by Nan Chauncy
‘She’d only think it was foxes had got ’em,’ Brick added helpfully.
‘Foxes? What are they?’ asked Tas. ‘Oh, I know. Them things you Pommies chase about with a lot of dogs.’
‘Don’t you have foxes in Australia?’
‘In Australia? Oh, yes. Uncle of mine in South Australia said he was always shooting foxes what ate his grapes. We don’t have them things in little Tassie, though, no fear we don’t.’
That evening Cherry fetched her goats in early, and had everything ready for ‘raiding’ before dark fell. When the meal was finished they sat talking round the fire, waiting for what Nigel called the ‘zero hour’.
Tas told tales of the bush. He told of a man who was lost on their very ranges. He had quarrelled with his brother, Tas said, and gone dashing off with nothing to eat, thinking he knew the bush like the palm of his hand. He was never seen alive again, but his body was found.
‘Tell us about the old Tasmanian Blackfellows,’ Cherry said hastily. She felt if Tas told more grim tales of real people she would never have the courage to go with them on the raid. It was different about Blacks, since they had all died out long ago. Already she rather regretted saying she would come with the big ones, leaving Brick and Nippy to guard the cave. It would have been nicer to tumble into bed, but Nigel’s remark about being an ‘old woman’ still rankled.
Tas began to tell of a pile of oyster shells he and his friend Mad Dad had found once, with some stone weapons close beside. Mad Dad was all worked up over the Tasmanian abo’s, he said, but Tas reckoned they were plain stupid. Look, they could count up to five on one hand, but didn’t have enough sense to cross on to the other and make ten.
‘I read somewhere,’ said Nigel, ‘that they could make fire, and knew how to fire the bush so that the grass came, and that brought the kangaroo, that was their meat, along. That wasn’t stupid, Tas.’
‘’Course they weren’t silly,’ cried Nippy, who had listened with the greatest attention. ‘If they brought oysters all this way to have a feast they were real clever. I had some oyster soup once so I know. It was lovely.’
‘Reckon they were though, Nippy. Look, they didn’t even make clothes out of the fur of the animals they killed and they must have been real cold sometimes.’
‘No! I bet those Blacks had snug caves like ours in the winter.’
‘They didn’t then. Least, they might have sheltered in a cave when they found one, but Mad Dad told me the shelter they built was nothing but a bit of skin and a couple of branches against the wind.’
‘I bet he’s wrong. I’d like to meet your old Mad Dad and ask him how he knows all this, if it’s true they all died out sixty years after the first whites came.’
‘Stop arguing, you two. Come and see the moon rise!’
They hurried over, leaning out to watch the big yellow coin draw itself above the hard line of the hills. The night changed with its light; there was mystery in the dark places, but no stumbling now to dread down the rough track. Even Cherry grew excited about the coming adventure and was eager to leave the cave.
The night air touched with a cold hand the cheeks of the three who left the warmth of the fire. As they set off the moon cleared the entangling trees and swung free in the starry sky. They felt it exciting and glorious to be roaming free themselves at such a time, when the whole world seemed their own property.
With eyes shining in the moonlight, one behind the other, like goats, they followed the vague track their feet were forming down to the Homestead.
It proved to be a very good raid. Before the first bird-cries of dawn, a tired but jubilant party returned to the cave and decided on breakfast before sleep. Brick and Nippy were already awake and running round to inspect the bags of spoil. They had been roused by a song Nigel had composed on the way up, in honour of the occasion of their first night raid. It had been sung rather breathlessly to the only tune which Tas would admit he knew—‘Waltzing Matilda’—and these were the words:
‘Once a jolly cave-man, tired of drinking milky dope
Drawn in a bucket from his goats’ cave-pen,
Said (as he threw his dinner at his sister), “Nope!
Who’ll come a-raiding, a-raiding the hen?”’
At this point Brick and Nippy, having caught the words, shrieked delightedly from above:
‘And he said, as he threw his dinner at his sister, “Nope!
I’ll come a-raiding, a-raiding the hen.”
May we go, too, next time?’
