"But perhaps Douglas thought you were crowing over him when you took off your hat to him-sneerin" at him, like, Mitch.e.l.l," reflected Jake Boreham.
"No, Jake," said Mitch.e.l.l, growing serious suddenly. "There are ways of doing things that another man understands."
They all thought for a while.
"Well," said Tom Hall, "supposing we do take up a collection for him, he"d be too d.a.m.ned proud to take it."
"But that"s where we"ve got the pull on him," said Mitch.e.l.l, brightening up. "I heard Dr Morgan say that Mrs Douglas wouldn"t live if she wasn"t sent away to a cooler place, and Douglas knows it; and, besides, one of the little girls is sick. We"ve got him in a corner and he"ll have to take the stuff. Besides, two years in jail takes a lot of the pride out of a man."
"Well, I"m d.a.m.ned if I"ll give a sprat to help the man who tried his best to crush the Unions!" said One-eyed Bogan.
"d.a.m.ned if I will either!" said Barcoo-Rot.
"Now, look here, One-eyed Bogan," said Mitch.e.l.l, "I don"t like to harp on old things, for I know they bore you, but when you returned to public life that time no one talked of kicking you out of the town. In fact, I heard that the chaps put a few pounds together to help you get away for a while till you got over your modesty."
No one spoke.
"I pa.s.sed Douglas"s place on my way here from my camp tonight," Mitch.e.l.l went on musingly, "and I saw him walking up and down in the yard with his sick child in his arms. You remember that little girl, Bogan? I saw her run and pick up your hat and give it to you one day when you were trying to put it on with your feet. You remember, Bogan? The shock nearly sobered you."
There was a very awkward pause. The position had become too psychological altogether and had to be ended somehow. The awkward silence had to be broken, and Bogan broke it. He turned up Bob Brothers"s hat, which was, lying on the table, and "chucked in" a "quid", qualifying the hat and the quid, and disguising his feelings with the national oath of the land.
"We"ve had enough of this gory, maudlin, sentimental tommy-rot," he said. "Here, Barcoo, stump up or I"ll belt it out of your hide! I"ll-I"ll take yer to pieces!"
But Douglas didn"t leave the town. He sent his wife and children to Sydney until the heat wave was past, built a new room on to the cottage, and started a book and newspaper shop, and a poultry farm in the back paddock, and flourished.
They called him Mr Douglas for a while, then Douglas, then Percy Douglas, and now he is well-known as Old Daddy Douglas, and the Sydney Worker, Truth, and Bulletin and other democratic rags are on sale at his shop. He is big with schemes for locking the Darling River, and he gets his drink at O"Donohoo"s. He is scarcely yet regarded as a straight-out democrat. He was a gentleman once, Mitch.e.l.l said, and the old blood was not to be trusted. But, last elections, Douglas worked quietly for Unionism, and gave the leaders certain hints, and put them up to various electioneering dodges which enabled them to return, in the face of Monopoly, a Labour member who, is as likely to go straight as long as any other Labour member.
The Blindness of One-eyed Bogan.
They judge not and they are not judged-"tis their philosophy- (There"s something wrong with every ship that sails upon the sea).
-The Ballad of the Rouseabout "AND what became of One-eyed Bogan?" I asked Tom Hall when I met him and Jack Mitch.e.l.l down in Sydney with their shearing cheques the Christmas before last.
"You"d better ask Mitch.e.l.l, Harry," said Tom. "He can tell you about Bogan better than I can. But first, what about the drink we"re going to have?"
We turned out of Pitt Street into Hunter Street, and across George Street, where a double line of fast electric tramway was running, into Margaret Street and had a drink at Pfahlert"s Hotel; where a counter lunch-as good as many dinners you get for a shilling-was included with a sixpenny drink. "Get a quiet corner," said Mitch.e.l.l, "I like to hear myself cackle." So we took our beer out in the fernery and got a cool place at a little table in a quiet corner amongst the fern boxes.
"Well, One-eyed Bogan was a hard case, Mitch.e.l.l," I said. "Wasn"t he?"
"Yes," said Mitch.e.l.l, putting down his "long-beer" gla.s.s, "he was."
"Rather a bad egg?"
"Yes, a regular bad egg," said Mitch.e.l.l, decidedly.
"I heard he got caught cheating at cards," I said.
