The Ghost Camp

“Well, he’d most likely get bushed, and have to turn back, though he mightn’t find it too easy to do that, or make where he come from. In winter time, if it come on to snow, he’d never get home at all. I’ve known things happen like that. There was one poor cove last winter, as we chaps were days out searchin’ for, and then found him stiff, and dead – he’d got sleepy, and never woke up!”

While this enlivening conversation was proceeding, the man from a far country discovered that the pathway, level enough for ordinary purposes, though he and his guide were no longer riding side by side, was rapidly narrowing. What breadth it would be, when they ascended to the pinnacle above them, he began to consider with a shade of apprehension. His hackney, which Mr. Jack Carter had regarded with slightly-veiled contempt as a “flat country horse, as had never seen a rise bigger than a haystack,” evidently shared his uneasiness, inasmuch as he had stopped, stared and trembled from time to time, at awkward places on the road, before they came to the celebrated “leading range.”

In another mile they reached the pinnacle, where Blount realised the true nature and surroundings of this Alpine Pass. Such indeed it proved to be. A narrow pathway, looking down on either side, upon fathomless glens, with so abrupt a drop that it seemed as if the wind, now rising, might blow them off their exposed perch.

The trees which grew at the depths below, though in reality tall and massive eucalypts, appeared scarce larger than berry bushes.

The wedge-tailed eagles soared above and around. One pair indeed came near and gazed on them with unblenching eye, as though speculating on the duration of their sojourn. They seemed to be the natural denizens of this dizzy and perilous height, from which the vision ranged, in wondering amaze over a vast lone region, which stretched to the horizon; appearing indeed to include no inconsiderable portion of the continent.

Below, around, even to the far, misty sky-line, was a grey, green ocean, the billows of which, through the branches of mighty forest trees, were reduced by distance to a level and uniform contour. Tremendous glens, under which ran clear cold mountain streams, tinkling and rippling ever, mimic waterfalls and flashing rivulets, the long dry summer through diversified the landscape.

Silver streams crossed these plains and downs of solemn leafage, distinguishable only when the sun flashed on their hurrying waters. These were rivers – not inconsiderable either – while companies of snow-crowned Alps stood ranged between, tier upon tier above them and the outlined rim, where earth and sky met, vast, regal, awful, as Kings of the Over-world! On guard since the birth of time, rank upon rank they stood – silent, immovable, scornful – defying the puny trespassers on their immemorial demesne. “What a land! what a vast expanse!” thought the Englishman, “rugged, untamed, but not more so than ‘Caledonia stern and wild,’ more fertile and productive, and as to extent – boundless. I see before me,” he mused, “a country larger than Sweden, capable in time of carrying a dense population; and what a breed of men it should give birth to, athletic, hardy, brave! Horsemen too, in the words of Australia’s forest poet, whom I read but of late. ‘For the horse was never saddled that the Jebungs couldn’t ride.’ Good rifle shots! What sons of the Empire should these Australian highlands rear, to do battle for Old England in the wars of the giants yet to come!”

This soliloquy, and its utterance in thought came simultaneously to a halt of a decisive nature, by reason of the conduct of Mr. Blount’s horse. This animal had been gradually acquiring a fixed distrust of the highway – all too literally – on which he was required to travel. Looking first on one side, then on the other, and apparently realising the dreadful alternative of a slip or stumble, he became unnerved and demoralised. Mr. Blount had ridden a mule over many a mauvais pas in Switzerland, when the sagacious animal, for reasons known to himself, had insisted on walking on the outer edge of the roadway, over-hanging the gulf, where a crumbling ledge might cause the fall into immeasurable, glacial depths. In that situation his nerve had not faltered. “Trust to old ‘Pilatus,’” said the guide; “do not interfere with him, I beseech you; he is under the immediate protection of the saints, and the holy St. Bernard.” He had in such a position been cool and composed. The old mule’s wise, experienced air, his sure and cautious mode of progression, had been calculated to reassure a nervous novice. But here, the case was different. His cob was evidently not under the protection of the saints. St. Bernard was absent, or indifferent. With the recklessness of fear, he was likely to back – to lose his balance – to hurl himself and rider over the perpendicular drop, where he would not have touched ground at a thousand feet. At this moment Jack Carter looked round. “Keep him quiet, for God’s sake! till I get to you – don’t stir!” As he spoke he slid from his horse, though so small was the vacant space on the ledge, that as he leaned against the shoulder of his well-trained mount, there seemed barely room for his feet. Buckling a strap to the snaffle rein, which held it in front of the saddle, and throwing the stirrup iron over, he passed to the head of the other horse, whose rein he took in a firm grasp. “Steady,” he said in a voice of command, which, strangely, the shaking creature seemed to obey. “Now, Boss! you get off, and slip behind him – there’s just room.” Blount did as directed, and with care and steadiness, effected a movement to the rear, while Jack Carter fastened rein and stirrup as before.

