By Blow and Kiss
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Dolly bowed melodramatically, with his hand on his heart. “I thank you,” he said humbly, and then sprang erect. “Now for the tea – interval for light refreshments, please.” He tipped Scottie’s bottle of water into the billy, hooked the handle over a stick, and held it in the blaze till it boiled, lifted it off and dropped in a handful of the wet tea, and put the lid on again for a minute.
“No sugar,” he said. “Dear, dear, I must speak severely to your uncle about this. Most careless. And please excuse the shortage of cups. Here, you can use this,” and he turned the lid of the billy upside down and gave it to her to hold, and poured some tea in it. “It cools quicker so,” he said, “and we’ll have turn about.”
They drank their tea, and Ess felt grateful for the warm glow it sent through her chilled body.
“I call this jolly,” said Dolly Grey; “really, it’s not half bad sport, y’know.”
“Well I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say jolly,” said Ess, “but, really, it’s a lot better than it was. What a difference a fire makes, Dolly. It was all so dark and dismal before, and now the blaze seems to make a nice cosy room, with the dark walls outside us.”
“Take your boots and stockings off,” ordered Dolly, “and dry them. You’ll feel so much more comfy. I’m going to dry my jacket.”
He piled the branches on the fire, and heaped the others beside it to dry, and to support his jacket and Ess’s boots and stockings. Everything else about her was quite dry, she assured him. When Dolly’s jacket was dry, he pulled off his shirt and spread it to the blaze, and put his jacket on, and stood in front of the fire and gravely turned himself round in a cloud of smoke and steam. “I’m drying beautifully,” he said.
“I do hope,” said Ess, “I suppose it’s an awful thing to say, Dolly, but I do hope it doesn’t commence to rain again.”
“Hush,” whispered Dolly, “don’t tell anyone – so do I.”
“But I hope it will rain lots more when we’re back to the Ridge,” she said loudly.
A moment later a sprinkle of rain fell. “Good Lord,” groaned Dolly, “you’ve done it now. It heard you, and it’s starting again so’s to be in good time.” He grabbed his shirt and put it on, and Ess hastily resumed her boots and stockings.
Dolly piled the wood heaping on the fire, in the hopes that the rain would not be heavy enough to drown it out, and they crept back under the buggy. But the rain came heavier and heavier, till soon it was pouring a deluge again, and beating on the buggy and hissing on the wet ground. The fire was drowned out in a minute, but Ess hugged an armful of dry sticks under her cloak, and Dolly assured her he would have it going again in no time when this shower went off. But the shower gave no signs of abating, and Ess sat watching the water spouting off the buggy and splashing down, and shivered at the thought of sitting there all through the long night. She had hardly a thought beyond the coming of daylight, and never considered the plight they would find themselves in, nor how they were to ever reach the Ridge. But Dolly gave plenty of thought to it, and was in no ways cheered at the outlook, although he laughed, and chattered rubbish, and joked, to keep the girl from guessing at his thoughts.
The animals were scuffling in under the buggy again, and Dolly could not beat them out faster than they came in.
Dolly knew that they were now on an island, and he knew too that the closer pressing of these beasts meant that the island was growing smaller. He got up at last to look, and before he had taken ten steps from the buggy he found the water lapping round his feet. Behind him and beyond the tree he could still see dark ground, and he made his way round the edge, kicking the rabbits from under his feet as he walked. He trudged back to the buggy. “The water’s almost upon us,” he said. “We’ll have to go and roost in the trees like the crows.”
Ess scrambled out with expressions of alarm, but he laughed, and joked, and made light of her fears, and together they went to inspect the tree. Ess clung to his arm and shrieked as they trod their way through and over the squirming masses of rabbits. The ground was packed and carpeted with them, and they found that the things had climbed on to the buggy and were clustered thick all over it.
“This will save some work for the poison carts and trappers,” said Dolly. “The boss spent £400 last year keeping the brutes down, but the water will save him that expense this year. Here’s the tree – now for a climb.” But the tree trunk stood up bare and smooth without projection or foothold, till it forked full twenty feet up. They ran back to the buggy, and found it already lapped about by the rising water. They hauled it to the foot of the tree, and Dolly tried to climb from it, but had to slip back in despair.
He sat down heavily on the seat, and Ess climbed beside him.
