The Squatter's Dream

CHAPTER XIX

“Strong is the faith of our youth to pursue

The path of its promise.” —Frances Brown.

On the following morning John Redgrave quitted for ever the place in which he had spent five of the best years of his life, all his capital, and, measured by expenditure of emotional force, as much brain-tissue as would have lasted him to the age of Methuselah at quiet, steady-going Marshmead. He had packed and labelled his personal belongings, which were to be sent to Melbourne by the wool-drays. They would reach their destination long ere he needed them, doubtless. He mounted his favourite hackney, leading another, upon the saddle of which was strapped a compact valise. The boundary-riders had come in, apparently for no reason in particular. But it had leaked out that the master was to clear out for good on that day. They were all about the stable-yard as he came out of the garden gate, attended by M‘Nab.

They made haste to anticipate him, and one of them led out the half-Arab gray, while another held his stirrup, and a third the led horse.

“We want to say, sir,” said the foremost man, “that we are all sorry as things have turned out the way they have. All the country about here feels the same. You’ve always acted the gentleman to every man in your employ since you’ve been on the river; and every man as knows himself respects you for it. We wish you good luck, sir, wherever you go.”

Jack tried to say a word or two, but the words wouldn’t come. Something in his throat intercepted speech, much as was the case when he last said good-bye to his mother after the holidays. He shook hands with M‘Nab and with the men all round. Mounting his horse, and taking the led horse by the lengthened rein, he rode slowly away along the Bimbalong track. The men raised a cheer, he waved his hand in response, and the small world of Gondaree went on much as usual, like the waters of a pond after the widening circles caused by a transient interruption.

After riding at a foot-pace for an hour, Jack began to press on a little, intending to put a fair day’s journey at nightfall between him and his late home. Turning in his saddle for a moment, to take a last look at the well-known landscape, with the winding, dark-hued line of the river timber cutting the sky-line, he saw that he was followed by the dog ‘Help.’ This astute quadruped, who, as Jack was wont to assert, “knew in a general way as much as other folks,” had evidently considered the question of his master’s departure, and had adopted his line of action. Aware from experience that if he exhibited an intention to go anywhere, or do anything, not comprehended in instructions connected with sheep, he was liable to be chained up till further orders, he had taken good care to keep out of the way at Jack’s leave-taking. His master had no intention of taking him with him, but had wished to pat him for the last time, and great whistling and calling had taken place in consequence. “But Gelert was not there.”

As the dog, therefore, upon Jack’s discovering him, came sidling forward, wagging his tail apologetically, and bearing in his honest eyes an expression partly of joy and partly of confession of wrong-doing, Jack felt a sensation of satisfaction more considerable than some people would have thought the occasion warranted.

“So you’ve come after me, you old rascal,” said he – upon which Help, divining that he was forgiven, set up a joyous bark, and careered wildly over the plain. “Do you know that you are not showing as much sense as I gave you credit for, in leaving a rich master to follow a poor one? You’re only a provincial, it seems, not a dog of the world at all. However, as you have come, we must make the best of it. Come to heel – do you hear, sir? – and we must get a muzzle at the first store we come to.”

The Bimbalong boundary, now a long line of wire fence, with egress only by a neat gate on the track, was reached in due time. Here Jack’s memory, unbidden, recalled the day of their first muster of the cattle – the glorious day, the abundant herbage, the free gallop after the half-wild herd, in which poor Wildduck had distinguished herself; and, fairer than all, the glowing hope which had invested the unaccustomed scene with brightest colours. How different was the aspect of the spot now! The bare pastures, the prosaic fence-line – the Great Enterprise carried through to the point of conspicuous failure; the reckless, joyous child of these lone wastes lying in her grave, under the whispering streamers of the great coubah tree yonder. And is every hope as cold and dead as she? He was faring forth a wanderer, a beggar. Better, perhaps, thought he, in the bitterness of his spirit, that I had dropped to the bushranger’s bullet. Better to have fallen in the front of the battle than to have survived to grace the triumph and wear the chain.