Then giving the cob a sounding slap on the quarter, he uttered a peculiar cry, and the leading horse stepped along the track at a fast amble, followed by the cob at a slow trot, in which he seemed to have recovered confidence.

“That’s a quick way out of the difficulty,” said Blount, with an air of relief. “I really didn’t know what was going to happen. But won’t they bolt when they get to the other side of this natural bridge over the bottomless pit?”

“When they get to the end of this ‘race,’ as you may call it, there’s a trap yard that we put up years back for wild horses – many a hundred’s been there before my time. Some of us mountain chaps keep it mended up. It comes in useful now and again.”

“I should think it did,” assented his companion, with decision. “But how will they get in? Will your clever horse take down the slip-rails, and put them up again?”

“Not quite that!” said the bushman smiling – “but near enough; we’ll find ’em both there, I’ll go bail!”

“How far is it?” asked Blount, with a natural desire to get clear of this picturesque, but too exciting part of the country, and to exchange it for more commonplace scenery, with better foothold.

“Only a couple of mile – so we might as well step out, as I’ve filled my pipe. Won’t you have a draw for company?”

“Not just yet, I’ll wait till we’re mounted again.” For though the invariable, inexhaustible tobacco pipe is the steadfast friend of the Australian under all and every condition of life, Blount did not feel in the humour for it just after he had escaped, as he now began to believe, from a sudden and violent death.

“A well-trained horse! I should think he was,” he told himself; “and yet, before I left England, I was always being warned against the half-broken horses of Australia. What a hackney to be sure! – fast, easy, sure-footed, intelligent – and what sort of breaking in has he had? Mostly ridden by people whom no living horse can throw; but that is a disadvantage – as he instinctively recognises the rider he can throw. Well! every country has its own way of doing things; and though we Englishmen are unchangeably fixed in our own methods, we may have something to learn yet from our kinsmen in this new land.”

“I suppose there have been accidents on this peculiar track of yours?” he said, after they had walked in silence for a hundred yards or more.

“Accidents!” he replied, “I should jolly well think there have. You see, horses are like men and women, though people don’t hardly believe it. Some’s born one way, and some another; teaching don’t make much difference to ’em, nor beltin’ either. Some of ’em, like some men, are born cowards, and when they get into a narrer track with a big drop both sides of ’em, they’re that queer in the head – though it’s the heart that’s wrong with ’em – that they feel like pitching theirselves over, just to get shut of the tremblin’ on the brink feelin’. Your horse was in a blue funk; he’d have slipped or backed over in another minute or two. That was the matter with him. When he seen old Keewah skip along by himself, it put confidence like, into him.”

“You’ve known of accidents, then?”

“My word! I mind when poor Paddy Farrell went down. He and his horse both. He was leadin’ a packer, as it might be one of us now. Well, his moke was a nervous sort of brute, and just as he got to the Needle Rock, it’s a bit farther on before the road widens out, but it’s terrible narrer there, and poor Paddy was walking ahead leadin’ the brute with a green hide halter, when a hawk flies out from behind a rock and frightened the packer. He draws back with a jerk, and his hind leg goes over the edge. Paddy had the end of the halter round his wrist, and it got jammed somehow, and down goes the lot, horse and pack, and him atop of ’em. Three or four of us were out all day looking for him at the foot of the range. We knew where we’d likely find him, and sure enough there they were, he and his horse, stone dead and smashed to pieces. We took him back to Bunjil, and buried him decent in the little graveyard. We managed to fish up a prayer-book, and got ‘Gentleman Jack’ to read the service over him. My word! he could read no end. They said he was college taught. He could drink too, more’s the pity.”

“Does every one drink that lives in these parts?”

“Well, a good few. Us young ones not so bad, but if a man stays here, after a few years he always drinks, partickler if he’s seen better days.”

“Now why is that? It’s a free healthy life, with riding, shooting, and a chance of a golden hole, as you call it. There are worse places to live in.”

