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

about repeating, except in a shearers’ hut or a gentlemen’s smoking-room.

“Shadowed you chaps,” remarked Stevenson, replying to the bullock drivers’ look of inquiry. And he also applied himself to the kindling of a small fire.

“Jis’ missed my ole camp by about ten chain!” cheerfully observed Saunders, entering the arena with a billy in one hand and a small calico bag in the other. “I was makin’ for her when when I heard you (fellows) talkin’. More the merrier, I s’pose.” And he set about making a third little fire.

“Gittin’ out with loadin’, Helsmok?” asked Donovan, while we waited the boiling of the billies.

“Yoos gittin’ dan mit der las’ wool,” replied the Dutchman. “I make der slow yourney; but, by yingo, I mus’ save der horses.”

“Ought to change that name of yours, Jan,” remarked Thompson, with real sincerity. “It’s an infernal name for children to hear.”

“Literally so,” commented Stevenson.

“Alter it to John Sulphur-Burnin’,” suggested Baxter.

“How’d Jack Brimstone-Reek do?” asked Donovan.

“Give it the aristocratic touch,” proposed Stevenson. “Sign yourself Jean Fumée de l’Enfer.”

“Why not the scientific turn?” I asked. “Make it Professor John OxySulphuret, F.R.S.⁠—Foreigner Rastling for Selebrity.”

“My idear’s Blue Blazes,” put in Saunders bluntly.

“Tank you, yentlemen,” replied the genial Mynheer. “Mineself, I enyoy der yoke. Bot I am brout of my name. Mit mine forefadders, it have strock der yolly goot fear of Gott into der Spaniar’ und der English.”

“No wonder,” sighed Thompson, purposely misconstruing the honest vindication. “And it’ll have the same effect on anybody that considers it properly. But for that very reason, it’s not a decent name.”

“It is ein olt name, Domson,” argued the Dutchman.

“Old enough,” rejoined Thompson gloomily. “It was to the fore when Satan was slung out of heaven; and it’ll be going as strong as ever when we’re trying to give an account of ourselves. It won’t be a joking matter then.”

Nor was it any longer a joking-matter for our assembly. Soon, however, the billies were taken off the fires, and spiritual apprehension forthwith gave place to physical indulgence.

After supper, we adjourned to the open plain. The night was delicious; and for half-an-hour the congress was governed by that dignified silence which backcountry men appreciate so highly, yet so unconsciously. Then the contemplative quiet of our synod was broken by the vigorous barking of Saunders’ dog, at a solitary box tree, indicating a possum tree’d in full sight.

“Gostruth, that ’on’t do!” muttered the fencer, hastily starting toward the dog. “That’s visible to the naked eye about three mile on a night like now.”

“Recalls the most perfect pun within my knowledge,” remarked Stevenson. “A lady, travelling by coach, had a pet dog, which annoyed her fellow-passengers till one of them remonstrated. ‘I’m surprised that you don’t like my dog,’ says the lady; ‘he’s a real Peruvian.’ ‘We don’t object to your Peruvian dog,’ says the passenger, ‘but we wish he would give us less of his Peruvian bark.’ ”

Before our company had recovered from the painful constraint induced by this unfathomable joke, Saunders resumed his place, holding the dog by a saddlestrap taken from his own equator.

“Dead spit of my poor old Monkey,” remarked Thompson sadly, as he caressed the dog. “Never felt the thing that’s on me more distinctly than when I lost poor Monkey.”

“Well, I offered you a fiver for him,” rejoined Donovan. “Never know’d a man to have luck with a thing that he’d refused a good bid for. Picked up a bait, I s’pose?”

“Monkey would never have stayed with you,” replied Thompson. “That dog would have broke his heart if he’d been parted from me. Tell you how I lost him. Last winter, when I was loaded-out for Kenilworth⁠—where I met Cooper⁠—you might remember it was dry, and frosty, and miserable, and the country as bare as a stockyard; and mostly everybody loafing on Kooltopa. Well, I dodged round by Yoongoolee, stealing a bite of grass here, and a bite there; and travelling by myself, so as not to be worth ordering-off the runs; and staying with the bullocks every night, and keeping them in decent fettle, considering.

“So, one evening, I left the wagon on that bit of red ground at the Fifteen-mile Gate, and tailed the bullocks down in the dark to sample the grass in Old Sollicker’s horse-paddock. About eleven at night, when the first of them began to lie-down, I shifted the lot to an open place, so as to have them all together when they got full. I was in bodily fear of losing some of them among the lignum, in the dark; for it’s a hanging-matter to duff in a horsepaddock on Yoongoolee. I knew Old Sollicker was as regular as clockwork, and I was safe till sunrise; so I intended to rouse-up the bullocks just before daylight, to lay in a fresh supply. In the meantime, I settled myself down for a sleep.”

“Where was the (adj.) dog?” asked Baxter.

“Rolled up in the blanket with me, I tell you; and we both slept like the dead⁠—”

“Owing to having no fleas on you?” suggested Stevenson.

“Don’t know what was the cause; but the thing that woke me was the jingle of a Barwell horse-bell on one side, and the rattle of a bridle on the other. Sure enough, there was the sun half-an-hour high, and Old Sollicker about thirty yards off, and here on the other side was his two horses dodging away from him; and me in a belt of lignum, halfway between; and my twenty bullocks, as bold as brass, all feeding together in the open, a bit to the left of the horses. It was plain to be seen that the old fellow hadn’t caught sight of the bullocks on account of the belt of lignum where I was planted; but he was making for an openish place, not twenty yards ahead of him, and when he got there it would be all up. So I grabbed hold of Monkey, and fired him at the horses. He was there! He went like a boomerang when I