The landless and dispossessed proprietor rode steadily on along the well-marked but unfrequented track which led “back” – that is, into the indifferently-watered, sparsely-stocked, and thinly-populated region which stretched endless at the rear of the great leading streams. In this desolate country, compared with which the frontage properties on the Warroo, slightly suburban as they might be deemed, were as fertile farms, lay grand possibilities – the Eldorado which always accompanies the unknown. Here were still tenantless, as wandering stockmen had told, enormous plains to which those on the Warroo were as river flats, fantastic, isolated ranges, full of strange metallic deposits and presumably rich ores. Immense water-holes, approaching the character of lakes, where curious tribes of aboriginals hunted, some of which were entirely bald, others bowed in the limbs from the continuous chase of the emu and kangaroo. From time to time Jack had listened to these tales of Herodotus; had, with some trouble, verified the localities indicated, and seen a pioneer or two who had explored this terra incognita.

Full of eager anticipation of the new untrodden land, in which wonders and miracles might still survive, leading to fortune by a triumphant short cut – a new run with limitless plains and hidden lakes, a copper mine, a gold mine, a silver mine, a navigable river – all these were possible in the unknown land, waiting only for some adventurer with purse as empty and need as desperate as his owner. Lulled by these glorious phantasies, John Redgrave gradually recovered his spirits – they were elastic, it must be confessed; and as the horses, poor but plucky, like their master, stepped cheerily along the level trail, he caught himself more than once humming a half-forgotten air. He had proposed to himself to make for a small township about forty miles distant, the inhabitants of which were composed in equal proportions of horse-stealers, persons “wanted,” and others, these last lacking only the courage, not the inclination, to turn bushrangers. Gurran – this was the name of this delectable settlement – of course boasted of two public-houses.

About an hour before sundown Jack calculated that he was about ten miles from his destination. He had of course not been pressing his horses, and had plodded steadily on without haste, but without halt, since the morning. He could not, as he calculated, reach Gurran by Sundown, but an hour’s travelling along the smooth, broad trail by the clear starlight would be pleasant enough. He did not want, Heaven knows, to get to the beastly hole too early. A simple meal, hunger sweetened, a smoke by the fire, and then to bed, with a daylight start next morning. Such were his intentions.

As he thought over and arranged these “short views of life,” he became aware that the sky was overclouded. Clouds were by no means rare on the Warroo, but no one had been in the habit of connecting them with rain for many a month past. And so Jack rode on carelessly, while the sky grew blacker, the air more still and warm, bank after bank rose in the south, and at length – no, surely, it never can be, by Jove! it is – a drop of rain!

“I shouldn’t wonder, now I think of it,” said Jack, sardonically, “if it were to rain cats and dogs, just when I am regularly cleaned out. A month ago it might have made a difference.” He unfastened an overcoat which he threw over himself, and as the rain commenced in a gentle but continuous drizzle (he knew the sign) paced gloomily forward.

His cynical anticipations were but too literally fulfilled. At first light and almost misty, then a steady downpour, in twenty minutes it was half a shower-bath, half a water-spout. Every shred of Jack’s clothing was soaked and resoaked, till the feeling was as if he were clad in wet brown paper. The horses slipped, and boggled, and stumbled, and laboured in the black soil plain which alternated with the sand, and which has the peculiar and vexatious quality of balling, or gathering on hoof or wheel, when thoroughly moistened. The air changed, the temperature was lowered, the night became dark, so that Jack more than once lost his way. The thunder pealed, and the lightning in vivid flashes from time to time showed a watery waste, with creeks running, and all the usual Australian superabundance of water immediately succeeding the utter absence of even a drop to drink. It was nine o’clock when, tired, soaked to the skin, with beaten horses, and temper seriously damaged, John Redgrave pulled up before the “Stock-horse Inn” at Gurran. The person who kept the poison-shop came out, with his pipe in his mouth, and, seeing a traveller, expressed mild surprise, but did not volunteer advice or assistance.

