Such Is Life Joseph Furphy (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📖

he’ll settle with you any time you call. Also there’s a letter for you at Lochleven Station. Two items.”

“I’m very much obliged to you for your trouble, Collins,” replied Alf, with a shade less of moroseness in his tone.

“Well, take care o’ yourself, ole son; you ain’t always got me to look after you,” said Mosey pleasantly; and we turned our horses and rode away. “Evil-natured beggar, that,” he continued. “He’s floggin’ the cat now, ’cos he laid us on to the selection in spite of his self. If that feller don’t go to the bottomless for his disagreeableness, there’s somethin’ radic’ly wrong about Providence. I’m a great believer in Providence, myself, Tom; an’ what’s more, I try to live up to my (adj.) religion. I’m sure I don’t want to see any pore (fellow) chained up in fire an’ brimstone for millions o’ millions o’ years, an’ a worm tormentin’ him besides; but I don’t see what the (adj. sheol) else they can do with Alf. Awful to think of it.” Mosey sighed piously, then resumed, “Grand dog you got since I seen you last. Found the (animal), I s’pose?”

“No, Mosey. Bought him fair.”

“Jist so, jist so. You ought to give him to me. He’s bound to pick up a bait with you; you’re sich a careless etc., etc.” And so the conversation ran on the subject of dogs during the return ride.

On our reaching the wagons, it was unanimously resolved that the selection should be patronised. This being so, there was no hurry⁠—rather the reverse⁠—for the selection was not to be reached till dusk.

You will understand that the bullock drivers’ choice of accommodation lay between the selection, the ram-paddock, and a perisher on the plain. The selection was four or five miles ahead; the near corner of the ram-paddock about two miles farther still; whilst a perisher on the plain is seldom hard to find in a bad season, when the country is stocked for good seasons. Runnymede home station⁠—Mooney and Montgomery, owners; J. G. Montgomery, managing partner⁠—was a mile or so beyond the further corner of the ram-paddock, and was the central source of danger.

Presently the tea leaves were thrown out of the billies; the tuckerboxes were packed on the pole-fetchels; and the teams got under way. Thompson pressed me to camp with him and Cooper for the night, and I readily consented; thus temporarily eluding a fatality which was in the habit of driving me from any given direction to Runnymede homestead⁠—a fatality which, I trust, I shall have no farther occasion to notice in these pages.

We therefore tied Fancy beside Thompson’s horse at the rear of his wagon, and disposed Bunyip’s packsaddle and load on the top of the wool; the horse, of course, following Fancy according to his daily habit.

A quarter of a mile of stiff pulling through the sand of the pine-ridge, and the plain opened out again. A short, dark, irregular line, cleanly separated from the horizon by the wavy glassiness of the lower air, indicated the clump of box on the selection, four miles ahead; and this comprised the landscape.

Soon we became aware of two teams coming to meet us; then three horsemen behind, emerging from the pine-ridge we had left. As the horsemen gradually decreased their distance, the teams met and passed us without salutation; sullenly drawing off the track, in the deference always conceded to wool. Victorian poverty spoke in every detail of the working plant; Victorian energy and greed in the unmerciful loads of salt and wire, for the scrub country out back. The Victorian carrier, formidable by his lack of professional etiquette and his extreme thrift, is neither admired nor caressed by the somewhat select practitioners of Riverina.

Then the three horsemen overtook Cooper, pausing a little, after the custom of the country, to gossip with him as they passed. According to another custom of the country, Thompson, Willoughby and I began to criticise them.

“I know the bloke with the linen coat,” remarked Thompson. “His name’s M’Nab; he’s a contractor. That half-caste has been with him for years, tailing horses and so forth, for his tucker and rags. Mac’s no great chop.”

“He lets his man Friday have the best horse, at all events,” said I. “Grand-looking beast, that black one the half-caste is riding.”

“By Jove, yes,” replied Willoughby. “Now, Thompson⁠—referring to the discussion we had this morning⁠—that is the class of horse we mount in our light cavalry.”

“And that strapping redheaded galoot, riding the bag of bones beside him, is what you would call excellent war-material?” I suggested.

“Precisely, Mr. Collins,” replied the whaler. “Nature produces such men expressly for rank and file; and I should imagine that their existence furnishes sufficient rejoinder to the levelling theory.”

“Quite possible the chap’s as good as either of you,” remarked Thompson, seizing the opportunity for reproof. “Do you know anything against him?”

“Well, to quote Madame de Staël,” replied Willoughby; “he abuses a man’s privilege of being ugly.”

“Moreover, he has left undone a thing that he ought to have done,” I rejoined. “He ought to be taking a spell of carrying that mare. And pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy”⁠ ⁠…

“ ’Day, chaps,” said Rufus, as he joined us. “Keep on your pins, you beggar⁠—” and he drove both spurs into his mare’s shrinking flanks. “Grey mare belongs to you, boss⁠—don’t she?⁠—an’ the black moke with the Roman nose follerin’? I was thinkin’ we might manage to knock up some sort o’ swap. Now this mare’s a Patriarch, she is; and you mightn’t think it. I won this here saddle with her at a bit of a meetin’ las’ week, an’ rode her my own self⁠—an’ that’s oc’lar demonster. I tell you, if this here mare had a week spell, you couldn’t hold her; an’ she’d go a hundred mile between sunrise an’ sunset, at the same bat. Yes, boss; it’s the breed does it. I seen some good horses about the King, but swelp me Gawd I never seen