“It may not come higher,” he said, “but the old flood mark is above our heads. And the trunk is too big round for me to swarm up and too smooth to climb. I’m afraid we’ll just have to sit here and see it out, and then swim for it if need be.”
“All right, Dolly,” she said calmly; “you’ve done your best, and we can’t do more. But I’m not afraid.”
“You’re a sport,” he said huskily, “a real sport. I wouldn’t care for myself – but I hate to think of you.”
“Don’t give in, Dolly,” she whispered. “I can be brave as long as you are, but – I’m frightened if you’re not.”
“All right, Miss Ess,” he said cheerily, “never say die. We’ll live to look back and laugh at this yet.”
And the water crept to the buggy wheels and commenced to rise slowly higher and higher on them; and still the rain poured down as if it would never cease.
They sat crouching in silence through the long dragging hours, till the waters of the flood rose lapping to their feet and the waters of despair rose in their hearts, and they turned their haggard faces to the grey light of the wet dawn.
CHAPTER XXI
The men of Thunder Ridge were revelling in the rain and playing boisterously in it like children at the seaside, or ducks in a pond. They had come splashing into the hut in the afternoon, laughing, and shouting, and stamping the mud from their boots on the verandah, and shaking the water from their hats.
They watched the lowering skies, and groaned when the downpour slackened a moment, and yelled and cheered again when it increased and came sweeping in blinding sheets down the valley.
They flung off their wet boots and sat to tea, and listened to the water roaring on the iron roof, till they had to shout to make themselves heard; they kept jumping up to look out of the door, and came back grinning widely, with the assurance that it was coming down “Bonzer”; they hurried over their meal, and crowded out on the verandah to stand and watch the waterfall that cascaded down from the overflowed gutters.
Aleck Gault made them set his window wide as it would go, and haul his bed over beside it, so that he could lean over and stretch his hand out and feel the rain beat down on it. And he laughed when Steve swore at him for letting the water run down his arm and soak his shirt-sleeve, and threatened if they said much more to flop out of bed, leg and all, and crawl out into the rain.
Scottie caught his horse and rode down the hill track and out on to the plains, and came back with the water streaming from his hat and cloak, and told the men that “The flat was full o’ water as a wet sponge, an’ the billabong full an’ rinnin’ fast.” And the men cheered the news as men cheer a stubborn fight and gallant victory.
They cheered again when the roof sprang a leak and a stream of water began to trickle down on the table; they cheered Blazes arranging pails and kerosene tins to catch the flood; they shouted with laughter and cheered again when Darby the Bull, running across the yard, slipped and fell, and picked himself up covered with mud. They were bubbling over with joy and good-humour, and flung jokes, and bandied words, and shouted roaring laughter at the feebliest of fun and clumsiest of wit. And when Darby, saying that now he was dirty and half wet he might as well have the pleasure of getting properly wet, went out grinning and took his stand under a spouting water pipe, they shed their clothes and flung them into the hut, and ran down and stood in the downpour. They slapped one another’s naked backs and limbs, and came on the verandah and soaped themselves, and stood out in the rain and washed and lathered themselves, and held their arms wide and turned their faces to the sky, and let the clean, sweet water sluice their mother-naked limbs and bodies.
And when Whip Thompson and Jack Ever pranced round in imitation of a black fellows’ corroboree and war dance, or Cocky Smith waddled across the yard and flapped his crook’d elbows and qua-a-ack-uack-uack-ed, or Darby held his hand out and looked up at the sky, and solemnly said he believed he felt a spot of rain, while the water ran in streams from him, they guffawed in gales of laughter, and yelled in an ecstacy of mirth. It was all very foolish and very childish, of course, but – well, the rain had come, plentiful, drenching, drowning rain; and let them and their folly be judged only by those who have known the rain come after a dry spell in the outside country, for no others can.
They were children for the time being, it is true – happy, boisterous children – but a few clipped sentences and a mouthful of speech was enough to turn them to men again.
A horseman splashed up out of the rain, and was met by a torrent of chaff and rough witticisms. “Did they come?” he asked, without heeding their banter. “Did they get through?”
A hush dropped on them at his anxious words. “Who?” someone asked. “Did who get through?” The horseman groaned. “Then they didn’t,” he said. “Dolly Grey started out to drive Miss Ess over here in the buggy this afternoon.”
