The Best Australian Bush Stories Page 6

  ‘Rose can have the same as her sisters,’ he said.

  His wife had made no comment but had glanced at him as much as to say, ‘That’s very handsome of you, Pa!’ Rose, emotional, though usually chary of display, had rubbed the side of his head with her cheek when she caught him sitting alone.

  So Pa was launched upon a sea of troubles that were not to end until he had experienced, for the first time in his life, dragging bogged and drought-stricken beasts from a shrunken waterhole, and skinning a ten-pound cow to salvage a ten-shilling hide.

  Preparations for the wedding developed apace. Rose and her mother sent to Brisbane for mail order catalogues and spent hours licking their thumbs over them. Occasionally they called Pa into consultation.

  ‘Look, Pa. Do you think this . . . ?’

  Pa, pleased at having his opinion asked, assisted to the best of his ability, and joined in the fun if his judgment was provocative of mirth. His was the honour and privilege of paying. He remembered how the cheques he had had to sign for the other weddings had made him wince a little; but somehow the wince had been the gauge of his importance and pleasure. Now, when his views were sought, he intimated, by opinions into which considerations of price had obviously not entered very much, that he was standing by the promise he had given on Rose’s account. He was rewarded by his womenfolk with small flatteries indicative of vast approval.

  His first intimation that things were not well with him came one morning when he went out to the road to intercept Snooker Hall, driving past on his way to the railhead. He wanted Snooker to buy him some roofing nails at the store. By this time, brown paper packages had begun arriving from the city for the Pettingels, and the chief sounds indoors, in the intervals of routine housework, were the silvery snip of scissors and the purr of the sewing machine.

  Pa had not yet had time to subdivide and it happened that his cattle were all gathered grazing near the front fence, opposite where he had stopped Snooker. They were a goodly band. It was September and they had come through the winter well. Pa noticed Snooker running his eye over them as they exchanged a little talk and, although he pointedly ignored them himself, he had them pridefully in mind. He was a little taken aback when Snooker said:

  ‘A bit over-stocked for this time of the year, aren’t you, Pettingel?’

  Snooker was one of those men who always have a sharp eye toward other people’s business and, disturbing factor, he had an authoritative air which implied that he had mostly found himself right in his conjectures.

  ‘There’s a good stand of feed at the back of the paddock,’ answered Pa, off-handedly.

  Snooker nodded without taking his eyes off the stock, as much as to say, ‘I knew you’d say that!’ His protracted survey of the cattle was pointed, and said as plainly as words, ‘You’ve been over-reaching yourself, old man!’

  The incident troubled Pa during the course of the day and in late afternoon, when he rode old Spring to the back of the selection to bring in the milkers, he took careful note of the amount of feed remaining. His paddock didn’t look very much different from those adjoining. The tall grass, dry and yellow, from last growing season, still stretched away under the box and ironbark trees like a paddock of thin wheat. He noticed that the soft under-feed was well bitten away but still . . .

  It was hard to feel pessimistic, sitting comfortably in the saddle after a heavy but satisfactory day, with the sun slanting serenely down through the ragged boughs and the cattle trailing contentedly home in front of him.

  ‘One day you think you’ve got some feed left, and a couple of days later it’s all gone!’ That was the voice of an old hand with whom he had discussed the character of the country. The words came back to him ominously; but Pa had a heart not readily given to dread. He looked at the fine condition of his stock, at the feed still standing; he thought of the advantageous price at which he had bought that mob of yearlings, and thrust misgiving into the back of his mind.

  That night Rose’s husband-to-be came on his twice-a-week visit. His selection was three miles across country, at the back of the Pettingels’. He’d have come oftener only that since he had proposed and been accepted, he had dropped temporarily into second place. It was the wedding that held the centre of the stage. Pa remembered that it had been like that when Ma—Lucy—had been in the throes of wedding preparations. Bart had to do his love-making when Rose went with him as far as the creek crossing on his way home; a proceeding, incidentally, that usually took as long as it would have taken Bart, alone, to go home and back a couple of times.

