While the Billy Boils

You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as “An old mate of your father’s on the diggings, Johnny.” And he would pat our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls⁠—as the case may have been⁠—and that we had our father’s nose but our mother’s eyes, or the other way about; and say that the baby was the dead spit of its mother, and then added, for father’s benefit: “But yet he’s like you, Tom.” It did seem strange to the children to hear him address the old man by his Christian name⁠—considering that the mother always referred to him as “Father.” She called the old mate Mr. So-and-so, and father called him Bill, or something to that effect.

“But then, you see, it don’t look well, you know.”

“Ah! I thought we’d get to it at last.”

The traveller upended his bluey against his knee, gave it an affectionate pat, and then straightened himself up and looked fixedly at the cabman.

“Now, look here!” he said, sternly and impressively, “can you see anything wrong with that old swag o’ mine?”

It was a stout, dumpy swag, with a red blanket outside, patched with blue, and the edge of a blue blanket showing in the inner rings at the end. The swag might have been newer; it might have been cleaner; it might have been hooped with decent straps, instead of bits of clothesline and greenhide⁠—but otherwise there was nothing the matter with it, as swags go.

“I’ve humped that old swag for years,” continued the bushman; “I’ve carried that old swag thousands of miles⁠—as that old dog knows⁠—an’ no one ever bothered about the look of it, or of me, or of my old dog, neither; and do you think I’m going to be ashamed of that old swag, for a cabby or anyone else? Do you think I’m going to study anybody’s feelings? No one ever studied mine! I’m in two minds to summon you for using insulting language towards me!”

He lifted the swag by the twisted towel which served for a shoulder-strap, swung it into the cab, got in himself and hauled the dog after him.

“You can drive me somewhere where I can leave my swag and dog while I get some decent clothes to see a tailor in,” he said to the cabman. “My old dog ain’t used to cabs, you see.”

Stiffner and Jim (Thirdly, Bill)

We were tramping down in Canterbury, Maoriland, at the time, swagging it⁠—me and Bill⁠—looking for work on the new railway line. Well, one afternoon, after a long, hot tramp, we comes to Stiffner’s Hotel⁠—between Christchurch and that other place⁠—I forget the name of it⁠—with throats on us like sunstruck bones, and not the price of a stick of tobacco.

We had to have a drink, anyway, so we chanced it. We walked right into the bar, handed over our swags, put up four drinks, and tried to look as if we’d just drawn our cheques and didn’t care a curse for any man. We looked solvent enough, as far as swagmen go. We were dirty and haggard and ragged and tired-looking, and that was all the more reason why we might have our cheques all right.

This Stiffner was a hard customer. He’d been a spieler, fighting man, bush parson, temperance preacher, and a policeman, and a commercial traveller, and everything else that was damnable; he’d been a journalist, and an editor; he’d been a lawyer, too. He was an ugly brute to look at, and uglier to have a row with⁠—about six-foot-six, wide in proportion, and stronger than Donald Dinnie.

He was meaner than a goldfield Chinaman, and sharper than a sewer rat: he wouldn’t give his own father a feed, nor lend him a sprat⁠—unless some safe person backed the old man’s I.O.U.

Macquarie the shearer had met with an accident. To tell the truth, he had been in a drunken row at a wayside shanty, from which he had escaped with three fractured ribs, a cracked head, and various minor abrasions. His dog, Tally, had been a sober but savage participator in the drunken row, and had escaped with a broken leg. Macquarie afterwards shouldered his swag and staggered and struggled along the track ten miles to the Union Town hospital. Lord knows how he did it. He didn’t exactly know himself. Tally limped behind all the way, on three legs.

The doctors examined the man’s injuries and were surprised at his endurance. Even doctors are surprised sometimes⁠—though they don’t always show it. Of course they would take him in, but they objected to Tally. Dogs were not allowed on the premises.

“You will have to turn that dog out,” they said to the shearer, as he sat on the edge of a bed.

Macquarie said nothing.

“We cannot allow dogs about the place, my man,” said the doctor in a louder tone, thinking the man was deaf.

“Tie him up in the yard then.”

“No. He must go out. Dogs are not permitted on the grounds.”

Macquarie rose slowly to his feet, shut his agony behind his set teeth, painfully buttoned his shirt over his hairy chest, took up his waistcoat, and staggered to the corner where the swag lay.

“What are you going to do?” they asked.

“You ain’t going to let my dog stop?”

“No. It’s against the rules. There are no dogs allowed on premises.”

The two-roomed house is built of round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with split slabs. A big bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the house itself, veranda included.

Bush all round⁠—bush with no horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance. The bush consists of stunted, rotten native apple-trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye save the darker green of a few sheoaks which are sighing above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilization⁠—a shanty on the main road.

The drover, an ex-squatter, is away with sheep. His wife and children are left here alone.

Four ragged, dried-up-looking children are playing about the house. Suddenly one of them yells: “Snake! Mother, here’s a snake!”

The gaunt, sun-browned bushwoman dashes from the kitchen, snatches her baby from the ground, holds it on her left hip, and reaches for a stick.

“Where is it?”

“Here! Gone into the wood-heap!” yells the eldest boy⁠—a sharp-faced urchin of eleven. “Stop there, mother! I’ll have him. Stand back! I’ll have the beggar!”

“Tommy, come here, or you’ll be bit. Come here at once when I tell you, you little wretch!”

The youngster comes reluctantly, carrying a stick bigger than himself. Then he yells, triumphantly:

“There it goes⁠—under the house!” and darts away with club uplifted. At the same time the big, black, yellow-eyed dog-of-all-breeds, who has shown the wildest interest in the proceedings, breaks his chain and rushes after that snake.