Smiling broadly Mick replied, “I found the little divil in a thruck.”
Ballest snorted, said, “Tell that to the marines!”
“Look at him!” cried Mick, excited. “Lil yeller-feller. Look at his pants like blue chicken-pox. I found him in a thruck with a dawg——”
“Bah—found it in the bulrushes!”
“In a thruck I said.”
“In the bulrushes! Take it away man, take it away. You can’t unload your brats on me.”
OSCAR held dominion over six hundred square miles of country, which extended east and west from the railway to the summit of the Lonely Ranges, and north and south from the horizons, it might be said, since there was nothing to show where the boundaries lay in those directions.
Jasmine had said that he worshipped property. It was true. But he did not value Red Ochre simply as a grazing-lease. At times it was to him six hundred square miles where grazing grew and brolgas danced in the painted sunset and emus ran to the silver dawn—square miles of jungle where cool deep billabongs made watering for stock and nests for shouting nuttagul geese—of grassy valleys and stony hills, useless for grazing, but good to think about as haunts of great goannas and rockpythons—of swamps where cattle bogged and died, but wild hog and buffalo wallowed in happiness—of virgin forests where poison weed lay in wait for stock, but where possums and kangaroos and multitudes of gorgeous birds dwelt as from time immemorial. At times he loved Red Ochre.
At times he loved it best in Wet Season—when the creeks were running and the swamps were full—when the multi-coloured schisty rocks split golden waterfalls—when the scarlet plains were under water, green with wild rice, swarming with Siberian snipe—when the billabongs were brimming and the water-lilies blooming and the nuttaguls shouting loudest—when bull-grass towered ten feet high, clothing hills and choking gullies—when every tree was flowering and most were draped with crimson mistletoe and droning with hummingbirds and native bees—when cattle wandered a land of plenty, fat and sleek, till the buffalo-flies and marsh-flies came and drove them mad, so that they ran and ran to leanness, often to their death—when mosquitoes and a hundred other breeds of maddening insects were there to test a man’s endurance—when from hour to hour luke-warm showers drenched the steaming earth, till one was sodden to the bone and mildewed to the marrow and moved to pray, as Oscar always was when he had had enough of it, for that which formerly he had cursed—the Dry! the good old Dry—when the grasses yellowed, browned, dried to tinder, burst into spontaneous flame—when harsh winds rioted with choking dust and the billabongs became mere muddy holes where cattle pawed for water—when gaunt drought loafed about a desert and exhausted cattle staggered searching dust for food and drink, till they fell down and died and became neat piles of bones for the wind to whistle through and the gaunt-ribbed dingo to mourn—then one prayed for the Wet again, or if one’s heart was small, packed up and left this Capricornia that fools down South called the Land of Opportunity, and went back and said that nothing was done by halves up there except the works of puny man.
Red Ochre was so named because an abundance of red ochre was to be found in the locality. Not far from the homestead was a cleft hillock of which the face was composed entirely of red ochre that was scored by the implements of men of the Mullanmullak Tribe who had gathered the pigment there for ages. From the hillock a score of red paths diverged as black ones do from a colliery, one of them leading to the homestead itself, trodden, so it was said, by Tobias Batty, founder of the Station, who went mad and took to painting his body after the fashion of the blacks.
Red Ochre was founded twenty years or more before Oscar settled there. His predecessor, who succeeded the mad Batty, was a man named Wellington Boots, formerly a Cockney grocer, who had a young wife whom he worked like a horse and five young children whom he kept perpetually in a state of virtual imprisonment. It was said that he used to weigh out the rations of his native riders in niggardly quantities on loaded scales. He was killed by a bull on the plain to the south and eaten by ants and crows and kites till buried in a sack by his wife.
The homestead stood in these days just as Batty had built it. It was of corrugated iron on an angle-iron frame. In the dwelling the materials even of the doors were such as could not be destroyed by termites. The windows had been sheet-iron shutters till Oscar glazed them. But in spite of the materials, the house was airy and cool; for the walls stopped short of meeting the sprawling roof by a foot or two, leaving a wide well-ventilated space between the iron itself and the ceiling of paper-bark, the entry of possums and snakes and other pests being prevented by wire netting. The walls were lined with paper-bark, pipeclayed and panelled with polished bloodwood. The floor was of ant-bed, the stuff of the termites’, or white-ants’ nests, which when crushed and wetted and beaten hard makes serviceable cement. Mrs Boots was responsible for most of the interior fittings. Oscar had improved on them. Carpets and marsupial skins lay about the floors; bright pictures and hunting trophies such as tusks of boars and horns of buffaloes adorned the walls. Broad verandas surrounded the house, each screened with iron lattice covered with potato-creeper, and decorated with palms and ferns and furnished with punkahs and rustic furniture made by Oscar.
The homestead was about twenty miles from the railway. It stood on the brow of a hill about which the Caroline River, hidden from view by a belt of scrub and giant trees, flowed in a semi-circle. It was the northern side of the house that faced the river, a side that was raised on a high stone foundation because of the rapid slope. The veranda on that side was the part of the house most used in dry weather. On the eastern veranda were the snowy mosquito-netted beds of the family, which now unhappily numbered only two. Peter Differ and his half-caste daughter Constance lived in a little house of their own at the rear. Differ worked on the run as foreman. Constance, who was aged about eleven, worked in the house as a sort of maid. The eastern veranda was sheltered by two great mangoes, part of a grove that led down to the river. On the opposite side were poinciana trees and cassias and frangi-panis and many other tropical growths that made the place very brilliant and fragrant in Wet Season.
***
One afternoon a few days after that of the incidents at the Siding, Oscar was sitting on the front veranda with his daughter Marigold, watching an approaching storm, when the child pointed to the scrub by the river and said, “Look Daddy—dere’s a niggah wit sumpin on his back.”
Oscar looked and saw a blackfellow in a red naga toiling up the flood-bank with a strangely clad half-caste child on his back. The man came to the veranda steps, panting and sweating profusely, and set his burden down. “What name you want?” asked Oscar. For answer the blackfellow stooped and took from the waist-band of the spotted blue breeches of his burden what proved to be a crumpled letter. He gave it to Oscar, who opened it and read
Dear Oscar, Herewith my nigger Muttonhead. I sent him acrost you with little 1/2 carst boy belong to your brother Mark his names No Name and belongs to Jock Driver of the Melisande Ma McLash reckons you knows all about it he got lef here in a truck we found him and trid keep for Jock nex train but carnt do it because hees too much damn trouble here Oscar hees gone bush 3 times allready and wats kwonskwence we friten for sponsbility to lose him plese you keep him there for Jock I will tell him if I heres from him hees good kid No Name and got good sense for yeler feler but too damn cunin like a dingo be a long way corse if hees look after I reckon heel be O.K. corse you see we gotter go out to work and Ma McLash wont have no truck with him and no good of putin him with nigers seen hees your nefew and seen as how hees one for goan bush like he does. Plese you give my niger Muttonhead a feed and a stick of tobaco or he wont do nuthen more hees cheeky swine thet Muttonhead belt him if he givs you trouble excuse pensl and hast hoppen to find you as it leves me at present. I remain Your obediant servent Joe Ballest Ganger 80-Mile.
Oscar raised a flushed face and looked at Nawnim, who was standing with hands