Old Drumble

by Jack Lasenby

  Old Drumble trotted over, nosed the back of Jack’s hand, and trotted back to his place at the head of the mob. Reins hooked over his arm, Andy waited and fell in behind, stick in his hand. Jack walked beside him. Young Nugget rushed from one side of the road to the other. Old Nell took it more quietly. And up the front, over the backs of the sheep, a black and white tail waved high in the air.

  The back of his hand still wet from Old Drumble’s nose, Jack looked at the tail and grinned. It reminded him of the feathers on the governor-general’s plumed hat, in the photo in the Weekly News.

  Chapter Eight

  How Old Drumble Was a Handy Dog and

  Carried a Map of the North Island in His Head,

  How He Won Andy the Bet, and

  Why Jack Barked at the Outside Tap.

  JACK TRIED TO LOOK as if his face was all leathery, dusty creases; he tried to sound creaky when he walked; and he tried to take steps the same length as Andy’s. When Andy whistled, Jack pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, too. When Andy waved a signal to the dogs, Jack wagged his hand, too, but behind his back.

  Old Drumble paused at the corner of Whites’ Road, made sure there was nothing coming, and led the mob on down Ward Street.

  “That Old Drumble, he’s what you call a handy dog.” Andy licked a crumb of ginger-nut off his moustache. “He can hustle them along with a bark like a huntaway, and he can head, and work them silently ’cause he’s got a bit of strong-eye in him, too. You can see the border collie in his head and his tail, and the huntaway in the length of leg.”

  Jack nodded and said he could see the border collie in Old Drumble’s head and tail, and the huntaway in the length of leg.

  “He’s as good on cattle as he is on sheep. He’ll split a mob to let a car through, and he’ll lead all day and never make a mistake. See how he’s dropped back to one side because he spotted that somebody’s left their gate open? You’d think folk who live on a stock route would have more sense. You watch, and you’ll see Old Nell move up into the gateway, and he’ll take the lead again.

  “There he goes. He knows there could be trouble at the church corner, turning them out on to the main road.”

  “How does Old Drumble know?” Jack asked, but Andy just grinned and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand.

  “Old Drumble knows every corner of every road, every gateway, every fence, and every farm in about six provinces, I reckon. It’s like he carries a map of the North Island inside his head.” Andy shook his own head in wonder.

  “Once for a bet, y’know, I give him six sheep and says to him, ‘Take these sheep to Waharoa.’ We were just this side of Rotorua, coming past Ngongotaha Mountain, and I’ve got to see a cocky, around the lake, about a mob of cattle beasts he wants brought up from Opotiki. At the turn-off for the Mamakus, I says, ‘Old Drumble, you take these here six ewes to Waharoa, and put them into the school horse paddock. I’ll be along in a day or two.’

  “And, y’know, Jack, when I gets to Waharoa four or five days later, them six ewes are in the school horse paddock, and Old Drumble’s lying across the gateway so they can’t get out. He’s smart enough to open the gate, Old Drumble, but he couldn’t figure out how to shove it closed again. Of course, that gate gets a bit heavy from time to time, even for a man.

  “The headmaster, Mr Strap, he told me that Old Drumble rounded up them six ewes at the same time each evening, trotted them down the Turangaomoana road as far as the Domain corner, and put them down the bank of the creek under the bridge, to water them. Then back he brings them to the horse paddock, turns them in for the night, and lies down across the gate-way again.”

  “Did you win your bet?”

  “Did I what?” said Andy. “Five bob that bet won me off young Tom Cookson, and five bob each off his mates, Mick Ruruhi and Russ Tulloch. Fifteen bob all told. They won’t be in a hurry to go laying bets against Old Drumble again, more’s the pity.”

  “What did Old Drumble do for tucker himself?”

  “I give him a few bob,” Andy said, “when I started him off from Ngongotaha. Each morning, once the ewes were feeding quietly, Old Drumble nicked across the track to Mrs Besant’s bakery and bought himself a mince pie. It only took him a couple of minutes, and he’d be back sitting on top of the gatepost, blowing on his pie and chewing it, and keeping an eye on his little flock. He’s very fond of a hot mince pie, Old Drumble.”