"Did you?" said Mitch.e.l.l. "Well, I believe he did. Ah, well," he added reflectively, after another long pull, "One-eyed Bogan won"t cheat at cards any more."
"Why?" I said. "Is he dead then?"
"No," said Mitch.e.l.l, "he"s blind."
"Good G.o.d!" I said, "how did that happen?"
"He lost the other eye," said Mitch.e.l.l, and he took another drink; "ah, well, he won"t cheat at cards any more-unless there"s cards invented for the blind."
"How did it happen?" I asked.
"Well," said Mitch.e.l.l, "you see, Harry, it was this way. Bogan went pretty free in Bourke after the shearing before last, and in the end he got mixed up in a very ugly-looking business; he was accused of doing two new-chum jackeroos out of their stuff by some sort of confidence trick."
"Confidence trick," I said. "I"d never have thought that One-eyed Bogan had the brains to go in for that sort of thing."
"Well, it seems he had, or else he used somebody else"s brains; there"s plenty of broken-down English gentlemen sharpers knocking about out back, you know, and Bogan might have been taking lessons from one. I don"t know the rights of the case: it was hushed up, as you"ll see presently; but anyway, the jackeroos swore that Bogan had done "em out of ten quid. They were both c.o.c.kneys and I suppose they reckoned themselves smart, but Bushmen have more time to think. Besides, Bogan"s one eye was in his favour. You see, he always kept his one eye fixed strictly on whatever business he had in hand; if he"d had another eye to rove round and distract his attention and look at things on the outside, the chances are he would never have got into trouble."
"Never mind that, Jack," said Tom Hall. "Harry wants to hear the yarn."
"Well, to make it short, one of the jackeroos went to the police and Bogan cleared out. His character was pretty bad just then, so there was a piece of blue paper cut for him. Bogan didn"t seem to think the thing was so serious as it was, for he only went a few miles down the river and camped with his horses on a sort of island inside an anabranch, till the thing should blow over or the new-chums leave Bourke.
"Bogan"s old enemy, Constable Campbell, got wind of Bogan"s camp, and started out after him. He rode round the outside track and came in onto the river just below where the anabranch joins it, at the lower end of the island and right opposite Bogan"s camp. You know what those billabongs are: dry gullies till the river rises from the Queensland rains and backs them up till the water runs round into the river again and makes anabranches of "em-places that you thought were hollows you"ll find above water, and you can row over places you thought were hills. There"s no water so treacherous and deceitful as you"ll find in some of those billabongs. Aman starts to ride across a place where he thinks the water is just over the gra.s.s, and blunders into a deep channel-that wasn"t there before-with a steady undercurrent with the whole weight of the Darling River funnelled into it; and if he can"t swim and his horse isn"t used to it-or sometimes if he can swim-it"s a case with him, and the Darling River cod hold an inquest on him, if they have time, before he"s buried deep in Darling River mud for ever. And somebody advertises in the missing column for Jack Somebody who was last heard of in Australia."
"Never mind that, Mitch.e.l.l, go on," I said.
"Well, Campbell knew the river and saw that there was a stiff current there, so he hailed Bogan.
" "Good day, Campbell," shouted Bogan.
" "I want you, Bogan," said Campbell. "Come across and bring your horses."
" "I"m d.a.m.ned if I will," says Bogan. "I"m not going to catch me death o" cold to save your skin. If you want me you"ll have to b.l.o.o.d.y well come and git me." Bogan was a good strong swimmer, and he had good horses, but he didn"t try to get away-I suppose he reckoned he"d have to face the music one time or another-and one time is as good as another out back.
"Campbell was no swimmer; he had no temptation to risk his life-you see it wasn"t as in war with a lot of comrades watching ready to advertise a man as a coward for staying alive-so he argued with Bogan and tried to get him to listen to reason, and swore at him. "I"ll make it d.a.m.ned hot, for you, Bogan," he said, "if I have to come over for you."
" "Two can play at that game," says Bogan.
" "Look here, Bogan," said Campbell, "I"ll tell you what I"ll do. If you give me your word that you"ll come up to the police-station to-morrow I"ll go back and say nothing about it. You can say you didn"t know a warrant was out after you. It will be all the better for you in the end. Better give me your word, man."
"Perhaps Campbell knew Bogan better than any of us.
