THE CAMP
I
SLIM JIM WEBSTER’S philosophy was well-nigh perfect in a world where the virtue of generosity is carried almost to a fault. He did not believe in working that he might eat, because to eat did not mean having to work.
During but two periods of the year did Slim Jim labour: at the annual lamb-marking and at the annual shearing. On Atlas the lamb-marking averaged four weeks of the fifty-two, whilst the shearing extended from five to seven weeks. The remainder of the year was lived as a Darling River Pirate, a life of unlimited freedom and boundless leisure, of walking without haste from station homestead to station homestead along one side of the river and down along the other side, with interposed breaks now and then of a week or a few days at work when a rest from constant travelling could be appreciated.
“Why work?” was Slim Jim’s pertinent inquiry. “I carry my swag up the river on the east side, camp where I like, fish when I like, call on a station cook for tucker when I like, sell a fish out of the river to a township pub or a squatter for a few plugs of tobacco, do the same when coming down the west bank, and engage as a lamb-markers’ cook and a wool-presser for money enough for me ’olidays. And at the end of twelve months I am just as well off as you blokes–who work all the year round. Work! Coo! Only suckers work!”
Thirty years as a Darling River Pirate had enabled Slim Jim to become thoroughly acquainted with every squatter and station cook from Wentworth to Burke, as well as every fishing-hole in that thousand-mile river course. To the squatters he was a man possessing two good points: he could cook well with the primitive utensils of a shifting camp, and he could be relied on to turn up on time if engaged for the lamb-marking six months previously.
Visualize, please, a man weighing fourteen stone, measuring six feet in height, possessing a face like a multi-split tomato, and a voice with the carrying power of a foghorn. His day at the lamb-marking camps of Atlas started when the alarm-clock rang at half-past five. A greater autocrat than the overseer, who was boss of the camp, Slim Jim occupied a tent in which were stacked the stores, and when he had dressed in spotless white drill trousers and cotton shirt, and had buttoned up a ragged overcoat, he stepped out into the brilliantly starlit, frost-gripped night, rolled toward the uprights and crossbeam which marked the fire-site, seized a rod and raked among the domed heap of white ash till he had bared the still glowing embers of wood billets he had so carefully buried in the depth of the fire before going to bed. Upon these embers he tossed an armful of twigs left in readiness, and, when the twigs caught fire, added log after log till, presently, a huge column of flame brought out of the darkness the white shapes of half a dozen tents expertly erected on frames.
Quite near was a round, galvanized iron tank of water, and from it he filled a pint billy-can which he hung over the fire, low, and in the centre of the flame column. In a minute it was boiling. Then Slim Jim removed his overcoat, and when he had made himself tea he sat on a box and sipped from the blackened billy-can whilst he smoked his first pipeful of strong, ink-black tobacco.
Himself refreshed, he examined his bread dough. Removing first a sheet of iron weighted by a log, he rolled away a sheepskin, when there was disclosed a round hole, and within the hole a large bucket covered with a cloth. When the cloth was removed it could be seen that the dough in the bucket was “ripe”. For fifteen minutes he punched this dough on a table built of a door laid over a rough bough frame, and when the dough had been once more placed in the bucket he set it near the fire, and carefully protected the far side from the cold night air with the sheepskin.
From another tent, which was his larder, he removed the mincemeat balls he had made up the night before, and placed them in two large iron camp-ovens, beneath and on which he shovelled red embers. Above several shovelfuls of red wood coals he hung the wire-netted grill, which he proceeded to cover with about ten pounds’ weight of mutton chops, which also had been cut in readiness the evening before.
Like the shroud of a ghost the eastern sky was shimmering whitely. Slim Jim was a kind cook. He set against the back of the fire two four-gallon petrol-tins of water before setting out on the long boarded table beneath the tarpaulin roof loaves of yeast bread, tins of jam, bottles of sauce, and heaped plates of slab brownie, or eggless cake. In the big iron boiler, half filled with boiling water, he made the oatmeal burgoo.
The stars were being quickly washed out by the dawning day. The camp was pitched, as now could be seen, on the bank of a waterless creek lined with box trees. Galahs, parakeets, and finches became active in their daily search for food, whilst five hundred yards further up the creek the baaings of many sheep drifted from a maze of low-built yards. It was two minutes to seven when Slim Jim looked at the clock in his tent.
