The conversation promised to suit him exactly.
"Never got farther than the dog myself," he said. "Did I Sool'em, old
girl?" But Sool'em becoming effusive there was a pause until she could
be persuaded that "nobody wanted none of her licking tricks." As she
subsided Dan went on with his thoughts uninterrupted: "I've seen others
at the guidwife business, though, and it didn't seem too bad, but I never
struck it in a camp before. There was Mrs. Bob now. You've heard me
tell of her? I don't know how it was, but while she was out at the
"Downs" things seemed different. She never interfered and we went on just
the same, but everything seemed different somehow."
The Maluka suggested that perhaps he had "got farther than the dog"
without knowing it, and the idea appearing to Dan, he "reckoned it must
have been that." But his whimsical mood had slipped away, as it usually
did when his thoughts strayed to Mrs. Bob; and he went on earnestly,
"She was the right sort if ever there was one. I know 'em, and she was
one of 'em. When you were all right you told her yarns, and she'd enjoy
'em more'n you would yourself, which is saying something; but when you
were off the track a bit you told her other things, and she'd heave you
on again. See her with the sick travellers!" And then he stopped
unexpectedly as his voice became thick and husky.
Camp-fire conversations have a trick of coming to an abrupt end without
embarrassing any one. As Dan sat looking into the fire, with his
thoughts far away in the past, the Maluka began to croon contentedly at
"Home, Sweet Home," and, curled up in the warm, sweet nest of leaves, I
listened to the crooning, and, watching the varying expression of Dan's
face, wondered if Mrs. Bob had any idea of the bright memories she had
left behind her in the bush. Then as the Maluka crooned on, everything
but the crooning became vague and indistinct, and, beginning also to see
into the heart of things, I learned that when a woman finds love and
comradeship out-bush, little else is needed to make even the glowing
circle of a camp fire her home-circle.
Without any warning the Maluka's mood changed, "There is nae luck aboot
her house, there is nae luck at a'," he shouted lustily, and Dan, waking
from his reverie with a start, rose to the tempting bait.
"No LUCK about HER house!" he said. "It was Mrs. Bob that had no luck.
She struck a good, comfortable, well-furnished house first go off, and
never got an ounce of educating. She was chained to that house as surely
as ever a dog was chained to its kennel. But it'll never come to that
with the missus. Something's bound to happen to Johnny, just to keep her
from ever having a house. Poor Johnny, though," he added, warming up to
the subject. "It's hard luck for him. He's a decent little chap. We'll
miss him"; and he shook his head sorrowfully, and looked round for
applause.
The Maluka said it seemed a pity that Johnny had been allowed to go to
his fate; but Dan was in his best form.
"It wouldn't have made any difference," he said tragically. "He'd have
got fever if he'd stayed on, or a tree would have fallen on him. He's
doomed if the missus keeps him to his contract."
"Oh, well! He'll die in a good cause," I said cheerfully and Dan's
gravity deserted him.
"You're the dead finish!" he chuckled, and without further ceremony,
beyond the taking off his boots, rolled into his mosquito net for the
night.
We heard nothing further from him until that strange rustling hour of the
night that hour half-way between midnight and dawn, when all nature stirs
in its sleep, and murmurs drowsily in answer to some mysterious call.
Nearly all bushmen who sleep with the warm earth for a bed will tell of
this strange wakening moment, of that faint touch of half-consciousness,
that whispering stir, strangely enough, only perceptible to the sleeping
children of the bush one of the mysteries of nature that no man can
fathom, one of the delicate threads with which the Wizard of Never-Never
weaves his spells. "Is all well my children?" comes the cry from the
watchman of the night; and with a gentle stirring the answer floats back
"All is well."
Softly the pine forest rustled with the call and the answer; and as the
camp roused to its dim half-consciousness, Dan murmured sleepily,
"Sool'em, old girl" then after a vigorous rustling among the leaves
(Sool'em's tail returning thanks for the attention), everything slipped
back into unconsciousness until the dawn. As the first grey streak of
dawn filtered through the pines, a long-drawn out cry of "Day-li-ght"
Dan's camp reveille rolled out of his net, and Dan rolled out after it,
with even less ceremony than he had rolled in.
On our way back to the homestead, Dan suggesting that the "missus might
like to have a look at the dining-room," we turned into the towering
timber that borders the Reach, and for the next two hours rode on through
soft, luxurious shade; and all the while the fathomless spring-fed Reach
lay sleeping on our left.
The Reach always slept; for nearly twelve miles it lay, a swaying garland
of heliotrope and purple waterlilies, gleaming through a graceful fringe
of palms and rushes and scented shrubs, touched here and there with
shafts of sunlight, and murmuring and rustling with an attendant host of
gorgeous butterflies and flitting birds and insects.
Dan looked on the scene with approving eyes.
