’ When a bankruptchequeman said that, she’d say, ‘Indeed, you won’t. You’ll have galah.’ And galah they would get-the toughest birds ever stewed half-way through.
“She only made one mistake in her life, and that was marrying John Nelson. A fine-looking, ’andsomebloke he was, I give that in, but he was a born boozer and gambler like his father before him. Ma Nelson tamed him some after she married him, and if it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have lasted as Cobb and Co.’s groom as long as he did. And then, when she bought the pub, his end was quick and sure.
“I gets into Carie one morning and I finds Ma and the yardman and Trooper Halliday all trying to hold John down on his bedso’s Doctor Tigue could get to work on him with a squirt thing. John is that powerful that he’s heaving ’emall around like they were straws. He’s well in the horrors, and he’s roaring that he’ll do ’emall in. There wasn’t nothing I could do but grab him, stand him up and place him right, and then clout him a goodun under the chin to quieten him and to give old Tigue a chance to prod him with the squirt.
“Oh, yes, John Nelson was a doer all right. What he drank no one kept tally, and in the end Ma got tired of trying to keep ’imoff it. Any’ow, I don’t think she did much trying after she bought the pub. Some says she oughtn’t to have bought it, knowing what John was, but buying it made no difference either way. Jail or the South Pole was the only place for him. He got to be like old Stumpy Tattem, wanting to bite everybody. Now, he could have done all these murders if I hadn’tmeself laid him out in his coffin what was a foot too small for him, but made up in width.”
“Never had any children, did they?”
“One-a baby boy. It was born in the worst sand-storm I everknoo.”
“Indeed! What happened to it?”
“Died. Might have been just as well-with John Nelson for a father. Aye, a fine, ’andsomebloke was John Nelson. He was dark and soft spoken, and all the gals tore their ’air over him.”
The old man stirred the fire sticks together and in the growing blaze they saw that Harry West had dropped off to sleep beside them.
Chapter Twenty
Grandfer Littlejohn
THE HEAT HAD been excessive all day, but such was the low humidity that none felt ill-effects when along the seaboard 118 degrees in the shade would have provided death with a harvest. And now the crimson sun was throbbing above the western scrub-line, the bluebush plain was painted with purple and blue, and Mrs. Nelson sat in her chair placed at the southern end of her balcony.
In the street below stood the dust-covered mail-car, its driver and passengers being waited on at dinner by Tilly, the beloved of Harry West. Near the car, talking to Constable Lee, stood the Wirragatta book-keeper, and a little farther along the street, on the far side, old Grandfer Littlejohn sat on his empty petrol-case seat outside his son’s house and conversed with a stranger to Carie, the man known there as Joe Fisher.
The sun disappeared and the distantsandhills changed colour from orange to red. Now and then Mrs. Nelson glanced down through the uprights of the balcony rail at the men standing by the mail-car, when she smiled only with her lips. Now and then she looked back to Bony and the town ancient, and then not even her lips smiled. At those times she glanced upward at the colourful sky her eyes narrowed and her beautiful hands trembled.
Presently the mail-car driver appeared, a tall youth dressed in city fashion, smoking a cigarette, wearing a vast cloth cap with the peak drooping over his right ear.
“Going to the ’Ill?” he asked the book-keeper.
“Yes. When, do you think, will we be starting?”
“When I’ve got me mails. I’m going for ’emnow.”
The driver went into his seat stern first, as had become the correct mode. The engine roared and cigarette-smoke mingled with exhaust fumes as the heavy car was turned round and driven to the post office. It was then that Fred Storrie stepped out to the veranda from Mrs. Nelson’s sitting-room.
“James said you wanted me to run up, ma’am,” he drawled.
From his elastic-sided riding-boots Mrs. Nelson’s beady eyes lifted their gaze to note the worn riding-slacks, the large, red, long-fingered hands, the faded khaki shirt, and finally the man’s sun-darkened face and its long black moustache and pale-blue eyes.
“Yes, Fred,” she said crisply. “This morning James told me that yesterday a man and his wife camped at Catfish Hole. Do you know anything about them?”