“Nobody knows why, but they all do; they’ll work hard and keep sober for months. Then they get tired of having no one to talk to – nobody like theirselves, I mean. They go away, and come back stone-broke, or knock it all down in Bunjil, if they’ve made a few pounds.”

“That sounds bad after working hard and risking their lives on these Devil’s Bridges. How old was this Patrick Farrell?”

“Twenty-four, his name wasn’t Patrick. It was Aloysius William, named after a saint, I’m told. The boys called him ‘Paddy’ for short. At home, I believe they called him ‘Ally.’ But Paddy he always was in these parts. It don’t matter much now. See that tall rock sticking up by the side of the road at the turn? Well, that’s where he fell; they call it ‘Paddy’s Downfall,’ among the country people to this day. We’ve only a mile to go from there.”

When Mr. Blount and his companion reached the Needle Rock, a sharp-edged monolith, the edge of which unnecessarily infringed on the perilously scanty foothold, he did not wonder at the downfall of poor Aloysius William or any other wayfarer encumbered with a horse. He recalled the “vision of sudden death” which had so nearly been realised in his own case, and shuddered as he looked over the sheer drop on to a tangled mass of “rocks and trees confusedly hurled.”

“We’ve got Bunjil Inn to make yet,” said the bushman, stepping forward briskly; “we mustn’t forget that, if we leave my old moke too long in the yard, he’ll be opening the gate or some other dodge.”

In a hundred yards from the Needle Rock the track became wider, much to Mr. Blount’s relief, for he was beginning to feel an uncanny fascination for the awful abyss, and to doubt whether if a storm came on, he should be able to stand erect, or be reduced to the ignoble alternative of lying on his face.

“They’ve passed along here all right,” said the guide, casting a casual look at the path; “trust old Keewah for that, he’s leadin’ and your moke following close up.”

Mr. Blount did not see any clear indication, and would have been quite unable to declare which animal was foremost. But he accepted in all confidence Little-River-Jack’s assurance. The track, without gaining much breadth or similarity to any civilised high road, was yet superior in all respects to the chamois path they had left behind, and when his companion exclaimed, “There’s the yard, and our nags in it, as safe as houses,” he was relieved and grateful. The loss of a horse with a new saddle and bridle, besides his whole stock of travelling apparel, spare shoes, and other indispensable matters, would have been serious, not to say irreparable.

However there were the two horses with their accoutrements complete, in the trap yard aforesaid. The yard was fully eight feet high, and though the saplings of which it was composed were rudely put together, they were solid and unyielding. The heavy gate of the same material showed a rude carpentry in the head and tail pieces, the former of which was “let into the cap” or horizontal spar placed across the gate posts, and also morticed into a round upright below, sunk into the ground and projecting securely above it.

“They must have come in and shut the gate after them,” remarked Blount; “how in the world did they manage that?”

“Well, you see, this gate’s made pretty well on the balance to swing back to the post, where there’s a sort of groove for it. It’s always left half, or a quarter open. A prop’s put loose agen it, which any stock coming in from that side’s middlin’ sure to rub, and the gate swings to. See? It may graze ’em, as they’re going in, but they’re likely to jump forward, into the yard. The gate swings back to the post, and they’re nabbed. They can’t very well open it towards themselves, they haven’t savey for that. So they have to wait till some one comes.”

This explanation was given as they were riding along a decently plain road to Bunjil township, the first appearance of which one traveller descried with much contentment.

The “Divide,” before this agreeable change, had begun to alter its austere character. The ridge had spread out, the forest trees were stately and umbrageous, the track was fairly negotiable by horse and man. A fertile valley through which dashed an impetuous stream revealed itself. On the further bank stood dwellings, “real cottages,” as Mr. Blount remarked, “not huts.” These were in all cases surrounded by gardens, in some instances by orchards, of which the size and girth of the fruit trees bore witness to the richness of the soil as well as of the age of the township.

The short winter day had been nearly consumed by reason of their erratic progress; so that the evening shadows had commenced to darken the valley, while the clear, crisp atmosphere betrayed to the experienced senses of Mr. Carter, every indication of what he described as “a real crackin’ frost.”

“We’re in luck’s way,” he said, in continuation, “not to be struck for a camp out to-night. It’s cold enough in an old man frost hereabouts, to freeze the leg off an iron pot. But this is the right shop as we’re going to, for a good bed, a broiled steak for tea, and if you make friends with Sheila (she’s the girl that waits at table) you won’t die of cold, whatever else happens to you. Above all, the house is clean, and that’s more than you can say for smarter lookin’ shops. We’d as well have a spurt to finish up with.” Drawing his rein, and touching his hack with careless heel, the bushman went off at a smart canter along the main street, apparently the only one in the little town, Mr. Blount’s cob following suit with comparative eagerness, until they pulled up at a roomy building with a broad verandah, before which stood a sign-board, setting forth its title to consideration, as the “Prospector’s Arms” by William Middleton.

