Part 21 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVIII
Only three weeks before, as we hunted for it through scrub and bush and creek-bed, the Yellow Hole had been one of our Unknown Waters, tucked snugly away in an out-of-the-way elbow of creek country, and now we found it transformed into the life-giving heart of a bustling world of men and cattle and commerce. Beside it stood the simple camp of the stockman--a litter of pack-bags, mosquito-nets, and swags; here and there were scattered the even more simple camps of the black boys; and in the background, the c.u.mbrous camp of the Chinese drovers reared itself up in strong contrast to the camps of the bushfolk--two fully equipped tents for the drovers themselves and a simpler one for their black boys. West of the Yellow Hole boys were tailing a fine mob of bullocks, and to the east other ”boys” were ”holding” a rumbling mob of mixed cattle, and while Jack and Dan rode here and there shouting orders for the ”cutting out” of the cattle, the Dandy busied himself at the fire, making tea as a refresher, before getting going in earnest, the only restful, placid, unoccupied beings in the whole camp being the Chinese drovers. Not made of the stuff that ”lends a hand” in other people's affairs, they sat in the shade of their tents and looked on, well pleased that men should bustle for their advantage. As we rode past the drovers they favoured us with a sweet smile of welcome, while Dan met us with a chuckle of delight at the sweetness of their smile, and as Jack took our horses--amused both at the drovers' sweetness and Dan's appreciation of it--the Dandy greeted us with the news that we had ”struck it lucky, as usual,” and that a cup of tea would be ready in ”half a shake.”
Dan also considered we had ”struck it lucky,” but from a different point of view, for he had only just come into camp with the mixed cattle, and as the bullocks among them more than completed the number required, he suggested the drovers should take delivery at once, a.s.suring us, as we drank the tea, that he was just about dead sick of them ”little Chinese darlings.”
The ”little Chinese darlings,” inwardly delighted that the Maluka's simple trust seemed as guileless as ever, smugly professed themselves willing to fall in with any arrangement that was pleasing to the white folk, and as they mounted their horses Dan heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
But Dan's satisfaction was premature, for it took time and much galloping before the ”little Chinese darlings” could satisfy themselves and each other that they had the very finest bullocks procurable in their mob. A hundred times they changed their minds: rejecting chosen bullocks, recalling rejected bullocks, and comparing every bullock accepted with every bullock rejected. Bulk was what they searched for--plenty for their money, as they judged it, and finally gathered together a mob of coa.r.s.e, wide-horned, great-framed beasts, rolling in fat that would drip off on the road as they travelled in.
”You'd think they'd got 'em together for a boiling-down establishment, with a bone factory for a side line,” Dan chuckled, secretly pleased that our best bullocks were left on the run, and, disbanding the rejected bullocks before ”they” could ”change their minds again,” he gathered together the mixed cattle and shut them in the Dandy's new yard, to keep them in hand for later branding.
But the ”little Chinese darlings” had counted on the use of that yard for themselves, and finding that their bullocks would have to be ”watched” on camp that night, they stolidly refused to take delivery before morning, pointing out that should the cattle stampede during the night, the loss would be ours, not theirs.
”Well, I'm blowed!” Dan chuckled, but the Maluka cared little whether the papers were signed then or at sun-up; and the drovers, pleased with getting their way so easily, magnanimously offered to take charge of the first ”watch”--the evening watch--provided that only our horses should be used, and that Big Jack and Jackeroo and others should lend a hand.
Dan wouldn't hear of refusing the offer. ”Bit of exercise'll do 'em good,” he said; and deciding the bullocks would be safe enough with Jack and Jackeroo, we white folk stretched ourselves in the warm firelight after supper, and, resting, watched the shadowy mob beyond the camp, listening to the shoutings and gallopings of the watchers as we chatted.
When a white man watches cattle, if he knows his business he quiets his mob down and then opens them out gradually, to give them room to lie down, or ruminate standing without rubbing shoulders with a restless neighbour, which leaves him little to do beyond riding round occasionally, to keep his ”boys” at their posts, and himself alert and ready for emergencies. But a Chinaman's idea of watching cattle is to wedge them into a solid body, and hold them huddled together like a mob of frightened sheep, riding incessantly round them and forcing back every beast that looks as though it might extricate itself from the tangle, and galloping after any that do escape with screams of anxiety and impotency.
”Beck! beck!” (back), screamed our drovers, as they galloped after escaped beasts, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles like half-filled water-bags; galloping invariably after the beasts, and thereby inciting there to further galloping. And ”Beck! beck!” shouted our boys on duty with perfect mimicry of tone and yells of delight at the impotency of the drovers, galloping always outside the runaways and bending them back into the mob, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles until, in the half light, it was difficult to tell drover from ”boy.” Not detecting the mimicry, the drovers in no way resented it; the more the boys screamed and galloped in their service the better pleased they were; while the ”boys” were more than satisfied with their part of the entertainment, Jackeroo and Big Jack particularly enjoying themselves.
”They'll have 'em stampeding yet,” Dan said at last growing uneasy, as more and more cattle escaped, and the mob s.h.i.+fted ground with a rumbling rattle of hoofs every few minutes. Finally, as the rumbling rattle threatened to become permanent, a long drawn-out cry of ”Ring--ing” from Big Jack sent Dan and the Quiet Stockman to their saddles. In ten minutes the hubbub had ceased, Dan's master-hand having soothed the irritated beasts; then having opened them out he returned to the camp fire alone. Jack had gone on duty before his time and sent the ”little Chinese darlings” to bed.
Naturally Dan's cattle-tussle reminded him of other tussles with ringing cattle; then the cattle-camp suggesting other cattle-camp yarns, he settled down to reminiscences until he had us all cold thrills and skin-creeps, although we were gathered around a blazing fire.
Tale after tale he told of stampedes and of weaners piling up against fences. Then followed a tale or two of cattle Iying quiet as mice one minute, and up on their feet cras.h.i.+ng over camps the next, then tales of men being ”treed” or ”skied,” and tales of scrub-bulls, maddened cow-mothers, and ”pokers.”
”Pokers,” it appears, have a habit of poking out of mobs, grazing quietly as they edge off until ”they're gone before you miss 'em.” Camps seem to have some special attraction for pokers, but we learned they object to interference. Poke round peaceful as cats until ”you rile them,” Dan told us, and then glided into a tale of how a poker ”had us all treed once.”
”Poked in a bit too close for our fancy while we were at supper,” he explained, ”so we slung sticks at him to turn him back to the mob, and the next minute was making for trees, but as there was only saplings handy, it would have been a bit awkward for the heavy weights if there hadn't have been enough of us to divide his attentions up a bit.” (Dan was a good six feet, and well set up at that.) ”Climbing saplings to get away from a stag isn't much of a game,” he added, with a reminiscent chuckle; ”they're too good at the bending trick. The farther up the sapling you climb, the nearer you get to the ground.”
Then he favoured us with one of his word-pictures: ”There was the sapling bending like a weeping willow,” he said, ”and there was the stag underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he could do anything for me, taking a poke at me boot now and then, 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 a.s.sured us, finding us unsympathetic, ”and n.o.body 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 a.s.suring 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sure 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.