  This night the women were stitching. Bart sat on the other side of the lamp from Pa, taking his part in the general yarning, being polite to Pa and Ma, and taking a frequent eyeful of Rose. There was a certain undercurrent of regret at the thought of parting with the last daughter, but she was getting a fine steady chap and on the whole the arrangement was a desirable one. Pa, full willing, was caught up in the mood of the occasion. He, too, looked forward to the wedding. With his stockinged feet stretched before him he even rehearsed in his mind a little of the wedding speech that had gone down so well on previous occasions: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me and my wife very great pleasure to see the faces of so many good friends and neighbours . . .’

  That night, in bed, while Rose was still down at the creek crossing saying goodnight to Bart, Pa was given additional reason for seeing her well started. Ma spoke of how strange the house would seem with only the two of them. She called him Jim, a name she had rarely used since the children were little. Ma, too, felt that Rose’s going drew attention to the sands steadily running.

  October passed and brought no rain with it. Pa spent the month putting up a fence to make a night paddock for the milkers, around the homestead. He was anxious now. From where he worked he could see into one of the neighbours’ paddocks, the one from whom he had bought the yearlings. You could see the difference; in his the under-feed was used up, and the cattle were starting on the top-feed. The stalky tufts were bitten off here and there, square, like brushes, and as appetite became less discriminating the stock would bite lower and lower. Freshness, too, was noticeably departing from the earth. Except at early morning and late afternoon there was a searching glare, as if the year was withering away.

  ‘You generally get rain when the weather warms up?’ That was Pa talking to one of the old hands, seeking verification of his observations of the previous season.

  ‘Yes, if it happens to be a good year.’

  ‘And what if it happens to be only a middling year?’

  ‘Well, we mostly get rain here in western Queensland—general rains that is—some time after Christmas. We might get a thunderstorm or two before then—if you’re lucky and happen to be in the track of it.’

  The casualness of the old hands, as against his fast increasing need, brought stabs of panic to Pa as he went about his work.

  He said nothing of his anxiety to his womenfolk. Going indoors, he would see a newly opened parcel, the paper still hanging loosely about it. ‘What’s that?’ he would ask.

  ‘That’s towelling—or sheeting—Pa,’ he would be told. ‘Look, Pa! Only two, eleven, three a yard. Special discount for brides!’

  Pa wondered where all the contents of the brown paper parcels disappeared to. When Violet and Myrtle married there had been dressmaker’s bills to pay, but this time—he had been told—out of consideration for their being on a new selection, it had been decided to save money by doing all the needlework at home. It seemed to him, however, that economies effected by home manufacture were more than made up for by liberal purchases of material. Still, he let no sign be seen. He had given his word. Also, his prestige abroad as well as at home was involved. Word of the forthcoming fine wedding was passing around among the neighbours.

  He was glad when the new fence was finished. The cows would soon bite it to the dust, and the sight of bare earth around the homestead would be a commonplace. That would be just the night paddock; in the big paddock, ex
tending to the back of the selection, peace and plenty would still presumably reign.

  The milch cows were going off in their yield; a fact that could not but be noticed by Rose, who helped with the milking. However, nothing else but a fall in the yield could be expected, according to Pa. They had been milking a long time now on dry feed. He remarked—with some truth—that everybody was complaining of the same thing.

  It was about this time that Pa relieved Rose of her customary job of taking the cream to the railway in the sulky. It would give her more time for getting ready for the wedding, he said. His real reason was that he was aware of Snooker Hall’s discerning eye directed at his selection every time he passed by, and he wanted to come between Rose and whatever neighbourhood gossip might be circulating on train days. To bluff even the stationmaster, he paid full freight on a half-empty cream can—and put it in the van himself, lest some too-obliging neighbour, helping load the van, should stumble on an interesting fact. Pa, by nature, didn’t like resorting to subterfuge, but things were closing in on him.