Scottie and Steve Knight had come running from the house when they saw the horseman, and they came in time to hear his words. “What’s the billabong like?” said Scottie, quickly. “And how did you get here?” asked Steve.
“First billabong was runnin’ hard,” said the man, “and the second one was worse. I started after that heavy shower, and when word came in that the river was up and risin’ fast, I came along the bank o’ the river, an’ had to swim the billabongs.”
“Couldn’t they have turned back?” said Jack Ever.
“No, the boss was out in his sulky,” answered the man, “an’ he scoured right along the edge o’ the first billabong for miles. The tracks turned into the water, but it was too deep for him to ford it, so they couldn’t have got back. I come along by the river bank where the ground’s a few foot higher than the plains. An’ the river was just near sloppin’ over. You couldn’t get back that way now.”
“Dolly never reckoned on the higher ground along the bank,” said Steve, “and he’d turned away from the river, thinking the ground must rise that way, or that he could round the end of the billabong. And now they’re cut off on the high ground somewhere, and the water rising.”
He turned, and “I’ll bring the horses up,” he shouted, as he ran across the yard.
The men leaped for their clothes, and dragged out oilskin coats and waterproofs, and were ready when Steve splashed back, driving the horses before him.
“I’ve been thinkin’, Steve,” said Scottie, “the only thing for’t is tae mak the township an’ the bridge an’ ride up the ither bank till we can get a crossin’, an’ get a boat if the water’s too deep for the horses.”
“That means the Toss-Up Track,” said Steve, quickly. “We all know what that is, but there’s some of us should win through it.”
Well the men knew what the Toss-Up meant, in that weather, and at night. It was the “Toss-Up” Track, because someone had once said it was a toss up whether a man came through or broke his neck riding it. It was rough and risky in ordinary weather and by day. None of them had tried it under conditions like the present. But there was no dispute or discussion over it now – it was the quickest way, and speed counted for everything. Some might come down, but, as Steve said, some would surely come through and be able to attempt a rescue.
Ten minutes after Steve brought the horses in the men were mounted and splattering out of the yard, and heading for the hills. Steve and Scottie led the way, and set the pace at a stout canter for the first mile. The track here was rough, but fairly good – rock, stones, and boulders certainly, but the horses were used to that and made nothing of it.
“Now the fun begins,” said Steve, as he and Scottie rose the crest of the Black Hill and dived down into the winding path that dropped in long loops beneath them. The hill was soft earth, and the earth had turned to greasy, slippery mud, and the horses slipped, and floundered, and sprawled, and recovered and slipped again. Darby was the first to go down, but he flung himself cleverly clear of the falling horse, and in an instant was up and helping the struggling brute to its feet.
“Come up, Blunderbuss,” he shouted. “Wot the blazes d’yer want to lay down there for?”
He climbed hastily to the saddle, and slid off downhill after the others. They had shouted rough chaff as they passed, but they had not stopped – there was no time for stopping that night, and if a man went down it was understood he must pick himself up, unless he was too badly hurt to do so.
There were more falls before the foot of the hill was reached, but it was soft falling, and no one was hurt.
“All here?” shouted Steve, glancing back.
“All here,” came the response, and Steve turned and drove into the path that twisted through the thick bush. The path was a foot under water and slippery as glass, the twigs and branches whipped and slashed at their faces and bent heads, but they went through at a hard gallop, and swung out on to The Pillow – the long hill where the track curved up over the swelling roundness like a string of beads over a woman’s breast. It was soft earth again, and a slip over the edge of the track meant a sliding shoot down to the foot, with nothing to save or break the fall.
“Can we ride it?” said Scottie. “Safer to walk, maybe.”
“But quicker to ride,” said Steve, and spurred up at a trot. They reached the top with the horses panting and blowing, but they made no halt, and raised a gallop across the top of the hill. When the rain came down in a sudden and blinding torrent again, so that they could see nothing of the track before them, the men simply slacked the reins and left the horses to pick a way amongst the pitfalls of paddy-melon holes.
They bucketed downhill again in single file on the drop that led to the Clay Pit and the swamp water beyond, and Darby shot sliding almost on top of Jack Ever.
“Look where yer bargin’ to, you lop-eared ellerfant,” yelled Jack.
“Hi, some o’ you,” roared Darby. “There’s a midge ridin’ a moskeeter down the track ahead o’ me. Take ’im away, someone, afore I treads on ’im an’ flattens ’im out.”
