In The Far North.
by Louis Becke.
1901
"Out on the wastes of the Never Never-- That"s where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance for ever-- That"s where the dead men lie!"
(Barcroft Boake, in the Sydney Bulletin.)
I
Jack Barrington, nominal owner of Tinandra Downs cattle station on the Gilbert River in the far north of North Queensland, was riding slowly over his run, when, as the fierce rays of a blazing sun, set in a sky of bra.s.s, smote upon his head and shoulders and his labouring stock-horse plodded wearily homewards over the spongy, sandy soil, the lines of Barcroft Boake came to his mind, and, after he had repeated them mentally, he cursed aloud.
"_That"s where the dead men lie!_ Poor Boake must have thought of this G.o.d-forsaken part of an utterly G.o.d-forsaken country, I think, when he wrote "Out where the Dead Men Lie." For I believe that G.o.d Almighty has forgotten it! Oh for rain, rain, rain! Rain to send the Gilbert down in a howling yellow flood, and turn this blarsted spinifex waste of scorching sand and desolation into green gra.s.s--and save me and the youngsters from giving it best, and going under altogether.... Boake knew this cursed country well.... I wonder if he ever "owned" a station--one with a raging drought, a thundering mortgage, and a worrying and greedy bank sooling him on to commit suicide, or else provide rain as side issues.... I don"t suppose he had a wife and children to leave to the mercy of the Australian Pastoralists" Bank.
D----n and curse the Australian Pastoralists" Bank, and the drought, and this scorching sand and hateful spinifex--and G.o.d help the poor cattle!"
He drew rein almost under the shade of a clump of stunted sandalwood, which had, in good seasons, been a favourite mustering camp, and looked about him, and then he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes to shut out for a few moments the melancholy spectacle before him.
I have said that he pulled up "almost" under shelter; further he could not advance, for the hard, parched ground immediately under the shade of the sandalwoods was thickly covered by the stiffened sun-dried carca.s.ses of some hundreds of dead cattle, which, having become too weak to leave the sheltering trees in search of food and water had lain down and died.
Beyond, scattered singly and about in twos and threes, were the remains of scores of other wretched beasts, which, unable to drag themselves either to the sandy river-bed or to the scanty shade of the stunted timber, had perished where they fell.
With a heavy sigh Harrington dismounted, took off his water-bag from the saddle, and pouring a little water into his hat, gave his horse a drink.
Then he drank a few mouthfuls himself, filled and lit his pipe, and sat down, to rest awhile until the sun had lost its fierce intensity--and think.
And he thought despairingly of the black prospect which for the past six or seven months had tormented him by day, and haunted him at night, broken now and then with a gleam of hope when the pitiless blue of the sky changed to grey, and rain seemed near, only to be followed by renewed and bitter disappointment.
"It cannot last much longer," he thought; "even if rain came within a week the rest of the poor brutes left alive will be too weak to recover--and there"s not hands enough on the station to cut leaves for them. Even the blacks have cleared out lower down the river... found a good water-hole I daresay, and, like wise n.i.g.g.e.rs, are camping there.
Why doesn"t Providence give a poor honest bullock as much show for his life in a drought as a d.a.m.ned, filthy blackfellow! Instead of hoofs--in this part of the country at any rate--cattle ought to have feet like a bandicoot, then the poor beasts could worry along by digging waterholes in the river bed."
Then, sick at heart as he was, a faint smile flitted over his sun-bronzed face at the fancy.
An hour pa.s.sed, and Harrington, with another weary sigh, rose and saddled his horse--one of the few now remaining to him and able to carry a rider. Five miles away from the sandalwood camp was another and larger patch of timber--tall, slender brigalows, which grew on the edge of a dried-up swamp, once the haunt and breeding place of countless thousands of wild duck, teal, and geese. This was another of the mustering camps on Tinandra, and as it lay on his way home, he decided to go there and see if any of the "Big Swamp" cattle were still alive. As he rode slowly over towards the fringe of timber, the westering sun turned from a dazzling, blinding gold to a gradually deepening red; and his sweating horse gave a snort of satisfaction as the soft, spongy, and sandy spinifex country was left behind, and the creature"s hoofs struck upon the hard sun-baked plain of yellow earth which lay between the two camps. Looking down at the great, widely spreading cracks in the hungry soil, the result of a seven-months" continuous drought, Harrington almost unconsciously bent his head and thought that surely G.o.d would send rain. He was not a religious man in the conventional sense--he had never been inside a church in his life--but the memory of his dead mother"s belief in G.o.d"s mercy and goodness was still strong within him.
The brigalow scrub was about half a mile in length, and stood between the swamp and the high river bank. At the dried-up bed of the swamp itself he did not care to look a second time; its once reedy margin was now a sight of horror, for many hundreds of cattle had been bogged there long months before, as they had striven to get further out to the centre where there was yet left a little water, saved from evaporation by the broad leaves of the blue water-lilies.
