Part 22 (2/2)

By way of contrast, we found Dan and Jack optimistic and happy, with some good bullocks in hand, a record branding to report for the fortnight's work, and a drover in camp of such a delightful turn of mind that he was inclined to look upon every bullock mustered as ”just the thing.” He was easily disposed of, and within a week we were back at the homestead.

We had left Cheon sad and disconsolate, but he met us, filled with fury, and holding a sack of something soft in his arms. ”What's 'er matter?” he spluttered, almost choking with rage. ”Me savey grow cabbage ”; and he flung the sack at our feet as we stood in the homestead thoroughfare staring at him in wonder. ”Paper yabber!” he added curtly, pa.s.sing a letter to the Maluka.

It was a kindly, courteous letter from our Eastern neighbour, who had ”ventured to send a cabbage, remembering the homestead garden did not get on too well.” (His visits had been in Sam's day). ”How kind!” we said, and not understanding Cheon's wrath, the Maluka opened the bag, and pa.s.sed two fine cabbages to him after duly admiring them.

They acted on Cheon like a red rag on a bull. Flinging them from him, he sent them spinning across the stony ground with two furious kicks, following them up with further furious kicks as we looked on in speechless amazement. ”What's 'er matter?” he growled, as, abandoning the chase with a final lunge, he stalked indignantly back to us; and as the unfortunate cabbages turned over and lay still on their tattered backs, he began to explain his wrath. Was he not paid to grow cabbages, he asked, and where had he failed that we should accept cabbages from neighbours? Cabbages for ourselves, but insults for him! Then, the comical side of his nature coming to the surface as unexpectedly as his wrath, he was overcome with laughter, and clung to a verandah post for support, while still speechless, we looked on in consternation, for laughing was a serious matter with Cheon.

”My word, me plenty cross fellow,” he gasped at intervals and finally led the way to the vegetable garden, where he cut an enormous cabbage and carried it to the store to weigh it. The scale turned at twelve pounds, and, sure of our ground now, we compared its mighty heart to the stout heart of Cheon--a compliment fully appreciated by his Chinese mind; then, having disparaged the tattered results to his satisfaction, we went to the house and wrote a letter of thanks to our neighbour, giving him so vivid a word-picture of the reception of his cabbages that he felt inspired to play a practical joke on Cheon later on. One thing is very certain--everyone enjoyed those cabbages including even Cheon and the goats.

Of course we had cabbage for dinner that day, and the day following, and the next day again, and were just fearing that cabbage was becoming a confirmed habit when Dan coming in with reports we all went bush again, and the spell was broken. ”A pity the man from Beyanst wasn't about,”

Dan said when he heard of the daily menu.

It was late in September when Dan came in, and four weeks slipped away with the concerns of cattle and cattle-buyers and cattle-duffers, and as we moved hither and thither the water-melons leafed and blossomed and fruited to Billy's delight, and Cheon's undisguised amazement and the line party, creeping on, crept first into our borders and then into camp at the Warlochs, and Happy d.i.c.k's visits, dog-fights, and cribbage became part of the station routine. Now and then a traveller from ”inside”

pa.s.sed out, but as the roads ”inside” were rapidly closing in, none came from the Outside going in, and because of that there were no extra mails, and towards the end of October we were wondering how we were ”going to get through the days until the Fizzer was due again,” when Dan and Jack came in unexpectedly for a consultation.

”Run clean out of flour,” Dan announced, with a wink and a mysterious look towards the black world, as he dismounted at the head of the homestead thoroughfare then, after inquiring for the ”education of the missus” he added, with further winks and mystery, that it only needed a n.i.g.g.e.r hunt to round off her education properly but it was after supper before he found a fitting opportunity to explain his winks and mystery.

Then, joining us as we lounged in the open starry s.p.a.ce between the billabong and the house, he chuckled: ”Yes, it just needs a n.i.g.g.e.r hunt to make her education a credit to us.”