" "Now then, Bogan," he said, "don"t be a fool. Give your word like a sensible man, and I"ll go back. I"ll give you five minutes to make up your mind."And he took out his watch.
"But Bogan was nasty and wouldn"t give his word, so there was nothing for it but for Campbell to make a try for him.
"Campbell had plenty of pluck, or obstinacy, which amounts to the same thing. He put his carbine and revolver under a log, out of the rain that was coming on, saw to his handcuffs, and then spurred his horse into the water. Bogan lit his pipe with a stick from his camp fire-so Campbell said afterwards-and sat down on his heels and puffed away, and waited for him.
"Just as Campbell"s horse floundered into the current Bogan shouted to go back, but Campbell thought it was a threat and kept on. But Bogan had caught sight of a log coming down the stream, end on, with a sharp, splintered end, and before Campbell knew where he was, the sharp end of the log caught the horse in the flank. The horse started to plunge and struggle sideways, with all his legs, and Campbell got free of him as quick as he could. Now, you know, in some of those Darling River reaches the current will seem to run steadily for a while, and then come with a rush. (I was caught in one of those rushes once, when I was in swimming, and would have been drowned if I hadn"t been born to be hanged.) Well, a rush came along just as Campbell got free from his horse, and he went down stream one side of a snag and his horse the other. Campbell"s pretty stout, you know, and his uniform was tight, and it handicapped him.
"Just as he was being washed past the lower end of the snag he caught hold of a branch that stuck out of the water and held on. He swung round and saw Bogan running down to the point opposite him. Now, you know there was always a lot of low cunning about Bogan, and I suppose he reckoned that if he pulled Campbell out he"d stand a good show of getting clear of his trouble; anyway, if he didn"t save Campbell it might be said that he killed him-besides, Bogan was a good swimmer, so there wasn"t any heroism about it anyhow. Campbell was only a few feet from the bank, but Bogan started to strip-to make the job look as big as possible, I suppose. He shouted to Campbell to say he was coming, and to hold on. Campbell said afterwards that Bogan seemed an hour undressing. The weight of the current was forcing down the bough that Campbell was hanging on to, and suddenly, he said, he felt a great feeling of helplessness take him by the shoulders. He yelled to Bogan and let go.
"Now, it happened that Jake Boreham and I were pa.s.sing away the time between shearings, and we were having a sort of fishing and shooting loaf down the river in a boat arrangement that Jake had made out of boards and tarred canvas. We called her the Jolly Coffin. We were just poking up the bank in the slack water, a few hundred yards below the billabong, when Jake said, "Why, there"s a horse or something in the river;" then he shouted, "No, by G.o.d it"s a man," and we poked the Coffin out into the stream for all she was worth. "Looks like two men fighting in the water," Jake shouts presently. "Hurry up, or they"ll drown each other."
"We hailed "em, and Bogan shouted for help. He was treading water and holding Campbell up in front of him now in real professional style. As soon as he heard us he threw up his arms and splashed a bit-I reckoned he was trying to put as much style as he could into that rescue. But I caught a crab, and, before we could get to them, they were washed past into the top of a tree that stood well below flood-mark. I pulled the boat"s head round and let her stern down between the branches. Bogan had one arm over a limb and was holding Campbell with the other, and trying to lift him higher out of the water. I noticed Bogan"s face was bleeding-there was a dead limb stuck in the tree with nasty sharp points on it, and I reckoned he"d run his face against one of them. Campbell was gasping like a codfish out of water, and he was the whitest man I ever saw (except one, and he"d been drowned for a week). Campbell had the sense to keep still. We asked Bogan if he could hold on, and he said he could, but he couldn"t hold Campbell any longer. So Jake took the oars and I leaned over the stern and caught hold of Campbell, and Jake ran the boat into the bank, and we got him ash.o.r.e; then we went back for Bogan and landed him.
