The woman burst out on the defensive, but McKeith silenced her.
"That"ll do. Clear away all that mess and let us have a clean cloth and some tea. And I say, if you have got a decent room for my wife to wash the dust off and take a bit of a rest in, I"ll be obliged."
The landlady blinked her puffed eyelids, muttered an uncourteous rejoinder and went off with some of the debris from the table. Bridget laughed blankly. She looked so small and flower like, so absolutely incongruous with her surroundings, that the humour of it all struck McKeith tragically.
"Good Lord! I wonder what your opinion is of this show! Here is the beginning of what is called the Never-Never Country, my dear. Do you want to go back again to Government House?"
"No, I don"t," and she touched him to the heart"s core by putting her little hand in his.
"That"s my Mate," said he, his blue eyes glistening. "But I"ll tell you what I think of your splendid pluck when we"re quit of these beastly townships, and have gone straight into Nature. Now, I"ve got to go and see after the buggy and find my boys, and I shall have all my work cut out to be ready in an hour. You just make the best of things, and if the bedroom is impossible spread out my poncho and take a rest on that sofa there, and don"t be frightened if you hear any rowdiness going on."
The bedroom was impossible, and the sofa seemed equally so. Bridget drank the coa.r.s.e bush tea which the landlady brought in, and was glad that the woman seemed too sulky to want to talk. Then she sat down at the window and watched the life of the township--the diggers slouching in for drinks, the riders from the bush who hung up their horses and went into the bar, the teams of bullocks coming slowly down the road and drawing up here or at some other of the nineteen public houses "to wet the wool," in bush vernacular. She counted as many as twenty-four bullocks in one of the teams, and watched with interest the family life that went on in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the wool bales and the canvas roof above. There were women up there and little children. She saw bedding spread and a baby"s clothes fluttering out to dry, and tin pannikins and chunks of salt beef slung to the ropes that bound the wool bales together. Then, when the wool was wetted, or when some other teams behind disputed the right of way in lurid terms which Lady Bridget was now beginning to accept as inevitably concomitant with bullocks, the first dray would proceed, all the cattle bells jingling and making, in the distance, not unpleasant music.
It was the horses that interested Lady Bridget most, for, like all the O"Haras, she was a born horsewoman. Though she was moved almost to tears by the spur scars on the lean sides of some of them--spirited creatures in which she recognised the marks of breeding--and by the unkempt condition of some that were just from gra.s.s, she decided within herself that there could never be a lack of interest and excitement in a land where such horseflesh abounded.
Presently she had her first sight of the typical stockman got up in "township rig." Spotless moleskins, new Crimean shirt, regulation silk handkerchief, red, of course, and brand new, tied in a sailor"s knot at the neck, leather belt with pouches of every shape and size slung from it, tobacco pouch, watch pouch, knife pouch and what not. Cabbage tree hat of intricate plait pushed back to the back of the head and held firm by a thin strap coming down to the upper lip and caught in two gaps on either side of the prominent front teeth--there are very few stockmen who have kept all their front teeth. Stockwhip, out of commission for the present, with an elaborately carved and beautifully polished sandal-wood handle hanging down behind, a long snake-like lash coiled in three loops over the left shoulder.
Lady Bridget knew most of the types of men who have to do with horses--huntsmen, trainers, jockeys, riding masters and the rest, but the Australian bush-rider is a product by itself. She liked this son of the gum forest-tanned face, taut nerves, alert eyes piercing long distances--a man, vital, shrewd, simple as a child, cunning as an animal. And the way he sat in his saddle, the poise of the lean, lanky muscular frame! No wonder the first stockman seemed to the wild blacks a new sort of beast with four legs and two bodies. And the clean-limbed mettlesome creature under him! Man and beast seemed truly a part of each other. Lady Bridget O"Hara"s soul warmed to that stockman and to his steed.
He was looking at the windows of the bar-parlour. As soon as he saw the lady, the cabbage tree hat was raised in a flourish, the horse was reined in, the man off his saddle and the bridle hitched to a post.
Now the stockman stepped on to the veranda.
"Mrs McKeith--or is it Lady McKeith I should say--I haven"t got the hang of the name if you"ll pardon me--Mr McKeith sent me on to say that he"ll be here with the buggy in a minute or two.... I"m Moongarr Bill.... Glad to welcome you up the Leura, ma"am, though I expect things seem a bit rough to you straight out from England and not knowing the Bush."
