by James Doig
* * * *
Next morning the recruited birds take wing for the drought-smitten plains once more, leaving the body of their comrade to keep company with that of the murderer.
IN THE NIGHT, by Ernest Favenc
The Bulletin, Christmas Edition, 17 December 1892
“Steady now, old man; do you feel better? Here! Hold hard! I’m not a nigger.”
The wounded man had struggled desperately as though still struggling with his foes.
One dead white man, speared through the body; one with his head cut open, whom the speaker was trying to revive, and four dead blacks, lying on their faces with outstretched arms—the posture in which niggers usually die who meet with a violent death. The sun had set, and darkness was rapidly closing in. Presently the wounded man regained his senses somewhat.
“How’s Joe?” he asked
“If Joe is your mate, I’m afraid it’s all up with him, as it would have been with you if I had not come. Not but what you had done pretty well before I came. I can only account for one,” and he motioned towards the dead.
“Yes; I remember. Joe was speared at the start. He was picking wood for the fire. How did you come here?”
“I’ve been after horses all day, and was on my way home when I heard the row. I got here just as you had this crack on the head; and the niggers cleared. I suppose you fellows were bound for the Cloncurry?”
“Yes. Poor old Joe! Are you quite sure he is dead?”
“Quite sure. Now, what’s the best thing to do about you? I suppose you can’t rise?”
The other shook his head wearily.
“It’s fifteen miles to the station. The boss has got a buggy in there, and we’ll bring it out for you if you are game to stop here alone while I go. I’ll be back by daylight. There’s no fear of the blacks turning up again, I know the run of these fellows.”
“I’m game,” said the wounded man faintly.
“Right. I’ll load your revolver up for you, and be back as soon as I can. Keep your pecker up, you’re safe enough here.”
With this rough but kindly consolation the stockman departed, and the survivor of the two men who had been suddenly attacked by the natives when camping, was left alone. Not a pleasant position, but nerves are not supposed to be known in the outside country.
There was a first-quarter moon, and the shadows soon got darker and darker beneath its feeble light. The man with the broken head had quite recovered his consciousness but he still felt dizzy and weak. It was an awful time to wait until daylight. Supposing the niggers came back again after all! Then he recalled all the stories he had heard of the blacks mutilating the dead bodies of their enemies. If they came back at all it would be for that. Supposing he was unconscious when they came and they commenced on him! He must watch all night to prevent that. Poor Joe, his mate, he wouldn’t like him to be cut up by the darkies.
Surely, he thought, one of the bodies had moved. The moon gave such a sickly half-light now it was sinking that it was impossible to make certain. Yes, it was a dark figure creeping up to Joe’s body, not one of the dead ones, for he could still count them—one, two, three, four. A live nigger crawling up to hack Joe about. He took aim and fired. That dropped him; he could see him writhing in the streak of light that broke through a rift in the trees. Go and finish him, to save another shot. On his hands and knees he crawled over, picking up a dropped club on the way. Then the silence of the night was broken by fierce and heavy blows, and he crawled back to his tree and fainted.
The moon had set when he opened his eyes again, but, by the pale light of the stars, he saw, to his horror, another black shadow approaching the dead body of his mate. Another successful shot and, full of rage, he again crept over and used the formidable club. But the savages were not to be deterred; one after another the dark forms came creeping up, to fall beneath revolver and club, until at last the man’s senses left him.
The day had broken, but the sun was not yet up, when the stockman and another man drove up in the buggy. They jumped out, and hastened to the apparent sleeper, but he was dead.
“Have the niggers been back and killed him?”
The stockman shook his head. “I can’t make it out—look at this club in his hand covered with blood and—”
The two stood up and gazed curiously about. One, two, three, four black bodies and one red heap.
“He wasn’t like that when I left him,” said the stockman, hastily; “he was speared clean.”
The head was pounded out of recognition, the body and limbs smashed by maniacal blows; the corpse of the wretched Joe was beaten out of all semblance of humanity.
“There have been no blacks here since I left.”
“What can be the meaning of that club in his hand?” was the reply.
A STRANGE OCCURRENCE ON HUCKEY’S CREEK, by Ernest Favence
The Bulletin, 11 December 1897
The heat haze hung like a mist over the plain. Everything seen through it appeared to palpitate and quiver, although not a breath of air was stirring. The three men, sitting under the iron-roofed verandah of the little roadside inn, at which they had halted and turned out their horses for a mid-day spell, were drenched with perspiration and tormented to the verge of insanity by flies. The horses, finding it too hot to keep up even the pretence of eating, had sought what shade they could find, and stood there in pairs, head to tail.
“Blessed if there isn’t a loony of some kind coming across the plain,” said one of the men suddenly.
The others looked, and could make out an object that was coming along the road that led across the open, but the quivering of the atmosphere prevented them distinguishing the figure properly until within half-a-mile of the place.
“Hanged if I don’t believe it’s a woman!” said the man who had first spoken, whose name was Tom Devlin.
“It is so,” said the other two, after a pause.