  “Didn’t he get thirsty?”

  “Course he did. A dog drinks a lot more than a sheep. But he knew how to turn on the school drinking fountain, when he wanted a drink. It only took him a few seconds to lap up a gutsful, and the sheep didn’t have time to notice he’d been gone.”

  “Hello, Jack!”

  Jack glanced and saw Harry Jitters and Minnie Mitchell waving from behind their gates. He looked straight ahead, as if he’d never seen them before, and strode out beside Andy, his face all creased and leathery, as if he’d been droving all his life. For a moment he thought of whistling Young Nugget and giving him an order.

  “One thing you never do, you never give orders to another man’s dogs,” said Andy. “Here’s the bottom of the street, and see how Old Drumble’s heading for the church corner? He’ll take a mosey round, make sure the main road’s clear of traffic, then lead the mob out and turn them right. This is as far as you come, Jack.”

  “Mum wouldn’t mind me going to the church corner, just to see Old Drumble lead them out on to the main road,” Jack said, but Andy grinned and shook his head.

  “Maybe next time, but you’re not getting me into hot water, young fellow-me-lad. Your mum said the bottom of the street and not a step further. Thank her for the cup of tea, it’s always a real life-saver, and tell her I said them ginger-nuts of hers are in a class of their own!”

  Jack stood at the bottom of Ward Street and watched them go down to the church corner and disappear. He was too far away to see how Old Drumble managed to turn the mob right. Slowly, Jack turned himself around; slowly, he took a couple of steps homeward; then something perked him up so, instead of dragging his feet, he strutted.

  Harry Jitters was coming out of his gate, and Minnie Mitchell was coming out of hers. As their mouths opened, Jack whistled, not a high, loud whistle like Andy’s, but still a whistle. He pointed to the side of the road, and an invisible handy dog ran to turn back several ewes. Jack whistled again, so the invisible dog barked noisily and drove them straight on up Ward Street.

  “Better close your gates, unless you want sheep all through your garden!” Jack didn’t look at Minnie and Harry, but heard their gates slam shut.

  “Townies!” Dancing between sheep muck like black currants scattered all over the road, whistling and waving and working his dogs. Jack drove his mob all the way back home—to the top end of Ward Street—and left them across by the hall, where they had something to eat, and his handy dog would hold them.

  “Next time Andy brings a mob through, he says I can watch Old Drumble put them round the church corner and turn them right on to the main road,” Jack told his mother. “And the cup of tea was a life-saver, and I was to tell you he said your ginger-nuts are in a class of their own. Can I go down the church corner next time? Mum? Can I go down the church corner next time, Mum? Andy said I could. Mum?”

  “Just look at those feet. You wash them under the outside tap before you even think of taking a step on my clean lino. This instant!”

  “Oh, Mum!”

  “Will you get out of my kitchen with your never-ending chatter and questions? And smart about it, or I’ll take the broom to you. We’ll see when the time comes. And once you’ve washed those feet, you can make yourself useful and chop me some kindling for the morning.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mum!” Jack said.

  “I haven’t said a word about the church corner. Don’t go thinking just because you’ve been allowed to go as far as the bottom of the street this once, that you can do it again. Out you go. Out. This moment!”

  His mothe
r banged the back door behind him, but Jack grinned. He scrubbed his feet, his legs, even his knees, under the outside tap. He lapped up a gutsful of water, barked twice, and made sure he didn’t leave the tap dripping. And he chopped enough kindling to last his mother the rest of the week.

  His mother heard his barks, then the sound of the tomahawk. She looked out the kitchen window and smiled. “I know what you’re up to, my boy!” she murmured. “Think you’re one jump ahead of your mother, do you? Well, you’ve got another think coming.”

  Chapter Nine

  How to Keep the Flies Off Smoked Trout,

  Why Old Drumble Didn’t Want to be

  Reminded About Fishing Without a Licence,

  and Barking in the Swagger’s Earhole.

