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

a while it looked any odds on the cow; then she slackened pace, wheeled round, and bolted back to the bamboos. They found Tommy very excited. He had used about eighteen cartridges, and had nothing to show for it.

“That’s the most underhand cow ever I seen!” said Tommy. “She runs into them there bamboos and pretends she’s going to run right clean through to Queensland, and when I go in after her, she wheels round and hunts me for my life. Near had me twice, she did. Every time I fire the old carbine, it jams, and I have to get the rod to it. Gimme your rifle, Walter, and I’ll go in and finish her.”

“She must have a lead mine in her already,” said the shooter. “Mind she don’t ketch you, Tommy.”

Tommy went in, but couldn’t find a sign of the cow. While they were talking she had slipped along the belt of bamboos, and was then, no doubt, waiting for a chance to rush somebody. As no one cared to chance riding on to her in that jungle, she escaped with the honours of war. The other shooter came up, having shot nine, and reported that Considine had had a fall; his horse, not being used to the country, had plunged up to his shoulders in a concealed buffalo-wallow, and turned right over on him. Luckily, the buffalo he was after was well ahead, and did not turn to charge him, but he was very much shaken; when he came up, however, he insisted on going on. They set to work to find the rest of the dead buffaloes⁠—no easy matter in that long grass⁠—and all hands commenced skinning. This job kept them till noonday, when they camped under some trees for their midday meal, hobbling the horses. Then they rested for an hour or two, packed the hides on the packhorses (and heavily loaded they were, each hide weighing about a hundredweight), and went back to the hunt, scanning the plain carefully.

They were all riding together through a belt of timber, the blacks and the Chinaman being well up with the packhorses, when suddenly the blacks burst out with great excitement.

“Buff’lo! Buff’lo!”

Sure enough, a huge blue bull⁠—a regular old patriarch, that had evidently been hunted out of a herd, and was camping by himself in the timber⁠—made a rush out of some thick trees, and set off towards a dense jungle, that could be seen half a mile or so away. Hugh and Considine were nearest him, each with his rifle ready, and started after him together, full gallop through the timber. The old man was evidently anxious to make up for his morning’s failure, and to take Hugh down a peg, for he set a fearful pace through the trees, grazing one and gliding under the boughs of another as only a trained bush-rider can. Hugh, coming from the mountains, was no duffer in timbered country either, and the two of them went at a merry pace for a while. The bull was puzzled by having two pursuers, and often in swerving from one or the other would hit a tree with his huge horns, and fairly bounce off it. He never attempted to turn, but kept straight on, and they drew on to him in silence, almost side by side, riding jealously for the first shot. Considine was on the wrong side, and had to use the carbine on the near side of his horse; but he was undeniably a good rider, and laughed grimly as he got first alongside, and, leaning over, prepared to fire. Then a strange thing happened. Before he could fire, the buffalo bull tripped on a stump and fell on his knees, causing Considine’s horse to shoot almost past him. As the bull rose again, he sprang savagely sideways, bringing his huge head up from beneath, and fairly impaled the horse on his horn. It gave a terrible scream, and reared over.

The old man never lost his nerve. Almost as he fell he fired down into the buffalo’s shoulder, but the bullet had no effect. Man and horse were fetched smashing to the ground, the man pinned under the horse’s body. The bull hesitated a second before hurling himself upon the two; and in that second Hugh jumped from his horse, ran up, stood over the fallen man, holding out the rifle like a pistol with the muzzle an inch off the bull’s head, and fired. A buffalo’s skull is an inch and a half thick, solid bone, as hard as granite; but a Martini carbine, sighted for a thousand yards, will pierce it like paper at short range. The smoke had not cleared away when the huge beast fell to the ground within two feet of his intended victims. Hugh pulled Considine from under the horse. The unfortunate beast struggled to his feet, with blood gushing from a terrible wound in the belly, ran fifty yards, and fell dead.

The old man looked round him in silence. “Serve me damn well right,” he said at last. “I ought to have got the other side of the buffalo!”

Not another word did he say, as he transferred his saddle to one of the blacks’ horses. But in the camp, that night, the old man came over to Hugh holding a paper in his hand.

“I’ve got something for you,” he said. “Here’s the certificate of my weddin’ with Peggy Donohoe. The parson gev us each one. That ought to do you, oughtn’t it? I’ll come down with you, as soon as you like, and give all the evidence you want. I’ll chance how I get on with Peg. I’ll divorce her, or poison her, or get shut of her somehow. But after what you done today I’m on Grant’s side, I am.”

And off he stalked to bed, while Hugh talked long with Tommy Prince and the buffalo-shooters of the best way to get down to the wire and send the news of his