Skirting the inner edge of the scrub till he reached its centre, he looked carefully among the timber, but not a beast was to be seen; then dismounting he led his horse through, came out upon the river bank, and looked across the wide expanse of almost burning sand which stretched from bank to bank, unbroken in its desolation except by a few ti-trees whose roots, deep down, kept them alive.
"Bob, old fellow," he said to his horse, "we"ve another ten miles to go, and there"s no use in killing ourselves. I think that we can put in half an hour digging sand, and manage to raise a drink down there in the river bed."
Still leading the animal, which seemed to know his master"s intention, Harrington walked down the sloping bank, his long riding-boots sinking deeply into the fine, sandy soil, and Bob p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and gave a true stock-horse sigh of weariness and antic.i.p.ation combined.
On the opposite side of the river bed and close under the bank were growing two or three heavy ti-trees, and here, just as the sun had set, he halted, again unsaddled, and after lighting a fire, began to scoop out a hole with his quart pot in between the roots of the trees. For some minutes he worked on with energy, then he stopped and listened, and Bob, too, turned his head inquiringly, for he also had heard the sound--it was only the cry of a beast, but it seemed so near that Harrington ceased his digging and stood up to look.
Not a hundred yards distant he saw, by the light of the now brightly blazing fire, four gaunt steers and a skeleton heifer, staggering and swaying over the river sand towards him in their weakness and agony of hunger and thirst The poor creatures had seen the man and the horse!
As they toiled towards the light of the fire, a dreadful, wheezing moan came from the parched throat of the leading steer as it laboured pantingly over to something human--something it a.s.sociated with water, and gra.s.s, and life, and presently the wretched animal, with one last effort, fell in its tracks almost at Harrington"s feet. It lay there quiet enough for a minute or two, with lean, outstretched neck and one horn buried in the sand, its fast glazing eye turned to the man, and seeming to say, "Give me water or death."
Harrington, wrought up and excited to the last pitch, flung himself upon his knees, and placed his cheek against that of the dying steer, and a sob burst from his bosom.
"O G.o.d, if there is a G.o.d! have mercy upon these Thy dumb creatures who suffer such agony."
He stepped up to his horse, took his revolver out of the pouch, and then a merciful bullet ended the sufferings of the thirst-stricken animal at his feet.
"Steady, Bob, old man! Steady there!" he said brokenly, "I may have to do the same to you before long." And then, tearing off a long piece of dried ti-tree bark from one of the trees, he thrust it into the fire.
Then, with the blazing torch in his left hand, and his pistol in his right, he tramped over the sand to the remaining cattle, and shot them dead one by one.
Then back to his digging again. A drink of thick, muddy water for his horse, and then with a dull sense of misery in his heart he led Bob up the bank and began the last stage of his ride home--home to his anaemic, complaining, shallow-brained wife and the weakly children who, instead of being the consolation of his life in his misfortunes, were an added and ever-present source of misery and despair.
II
A few years before, Harrington had bought Tinandra Downs, and had stocked the run with three thousand head of store cattle; for half of which number he had paid, the remainder he had bought on long terms from a neighbouring squatter--a man who knew his sterling merits, and was confident that he (Harrington) would make Tinandra one of the best cattle stations in the far north. Fortune had smiled upon him from the first; for within two years came the discovery of the famous Palmer River goldfields, only a few hundred miles distant, and cattle and station properties doubled in value, for in less than half a year there were six thousand diggers on the field, and more came pouring in from the southern colonies by every steamer to Cooktown. New townships sprang suddenly into existence, provisions of all kinds brought an enormous price, and Harrington cleared off his debt to his squatter friend almost ere he could realise having done so, and that he had several thousands of pounds to the good as well. And his good luck stuck to him, for it was attended by careful management, and every mob of fat cattle he despatched to the goldfield instead of sending them on a three-hundred league journey to Brisbane, meant another couple of thousand sovereigns.
Then he began to improve the head station--and to think of Myra, a girl whom he had once met in Sydney, and who sent him newspapers, and, once or twice, at long intervals, had written him letters. He had answered these letters with a secret hope that, if all went well with him, he would take another trip to Sydney, and then--well, he could at least ask her. If she said no, why, who was there to chaff him? He was not a communicative man, had very few intimate men friends, and the few women whom he knew were not the sort he could possibly talk to about a lady.
Both his parents had died before he was ten years of age, leaving him utterly alone in the world. Born in a bush town, in the interior of New South Wales, he had turned to the bush and to the wide, open, gra.s.sy plains, as an infant would have turned to its mother in its distress; and the bush and the plains and the grey mountain ranges had taken him to their bosoms; and the silent, reserved boy became the resolute, hardy bushman, stock-rider, and then miner--a man fit and ready to meet the emergencies of his rough life. Of the outside world he was as ignorant as a child, as indeed were most of the men with whom for many years he had a.s.sociated. But there was nothing despicable in his ignorance; and when as time went on, and his improved circ.u.mstances threw him in contact with men and women of refinement and culture, he was quick to take advantage of such opportunities; but the honest, simple nature of the man always remained the same.