“Not much. The woman slipped into the tent when I went there this morning. I don’t know the man. Said they had come up from Menindee. He’s a prospector.”
As Fred Storrie did not know these people, Mrs. Nelson was sure she herself had never seen them.
“Well, did you tell the man it is not a good place to camp at?”
“I did. I told them what had happened to Mabel near by, and the man laughed. Said he was afraid of no one.”
Mrs. Nelson remained still. Her passivity was one of the several remarkable things about her.
“What’s his name? Did you find that out?”
“Yes. His name’s Bennet. He’s thick-set, muscular, about forty-five. Tough-looking customer.”
The mail-car drew up again before the hotel, and the driver shouted:
“Come on, now! All aboard!”
Long accustomed as they were to watching the mail-cars depart, Mrs. Nelson and Fred Storrie broke off their conversation to watch this one away. All was bustle down below them. The book-keeper and several others climbed into the car whilst the knot of bystanders and James called farewells. The usual mob of children ran about it. Constable Lee took no notice of them. They no more feared him than they feared old Littlejohn. The driver derisively tooted the horn, and then the car slid away, with a boy standing on the running-board to go as far as the Common fence and open the gate. And so on to Nogga Creek and Broken Hill.
“That book-keeper didn’t last long at Wirragatta,” stated Mrs. Nelson with sharp disapproval. “Couldn’t stand being so far away from the pictures, I suppose.-Now, Fred, about that couple at the Catfish Hole. We can’t be sure that that fool of a Simone arrested the right man, and we don’t want another murder. To allow that couple to camp at Catfish Hole is flying in the face of Providence. They are on your place and you must move them first thing in the morning.”
“I can’t shift ’em, ma’am, if they don’t want to go,” asserted Storrie.
“You can’t shift ’em!” echoed Mrs. Nelson. “Fiddlesticks! Haven’t I been generous to your Mabel and you? Haven’t I pensioned old Mrs. Marsh?” The claws began to be shown. “I’m not a benevolent society, Fred. I have lost a lot of money over these murders, what with Sergeant Simone coming here and upsetting Lee and keeping my bar shut at nights. I am not going to sit quiet here and have more people murdered, do you hear? You can’t shift ’em! Say you want the water. Say you’ve got sheep watering at Catfish Hole! Sayanything, but move them on first thing in the morning.”
“They won’t go, and I can’t shift ’em,” Storrie persisted. “I told the man that Catfish Hole wasn’t healthy. He said the climate suited him. I then told him he was on my land, and he asked if Catfish Hole was inside the freehold of the selection. When I said it wasn’t he flashed a piece of paper at me-a miner’s right. He says he intends pegging a claim to include the sand-bar at the bottom end of the water, ’coshe reckons it’ll wash gold. He says Iain’tgonna shift him; the police can’t shift him; and with that miner’s right me and you can’t shift him, either.”
Standing there leaning against the veranda rail, Fred Storrie looked down into the beady eyes of the leader of Carie.
“Might be gold there, all the same,” Storrie dared to argue. “My father once found colour two miles up Nogga Creek.”
Mrs. Nelson permitted her gaze to wander over the plain from which the sunset colours were being drained away.
“I tell you, Fred, I don’t like it,” she said. “If the man is murdered, I won’t support the woman, or do anything for either of them, but that Simone will come again and I’ll have another period of bad trade. It’s not good enough. Still, if that man holds a miner’s right and hepegs a claim, no one can move them by law. I’ll have to concoct some plan. I must think it over. Go down to the bar for a drink, and then stroll up along the street and tell that half-caste talking to that old dotard of a Littlejohn that I’d like him to come up.”
Storrie nodded, evidently pleased that the interview was over, and departed with silent, cat-like tread. Mrs. Nelson turned to face squarely to the south, then to observe the colour-shot dust raised by the mail-car, still floating above the track all the way to the emerald tree-line that was Nogga Creek. The hot colours were now fading from the sky across the blue-orange dome, beneath which hung ghostly white streamers of cloud mist. Tight-lipped, the old woman regarded this ominous sign.