Dan never joined us in the evenings without an invitation, although he was not above putting himself in the way of one. Whenever he felt inclined for what he called ”a pitch with the boss and missus” he would saunter past at a little distance, apparently bound for the billabong, but in reality ready to respond to the Maluka's ”Is that you, Dan?”

although just as ready to saunter on if that invitation was not forthcoming--a happy little arrangement born of that tact and delicacy of the bush-folk that never intrudes on another man's privacy.

Dan being just Dan rarely had need to saunter on; and as he sewed down on the gra.s.s in acceptance of this usual form of invitation, he wagged his head wisely, declaring ”she had got on so well with her education that it 'ud be a pity not to finish her off properly.” Then dropping his bantering tone, he reported a scatter-on among the river cattle.

”I wasn't going to say anything about it before the ”boys,” he said, ”but it's time some one gave a surprise party down the river;” and a ”scatter-on” meaning ”n.i.g.g.e.rs in,” Maluka readily agreed to a surprise patrol of the river country, that being forbidden ground for blacks'

camps.

”It's no good going unless it's going to be a surprise party,” Dan reiterated; and when the Quiet Stockman was called across from the Quarters, he was told that ”there wasn't going to be no talking before the boys.”

Further consultations being necessary, Dan feared arousing suspicion, and to ensure his surprise party, and to guard against any word of the coming patrol being sent out-bush by the station ”boys,” he indulged in a little dust-throwing, and there was much talking in public about going ”out to the north-west for the boss to have another look round there,” and much laying of deep plans in private.

Finally, it was decided that the Quiet Stockman and his ”boys” were to patrol the country north from the river while we were to keep to the south banks and follow the river down to the boundaries in all its windings, each party appointed to camp at the Red Lily lagoons second night out, each, of course, on its own side of the river. It being necessary for Jack to cross the river beyond the Springs, he left the homestead half a day before us--public gossip reporting that he was ”going beyond the Waterhouse horse mustering,” and Dan finding dust-throwing highly diverting, shouted after him that he ”might as well bring some fresh relays to the Yellow Hole in a day or two,” and then giving his attention to the packing of swags and pack-bags, ”reckoned things were just about fixed up for a surprise party.”

CHAPTER XX

At our appointed time we left the homestead, taking the north-west track for over a mile to continue the dust-throwing; and for the whole length of that mile Dan reiterated the ”advantages of surprise parties,” and his opinion that ”things were just about properly fixed up for one”; and when we left the track abruptly and set off across country at right angles to it, Sambo's quick questioning, suspicious glance made it very evident that he, for one, had gleaned no inkling of the patrol, which naturally filled Dan with delight.

”River to-night, Sambo,” he said airily, but after that one swift glance Sambo rode after us as stolid as ever--Sambo was always difficult to fathom--while Dan spent the afternoon congratulating himself on the success of his dust-throwing, proving with many ill.u.s.trations that ”it's the hardest thing to spring a surprise on n.i.g.g.e.rs. Something seems to tell 'em you're coming,” he explained. ”Some chaps put it down to second-sight or thought-reading.”

When we turned in Dan was still chuckling over his cute handling of the trip. ”Bluffed 'em this time all right,” he a.s.sured us, little guessing that the blacks at the ”Red Lilies,” thirty miles away, and other little groups of blacks travelling down the river towards the lagoons were conjecturing on the object of the Maluka's visit--”something having told them we were coming.”

The ”something” however, was neither second-sight nor thought-reading, but a very simple, tangible ”something.” Sambo had gone for a stroll from our camp about sundown, and one of Jack's boys had gone for a stroll from Jack's camp, and soon afterwards two tell-tale telegraphic columns of smoke, worked on some blackfellow dot-dash-system, had risen above the timber, and their messages had also been duly noted down at the Red Lilies and elsewhere, and acted upon. The Maluka was on the river, and when the Maluka was about, it was considered wisdom to be off forbidden ground; not that the blacks feared the Maluka, but no one cares about vexing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

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