Now with a grin of perverse pleasure he took up two short pieces of bar-iron and began a tattoo on a headless oil-drum used sometimes for carting water. The quietude of that sylvan scene was shattered by pandemonium. The galahs fled away over the plain beyond the creek with screeches of protest, the parakeets fled up along the creek, and the many finches ceased their food hunt to crouch motionless till the storm of sound subsided.
First to emerge from one of the tents was the horse-tailer. He should have been after the musterers’ horses long before this, riding the chaff-fed night horse; but no amount of pleading and argument would induce Slim Jim to call him at daybreak. The cook’s contention was that his alarm-clock would wake any ordinary man within five hundred yards, and if the horse-tailer, who slept in a tent a bare forty yards distant, could not hear the vicious bell, well he, Slim Jim, was not paid to call him. Two minutes later the tailer was being whirled away on the night horse, which lived only for these morning gallops.
When the uproar of thumping iron sticks on an empty oil-drum ceased, it was continued by the dozen dogs chained to near-by trees. A man staggered out into the crisp morning air, rubbing his eyes and blenching from the cold. During normal periods of the year he was the Atlas bullock-drover. For three minutes and twenty-two seconds he cursed the dogs–in lieu of the cook–with a string of words very seldom repeated.
2
“You’re a nartist!” Slim Jim said admiringly, standing with his back to the fire.
“The ruddy dogs yelpin’ like that gets on me quince,” stated Fred, the bullock-drover, with emphasis. “This water fer us?”
“Yus. Nice warm water to sponge yer tender dial with. Just fancy, now! ’Ot water for measly station ’ands. Coo!”
Fred, a long lank man of forty or so who slouched in his walk so that his middle appeared to follow his head and his feet follow his middle, glared at the cook, opened his mouth, concealed by a bushy, unkempt ginger moustache-then succumbed to mental lethargy, not being properly awake, and refrained from addressing Slim Jim as he had addressed the dogs. Slim Jim, who had expected another artistic treat, felt let down.
The other men–fifteen all told–hovered about in the warmth of the fire, loth to leave it to wash, even with the warm water provided.
“For Gawd’s sake, get out of me bleedin’ way!” Slim Jim roared, moving unnecessarily about his fire. “Come on, now! You’ll never get to work to-day. ’0o wants burgoo? Come on, you burgoo-eating Scotchmen! Now, Fred!”
“None of yer pig-feed fer me..”
“Naw! You’re a good Aussie, you are. Chops for you with the blood drippin’ out of ’em. Well, ’ere yer are. Now, Mister Andrews?”
“Porridge, please.”
“Porridge! Wot’s that? Oh, yer means burgoo! Naw–nar! You ain’t in a droring-room nar. Burgoo it is. ’Ere y’are. Git that down yer swan neck. Now then, next! Oh! yous want yer chops well done, eh? Orl right. ’Ere’s yours done to a cinder. Take ’em away. Morning, Mister Noyes! Will you partake of par–no, burgoo–this morning? Yes? Mud on the liver this morning, eh? Well, you’re here for Kerlonial experience, and, by Gawd, you’re a-getting of it! Ah! ’Ow do, Mister MacDougall? No need to ask if you’ll ’ave any burgoo. Men a bit dopy. Slept in too long. Work ’em ’ard to-day, Mister MacDougall. Exercise is wot they want. Kerlonial experience! Give ’em Kerlonial Hexperience. That’s wot they’re ’ere for.”
There were but few better sheepmen in New South Wales than Angus MacDougall. Descended undoubtedly from Scottish ancestors, he was short and dapper, ungainly on his feet, bow-legged, long-armed, and round-shouldered. There was nothing braw about this Australian Scotsman, not even in his speech.
“Plenty of gab this morning, Jim,” he said in a soft, drawling voice, which did not disguise long acquaintance with command of men.
“Yus, I’m feeling good,” Slim Jim admitted. “These nice fresh mornings livens me up. You don’t see me rubbing me eyes and looking like I been on the booze for a month. You see––“
Angus, who had placed two meat chops on a huge slice of bread, carried this in one hand, with the plate of porridge in the other, across to an empty ration-case, and began his breakfast as though he had forgotten the existence of the cook. After the first serving the men became less lamb-like. Fred the bullock-drover, said:
“Gimme some chops, and gimme less yabber, you river pirate!” Three evil-looking teeth became bared in what was supposed to be a smile of affability.