Before he was thirty, Harrington was known as one of the most experienced and fortunate over-lander drovers in Australia, and he became as familiar with the long and lonely stock-route from the stations on the Gulf of Carpentaria to Sydney and Melbourne, in his many journeys, as if it were a main road in an English county.
At the conclusion of one of these tedious drives of seven months"
duration, the brown-faced, quiet drover was asked by an acquaintance with whom he had business transactions, to spend the evening with him at his house. He went, and there met Myra Lyndon. He was attracted by her bright manner and smiling face, and when she questioned him about his life in the Far North, his adventures among the blacks, and the many perils of a drover"s existence, he thought her the fairest and sweetest woman in the world. And Miss Myra Lyndon encouraged him in his admiration. Not that she cared for him in the least She had not reached eight-and-twenty years of age to throw herself away on a man who had no other ambition than to become a squatter and live amongst a lot of "horrid bellowing cattle." But he was nice to talk to, though terribly stupid about some things, and so she did not mind writing to him once or twice--it would reward him for the horse he had one day sent to her father with a lamely worded note, saying that it was one of a mob he had just bought at the saleyards, and as he had no use for a lady"s hack, he thought that perhaps Miss Lyndon would be so kind as to accept it Mr.
Lyndon smiled as he read the note, he knew that drovers did not usually buy ladies" hacks; but being a man hara.s.sed to death with an expensive family, he was not disposed to discourage Harrington"s attentions to Myra; though, having a conscience, he felt that Jack Harrington was too good a man for such a useless, empty-brained, and selfish creature as his eldest daughter.
So Harrington went back to his "bellowing bullocks," and then, having saved enough money, bought the very run he had so often wished he could buy; and "Jack" Harrington, the overlander, became "Mr." John Harrington, the pastoralist and owner of Tinandra Downs, and then the vision of Myra Lyndon"s face came to him very often--now that he was so prosperous.
One day he told his overseer that he was going to Sydney for a trip, and being a man of action, packed his valise, mounted his horse, and rode off on his journey of five hundred miles to the nearest seaport where he could take pa.s.sage for Sydney.
For the first week or so after his arrival in the city, he "mooned"
about doing nothing, and trying to pluck up courage enough to go to Myra Lyndon to ask her to be his wife. He had called several times upon her father and discussed business matters with him; but beyond inquiring after "Mrs. Lyndon and the Misses Lyndon," had said nothing further, and in a nervous, shamefaced manner had each time accepted Mr. Lyndon"s invitation to "come and see the girls before he went back to the North,"
but had not had the courage to go. Next week, or the week after that, would do, he thought. If she said "No," he wouldn"t feel it so much--once he was on his way North again in the old _Florence Irving_; he would put it off till just as he was ready to start. Then if she said "Yes," he would stay in Sydney as long as his love wished--a month--aye, six months, so long as she came back with him to Tinandra Downs. And Myra Lyndon, who knew from her father that her "bullock-driver admirer,"
as she had mockingly called him to her friends, was in Sydney, waited for him impatiently. A systematic course of jilting and being jilted had made her feel anxious as to her future, and gall and wormwood had come to her now that her two younger sisters had married before her, and left her, as her somewhat acidulous-tongued mother said, "the Lyndon family wallflower." She meant to marry him, spend a year or so among the "beastly bellowing cattle," and then return to Sydney, where as Mrs.
Harrington, the wealthy squatter"s wife, she could enjoy herself thoroughly, snub some of the women she hated, and flirt with some of the men she liked.
Late one night, Harrington, sauntering from the theatre to his hotel, met, to his intense astonishment, a man he knew--had known years before when he (Harrington) was a drover and the other man--Walters--was a mounted trooper in the Queensland police.
They shook hands warmly, and then Walters said, "Come along with me, Jack, to the Water Police Station; we can have a yarn there.... Oh, yes, I"m a Sydney man now--a full-fledged inspector of police... tell you all about it by and by. But, push along, old man. One of my men has just told me that a woman who jumped off the Circular Quay and tried to drown herself, is lying at the station, and is not expected to pull through.
Hallo! here"s a cab! Jump in, Jack; there"s some whisky in the sergeant"s room, and after I"ve seen the cadaver--if she has cadavered--we"ll have a right down good yarn."
The cab rattled through the now almost deserted street, and in a few minutes Harrington and his friend alighted at a small stone building overlooking the waters of Sydney Harbour. A water-policeman, who stood at the door under the big gas-lamp, saluted the inspector and then showed Harrington into the sergeant"s room.
Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and then Walters, accompanied by a big, stout, red-faced man, came in.
"Ha, here you are, old man. Jack, Dr. Parsons--the man who does the resuscitating and such silly business of this inst.i.tution; Parsons, my old friend, Jack Harrington. Sergeant, where is that whisky?"