  NEXT TIME ANDY THE DROVER came through Ward Street, it was from the northern end, and he was riding Nosy and running a Jersey bull up to the Matamata saleyards. The bull had a couple of steers for company, and Old Drumble, Old Nell, and Young Nugget kept them on the trot along Ward Street. Nobody wanted any trouble from a Jersey bull, so voices yelled from backyard to backyard, “There’s a bull coming! Is your front gate closed? Peter, run and close Mrs Harris’s gate.” Harry Jitters and Minnie Mitchell hid as the bull rolled by.

  Jack Jackman was in the bamboo patch along the road, cutting himself a pea shooter, so he didn’t even know Andy had come through. His mother said she’d caught a glimpse of them, that was all.

  “He’ll let them have a blow when he gets them past the last houses and on to the stock road up to Matamata.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t hear them: what with Andy cracking his whip, and his dogs barking, they made a hullabaloo, enough to raise the dead. Just as well, too, because I saw Mrs Dainty bolt back in her gate till they’d gone past. She’s been terrified of bulls ever since Mr Lewis’s broke through her fence, knocked down her clothes-line, and ran halfway out to the Kaimais with her nightie flapping on its horns.”

  It was several days before Andy’s stained old hat came bobbing past the kitchen window. Jack’s mother was expecting him and had the teapot filled, the plateful of ginger-nuts on the table, and the cups, the milk, and the sugar set out and waiting before he could poke his head in the back door.

  Jack wanted to run to where the mob was feeding, past the hall, and have a word with Old Drumble, but he tore out, patted Nosy, waved to Old Drumble, and tore back inside again so he wouldn’t miss anything. Besides, he had something he wanted to remind his mother about.

  In the kitchen, Andy was taking a cylindrical bundle of tightly tied tea-tree brush out of his sugarbag, and undoing it. The bundle unrolled, opened, and there—lying in a green bed of watercress—was a smoked rainbow trout which had been kept airy and fresh, yet protected from flies by the mesh of twigs and tiny leaves. Jack sniffed at the rich smell of tea-tree and smoked trout and felt his mouth fill with dribble.

  “From Mrs Henry,” said Andy, and drank his tea. “Her husband caught a couple of good fish away up in the head of that little stream, the Waimakariri, the other side of Tirau.

  “It was all I could do not to eat it, walking along and sniffing the smell of smoked trout,” he told Jack. “And Old Drumble, he kept dropping back and glancing up at the pikau. He knew what was in it.”

  “Does Old Drumble like trout?”

  “Like trout? If he had his way, he’d spend all day fishing for them, all night smoking them, and all the next day eating them.

  “Of course, he’s not a dry fly man, Old Drumble. I’ve told him there’s more satisfaction fishing upstream, but there’s no talking to the old coot when he’s got a rod in his hand. He’s so keen to catch a fish and smoke it, he doesn’t hear a word you say. Besides, he reckons he gets more fun out of a wet fly, and I’ve got to admit, he catches more fish than I do.”

  “Has he got a rod?” Jack asked.

  “An old split cane rod of mine that I give him for a birthday present,” said Andy. “And I make sure he buys a licence each year. He got caught fishing without one, when he was just a pup, and the ranger took him to court, dragged him up in front of the beak. His lawyer pleaded his youthfulness, but the magistrate said there was too much poaching going on, and Young Drumble had to cough up thirty bob.”

  “Did he pay the fine?”

  “Where was a young dog going to get thirty bob from? Young Drumble didn’t have two pennies to rub together, so the magistrate put him in the hinaki for a week. It taught him a lesson he’s never forgotten. Old Drumble doesn’t like being reminded of his time as a gaolbird, so I wouldn’t go saying anything about it to him, not if I was you, Jack.”

  Mrs Jackman turned from hanging the smoked trout from a cuphook in the safe. “That’s such a lovely fish, Andy! We’ll have it for our tea, with a fresh lettuce out of the garden. When you’re coming back through Waharoa, I’ll give you some marmalade for Mrs Henry.”

  Jack said nothing about Old Drumble’s fishing, because he knew his mother wouldn’t like it, specially not the bit about him going to gaol. He listened to Andy and Mum talking about how Mr Gaunt’s hay was doing, and how good the Arnolds’ big macrocarpa hedge was looking.