“Wot, just woke up?” ejaculated the astounded Slim Jim, whilst loading into an enamelled plate four of the fattest chops which he knew would find approval.
After this, conversation became more general. Whilst Slim Jim was by no manner of means tactful in his speech, he was thoroughly appreciated as a cook. When one man liked his meat underdone, he was sure to have his taste suited. Another man, who liked his meat well done, invariably was offered meat well cooked.
A rumble of hoofs announced the arrival of the musterers’ horses. A cloud of fine dust swerved outward when the bunch of horses raced into the roughly built stockyards, the tailer’s horse right on the heels of the last of them. The men began to stack their utensils on the end of Slim Jim’s cooking-table, then to separate, some walking across to the sheep-yards; others, the musterers, carving their lunches from loaves of bread and cold roasts of mutton set out for them.
Angus and Noyes went into short conference, the overseer directing the jackeroo, who was boss of the musterers, where to drive the sheep in the pass-out yards, and which paddock to muster that day for sheep that would be dealt with on the morrow.
In his ungainly manner Angus MacDougall walked to the yards whilst the horsemen were saddling their hacks. Within the yards were some five thousand ewes with their lambs. The uproar increased with the coming of the markers. Two horsemen galloped out wide of the yards, and the gates of the pass-out yards were opened wide. A stream of dun-coloured wool poured outward in a long column, finally halted by the two riders and their dogs until the flock of some three thousand began to mill in a huge bunch, whereupon three riders urged them gently across the southern plain to the mulga timber. Four other men were riding north on jogging mounts, blue tobacco clouds floating out behind them in the clear air like ladies’ blue silken scarfs.
At the gates at the end of a runway Angus began to draft the two thousand ewes with their lambs. Men “yowled” and waved their hats to force the sheep into the runway; and, when they reached the drafting gates, Angus saw to it that the lambs entered one yard and their mothers a second yard.
The bleatings of lambs parted from their mothers, and the baaing of the mothers for their lost lambs, became intensified. Men climbed into the yard containing the hundreds of lambs, each seizing a lamb and holding it with its rump resting on a rail. A knife between his teeth, Angus MacDougall moved up and down the line of lambs presented to him, followed by Andrews wielding ear-markers and tar-brush. These two wore dungaree overalls. Very soon after the start of the day’s work the overalls became streaked and spotted with the crimson blood.
It was an easy day, this day. Only fifteen hundred lambs winced at the sear of the knife.
3
At about the same time that Angus MacDougall started work, Frank Mayne left the homestead in the big station car on his first trip of inspection since his return from Europe. Beside him sat his wife, with Little Frankie, coated and capped and gloved, sitting on her lap. In the tonneau of the car were stored a hamper and thermos flasks containing milk and coffee. Quickly Ethel Mayne’s face was stung by the cold, frosty air, whilst the child glowed with health and fidgeted with vigour.
With his eyes half closed–it is remarkable how habit so quickly reasserts itself–Mayne drove the car at a fair speed along the track twisting over the river flats. The flats were wide, grey-brown in colour, utterly bare of vegetation, save in sheltered places beneath the spreading branches of the gnarled box trees. Here, protected from the frost, the wild carrot, parsnip, and spinach were shooting up, forming distinct circular green carpets.
After a little more than a mile they came to a gate in a wire fence, beyond which the river flats abruptly gave place to red sand-dunes on which grew the drought-defying mulga and pine trees. This day his own gate-opener, Mayne was obliged to open it and close it again after he had driven the car through.
When once again the car sped forward and had crossed the belt of dunes, they emerged on flat red-sand country harder than the flats, and studded with fifteen-foot scrub, beneath which, sheltered from the frosts, the tussock-grass was sprouting and the wild barley already was three inches high. The river country now left behind was banished from mind by this totally different class of land. In a good year, when herbage covered the river flats, the wide-spaced trees and the unbroken carpet of green made a picture not unlike an English park; but in this mulga country, where grass was still absent on the unprotected parts, the shorter scrub gave it the aspect of a boundless orchard of plum-trees.
A run of twelve miles brought them to the second gate, and when they had passed through, Ethel asked:
“What station is this, Frank?”
“Atlas,” he replied and, looking at her, smiled with the pride of possession.
Little Frankie, now between them, was content to croon a baby tune, to the accompaniment of the purring engine. Ethel fell back on her meditative silence, whilst her husband became fully occupied in mentally noting the condition of the country and planning improvements to fences and buildings.
