The Fizzer Changes Horses At Renner's Springs For The "Downs' Trip"; And
As His Keen Eyes Run Over The Mob, His Voice Raps Out Their Verdict Like
An Auctioneer's Hammer.
"He's fit.
So is he. Cut that one out. That
colt's A1. The chestnut's done. So is the brown. I'll risk that mare.
That black's too fat." No hesitation: horse after horse rejected or
approved, until the team is complete; and then driving them before him he
faces the Open Downs - the Open Downs, where the last mail-man perished;
and only the men who know the Downs in the Dry know what he faces.
For five trips out of the eight, one hundred and thirty miles of
sun-baked, crab-holed, practically trackless plains, no sign of human
habitation anywhere, cracks that would swallow a man - "hardly enough
wood to boil a quart pot," the Fizzer says, and a sun-temperature
hovering about 160 degrees (there is no shade-temperature on the Downs);
shadeless, trackless, sun-baked, crab-holed plains, and the Fizzer's team
a moving speck in the centre of an immensity that, never diminishing and
never changing, moves onward with the team; an immensity of quivering
heat and glare, with that one tiny living speck in its centre, and in all
that hundred and thirty miles one drink for the horses at the end of the
first eighty. That is the Open Downs.
"Fizz!" shouts the Fizzer. "That's where the real fizzing gets done, and
nobody that hasn't tried it knows what it's like."
He travels its first twenty miles late in the afternoon, then, unpacking
his team, "lets 'em go for a roll and a pick, while he boils a quart pot"
(the Fizzer carries a canteen for himself); "spells" a bare two hours,
packs up again and travels all night, keeping to the vague track with a
bushman's instinct, "doing" another twenty miles before daylight; unpacks
for another spell, pities the poor brutes "nosing round too parched to
feed," may "doze a bit with one ear cocked," and then packing up again,
"punches 'em along all day," with or without a spell. Time is precious
now. There is a limit to the number of hours a horse can go without
water, and the thirst of the team fixes the time limit on the Downs.
"Punches 'em along all day, and into water close up sundown," at the
deserted Eva Downs station.
"Give 'em a drink at the well there," the Fizzer says as unconcernedly as
though he turned on a tap. But the well is old and out of repair, ninety
feet deep, with a rickety old wooden windlass; fencing wire for a rope; a
bucket that the Fizzer has "seen fit to plug with rag on account of it
leaking a bit," and a trough, stuffed with mud at one end by the
resourceful Fizzer. Truly the Government is careful for the safety of
its servants. Added to all this, there are eight or ten horses so eager
for a drink that the poor brutes 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 72 of 162
Words from 37295 to 37880
of 84691