Lady Bridget won Moongarr Bill"s good favour instantly by the look in her eyes and the smile with which she answered him.
"I"m from Ireland, Moongarr Bill, and if we Irish know anything we know a good horse, and that"s a beauty you"re riding."
"Out of a Pitsford mare by a Royallieu colt, and there"s not a finer breed in the Never-Never. My word! you"ve struck it there, ma"am, and no mistake," responded the stockman enthusiastically. "I bought "im out of the yard at Breeza Downs--that"s Windeatt"s run about sixty miles from Moongarr, and I will say that though it"s a sheep-run they"ve beat us in the breed of their "osses.... Got "im cheap because he"d bucked young Windeatt off and nearly kicked his brains out, and there wasn"t a man along the Leura that he"d let stop on his back except me and Zack Duppo--the horse-breaker who first put the tackling on "im."
After the interchange of one or two remarks, Lady Bridget had no doubt of being friends with Moongarr Bill, and Moongarr Bill decided that for a dashed new-chum woman, Lady Bridget had a remarkable knowledge of horseflesh.
The quick CLOP-CLOP of a four horse team and a clatter of tin billys and pannikins--as Lady Bridget presently discovered slung upon the back rail of an American buggy--sounded up the street.
"There"s the Boss," said Moongarr Bill. "Look alive, with that packhorse, Wombo."
Lady Bridget now perceived behind the stockman a black boy on a young colt, leading a st.u.r.dy flea-bitten grey, laden with a pack bag on either side. He jumped off as lightly as Moongarr Bill and hitched his horses also to the veranda posts. Except that he was black as a coal, save for the whites of his eyes and his gleaming teeth, he seemed a grotesque understudy of the stockman--moleskins, not too clean and rubbed and frayed in places, fastened up with a strap; faded Crimean shirt exposing a wealed and tattooed breast; old felt hat--not a cabbage tree--with a pipe stuck in its greasy band; an ancient red silk handkerchief with ragged edges, where whip crackers had been torn off, round his neck, and a short axe slipped among a few old pouches into the strap at his waist. He jumped on to the veranda, clicked his teeth in an admiring e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n as he gazed at Lady Bridget.
"My word! BUJERI feller White Mary you! ... new feller Mithsis belonging to Boss. My word!" Then as McKeith drew up his horses in front of the hotel, Wombo and Moongarr Bill sprang to the heads of wheelers and leaders.
It seemed to Bridget that there was a change in her husband even since he had left her. He looked more determined, more practical, wholly absorbed in the unsentimental business of the moment. He had changed into looser, more workmanlike rig--was belted, pouched, carried his whip grandly, handled his reins with a royal air of command, as if he were now thoroughly at home in his own dominions, had already a.s.serted his authority--which she found presently to be the case--and intended the rest of the world to knock under to him. There flashed on Lady Bridget an absurd idea of having been married by proxy--like the little princesses of history--and of being now received into her lord"s country by the monarch in person. Her face was rippling all over with laughter when he joined her in the veranda.
"What! Another delicious black boy! He looks like a Christy Minstrel. I thought you hated blacks, Colin."
"So I do. You"ve got to have "em though for stock boys, and I keep my heel on the lot at Moongarr. Wombo and Cudgee aren"t bad chaps so long as they are kept clear of their tribe. How do you like the new buggy, my lady? A dandy go-cart, eh?"
He looked as pleased as a child with a new toy carriage. The buggy was quite a smart bush turn-out--comfortable seats in front--a varnished cover, now lying back; a well behind, filled with luggage; a narrow back seat whence Cudgee--a smaller edition of Wombo--sprang down.
Cudgee, too, stared at Lady Bridget and clicked his teeth in admiration, exclaiming:
"Hullo! New feller Mithsis."
Afterwards, Lady Bridget remembered the greetings and wondered why the black boys had said: "New feller Mithsis!" Who had been the old feller Mithsis? she asked herself.
McKeith sternly quashed the black boys" ebullition and told them to mind their own business. Bridget agreed that the buggy was first rate and became enthusiastic over the horses, four fairly matched and powerful roans.
"Oh! what beauties! I"d like to go and make friends with them."