“Open out a bit there,” yelled Steve. “Take room to fall easy without bringing your mate down”; and the men opened the intervals between them, and one by one squattered down into the Clay Pit.
Whip Thompson rode a little wide of the narrow margin of ridable track, and splashed and floundered girth deep in the soft ground along the edge.
“Hammer ’im out, Whip – hammer ’im out,” shouted the others as they struggled past. “Gimme ’is reins,” said Darby the Bull, pulling up and sliding down into the ankle-deep mess. Whip flung him the reins, and with a heave and a lift and a shout the horse was dragged out. They mounted and plunged on, and drove out into the swamp waters with the splash of a launching battleship.
“Where are ye all?” yelled Darby. “Are ye all drowned?”
“Come on behind,” came a faint shout from the darkness ahead. “Come on an’ have yer merry surf-bathin’. Oo-o-oo! Ain’t that a luvverly roller?”
They wallowed through, and on to the firmer ground, and the litter of rocks and logs that strewed the track. Falls up to now had been a thing to laugh at, for the ground was soft as porridge and a man could hardly hurt. But on the hard track and amongst the stones it was a different thing – a fall there might mean a broken bone, or at best a crippling bruise or sprain. But hard or soft, rock or mud, the men drove forward, galloping where they could, cantering where they could not gallop, and hardly slowing to a less pace than a trot.
“Hupp,” shouted Steve, lifting his horse in a cat-leap over a fallen log, and twisting in the saddle to look back at Scottie. “Can you take it? Jump if he will. The landing this side is good enough.”
Scottie came over with a rush, and one by one the men followed, jumping if the horse would jump, scrambling over anyhow if he would not.
“Gerrup there, Darby,” shouted Jack; “this ain’t a place to be playin’ at see-saw.”
Blunderbuss was sprawled over the log on his belly, swaying and kicking and scraping frantically, till he tilted over and slid on to his forefeet, and hunched his hindquarters over.
“See-saw yerself,” said Darby, scornfully, as Jack took the log with a leap. “You’d find it better’n comin’ your way,” he added, as Jack’s horse missed its footing and went rolling.
Jack dragged him up again, but cursed luridly as he saw the hanging foreleg and watched the dip-and-heave limp as he made him walk.
“Sprained ’is shoulder,” shouted Jack. “Go on – I’m out of it.”
So they left him cursing there, and ten minutes later Whip Thompson fell out at the Trickle – and a wild joke the name of the Trickle was that night, as it foamed down fifty yards wide, and boiled about the horses’ knees. Whip’s horse stumbled and went to his knees in it, and staggered up and went down again, and up again and out the other side, with Whip wading beside him.
“Broke both ’is knees,” said Whip to the next man to ride through. “I’ll get back an’ join Jack.”
At “The Ditch” Darby’s horse refused to take the three-foot drop to the water below the undercut bank, and the others had to leave him there, standing in the water up to his waist, his foot braced against the bank, and his hands twisted in the wet leather of the reins, as he strained and hauled to pull his Blunderbuss in on top of him.
All the others kept the ranks till they came to the Axe-Cut and the Creek. The path down the Axe-Cut was running water like a young river, and the rock track under it was slippery as wet slates. They went down it in kicking, struggling heaps, the men dismounted, and the horses plunging and shooting down, partly on their four feet, partly on their gathered haunches, and partly anyhow.
As they picked themselves up at the foot of the Cut, they halted a few minutes to breathe the blowing horses and readjust the displaced saddle gear.
“I’m thinkin’ it wull be chancy wark at the Creek,” shouted Scottie above the droning roar of the rain and the hiss of the water cascading down the Cut. “Seein’ there’s as much water in the ither burns, the Creek’s like tae be runnin’ a banker.”
“Mean swimming, I expect,” said Steve, tersely. “If it’s been raining like this away up in the hills at the head waters of the river, Scottie, there won’t be much ground above water on the Coolongolong flats.”
“I’m wishin’ it had been ony ither man than Dolly,” said Scottie; “he’s no used wi’ this country, an’ I misdoot he wadna ken whar tae strik for the highest groun’.”
“He couldn’t help but move back from the water as it rose,” said Steve, “and that should bring him to the highest. And the river couldn’t rise so quick as to flood out all the high ground surely.”