Down in the street, Bony was comfortably seated beside Grandfer Littlejohn, who had been listening with the interest of the confirmed gossip to the details of Harry West’s banishment to a fence.
“Old Dogger Smith and young Harry will enjoytheirselves,” he said, his voice cracked and never for long remaining at the same key. “It’ll do that young rip a lot of good having to workproperly, and Dogger will see to that. Timesain’t what theyuster be, when men could ride ’orseswithout being threatened with being charged with riding to the public danger. Still, he had no business to ride Black Diamond, night or day.”
“Have you been living hereabouts for long, Mr. Littlejohn?” Bony asked soothingly.
“When Ifust come to Carie it wasn’tyestiddy,” came the emphatic answer.
By now the evening was well advanced, and after the heat of the day the air was cool and languorous. The old man, who was dressed in the usual stockman’s regalia of elastic-sided boots, skin-tight moleskins and a “weskit” over a cotton shirt, spat with accuracy at the first of the yellow-and-black night ants, and then decided to proceed.
“When Ifust come to Carie, there was whips of cotton-bush and wild spinach and wild carrots and things growing all over the country. Now, the country is turning into a desert. You seenthemsandhills away over the Common to the east? Well, theywasn’t there forty years back. What the rabbits have done to Australiaain’tnothink to what the sand isgonna do.”
“I understand that Carie was much bigger in those far-off days,” led the crafty Bony, who was like a wiseriverman, sometimes allowing the current to take charge of the boat, sometimes steering it.
“It wasn’t what you’d think,” retorted Grandfer with a hint of asperity pardonable in one of his undoubted age.“ ’Course, the post office wasn’t up then. Ituster be at the store when the present man’s father ran it. Nor was the hall and the court house up in them days, but there was three pubs, more houses, more people and a hell of a lot more money. The hotel across the way was one-storied, and,” the old man chuckled, “one-eyed, too. It waskep ’ by a feller called Beaky Evans. When a man asked him, ‘How’s the galah’s perch today, Beaky?’ heuster get wild and chuck out all his customers and shut up the pub for a coupler hours or so.”
Bony gave an encouraging laugh.
“When was the hotel rebuilt?” he asked carelessly.
“Back in nineteen-o-eight. Watkins, who had the place, pulled it to bits and did the rebuilding, but he didn’t dono good. He sold out to Ma Nelson for four thousand pounds. He wasn’t meant to make money-like Ma Nelson.”
“She appears to be a born business woman, Mr. Littlejohn,” Bony said, knowing that the conversation would be repeated to the leader of Carie, but no longer disturbed by the probability.
“Ah, she’s all that, young feller,” agreed Grandfer. “She’s always had her head screwed on right, but even she didn’t dono good till after poor John Nelson shuffled off.”
“Drank hard, didn’t he?”
Grandfer’s clean-shaven chin sank to rest on the backs of his palsied hands, which, in turn, rested on the root handle of his stout mulga stick.
“John Nelson didn’t drink like you or me,” he said slowly, and Bony knew that he was no longer in the present. “He never hadnoswaller as I could see. Ifust knew him when he was working on Wirragatta, when he was a smart lad and a terrible fine horseman and a mighty good-looking chap. But the drink got him early, and it got him bad. He pulled up a bit when he was a-courting of Ma Nelson. She was cooking at the pub. Then he got the job of change-groom to Cobb and Co. in this here town and married her.
“Well, well! Ma was as pretty as pretty then, and poor John was as handsome as the devil himself. Any other man would have worked the flesh off his hands for a woman like that-but no, he went on the booze a week after they were married. He got locked up time and again, and old man Borradaleuster threaten and roar at him from the bench something terrible. And when John wascoolin ’ off in jail Mauster ride out for the change horses for the coach, and me and the othersuster hitch ’emin for her.”
“Plucky!”
“She was that, Joe Fisher. And so she is to this day. We knew something of what sheuster put up with, but not all of it. We could hear poor John on his way home-they lived at the far end of the town-and he would be roaring drunk. Sometimes someone would go out and stop him and persuade him to come in and camp the night. Itmusta been a happy day for Ma when he shuffled off.”