9
The Coming of Mad Dad
‘The goats have gone! I can’t find them anywhere.’
‘Bother you, Cherry. Why can’t you look after them better?’ Nigel emerged grumbling from the cave; his bare arms were covered in dusty cement and his hands were plastered greyly. All day the men of the cave had been absorbed in the building of a low wall across the cave mouth, to give some protection against bad weather, and to provide seats for breakfast in the sun when it shone. With a bag of cement stolen from an outhouse, rocks, sand, and water from the tarn, they had almost finished the work when Cherry’s call disturbed them.
‘I think they must have gone downhill for a change,’ she explained.
Nigel turned abruptly and fetched the others, for this was serious news. It was now full spring, with the wattle a smother of ripe lemon flowers in every gully, and all the past weeks the ‘little ladies’ had filed in punctually each sundown to the milking cave. Never before had they delayed as late as this, when the top rocks were already colouring up their peculiar salmon shade from the reflection of the setting sun.
‘Have you tried Tarn’s End and High Crag?’ Brick enquired, using some of the names that were becoming fastened to various parts of their domain.
‘Yes, and Rocky Creek. I can’t think what’s the matter; I used to say they were a better clock than the sun, but I can’t hear a tinkle anywhere up there now.’
Tas came hurrying out. ‘Wait while I wash my hands. You finish the job with Brick, Nig. I reckon we’ll find them, Cherry and me. You and Nippy try the slope again, will you, Cherry? And I’ll go over the ridge and find their tracks if they have gone downhill towards the Homestead,’ he called.
Cherry turned rather wearily and plodded off in the old direction. After the warm day, birds, bees and animals of various kinds showed by little sounds that they were intensely alive, but nowhere was the busy hum increased by the tinkle of a goat bell. She only half listened to Nippy’s chatter about how he could mix concrete with his hands for Nigel. ‘Just with my bare hands, Cherry, and Old Nig said it was lots better than Brick’s; at least, he didn’t say so, but it was, because Brick tipped half the tarn into his mixture, the silly coot, thinking it would be easier to stir, see? Which just shows a man—’
‘Shut up a minute and listen. I’m sure I heard something just then.’
They stood poised on a shelf of rock and looked round. Tas had disappeared from sight and half the tarn was in shadow. Above was a thicket of gum saplings from which came, unmistakably, the noise of bells. One by one the goats filed into view, pausing behind their leader to take a snatch at a bough of pale gold wattle buds which pricked the sombre scrub with colour.
‘The goats! Ha ha! You must have looked hard, Cherry. You going blind as well as deaf? They must have been there all the time.’
‘They’ve never come in from this side before,’ she protested, running to them without waiting for the rest of Nippy’s remarks. Lily came up and nuzzled her hand and Cherry saw that her sides were heaving.
‘Go and find Tas,’ she called back. ‘Tell him they’re all here, but they have been chased by something; they’re panting and upset. Hurry up and tell him they’re found. I’ll go down with them and milk.’
There was no need to drive her flock, for the deer-like Lily trotted after her and the others followed, only pausing at their usual corner for a drink of tarn water. Inside the cave she found Nigel placing his last stones more by feel than by sight
, and whistling cheerfully.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘I heard you coming along with them.’
‘It looks an awful mess in here,’ she grumbled, for sand lay everywhere in sugar-bags and upon the floor, and Brick was collecting up odd stones, and trying to clean up a pool of water.
‘Who cares?’ Nigel stood up to ease his aching back and looked proudly at his work.
When Cherry returned with the milk he had one foot on the wall and was making a speech. ‘Ladies and, er—cave-woman and cave-men! In spite of drinking too much goat’s milk at the Special Luncheon you held in my honour today I am still able to declare this Wall Open—I mean Closed! And every stone well and truly laid except the ones Brick did.’
‘Shut up! No one asked you to make a speech, anyway. Ah, here they come. No, it’s only Nippy.’
‘Hullo, Nippy! (I’ll finish my speech later, dear friends.) Didn’t you find Tas?’