“Have you any hostler here?” demanded Jack, with pardonable acerbity.

“Well, there is a chap, but he’s on the burst just now, as one might say. Are you going to stop?”

“Yes, of course,” said Jack; “why don’t you look a little more lively! If you were as wet and cold as I am you’d know what I want.”

“I should want a jolly good nip to begin with,” said the unmoved landlord; “but you can let your horses go, and put your saddles and swags in the ferendah, can’t ye?”

“Haven’t you got a stable?” asked Jack, furious at this reception after such a ride.

“Well, there’s a stable at the back, but the door’s off, and there’s nothing in it.”

“No corn? no chaff?”

“No – there ain’t nothin’. How am I to get it up here?”

“And what is there for my horses to eat, if I let them go?”

“Well, there’s a bit of picking down by the crick. It’s all our horses has to live on.”

Jack reflected for a while; then, considering that the other inn couldn’t possibly be worse than this, and might be better, he concluded to try it, and telling the astonished innkeeper that he was an uncivil brute, and deserved to lose his license, he headed straight for the light of the rival hostelry.

Here he met with a decided welcome and abundant civility. His horses were unsaddled, and put into a building which, if rude, possessed the essentials of equine comfort. And when he found himself before a good fire in a small parlour adorned with wonderful prints, with a glass of hot grog in possession, and a supper of eggs and bacon in prospect, he felt that there were extenuating circumstances in the lot even of that ill-fated and persecuted individual John Redgrave, late of Gondaree.

He awoke next morning early, and, dressing hastily, went straight to the stable, which to his exceeding wrath and despair he found empty. The badly-fastened door was open; there was no means of knowing at what hour the nags had escaped or been taken out. Here was a pleasant state of matters; all the misery of the position, intensified by the state of his nerves, rushed upon him. He knew well what a nest of robbers he was among. If not stolen, the horses had been “planted” or concealed until a reward, consonant with the ideas of the thieves, was forthcoming. He would do anything rather than go back to Gondaree. He had a few pounds left, and he could, at worst, buy a mustang of the neighbourhood and pursue his journey. Turning back sullenly to the inn, he saw his host ride up, who stated that he had been out since daybreak after the absentees without success, but that he had sent a young man after them, who, if this here rain didn’t wash out the tracks, would find ’em “if they was above ground.” With this meagre consolation Jack proceeded to attack his uninviting breakfast.

The rain was still falling; the dismal, dusty, thinly-timbered flat, which stretched for miles in unbroken dulness, with a shallow, unmeaning, dry creek winding tortuously through, was now converted into a sea of black mud. Jack knew that in a week it would be carpeted with green, as would indeed be the whole of Gondaree, and the Warroo generally. He groaned as he thought that all this “unearned increment” would be of not a shilling’s-worth of value to him. Mr. Bagemall and Mr. M‘Nab would reap the benefit of it – it was a clear fifty per cent. upon the price of every sheep on the place to begin with. Gregory Hardbake would be on the way down from the mountains rejoicing. All the world would be joyful and prosperous, while he was left on his beam-ends, a stranded wreck, and not even allowed to pursue his lonely voyage in peace. It was hard; but Fate should break, not bend, him. His friends, if he had any left, should see that. All that day he was compelled to pace up and down the narrow verandah of the melancholy wooden box, comforted by the assurances of the host that his ’osses would be safe to be got within the week, that the “young man as was after ’em” had never been known to miss finding such runaways. Unless – added he, meditatively – they’ve gone and made back to where they came from.

However, that night the much-vaunted “young man,” a long-legged, brown-faced, long-haired son of the soil, of the worst type of pound-haunting, gully-raking bush native, returned without the horses. When Jack, in the course of the evening, mentioned that thirty shillings for each horse would be forthcoming on delivery, he brightened up, and declared his determination to have another try next morning.