“That was in 1914, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was in 1914, in December-the year the war broke out.”
“What did he die of?”
“Delirium tremens, of course. He could die ofnothink else.”
“Was he ill long?”
“Well, yes, he was,” replied the old man. “He had a terrible strongconstitooshon, did poor John Nelson, and he took a lot of killing. You see, Ma Nelson come into some money-her aunt left her a tidy sum-and she bought the hotel in 1910. From then on John Nelson got going properly. Nothink could stop him. Between bouts of boozing he got bouts of praying, holding meetings in the bar parlour. There was no more keeping him off the praying than there was off the drink.
“Well, it got worse andworser, and the beginning of the end come when poor John walked round and round the pub all one afternoon and night, wearing a track so plain that it lasted eight months. That side fence joining the hotel to the postmaster’s house wasn’t up then, so John had a fair go.
“A coupler daysafter that he fell down in a kind of fit. The policeman-not Lee, but a man called Halliday-the yardman and Ma Nelson carried him up to bed and sent for old Doc Tigue. Then there was Ma and the yardman and the policeman all trying to hold poor John downso’s Tigue could quieten him withmorphia or something. Dogger Smith, he come on the scene and quietened John with a punch. Then old Tigue got to work, and John slept a bit. John always was a bitlooney, but that time he was a raging madman. And then he busted a blood vessel one evening, and that was his finish.”
“Horrible!” murmured Bony. “Were you with him when he died?”
“No. Old man Borradale was short of a horse-boy and I was on that job formore’n five years. You see, I was getting past real work even in those days, and the job was easy. The missus, rest her soul, and me had this very house behind us, so when me and the boss wasn’t out on the run I could get home at nights.”
Memory silenced Grandfer Littlejohn for several moments, and Bony wisely waited. Then:
“We’regonna have another wind-storm be the look of that sky tonight,” predicted the old man. “It bin a rare year for wind-storms, this has. Not as bad as seventy-one though.”
Bony recalled the conversation he had had with Dr. Mulray
, when he had complained about the shortness of life, and now he glimpsed the comfort old age drew from the store of memory. Grandfer’s body was old, but his mind was young. How strange it is that while the mind remains healthy it seldom grows old and feeble like the body. Bony saw himself fifty years hence. God willing, what a store of memories he would possess then!
Softly he said, “I wonder! I wonder if John Nelson would have pulled up if his wife had had children.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Grandfer as though this was a question he had often debated. “You know, she did have one baby. It was early in 1910. I remember quite well when it was born, because it was in the middle of the worst sand-storm I ever seen. Fortunately for Ma Nelson, poor John went on the booze something terrible two days before the littleun come along and the policeman locked him up for Ma’s good. Old man Borradale-he was the sitting Justice, as his son is today-he gets the policeman to charge John with assault and battery and resisting arrest, and obscene language, so’s he can give fourteen days without the option. As it happened, John was just plain drunk-so drunk that he couldn’t resist and assault no one, and he couldn’t swear, because he couldn’t speak. Every one knew it and every one was glad he got the fourteen days.
“That giveMa Nelson a bit of peace and quiet. My wife, rest her soul, tended her, and when the baby was born the father was stone sober and quite safely out of the way. When he was told about the baby, he swore off the drink and implored the policeman to let him outso’s he could see his son and heir. But the policeman, he says, ‘No, Nelson. Youstays where you are till your fourteen days is up. When welets you out your wife will be strong enough to take care of herself and the baby.’
“Then the baby died, and when John got out, instead of going home to Ma, he walked direct to the pub and started drinking again. That finished Ma with him. She was never the same to him again, and I don’t blame her. Watkins had no business to serve him, and ever since she took over the pub, Ma watches the married men, and if she thinks they’re boozing too much she puts ’emon the Blackfeller’s Act, and James keeps ’emout. If that baby had lived, poor John might have gone straight, but I doubt it. He was too far gone.”
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