Chapter XIII The Bush Contingent
‘Armed year—year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year.
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon—
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.’
Cameron was in Sydney again—the first time for seven long years. He had come down almost a month before the date upon which the Utopia was advertised as due, with the desperate hope of getting something to do that might yield him enough money to buy a new suit.
Up on the selection he wore soft shirts and old tweed trousers almost all the time.
When it came to a question of finding him starched shirts and a decent suit and hat in which to face his wife, Hermie and Miss Browne were nonplussed.
Finally they discovered one suit that had not been taken, piecemeal, to work in; but the moths had also discovered it. Sponge and press and darn as Hermie might, it still looked disreputable; the shirts were ragged, there was no hat that was not hopelessly spoiled with the sun and dust and rain.
It forced itself upon Cameron that there was but one thing to do—he must borrow a few pounds from some one.
And there was but one man he knew who would lend it to him—Mortimer Stevenson. Hermie had never told her secret. He groomed Tramby up a little, and put on a linen coat and hat, and set out in the direction of Coolooli. He hoped he might not meet the father; he was quite conscious of the fact that the business-like, successful old man looked upon him as a shiftless beggar. They knew each other slightly; Stevenson had ridden in two or three times when passing the selection, and stayed for an hour or two talking stock and crops and the war. Once or twice Cameron had been for dinner to Coolooli while shearing was on, and there were chances to learn successful methods. But he shrank with all his soul from encountering the old man this morning.
Two or three aboriginal women were coming back from a journey to the house, cloths full of stores and broken food slung over their shoulder. Stevenson forty years ago had had to break up a big camp of them on the land he had just taken up, and drive them farther west. Ever since he had not felt justified in refusing food to any of their colour.
Cameron stopped the women, to ask if they had seen Mortimer riding away that morning.
‘I say, Mary,’ he said, ‘you been see that one Mr. Mortimer?’
‘Ba’ al mine see ’im that one young pfeller Stevenson walk about,’ said the most ancient of the women. ‘Old pfeller Stevenson ’im up there. You gib it tik-a-pen, you gib it plenty pfeller ’bacca.’
Cameron threw her a bit of precious tobacco, which she proceeded at once to cut up and cram into her unsavoury-looking pipe. Then he rode on; Mortimer might by chance have gone out somewhere on the run before the women had reached the station. Half a mile nearer to the house a sundowner had been put on to mending a fence. At present he was smoking and looking at it occasionally.
‘Going up to volunteer, mate?’ he said, as Cameron rode through a gate.
Cameron disclaimed the honour.
‘Take a tip and do it,’ the fellow said. ‘The old chap is off his nut just now, and is jolly well flinging his money round—him as was too close to give a fellow tucker without turning him on to axe-sharpening first. You’ll get your fare to Sydney and a moke and pocket of tin handed over to you afore you’ve finished of telling him you want to join.’
Cameron inquired good-humouredly why under such exceptional circumstances he himself did not volunteer.
He grinned. ‘Guv’nor’s knowed me on and off for twenty year,’ he said, and fell to looking at the work before him again. ‘Seems to think I’ve had too much bush experience. Had a try on, of course, but Mister Mortimer he put the stopper on me. I’m cursing my luck for not waiting till he’d gone.’
‘Gone!’ said Cameron; ‘why, where’s he going?’
‘He went larst Monday—you must be a just-come not to know,’ the man said; ‘he’s goin’ off to glory along o’ the Swaggies Army.’
Cameron turned his horse’s head and rode slowly back to the selection.
He took a picture or two, and tried to sell them in Wilgandra, but they were still frameless, and he only raised a pound by the sale of both.
It was his neighbour Daly who helped him most; he saved him his fifty shilling railway ticket by sending him to Sydney in charge of a dozen trucks of sheep.
Landed there after the almost intolerable journey, he tried desperately for work—even beat up an old friend or two, who looked askance at his shabby appearance. One offered him a pound which he could ill spare, having fallen on hard times himself, the other wrote him half a dozen useless recommendations to various business men.