It had not ceased to rain steadily, but now there came another of the pelting, driving downpours, and they stood a moment listening to the furious beat of the flooding sheets of water, till the Axe-Cut beside them spouted again, like a choked gutter.
“Longer we wait the worse the Creek gets,” shouted Steve, and they climbed into the wet saddles again, with their hats pulled down over their eyes and the rain lashing down on their stooped shoulders.
When they came to the Creek, they pulled up and looked at it in dismay.
For twenty yards out from the edge it boiled and seethed in leaping, creaming foam, and, beyond the white glimmering edge of this milky swathe of angry turmoil, it ran smooth and still to the other edge, where they could just faintly see the glint of broken water fretting at the bank. The white water looked bad, but they all knew well that it was the centre strip that ran so smooth, and still, and swift that held the danger.
“They’ll never mak it, Steve,” shouted Scottie. He had to shout with his lips to Steve’s ear, to make him hear through the noise of the storm and the rushing water. “We’ll have to mak up stream tae the Prong, an’ win ower above it.”
The others were pressing close and shouting their opinions of the chances, and all seemed to think that no horse could wade and swim to the other side alive.
“It’ll take all of two hours to ride round,” shouted Steve. “I’ll try it, and if I think it’s good enough for you to try I’ll coo-ee. If you don’t hear me, don’t try it.”
“I’ll try it wi’ you, Steve,” said Scottie. “Twa micht be a help tae ane anither.”
They arranged it so, but, just as they were preparing to ride in, there was a shout from the darkness, and Darby the Bull clattered up and halted abruptly, grinning wetly at sight of them.
“I beat ’im,” he shouted. “I beat the silly cow. Turned ’im round so ’e couldn’t see the water, an’ smacked ’im about the chops wi’ me ’at. An’ he backed an’ backed till ’is hind legs slipped over the bank, an’ then I shoved ’im in. ’E couldn’t climb back, so he come on over.”
When he heard the plans just made, he announced his intention of taking it with the other two.
“Ol’ Blunderbuss can make it if any ’orse can,” he persisted. “You’ve no idea wot a wunner ’e is for water. Go on – I’m comin’.”
So they rode down to the edge and let the horses sniff at it, and back away, and advance cautiously again, and wade slowly and carefully in.
Blunderbuss was loath to go, but Darby wrenched his head back every time he tried to turn, and flailed at his flanks with spurred heels. They came through the broken water and passed slowly into the smoother but stronger current beyond.
The horses went in a step at a time, snorting fearfully as they went, the riders leaving their heads free and sitting ready to slide off their backs if they were swept away and forced to swim. Steve’s and Scottie’s horses lost their footing almost at the same instant, and went shooting downstream with the men dragging behind, and striking out to lessen the drag. Darby’s horse stood higher and his weight was greater, so he won a few paces further before he was carried down, and he made a straighter and faster line across, and won to the shallower water on the other side above the other two. But just as he found footing again a stick of floating timber shot out of the darkness and took the horse off his feet, and carried him away, rolling over and over as he went.
Steve and Scottie came to the firm ground just in time to see Darby come squattering ashore like a duck with a broken wing. “Rough luck,” he sputtered ruefully, “after gettin’ ’im so far; but serve the silly blighter right.”
“You can walk the rest to the town,” cried Steve. “We won’t coo-ee to the others. It’s bad enough, and we might lose more horses, or a man, and we’d lose time trying to help him. You’ll be able to pick up another horse in the township, Darby. Come on, Scottie.”
“Say,” bellowed Darby, “d’you think that ’orse o’ mine ’ad a presentingment that he was goin’ to be drowned?” And the others pressed on and left him to ponder the problem.
They were winning near to the township now, and the “Fly-on-a-Wall” was the only desperately bad bit of the track left. They took it dismounted and with the greatest caution, but for all their caution Scottie’s horse went.
The Fly-on-a-Wall is a narrow ledge winding along the face of the cliff that runs alongside the Creek, and the solid rock path was slimy wet and dangerous, and the horses went up with glancing hoofs and sides pressed hard in to the rock wall, snorting and cowering back with glaring eyes from the plummet-drop over the edge to the rocks and the gleaming water below.
Scottie’s horse slipped, and its feet shot from under it, and it came down with a thump and a crash, and lay kicking with its legs right over the edge.