Devlin walked to where the waterbags had been hung to cool, and, taking one down, went out into the glaring sunshine to meet the approaching figure.
It was a woman. Weary, worn-out, and holding in her hand a dry and empty waterbag. Although only middle-aged, she had that tanned and weather-beaten appearance that all women get, sooner or later, in North Queensland.
With a sigh of gratitude she took the waterbag from Tom’s hand and put the bottle-mouth to her lips, bush fashion. There is no more satisfactory drink in the world for a thirst person than that to be obtained straight from the nozzle of a waterbag.
Tom regarded the woman pityingly. She was dressed in common print and a coarse straw hat, and looked like the wife of a teamster.
“Where have you come from, missus, and what brought you here?”
“We were camped on Huckey’s Creek, and my husband died last night. I couldn’t find the horses this morning, so I started back here.”
“Fifteen miles from here,” said Devlin. “We are going to camp there tonight, and will see after it. You come in and rest.”
He took her back to the little inn, where she could get something to eat and a room to lie down in. Then they caught their horses and started, promising to look up the strayed animals and attend to everything, according to the directions the woman gave them.
The three men arrived at Huckey’s Creek about an hour before sundown. They examined the place thoroughly, but neither dray, horses, nor anything else was visible. The marks of a camp and the tracks bore out the woman’s story, but that was all.
“Deuced strange!” said Devlin. “Somebody must have come along and shook the things, but what did they do with the man’s body? They wouldn’t hawk that about with them.”
“Here’s the mailman coming,” said one of the others, as a man coming towards them with a packhorse hove in sight.
They awaited his approach, standin
g dismounted on the bank of the creek. The mailman’s thirsty horses plunged their noses deep in the water and drank greedily.
“I say, you fellows,” he called out, “you didn’t see a woman on foot about anywhere, did you?”
“Yes,” replied Tom, “she is back at the shanty.”
“Wait ’til I come up,” said the mailman. When his horses had finished he rode the bank to the others.
“Such a queer go,” he said. “About five or six miles from here I met a tilted dray with horses, driven by a man who looked downright awful. He pulled up, and so did I. Then he said, staring straight before him, and not looking at me, ‘You didn’t meet a woman on foot, mate, did you?’
“I told him no, and asked him where he was going. ‘Oh,’ he said, just in the same queer way, ‘I’m going on until I overtake her.’
“‘You’d best turn back,’ I said. ‘It’s twenty-five miles to the next water; and I tell you I’d have been bound to see her.’ He shook his head and drove on, and you say the woman’s back at the shanty?”
“Yes; it’s about the rummiest story I ever come across. The woman turned up at Britten’s today, about 1 o’clock, on foot, and said that her husband died during the night; that she could not find the horses, and had come in on foot for help.”
“I suppose he wasn’t dead, after all, and when the horses came in for water he harnessed up and went ahead, looking for his wife, in a dazed, stupid sort of a way.”
“I suppose that is it,” said Devlin. “Are you going on to Britten’s tonight?” he asked the mailman.
“Yes.”
“You might tell the woman that her husband has come-to, and started on with the dray. After we have had a spell, we’ll go after him. He can’t be far.”
“No,” replied the mailman, as he prepared to ride off. “He looked like a death’s-head when I saw him. So-long.”
The men turned their horses out and had a meal and a smoke; by this time they were talking about starting when the noise of an approaching dray attracted their attention.
“He’s coming back himself,” said Tom.
The dray crossed the creek and made for the old camp, where the driver pulled-up and got out. The full moon had risen, and it was fairly light.
“Don’t speak,” said Devlin; “let us see what he is going to do.”
The figure unharnessed the horses with much groaning, and hobbled them; then it took its blankets out of the dray and spread them underneath and lay down.
“Let’s see if we can do anything for him,” said Devlin, and they approached.
“Can we help you, mate?” he asked.
There was no answer.
He spoke again. Still silence.
“Strike a match, Bill,” he said; “it’s all shadow under the dray.” Bill did as desired, and Devlin peered in. He started back.
“Hell!” he cried, “the man did die when the woman said. He’s been dead forty-eight hours!”
THE WRAITH OF TOM IMRIE, by William Sylvester Walker
From the Land of the Wombat (1899)
Alas for this grey shadow once a man!
—Tennyson
Yet this way was left,
And by this way I ’scaped them.
—Ibid.
William Sylvester Walker (1846-1926) was born at Hartlands, Heidelberg, near Melbourne, on 16 May 1846. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School, where he was a contemporary of Sir Edmund Barton, Australia’s first Prime Minister, and continued his studies in England at Wellesley House, Twickenham, and later at Worcester College, Oxford. As a university student he won the Worcester challenge skulls, played for the college first eleven cricket team, and was nominated for the University Trial Eights. He lived in New Zealand for fifteen years where he worked as a journalist and was editor of the Marlborough Press and later the Blenheim Times. It was in New Zealand that he began to write poems and short stories for popular periodicals of the time. Walker was the nephew of “Rolf Boldrewood” (whose real name was Thomas Alexander Browne), the great Australian colonial writer and author of Robbery Under Arms (1888), who evidently did not approve of his writing. He had three sons, two daughters and two step-daughters. In 1921 he took up residence with his family at Soroba House, Oban in Argyllshire, Scotland, and he died there at the age of eighty in 1926.