‘No. I looked and called everywhere. He must’ve gone right right down, so I came back as it was getting dark.’
‘You would. Why didn’t you shout?’
‘I did a bit. He didn’t answer, though.’
‘Well, to conclude our brief address: let your Pa Pinners do their worst! Naught shall make us rue, if cave-men to their cave remain but true. Did I hear loud applause?’
‘You did not.’
‘Now lift your toothmugs and sing this touching tribute (and chuck some wet bags over it, Brick, or it will dry out in cracks), the tune is “Pop Goes the Weasel” (and what about something to eat, Cherry? And throw us over that towel, someone).
‘Half a ton of pinched cement,
Half a pail of water,
Mix ’em up and make ’em nice
And—
‘Hullo!’ He stopped so abruptly that they all looked at him, not certain whether this was some new fooling or not. Nigel was standing tense and listening intently. They listened too, until they heard something which made them also rigid.
For there were voices coming up the track, voices in quiet conversation.
In a moment they found themselves along the new wall, heedless of the fresh cement, and peering into the half-dark bush to see who was coming.
There was Tas, of course, but the other figure emerging from the shadows and keeping close behind him—who was he?
‘It’s—Pa Pinner!’
‘It’s not—it can’t be.’
‘Is Tas mad? To bring him so near…’
‘They’ve stopped! Look—Tas is coming on alone. What on earth does he want?’
Tas came on until he stood beneath the cave. Then he called with his special whistle and looked up. Seeing their faces dimly as they leaned out, he asked quite loudly, ‘D’you blokes mind if I bring a friend along?’
There was a stupefied silence till Nigel broke it. ‘Would he be safe, Tas? I mean safe not to tell anyone?’ he whispered.
‘’Course he is! Did the goats come in all right?’
‘Yes,’ Cherry whispered down urgently, ‘but they were frightened, as though they’d been chased, Tas.’
‘That’s all right, they only saw my friend, I reckon. I’ll bring him up then.’ Turning, he left them to their astonished guessing.
Bush and shadows merged into a curtain to conceal the track, and the last primrose streaks of light in the west were too far away to help them learn more about this friend that Tas was leading up the Giant Steps.
‘I’ll slip out and get an eyeful as they come over the ridge,’ Nippy cried excitedly, but Nigel would allow no such spying.
‘Tas will think we don’t trust him. You get some more logs and stir up the fire instead,’ he commanded.
In the few minutes left to them a wonderful tidying went on, bags were thrown over the mess by the wall, the stone table was set for a meal, and a lighted candle placed in the middle. As the fire blazed up, the cave looked warm and inviting.
A strange voice could be heard admiring the goats in the outer cave, but Nigel would not allow anyone to go even as far as this to satisfy an urgent curiosity. They stood, awkwardly waiting, like nervous hosts before a party, Cherry trying to comb her hair with her fingers, and Brick to replace a broken piece of string which had once held his shirt together.
‘Here we are,’ Tas called cheerily, as he led the way in.
He was followed by a bent old man, with a gentle face framed in straggling white hair—hair that grew down his cheeks and ended in a wisp of beard. Nippy gave one look at him and gulped, biting his thumb to prevent an explosion of mirth.
Even Cherry had difficulty in keeping her face straight, for this face was just the face of a goat; a kind, thoughtful leader of the herd, complete to the last wisp of white hair under his chin. Then she met his twinkling blue eyes for a second and no longer wished to laugh. She understood why Nigel came forward so politely to offer a log for a chair, and called him ‘sir’.
‘“Sir”?—“Sir”?’ The stranger chuckled before Tas could speak, ‘He mustn’t call old Mad Dad “sir” must he, Tas? No! Not in our democratic country.’
‘Dunno,’ grinned Tas, glancing at him shrewdly as he helped him off with his pack. ‘Reckon a good few called you “sir” once, didn’t they, if you give us the dinkum oil?’
‘Ah, well—maybe, maybe—some boys perhaps, if you insist upon the truth. But that’s my little secret—eh?—just as your domestic arrangements up here’—he glanced with approval round the firelit cave—‘are your own. Be sure I shall betray them to no one, my friends.’ His keen eyes darted round the circle and it seemed to Cherry he was really saying, ‘Please trust me. I respect a secret because I have one myself.’