  The women gave Pa no rest. To keep his mind off his anxieties he was building a new pig-pen, of straight brigalow logs, to replace the cockatoo structure he had thrown together the first year. Rose came to him while he was notching the logs. She had evidently awaited an opportunity to speak with him, daughter to father. ‘Pa, do you think we ought to get a good suite for the parlour while we’re at it? There’s one at fourteen pounds ten and another at eighteen pounds ten.’ Pa recalled, with a sinking of his stomach, that his wedding present to Violet and Myrtle had been to furnish their parlours—where they could entertain in bang-up style. He hadn’t counted on it this time, somehow; but Bart, he recalled, had been building his house; he had put everything else aside; no doubt on Rose’s suggestion. Rose would want to have a good tale to tell in her letters to her sisters.

  Pa examined the log under his hands for a long while before looking up to meet his daughter’s eyes. ‘I think it would be best to get the good one,’ he said. ‘Better to have something that will last.’

  While pleased that he should have so decided, Rose was evidently not surprised. She thanked him, and dutifully asked if she could be of any help. He thanked her and assured her that he could manage. She stood awhile and admired the new pig-pen before going back, with quickening steps, to the house.

  After she had gone Pa’s hands fell idle for a time. He was wondering what was in store for him, if he could get through summoning his strength of spirit to face unknown ends. Rose was evidently out for all there was in it—but that was only natural. As against a momentary flash of resentment at the way women lost themselves in a wedding, he recalled that Rose had been very good in the early camping days on the selection, shovelling dirt out of the post-holes when they were fencing, while he was wielding the spud-bar; bending in the hot sun, paying out from the coil when he was running the wires through the posts; handing up planks, tools and sheet iron when he was building; interested, rarely complaining, making light of grimed and scarred hands. Pa blew a deep sigh and turned again to his work.

  Bart brought cheering news, one night. ‘I hear they’ve had storms down the line, Mr Pettingel. Nogganilla copped three inches!’

  This was indeed heartening. In imagination Pa saw one of these beneficent storms sweep across his selection.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Pa?’ This from Ma, looking up from matching buttons, referring to his affairs in general. This was very nice of Ma; perfunctory, of course, for her mind was on other things, but well intended.

  ‘Yes, I can’t complain,’ from Pa. At the same time he caught a look in Bart’s eye, and he knew what he had suspected for some time; that Bart fully realised the parlous state of his affairs. In coming visiting Bart crossed a back corner of Pettingel’s selection; he came at night admittedly, but these bush-bred lads had eyes in their feet.

  It was humiliating for Pa that Bart should know his position, because that position was entirely Pa’s own fault; he shouldn’t have bought that mob of yearlings; forty youngsters, busy eating and growing, had made the difference between security and desperation. That was why Bart had made no comment, but had been eager with hopeful news. Bart was not over-stocked. Pa had a feeling that he had only to say the word and Bart would relieve him by taking some of his cattle. But was he, the man with a lifetime’s experience, to make a start by falling on the shoulders of his future son-in-law? No, by the Hokey Pokey! The look he returned Bart revealed nothing.

  ‘Funny how stock make a dead set on an ironbark ridge,’ said Pa. ‘They must find ’em sweet.’ He was giving the conversation a tactical twist. It was an ironbark ridge over which Bart came.

  Only dry storms—those subject fiends of Demon Drought—came to Pettingel’s selection. Twice Pa was driven by them to seek shelter. Overpowering heat, a smell of rain somewhere about, a clouding up, thunder rolling, darkness, a rushing of wind, a wild thrashing of boughs, a scattering of large ineffectual raindrops, like florins, pitting the dust; then dispersal, and the sun again, hotter than ever, mocking the aching earth, and seeming to jeer: ‘Did you think it was going to rain, Pettingel?’ At such times Pa’s heart nearly broke.