If his wife guessed correctly precisely what did occupy Mayne’s mind, he never thought to guess of what she was thinking. Actually she was going back to the house-warming dinner, recalling every action and word made and spoken by two people. Since the dinner those two people had been constantly in her thoughts.
Of Ann Shelley, Ethel’s first impression remained. There were occasions when Ethel Mayne was remarkably honest with herself and, without consciously colouring her judgment of Ann Shelley, she frankly admitted that she admired Ann’s well-moulded figure and beautifully formed features, made lovelier by the transparent purity of her mind.
What was it in Ann Shelley Mayne’s wife disliked? She disliked the cool, steady gaze of the wide-spaced fearless grey eyes. The personality of this Australian woman, like her colouring, was the antithesis of Ethel Mayne’s. The wife’s nature was to gain a point by devious paths, by subtlety; it was Ann’s nature to reach a point by proceeding straight to it. Ethel was, or could be, an apt disciple of the great Machiavelli; whilst Ann would not bother to waste time, or think it worth while to plan or scheme to obtain anything by subterfuge.
Ethel recognized at the first moment of their meeting that she and Ann Shelley were as clay and sand. It was merely that which aroused her antipathy, whereas a less self-centred woman would have assessed the advantage of being the subtler of the two. In beauty she felt she was not inferior; in brainpower she decided she was Ann’s superior. Certainly she was superior to Ann in cultural attainments and experience; and, in consequence, having nothing to fear, she decided to tolerate her romantically powerful neighbour.
Presently she was aroused from her meditation by Mayne pointing out several kangaroos that were taking long, loping jumps away from the passing car. They were the first kangaroos she had seen outside a zoo, but she could see no beauty in their physical grace or movement; and once more she relapsed into silence.
She thought of Alldyce Cameron, and already recognized the significance of thinking overmuch of this man; but she was not a woman to banish thought or memory of anything she knew was not healthy to think about or remember; rather she preferred to analyse her impressions and her feelings, for the scorching fire of deep emotion never yet had been presented to her for analysis.
The picture of the man gazing steadily at her whilst he stood just inside the door of the drawing-room was indelibly photographed on her mind. That she was tremendously impressed by Cameron she honestly admitted. Never before had she met a man so vitally alive, so magnetic, so masculine. Turning back the leaves of the book of life, she found in it no man better-looking than he, and but one only who came near the standard Alldyce Cameron set. His culture was evident, even before he spoke, and Ethel Mayne considered that culture was ingrained by birth and education.
All this she could dispassionately examine and dissect. What she could not analyse was the peculiar colouring of the lights at her first sight of him, the lightness of spirit his impact on her life had caused, and the reason why her mind constantly conjured his picture, especially his mouth and chin. This she could not analyse because such experiences never before had entered her life; for, despite her upbringing by clever, ambitious parents, despite her life lived on that social stratum wherein few illusions remain after the twentieth year, she failed to recognize that, despite her cold and stately physical aspect, she was but a butterfly in imminent danger of being scorched, if not consumed, by fire.
“What are you thinking about?” Mayne asked abruptly.
Without hesitation she replied:
“I was thinking of Ann Shelley. Does she live alone at Tin Tin?”
“Oh no! The homestead is just about as populous as ours. Ann has a companion of her own age living with her ever since her mother died. She has a housekeeper as a further safeguard against the inquisition of Mrs. Grundy. A manager–his name is Leeson–lives in a bungalow quite near the Government House. But Ann is boss. A very efficient woman is Ann.”
“You seem to be on quite familiar terms with her, and she with you,” Ethel murmured. “Accepting the fact that you have known each other since early childhood, do you not now think it were better to address each other more formally?”
“Maybe,” Mayne answered doubtfully. “I never thought about it. I have always called her Ann, and she has always called me Frank. Feng and she and I have always made up what shall I say?–a triple alliance. Does such familiarity annoy you?”
“Dear me, no! But it does strike me as unusual. Perhaps it is coming among a people so very democratic which overemphasizes a custom to an Englishwoman. As your wife, and as one having known Miss Shelley only a few days, you must excuse what must appear to you an unwarrantable objection. Oh, look!”
They were passing through a thick belt of pines, when two emus appeared as from the ground and raced along the track ahead of them. The diversion gladdened Ethel Mayne, for the subject of their conversation had reached a point when it were better for the seeds it contained to take root in her husband’s mind.
