Just to show nothing would be
no bother, and there was me, hanging on to the sapling, and leaning
lovingly over him, telling him not to go hanging round, tiring himself
out on my account; and there was the other chaps - all light
weights - laughing fit to split, safe in their saplings. 'Twasn't as
funny as it looked, though," he assured us, finding us unsympathetic,
"and nobody was exactly sorry when one of the lads on duty came along to
hear the fun, and stock-whipped the old poker back to the mob."
The Maluka and the Dandy soon proved it was nothing to be "treed."
"Happens every time a beast's hauled out of a bog, from all accounts,
that being the only thanks you get for hauling 'em out of the mess." Then
Dan varied the recital with an account of a chap getting skied once who
forgot to choose a tree before beginning the hauling business, and
immediately after froze us into horror again with the details of two
chaps "lying against an old rotten log with a mob of a thousand going
over 'em "; and we were not surprised to hear that when they felt well
enough to sit up they hadn't enough arithmetic left between 'em to count
their bruises.
After an evening of ghost stories, a creaking door is enough to set teeth
chattering; and after an evening of cattle-yarns, told in a cattle camp,
a snapping twig is enough to set hair lifting; and just as the most
fitting place for ghost stories is an old ruined castle, full of eerie
noises, so there is no place more suited to cattle-camp yarns than a
cattle camp. They need the reality of the camp-fire, the litter of camp
baggage, the rumbling mob of shadowy cattle near at hand, and the
possibilities of the near future - possibilities brought home by the sight
of tethered horses standing saddled and bridled ready "in case of
accidents."
Fit surroundings add intensity to all tales, just as it added intensity
to my feelings when Dan advised the Maluka to swing our net near a
low-branched tree, pointing out that it would "come in handy for the
missus if she needed it in a hurry."
I favoured climbing the tree at once, and spending the night in it, but
the men-folk assuring me that I would be "bound to hear them coming," I
turned in, sure only of one thing, that death may come to the bush-folk
in any form but ennui. Yet so adaptable are we bush-folk to
circumstances that most of that night was oblivion.
At sun-up, the drovers, still sweetly smiling, announced that two
bullocks had strayed during some one's watch. Not in theirs, they
hastened to assure us, when Dan sniffed scornfully in the background.
But Dan's scorn turned to blazing wrath, when - the drovers refusing to
replace the "strays" with cows from the mixed cattle in hand, and
refusing also to take delivery of the bullocks, two beasts short - the
musterers had to turn out to gather in a fresh mob of cattle for the sake
of two bullocks. "Just as I was settling down to celebrate Sunday, too,"
Dan growled, as he and Jack rode out of camp.
Forty years out-bush had not been enough to stamp generations of
Sabbath-keeping out of Dan's blood, although he was not particular which
day of the week was set apart for his Sabbath. "Two in a fortnight" was
all he worried about.
Fortune favouring the musterers, by midday all was peace and order; the
drovers, placid and contented, had retired to their tents once more,
reprieved from taking delivery for another day and night, and after
dinner, as the "boys" tailed the bullocks and mixed cattle on the
outskirts of the camp, to graze them, we settled down to "celebrate our
Sabbath" by resting in the warm, dry shade.
Here and there upon the grassy incline that stretched between the camp
and the Yellow Hole, we settled down each according to his taste; Dan
with his back against a tree trunk and far-reaching legs spread out
before him; the Maluka, Jak [sic], and the Dandy flat upon their backs,
with bent-back folded arms for pillows, and hats drawn over eyes to
shade them from the too dazzling sunlight; dogs, relaxed and spread out,
as near to their master as permitted, and the missus "fixed up" in an
opened-out, bent-back grassy tussock, which had thus been formed into a
luxurious armchair. At the foot of the incline lay the Yellow Hole,
gleaming and glancing in the sunshine; all around and about us were the
bush creatures, rustling in the scrub and grasses - flies were conspicuous
by their absence, here and there shafts of sunlight lay across the
gray-brown shade; in the distance the grazing cattle moved among the
timber; away out in the glorious sunshine, beyond and above the tree-tops,
brown-winged, slender Bromli kites wheeled and circled and hovered and
swooped; and lounging in the sun-flecked shade, well satisfied with our
lot, we looked out into the blue, sunny depths, each one of us the
embodiment of lazy contentment, and agreeing with Dan that "Sunday wasn't
a bad institution for them as had no objection to doing a loaf now and
then."
That suggesting an appropriate topic of conversation to Dan, for a little
while we spoke of the Sabbath-keeping of our Scottish forefathers; as we
spoke, idly watching the circling, wheeling Bromli kites, that seemed
then as at all times, an essential part of the sunshine. To the
bush-folk of the Never-Never, sunshine without Bromli kites would be as a
summer's day without the sun.