"We had some whisky and soon brought Campbell round; but Bogan was bleeding like a pig from a nasty cut over his good eye, so we bound wet handkerchiefs round his eyes and led him to a log and he sat down for a while, holding his hand to his eye and groaning. He kept saying, "I"m blind, mates, I"m blind! I"ve lost me other eye!" but we didn"t dream it was so bad as that: we kept giving him whisky. We got some dry boughs and made a big fire. Then Bogan stood up and held his arms stiff down to his sides, opening and shutting his hands as if he was in great pain. And I"ve often thought since what a different man Bogan seemed without his clothes and with the broken bridge of his nose and his eyes covered by the handkerchiefs. He was clean shaven, and his mouth and chin are his best features, and he"s clean limbed and well hung. I often thought afterwards that there was something of a blind G.o.d about him as he stood there naked by the fire on the day he saved Campbell"s life-something that reminded me of a statue I saw once in the Art Gallery. (Pity the world isn"t blinder to a man"s worst points.) "Presently Jake listened and said, "By G.o.d, that"s lucky!" and we heard a steamer coming up river and presently we saw her coming round the point with a couple of wool-barges in tow. We got Bogan aboard and got some clothes on him, and took him ash.o.r.e at Bourke to the new hospital. The doctors did all they knew, but Bogan was blind for life. He never saw anything again-except "a sort of dull white blur", as he called it-or his past life sometimes, I suppose. Perhaps he saw that for the first time. Ah, well!
"Bogan"s old enemy, Barcoo-Rot, went to see him in the hospital, and Bogan said, "Well, Barcoo, I reckon we"ve had our last fight. I owe you a hiding, but I don"t see how I"m going to pay you." "Never mind that, Bogan, old man," says Barcoo. "I"ll take it from anyone yer likes to appoint, if that worries yer; and, look here, Bogan, if I can"t fight you I can fight for you-and don"t you forget it!" And Barcoo used to lead Bogan round about town in his spare time and tell him all that was going on; and I believe he always had an ear c.o.c.ked in case someone said a word against Bogan-as if any of the chaps would say a word against a blind man.
"Bogan"s case was hushed up. The police told us to fix it up the best way we could. One of the jackeroos, who reckoned that Bogan had swindled him, was a gentleman, and he was the first to throw a quid in the Giraffe"s hat when it went round for Bogan, but the other jackeroo was a cur: he said he wanted the money that Bogan had robbed him of. There were were two witnesses, but we sent "em away, and Tom Hall, there, scared the jackeroo. You know Tom was always the best hand we had at persuading witnesses in Union cases to go home to see their mothers."
"How did you scare that jackeroo, Tom?" I asked.
"Tell you about it some other time," said Tom.
"Well," said Mitch.e.l.l, "Bogan was always a good wool-sorter, so, next shearing, old Baldy Thompson-you know Baldy Thompson, Harry, of West-o"-Sunday Station-Baldy had a talk with some of the chaps, and took Bogan out in his buggy with him to West-o"-Sunday. Bogan would sit at the end of the rolling tables, in the shearing shed, with a boy to hand him the fleeces, and he"d feel a fleece and tell the boy what bin to throw it into; and by-and-by he began to learn to throw the fleeces into the bins himself. And sometimes Baldy would have a sheep brought to him and get him to feel the fleece and tell him the quality of it. And then again Baldy would talk, just loud enough for Bogan to overhear, and swear that he"d sooner have Bogan, blind as he was, than half-a-dozen scientific jackeroo experts with all their eyes about them.
"Of course Bogan wasn"t worth anything much to Baldy, but Baldy gave him two pounds a week out of his own pocket, and another quid that we made up between us; so he made enough to pull him through the rest of the year.
"It was curious to see how soon he learned to find his, way about the hut and manage his tea and tucker. It was a rough shed, but everybody was eager to steer Bogan about-and, in fact, two of them had a fight about it one day. Baldy and all of us-and especially visitors when they came-were mighty interested in Bogan; and I reckon we were rather proud of having a blind wool-sorter. I reckon Bogan had thirty or forty pairs of eyes watching out for him in case he"d run against something or fall. It irritated him to be messed round too much-he said a baby would never learn to walk if it was held all the time. He reckoned he"d learn more in a year than a man who"d served a lifetime to blindness; but we didn"t let him wander much-for fear he"d fall into the big rocky water-hole there, by accident.
"And after the shearing season Bogan"s wife turned up in Bourke-"
"Bogan"s wife!" I exclaimed. "Why, I never knew Bogan was married."