Mayne increased the car’s speed. Ethel watched the flying legs of the two birds, and wondered why neither used its wings, not knowing that an emu’s wings never develop. On being lifted up, Little Frankie clapped his gloved hands and viewed the race with wide, sparkling eyes.
The speedometer needle quickly fell to thirty miles an hour. Mayne held the car at thirty-five miles an hour for ten minutes.
Gradually the machine lessened the distance. A short burst at forty miles an hour brought the car to within two yards of the fern-like tail feathers, when now the giant striding feet flung dust and sand against the wind-screen. Still faster sped the car. The speedometer needle hovered a fraction over forty-three miles an hour before Frank Mayne saw that he had conquered the speed of the fastest running creature on earth.
The birds were becoming winded. Their beaks gaped wide, whilst from side to side they moved their heads to eye the monster purring behind them. Now Mayne slowly slackened speed, ever slower until they were travelling no faster than fifteen miles an hour. Yet over a further mile the silly birds ran before suddenly diving into the bordering scrub and disappearing from sight.
“My! Can’t they run!” Ethel exclaimed, thrilled out of her cold reserve.
“Without doubt,” her husband agreed. “I have estimated that thirty-six miles an hour is about the top speed of the average bird. Of course their speed is based on their physical condition. Only once have I driven an emu over forty-six miles to the hour, but when they are in poor condition their speed drops to about ten.”
“Can one eat them?”
“They are rather rank and oily,” he said, chuckling. “The blacks are very fond of them, however, whilst the emu oil possesses exceptional penetrating qualities.”
Ethel became avid for information about emus. Purposefully she kept her husband’s mind from recurring to what she had said about Ann Shelley.
4
Quite suddenly the road debouched on a small plain, on whose further side could be seen the several white tents and the fire-smoke of the lamb-markers’ camp, with the yards a short quarter of a mile apart, from which slowly drifted a slanting column of dust. Whilst they crossed the plain Ethel discerned the figures of men at the base of the dust column, and the white-clad figure of the cook near his fire. A minute later they were stopped but a few yards from the camp, when Slim Jim sauntered towards them.
At this red-faced giant of a man Ethel looked with interest, noting the livid mark down one cheek which gave his face the appearance of a split tomato. His bare arms were weather-stained and hairy. Only when he stood close to her husband did he remove the blackened clay pipe from between the few remaining teeth in his mouth. Without touching his forelock, he said:
“Good day-ee, Mr. Mayne I Good day-ee, marm! Hallo, younkers! By gosh, you’re the dead image of Old Man Mayne!”
For Slim Jim this was studied politeness. Unabashed by the leaping haughtiness in Ethel’s eyes, the lamb-markers’ cook proceeded without the fear of the angels:
“He’s a beaut, for sure. Old Man Mayne would have been proud of him, marm. ’E’s got the old bloke’s mouth and eyes. I’ll bet when ’e grows up he’ll let out a laugh just like Old Man Mayne’s roar. Are you stopping for a cup-er-tea?”
Frank Mayne looked at his wife. He said:
“I must have a word with MacDougall. We’ll be here half an hour at least. If you care to accept Jim’s invitation, by all means do so.”
How her husband’s familiar reference to this common, brutal-looking man did sting! She was about icily to refuse, when she recalled the cook’s reference to Old Man Mayne, which denoted that he was not a newcomer to the district. Suddenly she smiled.
“I think I would like a cup of tea, Jim,” she said in quite a friendly tone. “The baby will perhaps drink a cup of milk. Frank, find the milk thermos, please.”
Oh, why wouldn’t her husband see the absurdity of his Christian name almost coupled with that of this ruffian grinning at her and her child? But Mayne, having secured the flask, handed it to Slim Jim, smiled at her, nodded casually at Slim Jim, and as casually left them, strolling away toward the sheep-yards.
Carrying the thermos flask, Slim Jim gallantly conducted his guest to the long table beneath the tarpaulin roof, where he reached for a packing-case, which he placed in position, dusted, and bowed her on with ludicrous politeness. From this open-air dining-room Ethel surveyed the camp with interest: the tents, the water-cart, the huge iron ovens, and the large open fireplace over which hung petrol-tin buckets and large billy-cans, and in her heart approving the outward cleanliness of the cook.