Nigel nodded slowly, still watching him. ‘That’s all right. Tas says you’re his friend. He’s often told us about you.’
‘Has he? Then at least you knew old Mad Dad Williams by name—as I know you! Over there, wondering if I am a spy in disguise, stands the Black-Haired Chief with the Singing Voice—Nigel or “Old Nig”. Am I right? Next to him is a Brick that is never dropped; and beyond, somebody called Nippy, given to decorating the cave walls with pictures of wild beasts, just as his far-off ancestors were wont to do with theirs…yes, yes!’ His eyes blinked at the far wall, and an old hand, trembling slightly, picked up a twist of bark and with it stirred the fire to a fresh spurt of light, so that Nippy’s charcoal drawings, made with a burnt stick, showed up bravely.
‘Is that a mastodon I see, or a dinosaur? Those tusks, now—or is it a trunk?’
‘Those aren’t tusks or trunks—those are whiskers,’ protested Nippy indignantly. ‘Can’t you see those are drawings of my cat, Fluffles?’
They felt more at ease after laughing at Nippy and his Art, and then Tas turned the tables on his friend by asking why he hadn’t included Cherry in his inventory.
‘Ah, a girl,’ twinkled the old man, ‘but I hardly recognized her; I know so little about the species. Ask me instead the habits of the platypus, iguana, or echidna and I’ll discuss them with you all night; but a girl—no!’ And then he smiled at her and added, ‘Of course I knew why the cave was so bright and homelike, though.’
In a very short time they felt they knew him well, though he certainly disliked being questioned about himself. For instance, there was the fireplace. It seemed to interest him very much, especially the way Tas had rebuilt the chimney to allow smoke to escape more quickly through to the outside. Tas glanced up sharply as Mad Dad stood examining it and said, ‘So you knew it wasn’t like this when we came, eh Dad? Reckon you’ve been inside this cave before, haven’t you?’
The old man’s only reply was to talk hard to Brick about firewood, and whether she-oak or wattle gave out the greatest heat. For a time he ignored Tas altogether.
As the days passed they found him mysterious in other ways. He accepted gladly their warm invitation to stay and rest, before pushing on across the ranges to his own lonely hut, and he was most friendly and helpful. He improved the table and added to its length, made rough be
nches of saplings for either side, brought rabbits for the stew pot, and taught them many bush ways. He also shared with them a special kind of rather bitter chocolate in a blue wrapper, which he said he lived on.
Yet one evening, when they had all looked forward to sitting round the fire roasting some ‘pinched’ potatoes and listening to his yarns, he failed them.
Cherry blamed Brick, though she admitted to herself she had noticed how restless Mad Dad had been all through the evening meal. He had eaten bread and goats’ milk cheese away from the fine new table, standing at the mouth of the cave watching for the moon to rise. Still, Brick should not have asked him—despite a scowl from Tas—why he wandered about as he did all over the bush. ‘Are you looking for something?’ asked Brick—a question which had nearly bubbled out before.
‘Eh?…I go wherever the anaspides—the mountain shrimps—are to be found. Didn’t Tas tell you?’ He stirred his tea and carried it to the new wall as he spoke. ‘Think—just think of it! Picture, children, all the learned men poking about with fossils—see them? Peering through glasses in all the museums to classify the fossil print of one tiny creature supposedly extinct many thousand years ago; yes, dead and done for twenty thousand or so years before our time; and all of them wrong! Quite wrong, for here he’s been quietly swimming all this time—suddenly discovered in our own wonderful little Island, very much alive and kicking in the high pools and mountain creeks.’
‘Not up here—not in our own tarn?’
‘Yes, lots of ’em. Haven’t you noticed? I’ll show you in the morning.’
‘Couldn’t we see tonight?’ demanded Nippy, prepared to dash out then and there. ‘The moon is full, and look!—it’s coming up behind the trees across the valley now.’