Cameron hung around the quay in a sort of fascination; no pilot boat went out but he did not tremble, no great ship came round Bradley’s Head but he felt it bore his wife on board. The transports sent from the Cape for the Bush Contingent—The Atlantian and the Maplemore—were already anchored out in the stream, the great numbers painted on their sides adding an unusual note to the shipping on the smiling harbour. Launches and heavily weighed boats bearing timber for the horse-boxes were continually putting off from the quay to cross the intermediate stretch of water to where they lay.
The bustle and movement woke Cameron to life again, and the knowledge that he must do something, if it were only to take a header into the plentiful water; not here at the quay where a thousand eyes would see, but from one of the quiet bays or headlands the harbour has so many of.
Then he pulled himself together again, recognised it was want of food that had begot such cowardice in him, and spent his last shilling on a good meal. After that he tramped out to Randwick to the camp, and asked for Private Mortimer Stevenson.
The sentry jerked his head in a certain direction, and Cameron made his way to where some ten thousand perhaps of Sydney’s citizens, women and children, had crowded, as they crowded almost every afternoon, for the novelty of seeing the bushmen drill.
It was an odd, unmilitary spectacle. Uniforms were not yet served out, and there seemed no regularity as to height. Here a sunburnt fellow from ‘out back’ drilled in a tattered flannel shirt and a pair of ancient moleskins that had seen several hard shearing seasons. Next to him was some wealthy squatter’s son in a well-cut light grey suit, then a rough fellow with a beard half a foot long, moleskins again, and an old red handkerchief tied round his throat, then a lad, a fine well-grown fellow in the white flannels he played tennis in on his far-off station. None of the pomp, the éclat of militarism was there—not even the discipline; the men gossiped cheerfully with each other even while they stood in their ranks, they laughed at the girls in the crowd—even threw kisses to them. They were a fine, independent-looking lot, and you knew at a glance at them that they would think no more of carrying their lives in their hands than most people think of carrying umbrellas. But you marvelled how they were to assume in so few weeks’ time the well-groomed, spick-and-span, automatic appearance you had hitherto associated with the word soldiers.
Cameron watched the different squads for a little time, and felt proud of Mortimer when he found girls and men were pointing him out and saying. ‘That one, look! the fourth from the end; he’s a splendid-looking fellow, isn’t he?’ ‘See that fourth chap, that’s the sort of man we want to represent us.’
But the drilling and the hoarse cries of the hardworked sergeants seemed endless, and Cameron wandered on and watched the riding and shooting tests which separated the genuine bushmen from the counterfeits, who swarmed here, as easily as the winnow separates the grain from the chaff. At last the squads broke up, and the men mixed with the crowd or went off, mopping their steaming faces, to their tents or the canteen.
Mortimer broke loose from the men around him, and went instantly to Cameron, whom he had quickly seen while drilling. He carried him off direct to his tent.
‘I’m awfully sorry to have kept you waiting so long,’ he said. ‘Here, try this deck-chair, it’s more comfortable than that bench. And what will you have to drink? Oh, I know, you like lemon squash.’ He turned to a rough-looking fellow at the door. ‘Go down to the canteen, Brady, like a good fellow, and get a jug of lemon squash. Here’s the money.’ He turned back to Cameron. ‘I’d have given anything to get away when I saw you, but you can guess what it is out there.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Cameron, ‘it doesn’t matter; it was all interesting. I have been looking about.’
Mortimer gave him a sharp look.
‘Is all well up there?’ he said. ‘It isn’t often you come down.’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ said Cameron, ‘I came down to meet my wife, that’s all.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Mortimer; ‘stupid of me. I was reading about it only this morning in the paper—about the big welcome the citizens intend to give your little girl. There is to be a launch—the Government launch, isn’t it?—and the mayor and no end of people are going up the harbour to meet her.’
‘Are they?’ said Cameron.
‘You’ve been consulted about it, surely?’ said Mortimer warmly. ‘They’re not doing all this without referring to you?’