She became seated at the table, with Little Frankie on her lap, whilst Slim Jim produced what was almost unheard of in a lamb-markers’ camp, a china cup and saucer. Little Frankie drank his milk from an enamelled pint pannikin, and seized on a slab of sponge-cake, as the eternal child will do to denote that at home it seldom gets anything to eat.
“We bin lucky, marm,’“ Slim Jim remarked, leering at her in pouring tea from a billy-can. “The musterers brought home nine emu eggs yesterday.”
“Are emu eggs suitable for cooking purposes?”
“You bet, marm! One emu egg is equal to a dozen hen eggs. When you make your next bread batter, beat in a dozen hen eggs or one emu egg. You’ll be surprised how it will improve the bread.”
Suppressing a shudder, Ethel Mayne lightly said that she would accept the advice, adding:
“Are you an Australian?”
“No, marm. I come from Pommyland. I bin in this country twenty-seven years,” replied Slim Jim, seating himself at the opposite side of the table.
“Pommyland? Where is that?”
Slim Jim revealed astonishment at her ignorance. He searched for his pipe, remembered the importance of his guest, rubbed his hands on his spotless apron.
“Why, Hengland, marm. The Orstralians call all Englishmen Pommies. It’s a way they ’ave.”
“Pommy! What a peculiar name! What does it mean?”
“Bless yer, marm, I don’t know,” Slim Jim candidly admitted.
“You don’t know the meaning of an Australian expression after having been in the country for twenty-seven years?” Ethel exclaimed in calm, cold surprise, so cold and disapproving that the cook thought he had undone all the good impression he had been so careful to make. Almost he gasped.
“That’s a fact, marm,” he said. “Wotever it does mean, it’s got two meanings. If a bloke calls you a Pommy and you know he’s chiacking you, you take no notice; if a bloke calls you a Pommy and you see that ’e is serious, well, you bash ’im on the nose.”
“I see,” Ethel said slowly, although she didn’t. “What does ‘chiacking’ mean?”
“Oh, that means kidding–er, you know, teasing.”
“Oh, I shall have to memorize these quaint Australian words.” She added further milk to Little Frankie’s pannikin, and dusted the crumbs from the front of his jacket. Quite abruptly she looked straight at Slim Jim’s winking eyes, and he now appeared as a victim of an examining inquisitor.
“I suppose you know everyone in this locality. Have you ever worked on Tin Tin Station?”
“Plenty of times, marm. Old Baldy–I mean Mr. Leeson–is a good boss. So’s Miss Shelley. If a bloke is sacked by Mr. Leeson an’ ’e ain’t just ready to leave, Miss Shelley will put ’im on again if she’s asked proper. Anyway, a bloke ’as to be pretty tired for old B–Mr. Leeson–to put ’im orf.”
Now sure of his ground, Slim Jim warbled on, unconscious that Mrs. Mayne was taking particular note of what he said.
“Yes, Tin Tin is a good place. Old Shelley retired years ago, having made tons of oof”–Ethel did not know the meaning of the word “oof”, but refrained from interrupting–”but I reckon the bush got ’im ’ard and fast, ’cos ’e had to come back from Adelaide to shuffle orf on Tin Tin. The bush ’as got Miss Ann too. I was diggin’ up the garden one day, and she told me ’erself she wouldn’t leave Tin Tin for all the tea in China. I can’t say nothink against that, ’cos I’ve bin roaming up and down the Gutter for twenty-six years, and never bin orf it–and never will.”
“What other stations have you worked on?”
“Me? Lots, on and orf, as the saying is. Durlop, up Burke way, was a good place before the War. Albemarle, above Menindee, ain’t bad either.”
“Have you ever worked for Mr. Cameron?”
“Yes, marm. For three days.”
Slim Jim had reached thin ice, and knew it.
“Only three days! That is quite a short period, isn’t it? Why did you leave?”
“Me and Mr. Cameron ’ad a kind of disagreement.” Slim Jim stated, actually flushing. He knew he could never dare explain to this “’aughty tart” how he had inadvertently discovered Alldyce Cameron flagrantly flirting with one of the Thuringah maids, and in consequence had been paid off the following morning with a bribe of five pounds silence money.
He said: “Yes, me and ’im ’ad a nargument. ’E spoke kind of sharp, and my tongue ain’t slow of a cold morning. Anyway, there’s always plenty of work for a cook, marm.”
“Yes, I suppose there is,” Ethel concurred, wondering why the man lied. It was unfortunate that her husband returned just then.