  Cementing the cow bails—a job he set himself to as a sort of a penance—Pa had a brief nostalgia for the snug little property he had left in the Gippsland Ranges. Green maize ten feet high on the tiny creek flat, cocksfoot and clover like a green mantle on the spurs; water gurgling under musky leafage down every gully. He was led from his consideration of his present plight to wonder why he had uprooted himself and come north. Bigger acreage. Change. A stirring in the blood. A wave of optimism similar to that which had carried him into buying those yearlings. A belief, vaguely founded, that by leaving the old stand he could outwit nature—shake off the gathering weight of years. In some measure he had. Here on the new settlement he had shared in the days of beginnings. He had held his own, too, in hard work, stepped into the job with younger men and kept up with them, pace for pace, stroke for stroke—but he wished he hadn’t bought those yearlings!

  While he was toiling through the hot hours to escape his thoughts, Alec Lavresen, from whom he had bought them, was probably making a long midday of it, his back against the shady side of his house, reading the paper, his family around him, easy of mind. Alec was only half his age, but a western Queenslander, an old hand in regard to the country.

  ‘Once the stock start to die they go quicker and quicker. It’s one today, two or three more by the end of the week, five or six next week, ten or a dozen the following week.’ The grim old hands were talking again!

  Pa hurriedly finished smoothing off the cement in the bail where he was at work. Then he flung down his tools and went for old Spring. He was going to have a thorough good look at his land, ride right over it, see how much longer the feed would last.

  He saw little to comfort him, riding over the hill, flat and gully. The best country—the ironbark ridges—was completely eaten out, black and bare. On the box sidings the tufts were bitten back to about three inches, right back to the hard wood, and the stock were still at it, except a few that he noticed making an experimental attack on a clump of wilga bushes. It was pretty much the same on the best of the flats. There was one small stretch, swampy in wet weather, covered with long tough blady and wire grass. Stock wouldn’t look at it ordinarily, but a lot of them were in it now, nosing after a bite at the bottom. Pa sat his horse, watching disconsolately.

  How long could he last? He hadn’t the money to buy agistment; that had gone into Rose’s wedding. He couldn’t raise money; he had borrowed to build—Ma needed a proper house at her age. Could he last until after the wedding? Another fortnight? He might be compelled to fall back on Bart. That thought galled him. And then there was the thought that perhaps the district was in for a real drought. What right had he to ask the younger man to shoulder some of his risks in the face of that possibility?

  He rode home heavily. His stock would be on their feet for two or three
weeks yet, but after that they would go down like scrub falling; that was one of the penalties of having almost all good country—and over-stocking. The thought of the wedding turned his insides to lead. The guests would know. The story had got around. He had a neighbour on each side and one at the back, as well as Hall, going by. At the railway he had met Tom Sturges, from over on Bluey Creek, ten miles away. Tom had asked how he was getting on, and on being told that he was doing fine, had expressed surprise. ‘Oh, I’m glad to hear that. I heard you were in deep water!’ Pa could imagine the swarm of guests, jovial, friendly, congratulatory—and silently critical, quietly observant of the shameful difference between his ostentatious board and his hungry paddocks. That ate into Pa; he had always—at least when not tempted to over-optimism—paid respect to sound and careful husbandry.

  Dinner, on the day the rain came, had been a scratch meal eaten in an atmosphere of dress manufacture. There was the uncovered sewing machine, loose heaps of material piled on chairs—and smelling like a draper’s shop—snippings on the floor, and Rose with her hair tousled from dragging things on and off over her head.

  The women were talking of the wedding. Pa was thinking about his cattle. During the week he had had to pull three beasts out of the bog at the top end of the waterhole in the creek. He had had the satisfaction of seeing them go tottering off on their muddied legs, but one of them had died, a cow. He had spent the morning skinning her. Pa wasn’t accustomed to skinning. He had made a laborious and bloody job of it. He had washed the blood off his hands and arms at the waterhole and flung the hide over a log to avoid bringing it home. That was the first of them! Before Pa’s inner eye was the image of that obscene carcass lying in the gully, and in his ears the ca-a-a-rk, ca-a-a-a-a-a-rk, of gathering crows. Although a stock-keeper, Pa was humane, and was troubled by a sense of moral guilt as well as of financial loss.