And so you don’t believe in ghosts, you fellows?” said Mcllwaine, the squatter, one night as we sat around the cheery pine-log fire at Yerilla. “I do, and I will tell you my reasons. It is not the first time in my life that I have seen one, and I’ve heard that ghost-seeing runs in our family.
“I saw the ghost of a man, a horse and a cattle dog one night as plain as I see each of you now, but the dog turned out to be real afterwards, and I don’t believe that he saw the ghost; anyway, he didn’t act as if he did. He was very serviceable to me, that dog. Twenty-five years ago, before some of you were born (you may well look, Jemmy, but it’s true), I was cattle-droving ‘store’ cattle from up north, and my chum was a man called Tom Imrie.
“We camped one night on the Lower Tarcoo, and Tom and I left our head man and the others with the cattle and rode on to a bush hotel to put in the evening. There were about a dozen fellows there, a rather mixed lot; and some one was playing a concertina awfully well as we rode up. I never got that imitation peal of bells out of my head. ‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clements,’ sort of thing. He played the different changes and triple bob majors, crashes and all the other thingummybobs nearly as well as George Cass himself, whoever he was. I did not know the player then, but I had cause to do so afterwards.
“There were two other drovers in a private room at the hotel, who had a mob of cattle ahead of ours. So we chummed up and had a game of whist.”
“McIlwaine plays whist everywhere, anywhere and where he can, so beware,” remarked Jemmy uproariously.
“You bide awee, ma fren, and I’ll knock spots out till ye,” rejoined Mcllwaine.
Jemmy made a pantomimic gesture, expressive of contempt, and Mcllwaine resumed:
“Well, as I was after saying, if that infant hadn’t interrupted a man of my age, the name of the place was Bylo. The usual far-back sort of a township, only the hotel and public stockyard. And the hotel was combined with an all-round store, where you could get a variation from a suit of clothes to a frying-pan, haberdashery and hardware mixed. The police had not yet arrived, though there were any amount of long, loafing crawlers in the district, the usual sort who stay about a place of this description, that promises to be a town some day. They usually get cleared out in time, before decent people come. And there is generally a death or two before that happens—innocent and guilty alike. The police were wanted. I tell you, and not very long after our arrival either. We tied our horses up to the verandah posts, along with a lot of others, on first arriving, and it was there I noticed the concertina. We stayed about an hour playing whist with the drovers, and taking an occasional glass together.
“You must know that in the big knock-about room, next to the one we were in, a lot of young fellows were gambling, and drinking pretty freely also. Some of them I noticed were jackeroos, ‘jaast like ma young fren, Innocence, here,”’ laying a mighty paw upon Master Jemmy’s shrinking flesh and causing an awful hullabaloo, so that we had to wait until things assumed an aspect of order again.
“Well, these jackeroos that I was telling you about were mixed and various ‘poddies,’ ‘cleanskins,’ ‘two tooth,’ some of them ‘four,’ and maybe one or two just lambs unshorn, like Jemmy; knew just enough to say ‘baa’. It was a wild, Godforsaken sort of district, right out on the back blocks beyond the New South Wales border, and young fellows learn bad things quick enough, unless they stick to their work like men.
“One fellow amongst this lot who were gambling looked pretty ‘old in the horn’.
I spotted him when I passed the door, for I went out once to look if the horses were all right. He was the concertina player. Sort of sharp, by his appearance. He might have been anything from a cattle-duffer to a horse thief, but he looked like a ‘spieler’. He was pretty hard bitten.
“All of a sudden, whilst we were going on with our game (I had the ace, four, five and three of hearts, trumps, I mind, in my hand, and it was my turn to play), there was a fearful shindy! Shouting, swearing, stamping, chairs and tables knocked down and a rush. We jumped up and, just as we got to the door, the very man I have been describing tore out like a maniac, took the first horse he came to and galloped off. The rush of the others coming out after him all of a heap frightened the other horses to such an extent that they all pulled back at once and broke every individual bridle in that crowd. My word, that fellow on the horse did scratch away past the pine ridge on the up-river road.
“Tom was a pretty hot-tempered fellow. He managed to catch his horse somehow, got a bridle from somewhere, and was away after the fugitive before I could say ‘Jack Robinson’. We had seen a still form lying in that other room as we came out, and some of the fellows were shouting ‘Murder!’
“At last I got my horse, and a fresh bridle out of the store, and one of the drovers, another young fellow and myself, started in pursuit. Off we went. The tracks kept on the road, and after a hard ride of about six miles we suddenly came upon two dead bodies—the spieler-looking concertina man and poor Tom! The first had a bullet through his head, as near the centre of the forehead as it well could be.