5
Again speeding westward, they passed two huts built near a tall windmill set over a well, Mayne explaining that the two stockmen usually camped there were now at the lamb-marking camp. Beyond this place, known as White Well, they left the mulga country and entered on a great stretch of rolling plain country covered with tussock-grass, which appeared blackened as though by fire, the new shoots not sufficiently conspicuous to tinge the expanse with green.
Red sand-dunes appeared far to the north, among them a windmill and hut, and a huge surface dam known as Karl’s Dam. To the south a line of black-looking mulga marked the horizon. The wind tore at Ethel’s hat and whipped her cheeks to colour. Her mind was awed by the vastness of space about them, but she felt no thrill when her husband told her that just north of the mulga belt was the south boundary fence, and that far beyond the northern sand-dunes lay the north boundary fence.
Up and down over the gentle swells of the ground the car sped at an even forty-five miles an hour. The low, dark smudge of westward scrub so very slowly grew into sharp relief that it seemed as if they hardly moved at all. Beyond the scrub belt the land rose into a range of low hills, blue-black in colour at the foot of the azure sky.
Twelve miles, and they had crossed the plain. Now the car approached a camp called Mulga Flat and, as White Well, deserted.
The iron structure of the hut appeared to the woman as the work of a crazy man whose materials were battered iron sheets, hessian bagging, and bare poles. Miles still, whilst steadily the track lifted them up to the summits of the rock-strewn, mulga-coated hills. And then abruptly, when they swung round a spur, Mayne stopped the car and sat silent whilst his wife looked out over the western limits of Atlas.
Nestling in a gully almost directly below were clustered the iron-roofed buildings comprising the Atlas out-station called Forest Hill. The large, stone-built building with the single wide veranda was the home of Angus MacDougall and his wife. Beyond that gully the hills were lower than the point of the track at which they were halted, and beyond those lower hills, stretching to the horizon, lay a vast, flat, grey sea of salt-bush. From north to south stretched the salt-bush plain; north-west to the foot of the gigantic blue rocks lying along the horizon as rocks towering above the sea, rocks that were the distant Barrier Range, among which the enormously rich lead mines of Broken Hill were situated; west and south-west to the clear-cut horizon, as distinct and as even as the horizon of an ocean. Somewhere out on that vast salt-bush-covered plain, running north and south, was the west boundary of Atlas.
It was very pretty, Ethel thought, but rather uninteresting. A river or two, and a cathedral surrounded by oaks and elms, would have added beauty to the scene. She was rather hungry, and said so.
Frank Mayne could have sat an hour gazing out on that mighty panorama, he who was thrilled by the magic of those almost limitless spaces; the waves of dark green in the foreground, the even sweep of grey beyond, and the brilliant azure of the sky. They were sixty-three miles from home and still on his own land.
“Shall we have lunch here, or shall we go on and get Mrs. MacDougall to give us lunch?” he asked, conscious of a tinge of disappointment at the obvious failure of his wife to appreciate what he felt.
“We will have it here, please. I don’t think I want to meet your overseer’s wife to-day, Frank.”
“Very well,” he answered, with his habitual deference to his wife’s wishes.
So it was they picknicked within sight of Forest Hill, and later, when Mayne turned the car for the homeward run by different tracks, he pondered the words he would say to excuse their not calling on Mrs. MacDougall, who assuredly would have seen the car and wondered why, when so near, he had not called and presented her to the new mistress of Atlas.
Almost against her will, Ethel Mayne absorbed a little of the vastness of Atlas, coming to understand the extent of an Australian sheep-run. Yet long before sundown she was wishing she were at her new home, and wondering which of her dozen gowns she would wear at dinner that night. At sunset they were crossing the river flats, and she roused sufficiently to ask her husband the meaning of the word “Pommy”.
Mayne chuckled and smiled at her sheepishly.
“It is difficult to decide the origin of the word,” he said slowly, and she knew he was choosing his words carefully. “Some say it is derived from the word ‘Pomegranate’, applied to new-chums on account of the freshness of their complexions. Of latter years it is not nearly so much used by Australians, and much more used by English people themselves.”
“Is it not used in a derogatory sense?”
“Sometimes, but only by those Australians whose parents did not originate from the British Isles. For centuries people have traduced poor old England and her sons. In some respects, some of us are ridiculously narrow-minded.”
They had travelled about one hundred and forty miles that day without ever touching a boundary fence of Atlas.