"Neither did anyone else," said Mitch.e.l.l. "But he was. Perhaps that was what accounted for Bogan. Sometimes, in his sober moods, I used to have an idea that there must have been something behind the Bogan to account for him. Perhaps he got trapped-or got married and found out that he"d made a mistake-which is about the worst thing a man can find out-"
"Except that his wife made the mistake, Mitch.e.l.l," said Tom Hall.
"Or that both did," reflected Mitch.e.l.l. "Ah, well!-never mind-Bogan had been married two or three years. Maybe he got married when he was on the spree-I knew that he used to send money to someone in Sydney and I suppose it was her. Anyway, she turned up after he was blind. She was a hard-looking woman-just the sort that might have kept a third-rate pub or a sly-grog shop. But you can"t judge between husband and wife, unless you"ve lived in the same house with them-and under the same roofs with their parents right back to Adam for that matter. Anyway, she stuck to Bogan all right; she took a little two-roomed cottage and made him comfortable-she"s got a sewing-machine and a mangle and takes in washing and sewing. She brought a carroty-headed youngster with her, and the first time I saw Bogan sitting on the verandah with that youngster on his knee I thought it was a good thing that he was blind."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the youngster isn"t his," said Mitch.e.l.l.
"How do you know that?"
"By the look of it-and by the look on her face, once, when she caught me squinting from the kid"s face to Bogan"s."
"And whose was it?" I asked, without thinking.
"How am I to know?" said Mitch.e.l.l. "It might be yours for all I know-it"s ugly enough, and you never had any taste in women. But you mustn"t speak of that in Bourke. But there"s another youngster coming, and I"ll swear that"ll be Bogan"s all right.
"Acurious thing about Bogan is that he"s begun to be fidgety about his personal appearance-and you know he wasn"t a dood. He wears a collar now, and polishes his boots; he wears elastic sides, and polishes "em himself-the only thing is that he blackens over the elastic. He can do many things for himself, and he"s proud of it. He says he can see many things that he couldn"t see when he had his eyes. You seldom hear him swear, save in a friendly way; he seems much gentler, but he reckons he would stand a show with Barcoo-Rot even now, if Barcoo would stand up in front of him and keep yelling-"
"By the way," I asked, "how did Bogan lose the sight of his other eye?"
"Sleeping out in the rain when he was drunk," said Mitch.e.l.l. "He got a cold in his eye." Then he asked, suddenly: "Did you ever see a blind man cry?"
"No," I said.
"Well, I have," said Mitch.e.l.l. "You know Bogan wears goggles to hide his eyes-his wife made him do that. The chaps often used to drop round and have a yarn with Bogan and cheer him up, and one evening I was sitting smoking with him, and yarning about old times, when he got very quiet all of a sudden, and I saw a tear drop from under one of his shutters and roll down his cheek. It wasn"t the eye he lost saving Campbell-it was the old wall-eye he used to use in the days before he was called "One-eyed Bogan". I suppose he thought it was dark and that I couldn"t see his face. (There"s a good many people in this world who think you can"t see because they can"t.) It made me feel like I used to feel sometimes in the days when I felt things--"
"Come on, Mitch.e.l.l," said Tom Hall, "you"ve had enough beer."
"I think I have," said Mitch.e.l.l. "Besides, I promised to send a wire to Jake Boreham to tell him that his mother"s dead. Jake"s shearing at West-o"-Sunday; shearing won"t be over for three or four weeks" and Jake wants an excuse to get away without offending old Baldy and come down and have a fly round with us before the holidays are over."
Down at the telegraph-office Mitch.e.l.l took a form and filled it in very carefully: "Jacob Boreham. West-o"-Sunday Station. Bourke. Come home at once. Mother is dead. In terrible trouble. Father dying.-MARY BOREHAM."
"I think that will do," said Mitch.e.l.l. "It ought to satisfy Baldy, and it won"t give Jake too much of a shock, because he hasn"t got a sister or sister-in-law, and his father and mother"s been dead over ten years."
"Now, if I was running a theatre," said Mitch.e.l.l, as we left the office, "I"d give five pounds a night for the face Jake"ll have on him when he takes that telegram to Baldy Thompson."
The Shearer"s Dream.
MITCh.e.l.l and I rolled up our swags after New Year and started to tramp west. It had been a very bad season after a long drought. Old Baldy Thompson had only shorn a few bales of gra.s.s seed and burrs, so he said, and thought of taking the track himself; but we hoped to get on shearing stragglers at West-o"-Sunday or one of the stations of the Hungerford track.