Several persons stood or lounged about the verandah, who looked at them keenly as they rode up. A broad-shouldered man with a frank, open countenance, came out of a door, somewhat apart from the group. He was plainly, by appearance and bearing, the landlord.

“So you’re back again, Jack,” said he, addressing the bushman with an air of familiar acquaintance; “didn’t know what had come o’yer. What lay are ye on now?”

“Same’s usual, moochin’ round these infernal hills and gullies ov yours. There’s a bit of a rush Black Rock way. I’m goin’ to have a look in to-morrow. This gentleman’s just from England, seein’ the country in a gineral way; he’ll stay here till I get back, and then we’ll be going down river.”

“All right, Jack!” replied the host. “You can show him the country, if any one can – the missus’ll see he’s took care of,” and as he spoke he searched the speaker with a swift glance as of one comprehending all that had been said, and more that was left unspoken. “Here, take these horses round, George, and make ’em right for the night.”

An elderly individual in shirt sleeves and moleskins of faded hue here came forward, and took the stranger’s horse, unbuckling valise and pack, which the landlord carried respectfully into an inner chamber, out of which a door led into a comfortable appearing bedroom; where, from the look of the accessories, he augured favourably for the night’s rest. Mr. Carter had departed with the old groom, preferring, as he said, to see his horse fed and watered before he tackled his own refreshment; “grub” was the word he used, which appeared to be fully understanded of the people, if but vaguely explanatory to Mr. Blount.

That gentleman, pensively examining his wardrobe, reflected meanwhile by how narrow a chance the articles spread out before him had been saved from wreck, so to speak, and total loss, when a knock came to the door, and a feminine voice requested to know whether he would like supper at six o’clock or later. Taking counsel of his inward monitor, he adopted the hour named.

The voice murmured, “Your hot water, sir,” and ceased speaking.

He opened the door, and was just in time to see a female form disappear from the room.

“We are beginning to get civilised,” he thought, as he possessed himself of the hot water jug, and refreshed accordingly. After which he discarded his riding gear in favour of shoes and suitable continuations. While awaiting the hour of reflection, he took out of his valise a pocket edition of Browning, and was about to glance at it when the clock struck six.

Entering the parlour, for such it evidently was, he was agreeably surprised with the appearance of affairs. A clean cloth covered the solid cedar table, on which was a hot dish – flanked by another which held potatoes. A fire of glowing logs was cheerful to behold, nor was the “neat-handed Phyllis” wanting to complete the tableau. A very good-looking young woman, with a complexion of English, rather than Australian colouring, removed the dish covers, and stood at attention.

Here the wayfarer was destined to receive fresh information relative to the social observances of Australian society. “You have only laid covers for one,” said he to the maid. “My friend, Mr. Carter, is not going to do without his dinner surely?”

“Oh! Jack!” said the damsel, indifferently; “he won’t come in here, he’s at the second table with the coachman and the drovers. This is the gentlemen’s room.”

“How very curious!” he exclaimed. “I thought every one was alike in this part of the world; all free and equal, that sort of thing. I shouldn’t the least mind spending the evening with er – John Carter – or any other respectable miner.”

The girl looked him over before she spoke. “Well, Mr. Blount (Jack said that was your name), you mightn’t, though you’re just from England, but other people might. When the police magistrate, the Goldfields Warden, and the District Surveyor come round, they always stay here, and the down river squatters. They wouldn’t like it, you may be sure, nor you either, perhaps, if the room was pretty full.”

He smiled, as he answered, “So this is an aristocratic country, I perceive, in spite of the newspaper froth about a democratic government. Well, I must take time, and learn the country’s ways. I shall pick them up by degrees, I suppose.”

“No fear!” said the damsel. “It’ll all come in time, not but there’s places at the back where all sorts sit down together and smoke and drink no end. But not at Bunjil. Would you like some apple-pie to follow, there’s plenty of cream?”

Mr. Blount would. “Apple-pie reminds one of Devonshire, and our boyhood – especially the cream,” thought he. “What fun I should have thought this adventure a few years ago. Not that it’s altogether without interest now. It’s a novelty, at any rate.”