After a long hunt Mac recovered it and stood looking dejectedly at
the ruins of his cookery - a heap of flat, stodgy-looking slabs. "Must
have been sitting on 'em all night," he said, "and there's no other bread
for breakfast."
There was no doubt that we must eat them or go without bread of any kind;
but as we sat tugging at the gluey guttapercha-like substance, Mac's
sense of humour revived. "Didn't I tell you I was slap-up at Johnny
cakes?" he chuckled, adding with further infinitely more humorous
chuckles: "You mightn't think it; but I really am." Then he pointed to
Jackeroo, who was watching in bewilderment while the Maluka hunted for
the crispest crust, not for himself, but the woman. "White fellow big
fellow fool all right! eh, Jackeroo?" he asked, and Jackeroo openly
agreed with us.
Finding the black soil flats impassable after the deluge, Mac left the
track, having decided to stick to the ridges all day; and all that had
gone before was smoothness itself in comparison to what was in store.
All day the buck-board rocked and bumped through the timber, and the
Maluka, riding behind, from time to time pointed out the advantages of
travelling across country, as we bounced about the buck-board like rubber
balls: "There's so little chance of getting stiff with sitting still."
Every time we tried to answer him we bit our tongues as the buck-board
leapt over the tussocks of grass. Once we managed to call back, "You
won't feel the journey in a buck-board." Then an overhanging bough
threatening to wipe us out of our seats, Mac shouted, "Duck!" and as we
"ducked" the buck-board skimmed between two trees, with barely an inch to
spare.
"I'm a bit of a Jehu all right!" Mac shouted triumphantly. "It takes
judgment to do the thing in style"; and the next moment, swinging round a
patch of scrub, we flew off at a tangent to avoid a fallen tree, crashing
through its branches and grinding over an out-crop of ironstone to miss a
big boulder just beyond the tree. It undoubtedly took judgment this
"travelling across country along the ridges"; but the keen, alert bushman
never hesitated as he swung in and out and about the timber, only once
miscalculating the distance between trees, when he was obliged to back
out again. Of course we barked trees constantly, but Mac called that
"blazing a track for the next travellers," and everywhere the bush
creatures scurried out of our way; and when I expressed fears for the
springs, Mac reassured me by saying a buck-board had none, excepting
those under the seat.
If Mac was a "bit of a Jehu," he certainly was a "dead homer," for after
miles of scrub and grass and timber, we came out at our evening camp at
the Bitter Springs, to find the Head Stockman there, with his faithful,
tawny-coloured shadow, "Old Sool em," beside him.
Dog and man greeted us sedately, and soon Dan had a billy boiling for us,
and a blazing fire, and accepted an invitation to join us at supper and
"bring something in the way of bread along with him."
With a commonplace remark about the trip out, he placed a crisp, newly
baked damper on the tea-towel that acted as supper cloth; but when we all
agreed that he was "real slap-up at damper making," he scented a joke and
shot a quick, questioning glance around; then deciding that it was wiser
not to laugh at all than to laugh in the wrong place, he only said, he
was "not a bad hand at the damper trick." Dan liked his jokes well
labelled when dealing with the unknown Woman.
He was a bushman of the old type, one of the men of the droving days;
full of old theories, old faiths, and old prejudices, and clinging always
to old habits and methods. Year by year as the bush had receded and
shrunk before the railways, he had receded with it, keeping always just
behind the Back of Beyond, droving, bullock-punching, stock-keeping, and
unconsciously opening up the way for that very civilisation that was
driving him farther and farther back. In the forty years since his
boyhood railways had driven him out of Victoria, New South Wales and
Queensland, and were now threatening even the Never-Never, and Dan was
beginning to fear that they would not leave "enough bush to bury a man
in."
Enough bush to bury a man in! That's all these men of the droving days
have ever asked of their nation and yet without them the pioneers would
have been tied hand and foot, and because of them Australia is what it
is.
"Had a good trip out?" Dan asked, feeling safe on that subject, and
appeared to listen to the details of the road with interest; but all the
time the shrewd hazel eyes were upon me, drawing rapid conclusions, and I
began to feel absurdly anxious to know their verdict. That was not to
come before bedtime; and only those who knew the life of the stations in
the Never-Never know how much was depending on the stockmen's verdict.
Dan had his own methods of dealing with the Unknown Woman. Forty years
out-bush had convinced him that "most of 'em were the right sort," but it
had also convinced him that "you had to take 'em all differently," and he
always felt his way carefully, watching and waiting, ready to open out at
the first touch of fellowship and understanding, but just as ready to
withdraw into himself at the faintest approach to a snub.