It was very hot weather, so we started after sunset, intending to travel all night. We crossed the big billabong, and were ploughing through the dust and sand towards West Bourke, when a buggy full of city girls and swells pa.s.sed by. They were part of a theatrical company on tour in the Back-Blocks, and some local Johnnies. They"d been driven out to see an artesian bore, or wool-shed, or something. The horses swerved, and jerked a little squawk out of one of the girls. Then another said: "Ow-w! Two old swaggies. He! he! he!"
I glanced at Mitch.e.l.l to see if he was. .h.i.t, and caught his head down; but he pulled himself up and pretended to hitch his swag into an easier position.
About a hundred yards further on he gave me a side look and said: "Did that touch you, Harry?"
"No," I said, and I laughed.
"You see," reflected Mitch.e.l.l, "they"re more to be pitied than blamed. It"s their ignorance. In the first place, we"re not two old tramps, as they think. We are professional shearers; and the Australian shearers are about the most independent and intelligent cla.s.s of men in the world. We"ve got more genius in one of our little fingers than there is in the whole of that waggonette-load of diddle-daddle and fiddle-faddle and giggles. Their intellects are on a level with the rotten dramas they travel with, and their lives about as false. They are slaves to the public, and their home is the pub parlour, with sickly, senseless Johnnies to shout suppers and drink for them and lend their men money. If one of those girls is above the average, how she must despise those Johnnies-and the life! She must feel a greater contempt for them than the private barmaid does for the boozer she cleans out. He gets his drink and some enjoyment, anyhow. And how she must loathe the life she leads! And what"s the end of it as often as not? I remember once, when I was a boy, I was walking out with two aunts of mine-they"re both dead now, G.o.d rest their fussy, innocent old souls!-and one of "em said suddenly, "Look! Quick, Jack! There"s Maggie So-and-So, the great actress." And I looked and saw a woman training vines in a porch. It seemed like seeing an angel to me, and I never forgot her as she was then. The diggers used to go miles out of town to meet the coach that brought her, and take the horses out and drag it in, and throw gold in her lap, and worship her.
"The last time I was in Sydney I saw her sitting in the back parlour of a third-rate pub. She was dying of dropsy and couldn"t move from her chair. She showed me a portrait of herself as I remembered her, and talked quite seriously about going on the stage again.
"Now, our home is about two thousand miles wide, and the world"s our stage. If the worst comes to the worst we can always get tucker and wood and water for nothing. If we"re camping at a job in a tent there"s no house-cleaning to bother us. All we"ve got to do when the camp gets too dirty is to shift the tent to a fresh place. We"ve got time to think and-we"re free.
"But then, agen," he reflected, "there"s the world"s point of view to be considered. Some day I might be flashing past in a buggy or saloon carriage-or the chances are it will be you-and you might look out the window and see an old swaggy tramping along in the dust, or camped under a strip of calico in the rain in the scrub. (And it might be me-old Mitch.e.l.l-that really wrote your books, only the world won"t know it.) And then you"ll realise what a wretched, miserable life it was. We never realise the miseries of life till we look back-the mistakes and miseries that had to be and couldn"t be helped. It"s all luck-luck and chance."
But those girls seemed to have gravelled Mitch.e.l.l, and he didn"t seem able to talk himself round. He tramped on, brooding for a while, and then suddenly he said: "Look here, Harry! Those girls are giving a dance to-night, and if I liked to go back to Bourke and tog up and go to the dance I could pick out the prettiest, dance with her all the evening, and take her for a stroll afterwards, old tramp as they thought me. I"ve lived.-But it wouldn"t be worth my while now."
I"d seen Jack in a mood like this before, and thought it best to say nothing. Perhaps the terrible heat had affected him a little. We walked on in silence until we came to the next billabong. "Best boil the billy here, Harry," said Mitch.e.l.l, "and have some tea before we go any further."
I got some sticks together and made a fire and put the billy on. The country looked wretched-like the ghost of a burnt-out land-in the moonlight. The banks of the creek were like ashes, the thin, gnarled gum-bush seemed dry-rotting fast, and in many places the surface of the ground was cracked in squares where it had shrunk in the drought. In the bed of the creek was a narrow gutter of water that looked like bad milk.