Have to be tied up, and watered one at a
time; and so parched with thirst that it takes three hours' drawing
before they are satisfied - three hours' steady drawing, on top of
twenty-three hours out of twenty-seven spent in the saddle, and half that
time "punching" jaded beasts along; and yet they speak of the "Fizzer's
luck."
"Real fine old water too," the Fizzer shouts in delight, as he tells his
tale. "Kept in the cellar for our special use. Don't indulge in it much
myself. Might spoil my palate for newer stuff, so I carry enough for the
whole trip from Renner's."
If the Downs have left deep lines on the Fizzer's face, they have left
none in his heart. Yet at that well the dice-throwing goes on just the
same.
Maybe the Fizzer feels "a bit knocked out with the sun," and the water
for his perishing horses ninety feet below the surface; or "things go
wrong" with the old windlass, and everything depends on the Fizzer's
ingenuity. The odds are very uneven when this happens - a man's ingenuity
against a man's life, and death playing with loaded dice. And every
letter the Fizzer carries past that well costs the public just twopence.
A drink at the well, an all-night's spell, another drink, and then away
at midday, to face the tightest pinch of all - the pinch where death won
with the other mail-man. Fifty miles of rough, hard, blistering,
scorching "going," with worn and jaded horses.
The old programme all over again. Twenty miles more, another spell for
the horses (the Fizzer never seems to need a spell for himself), and then
the last lap of thirty, the run into Anthony's Lagoon, "punching the poor
beggars along somehow." "Keep 'em going all night," the Fizzer says;
"and if you should happen to be at Anthony's on the day I'm due there you
can set your watch for eleven in the morning when you see me coming
along." I have heard somewhere of the Pride of Harness.
Sixteen days is the time-limit for those five-hundred miles, and yet the
Fizzer is expected because the Fizzer is due; and to a man who loves his
harness no praise could be sweeter than that. Perhaps one of the
brightest thoughts for the Fizzer as he "punches" along those desolate
Downs is the knowledge that a little before eleven o'clock in the morning
Anthony's will come out, and, standing with shaded eyes, will look
through the quivering heat, away into the Downs for that tiny moving
speck. When the Fizzer is late there, death will have won at the
dice-throwing.
I suppose he got a salary. No one ever troubled to ask. He was
expected, and he came, and in our selfishness we did not concern
ourselves beyond that.
It is men like the Fizzer who, "keeping the roads open," lay the
foundation-stones of great cities; and yet when cities creep into the
Never-Never along the Fizzer's mail route, in all probability they will
be called after Members of Parliament and the Prime Ministers of that
day, grandsons, perhaps, of the men who forgot to keep the old well in
repair, while our Fizzer and the mail-man who perished will be forgotten;
for townsfolk are apt to forget the beginnings of things.
Three days' spell at Anthony's, to wait for the Queensland mail-man from
the "other-side" (another Fizzer no doubt, for the bush mail-service soon
culls out the unfitted), an exchange of mail-bags, and then the Downs
must be faced again with the same team of horses. Even the Fizzer owns
that "tackling the Downs for the return trip's a bit sickening; haven't
had time to forget what it feels like, you know," he explains.
Inside to Anthony's, three days' spell, over the Downs again, stopping
for another drink at that well, along the stage "that's a bit off," and
back to the "kid's game," dropping mail-bags in twos and threes as he
goes in, and collecting others as he comes out, to say nothing of the
weary packing and unpacking of his team. That is what the Fizzer had to
do by half-past eleven four weeks.
"And will go hopelessly on the spree at the end of the trip," say
uncharitable folk; but they do not know our Fizzer. "Once upon a time I
was a bad little boy," our Fizzer says now, "but since I learnt sense a
billy of tea's good enough for me."
And our Fizzer is not the only man out-bush who has "learnt sense." Man
after man I have met who found tea "good enough," and many more who "know
how to behave themselves." Sadly enough, there are others in plenty who
find their temptations too strong for them - temptations that the world
hardly guesses at.
But I love the bush-folk for the good that is in them, hidden, so often,
carefully away deep down in their brave, strong hearts - hearts and men
that ring true, whether they have "learnt sense," or "know how to
behave," or are only of the others. But every man's life runs parallel
with other lives, and while the Fizzer was "punching along" his dry
stages events were moving rapidly with us; while perhaps, aways in the
hearts of towns, men and women were "winning through the dry stages" of
their lives there.
CHAPTER XIII
Soon after the Fizzer left us the horse-teams came in, and went on,
top-heavy with stores for "inside"; but the "Macs" were now thinking of
the dry stages ahead, and were travelling at the exasperating rate of
about four miles a day, as they "nursed the bullocks" through the good
grass country.
Dan had lost interest in waggons, and was anxious to get among the cattle
again; but with the trunks so near, the house growing rapidly, the days
of sewing waiting, I refused point-blank to leave the homestead just
then.