He was delighted. "Good "uns, ain"t they? But wait and make friends when you"re behind "em. We"ve twenty-five miles to do before sundown.
Got your traps fixed up? That"s right. Here, Bill, take her ladyship"s bag and stow it safely at the back of the buggy. Handle it gingerly--it"s full of silver and gla.s.s fallals--not what we"re much used to on the Leura."
The stockman grinned and carried the dressing-bag--one of Sir Luke"s and Lady Tallant"s wedding presents--as if it were dynamite. Colin seemed anxious to impress his wife"s dignity upon her new subjects. She felt still more like a queen of comic opera. He helped her into her dust cloak, paid the bill, cut short the landlady"s sulky apologies--she had done her hair and recovered herself a little. Then he settled Lady Bridget into the buggy after the manner of a bush courtier--her feet on a footstool, the rug over her knees, a cushion at her back. His whole air seemed to say:
"This is the Queen, and I, the King, expect that proper homage be paid her."
CHAPTER 6
The loafers at the bar all came out to see the start. The family on the top of the bullock-dray peered forth from under the tilt. The barkeeper shouted, "Good luck to you and your lady, Mr McKeith." The drunken reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, "Goo-luksh!" There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, "Thank ye--Good day, mates," a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies--the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in the train from Leuraville.
Three of these men lurched on to the bar veranda, and, so to speak, took the stage. In front was a stumpily-built bullock driver with a red, truculent face, a ragged carrotty beard and inflamed narrow-ridded eyes. A little to the rear stood a lanky, muscular bushman in very dirty moleskins, with a smooth loose-lipped face, no eyelashes, and a scowling forehead, who was evidently the worse for drink; next to him, a shorter man of the drover type, older, eagle-beaked and with sinister, foxy eyes. This one hailed McKeith.
"Yah! Look at him and his spanking team! What price honest labour, you blamed scab of a squatter? Just you wait a bit. It"ll be our turn soon to burn all you blanked capitalists off the Leura."
The lanky bushman took up the jeering note.
"Pretty flash turn-out, ain"t it! My word, you think yourself a bloated fine gentleman now you"ve married into the British hairystocracy, don"t you, Mister Colin McKeith? You can take it from us, boys, he"s the meanest cuss that ever downed a harmless n.i.g.g.e.r.... Ask him what the twenty-five notches on his gun stand for?"
"And I tell YOU what it is, Steve Baines. There"ll be another notch on my gun, and it won"t be for a n.i.g.g.e.r, if you give me any more of your insolence," said McKeith coolly. "Get out of the way, men. Let the horses go, Cudgee. Ready, Biddy?"
But Cudgee, out of malice or stupidity, did not let the roans go or else someone else put a restraining hand on the reins. The man with the ragged beard roared out.
"Ho, you think you"re going to ride over us!--you and your fine ladyship! Wot do we care about the British hairystocracy. What we"re asking for is the rights of labour, and we mean to have "em. Do you want to know what he"s done to us boys? Fired us out straight away cos we was "avin" a bit of a spell and a drink to keep the life in us after we"d close up killed ourselves lifting that there ladyship"s blanked hundred-ton weight of pianner on to the dray...."
Moongarr Bill"s chivalrous instinct flamed to a counter attack. He had just mounted, but swung down from his saddle and made a rush at the speaker. McKeith"s stern voice stopped him.
"Don"t be a fool, Bill. Let the brutes alone and push on with the pack.
This is not the time for a row. As for you, Jim Steadbolt--you know me, and you know that if this was any other sort of occasion, you"d pay on the nail for your infernal cheek.... Leave go of those reins. D"ye hear"; for the man of the ragged beard was jerking the near leader"s bit and putting the mettlesome animal on its haunches.
"d.a.m.n you! Let go."
He leaned forward to strike at Steadbolt with his riding whip, but the lash had caught round the pole-bar of the buggy, and he could not extricate it. Bridget tried to help him. He turned to her for an instant, a soft gleam of tenderness shining through the steely anger on his face.
"No. Keep still, my dear. Don"t be frightened."
"I frightened!" She gave a little laugh. Her form stiffened. The small pale face poked forward between the folds of her motor veil, and all the O"Hara spirit flashed as she spoke to the group of malcontents.