As Jack, about noon on the following day, was observing gloomily that the rain had stopped, to his intense delight the young man before eulogized was observed approaching, driving the lost horses before him. Perhaps no sense of gratification is keener for the moment than that of the traveller in Australia, who in a strange, possibly evil-reputed locality recovers the favourite steed. The agonizing anxiety, the too probable fear of total loss, the delay, expense, and inconvenience of remount – all these doubts and dreads vanish at the moment when the well-known outline appears. Like wrathful passengers upon reaching the end of the voyage, all previous offences are condoned. The despotic captain, the surly second officer, become almost popular, and a general amnesty is proclaimed.

So, as old Pacha, with his high shoulder and flea-bitten grey skin, followed by his companion, walked into the stable yard, about two panels square of rickety round rails, Jack thought the much-suspected “young man” not such a bad fellow after all. He perhaps reciprocated the compliment after receiving the reward, though his conscience ought to have troubled him if, as is too probable, he had “shifted” Jack’s horses the first night, and left them at a convenient distance from the inn on the second.

Their owner concluded not to tempt misfortune further.

Saddling up promptly, he once more took the road, glad to leave behind Gurran and all its belongings.

That night John Redgrave reached a station where, of course, he was hospitably received, and where he rested secure from the machinations of persons to whom fresh horses and “clean-skinned” cattle presented an irresistible temptation.

Keeping a northerly course, he gradually passed the boundaries of the comparatively settled country, and entered the legendary and half-explored region that skirted the great desert of his dreams. Here rose, like polar meteors, fresh gleams of hope irradiating the sunless cloud-land in which his spirit had dwelt of late – glimpses of that garden of the Hesperides – anew discovery – fortunate isles – a land of gold and gems, were on the cards. Like the garden of old, there was the Dragon – a dragon to be fought or circumvented, as circumstances might direct.

Did he lose the faint track which led between the solitary outposts of the pioneers, there was the certainty of death by thirst. A few days’ anxious wandering, twenty-four hours of delirious agony, and the bones of John Redgrave and his weary steeds would lie blanching on the endless plains and sand-ridges, until the next lost wayfarer or questing tracker fell across them.

Did he escape the famine-fiend, were there not the prowling patient human wolves of the melancholy waste ready to surround and do to death that enemy of all primeval man, the wandering, insatiable white man? Little, however, did John Redgrave reck of Scylla and Charybdis. The barque must float him onward and still onward to fortune and to fame, or must lie deep amid ocean’s treasures, or a stranded wreck upon the inhospitable shore. He was in no mood to be frightened at aught which other men had dared. With the demon of poverty astern, what to him was the terrible deep, fanned by the wildest storm that ever blew? Still he pressed onward; not heedlessly, but with wary patience, as beseemed an experienced bushman, whose life might depend upon the strength and speed of the good horse between his knees. The influence of the great drought in this unstocked country became fainter and less unfavourable. The gray tufted grasses and salsolaceous bushes, uncropped by stock, remained nutritive and uninjured year after rainless year in that strange Australian desert. Their strength untaxed by the moderate journeys, old Pacha and his companion, with the wonderful hardihood of Australian horses, improved in condition.

Now it chanced that at one of the most distant stations, of which the proprietor had been able to say, like Othere, “no man lies north of me,” Jack picked up a partner, who volunteered to join in his adventure, sharing equally in the expenses of the modest outfit and in the profits, such as they might be. Guy Waldron was a big, ruddy-faced, jovial young Englishman, scarce a year from his father’s hall in Oxfordshire. An insuperable disgust for the slow gradation of English fortune-making, combined with the true dare-devil Norse temperament, had driven him forth with his younger son’s portion to make or mar a colonial career. The two men took to one another with sudden strength of liking.

The quiet resolution and utter disdain of danger which Jack exhibited after a course of highly discouraging anecdotes volunteered by Mr. Blockham, the proprietor of Outer Back Mullah, attracted the younger son.