  “Time was,” Andy said, “when every farm in the province had one along their road frontage. They used to say a macrocarpa hedge needs a whole family of boys to keep it in shape. That’s why a lot of them got out of hand during the Great War. Then families got smaller, and there weren’t the boys to do the clipping, so the cockies started pulling them out. Let a macrocarpa hedge get away on you, and you can’t cut it back without getting those dead bits here and there that spoil the look.

  “Mrs Charlie Ryan says to tell you her big hydrangea just up and died without warning—I think she’d like a cutting off that blue one of yours; and she said that Eileen MacLean’s getting on fine at Hinuera School. She straightened out those Tulloch scamps her first week, and hasn’t had a peep out of them since.”

  As Andy loaded his sugarbag with bread and cakes and biscuits, and a jar of marmalade for old Mrs Gray, Jack said to his mother, “Can I go down to the church corner with Andy?”

  “What’s this?”

  “You promised, Mum!”

  “I did nothing of the sort!”

  “Aw!”

  “Oh, well, I suppose you can go. But just as far as the church corner, and not a step further. No going out on the main road. And straight home. No stopping to play down the other end of Ward Street. You make sure you send him straight home, Andy.”

  Before his mother had finished, before Andy could hide his amazing skull under his hat, Jack was streaking across the hall corner to help Old Drumble lead the sheep over the Turangaomoana road and down Ward Street.

  As he fell to the back of the mob and walked beside Andy and Nosy, Jack said, “I didn’t say anything to Old Drumble about being a gaolbird.” Andy nodded.

  “It must be a long time ago now,” said Jack. “Do you think he still remembers?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Andy, “that dog’s got a better memory than most people.”

  “Really?”

  Andy nodded. “Old Drumble’s got what you call a photographic memory. He could have had a career as a detective. Never forgets a face.

  “Years ago, I was taking a mob of steers through the back road, out Okauia, taking them to Old Man Parson’s place. Hot day, dry dirt road: a man was eating dust. Just before the bridge, Nosy shies a bit, to let me know there’s something going on, and I looks down and sees this swagger lying back with his bare feet in the creek: smoke drifting up from the embers where he’s boiled his billy, hat pulled over his face, having forty winks. I looks at the cool water and thinks to myself: ‘I wouldn’t mind swapping places with you, mate,’ but just then Old Drumble comes padding up beside me and tries to catch me eye.

  “I don’t take any notice of Old Drumble, just watch that none of them cattle try to shoot off down the side of the bridge—it’s a favourite trick of theirs. They know you’ve got to send a dog after them, th
en they get themselves penned into a corner, and you finish up going down yourself and working them out and up on to the road again. And then, nine times out of ten, they take off up the road the way you’ve just come, and you’ve got to send somebody to turn them back.

  “Well, Old Drumble gives a bit of a whine. Next thing he jumps down, takes the swagger by the shoulder, gives him a good shake, and wakes him with a bark fair in the earhole. It must have been enough to wake the dead.”

  “Enough to wake the dead,” Jack thought to himself and wondered what on earth Andy meant.

  Chapter Ten

  How Old Drumble Recognised Tuppenny Bill,

  Why Minnie Told Harry He Was Silly, and How

  Jack’s Mother Could See Him Through the

  Door and Tell What He Was Thinking.

  “WAS THE SWAGGER DEAD?” asked Jack. “Is that why Old Drumble barked in his earhole?”

  Andy shook his head. “Not on your Nelly! He was just out the monk, having a moe, but he comes to pretty smartly with that thundering bark in his ear.

  “He reaches out for his hat that Old Drumble had sent flying with a wag of his tail, jumps to his feet, and looks straight up into me eyes where a man’s standing on the sill of the bridge, looking down at him.

  “‘Andy!’ the swagger calls up to me. ‘It’s been a few years since I seen you, and I reckon your old dog knows me better than you do.’

  “It’s only then that I recognise him—Old Tuppenny Bill who used to do a bit of post-splitting over Putaruru way.

  “‘G’day, Tuppenny!’ I says to him, and he says again, ‘You wouldn’t have known me but for Old Drumble.’

  “Anyway,” Andy said to Jack, “Tuppenny Bill puts his hat back on, kicks his fire together and swings the billy. The cattle graze along the side of the road, and we have a brew and yarn about old times.