An Outback Marriage Banjo Paterson (philippa perry book .txt) 📖

elbow and another shovin’ behind. I’d sooner do a five-stretch than take Peggy back again. And that’s the beginning and the end and the middle of it. And now I’ll wish you good night.” XXVI The Saving of Considine

At grey dawn all the camp was astir. Hugh looked from under his mosquito-net, and saw old Considine over the fire, earnestly frying a large hunk of buffalo meat. He was without a trouble in the world as he turned the hissing steak in the pan. Two black gins in brief garments⁠—a loin cloth and a villainously dirty pyjama-jacket each⁠—were sitting near him, languidly killing the mosquitoes which settled on their bare legs. These were Maggie and Lucy, but they had degenerated with their surroundings. Tommy Prince was oiling a carbine, and one of the shooters was washing his face at a basin formed by scratching a small hole in the ground and pressing a square of canvas into the depression.

The Chinese skinner was sitting on a log, rubbing a huge butcher’s knife on a sharpening stone. Away up the plain the horses, about thirty or forty in number, were slowly trooping into camp, hunted by a couple of blackfellows, naked except for little grass armlets worn above the elbow, and sticks stuck through their noses. When the horses reached the camp they formed a squadron under the shade of some trees, and pushed and shoved and circled about, trying to keep the flies off themselves and each other.

Hugh walked over to Tommy Prince at his rifle-oiling, and watched him for a while. That worthy, who was evidently a true sportsman at heart, was liberally baptising with Rangoon oil an old and much rusted Martini carbine, whose ejector refused to work. Every now and then, when he thought he had got it shipshape, Tommy would put in a fresh cartridge, hold the carbine tightly to his shoulder, shut his eyes, and fire it into space. The rusty old weapon kicked frightfully, after each discharge the ejector jammed, and Tommy ruefully poked the exploded cartridge out with a rod and poured on more oil.

“Blast the carbine!” said Tommy. “It kicks upwards like; it’s kicking my nose all skewwhiff.”

“Don’t put it to your shoulder, you fool,” said one of the shooters; “it’ll kick your head off. Hold it out in one hand.”

“Then it’ll kick my arm off,” said Tommy.

“No, it won’t; you won t feel it at all,” said the shooter. “Your arm will give to the recoil. Blaze away!”

“What are you up to with the carbine?” said Hugh.

“I’m going to have a blaze at some of these ’ere buff’loes,” said Tommy gaily. “Bill’s lent me a horse. They’s got a rifle for you, and one for the old man. ‘We’ll give them buff’loes hell today. Five rifles⁠—they’ll think the French is after them.’ ” “Well, but I want to get back,” said Hugh. “We mustn’t waste any time. What about the storekeeper’s horses?”

“Ho! it’d never do to take them straight back again,” said Tommy. “Never do. They must have a spell. Besides, what’s the hurry?”

And Hugh, recognising that for all the good he could do he might just as well not hurry back again, resigned himself to the inevitable, picked up his bridle, went into the shuffling herd of horses, and caught the one pointed out to him. It was a big, rawboned, ragged-hipped bay, a horse that would have been a gentleman under any other conditions, but from long buffalo-hunting had become a careless-going, loose-jointed ruffian, taking his life in his hands every day. He bit savagely at Hugh as he saddled him, and altogether proclaimed himself devoid of self-respect and the finer instincts.

Breakfast was despatched almost in silence. The shooters knew vaguely that Hugh’s visit was in some way connected with Considine, and that Considine had refused to do what Hugh wanted. But the hospitality of the buffalo camp is as the hospitality of the Arabs of old⁠—the stranger is made welcome whatever his business, and may come and go unquestioned.

Hugh had little desire to talk on the subject of his visit, and Considine maintained a dogged silence. Tommy Prince alone chatted away affably between large mouthfuls of buffalo beef, damper, and tea, airing his views on all subjects, but principally on the fair sex. Meanwhile the blacks were catching the packhorses, and sharpening their skinning knives. The two horses used by the shooters were brought over to the camp fire and given a small feed each of much-prized maize and oats and bran, that had been brought round in the lugger from Port Faraway with the camp supplies, landed on the riverbank twelve miles off, and fetched in on packhorses.

“A little more beef, Mister? No? Well, all aboard for the Buffalo Brigade! That’s your rifle by the tree. Put this cartridge-belt on and buckle it real tight; if you leave it loose, when you start to gallop it will shake up and down, and shake the soul out of you. Come, Paddy, what are you riding?”

“I’m going to ride the boco.”1

“I wouldn’t if I was you. He’s all right to race up to a buffalo, but that blind eye of his’ll fetch him to grief some day. Ride the old grey.”

“No fear,” said the old man obstinately, “the boco’s one eye’s worth any horse’s two. Me an’ the boco will be near the lead when the whips are crackin’, take it from me.”

“Come along, then!”

Hugh clambered on to his rawboned steed, known as “Close Up,” because he would go so close to the buffaloes, and the procession started. The five white men rode ahead, all smoking with great enjoyment. Hugh was beside one of the shooters, and opened conference with him.

“I’ve heard a lot about this business,” said Hugh, “but never hoped to see it. What are these Australian buffaloes? I thought they were just humped cattle like those little Brahmin cattle.”

“People reckon they’re the Indian buffalo,” said the bushman. “They were fetched