Cameron straightened himself a little.
‘I’ve had no fixed address since I came down,’ he said. ‘They’ve overlooked me, I suppose, because they don’t know I exist; I hardly do, you know.’
‘Are any of the others down with you?’ asked Mortimer—‘Bart or Roly or any of them?’
‘Oh no,’ said Cameron. ‘Some one has to mind the landed property against my return.’
‘And are they all well?’ pursued Mortimer. ‘Roly—wasn’t Roly looking a little thin before I left?’
‘Oh no,’ Cameron said, ‘he’s right enough. The girls feel the life more than he and Bart. My eldest girl seemed very off colour when I left?’
‘Not typhoid?’ burst out Mortimer. ‘I saw in the paper it had broken out in Wilgandra——’
‘Oh no, we’re too far for that. Nothing but the heat. Was that Timon I saw among the horses?’
‘Yes, I brought him and the governor’s favourite roan down—he made me have him.’
‘Mortimer—I’m compelled to ask—I cannot do without—my wife—Challis—suit—make them ashamed——’ Cameron’s voice choked.
‘Confound that Brady!’ said Mortimer, springing up and upsetting his chair; ‘takes as long to get a lemon squash as if I’d sent him to town for it. If it had been a bottle of whiskey, now, no delay then; might come in for a spare glass himself. You r’mber Brady, rouseabout up at Coolooli, gives a home-touch to see him about. He volunteered the same time as I. I say, I’m off duty now for the rest of the day—may as well come back to town and have a bit of spree. Brooks, I say Brooks, go and see if there’s a spare cab, there’s a good fellow.’ Another coin went into another rough fellow’s hand.
Cameron found himself driving back to town by Stevenson’s side before he had collected his thoughts—or even had his lemon squash.
Half the way Mortimer rattled on about the day’s work in camp, the transports, provisions for the comfort of the horses, the prospect of the contingent’s success.
‘By the way,’ he said all at once, ‘I want you to do me a favour. The governor’s been too free with his cash for me—not safe to have too much about, you know—tempt some poor devil. D’ye mind taking some of it and looking after it for me—just for a year or two till I get back? Use it, you know; you might use it now instead of drawing any out of your own account, then when I come home you can pay me back. Awfully obliged it you will; had a couple of pounds stolen out of my tent yesterday, and have been going about with fifty pounds on me since. I’ll get you to look after thirty of it; the governor’s cabled no end of money to a bank in Durban for me, for fear I’ll run short.’
Half a dozen crisp notes were thrust into Cameron’s hands, and Mortimer, hot and red in the face, was rattling on again about the horse-boxes for the voyage, and how they should have been made this way, and not that way, and about the wisdom of telling the men to bring their own saddles, and about that egregious ass the public, who seemed to think the Bushmen were so thin-skinned that they could not bear a word of command, unless it was put in the form of a polite request.
‘Isn’t it tommy-rot?’ said Mortimer. ‘We’re not a pack of sensitive girls. We enjoy the discipline, and recognise we have to be licked into some sort of order, unless we want to remain a mob.’
Cameron was very quiet, but he gripped Mortimer’s hand on parting, and cleared his throat to try to say something.
But the young volunteer found he must be off in violent haste.
‘By George,’ he said, ‘haven’t another minute; promised the colonel I’d go out and kick up a row about the horse-boxes,’ and his big loose figure plunged back to the waiting cab. ‘You’ll come and see me off, all right, so long’; and the cab woke to life and moved smartly off, to lose itself in the stream of vehicles going towards the quay.
Cameron, a lump in his throat, turned towards the General Post Office, to see if there were further news from the little contingent at home. The last letters from Bart had been disquieting; Small, the butcher, it seemed, had transferred the mortgage he held on the selection to old Mr. Stevenson. ‘And Daly says,’ Bart had written, ‘it’s about the worst thing that could have happened, Stevenson’s so close-handed. Small often used to give you time, but he says Stevenson never will.’ A second letter followed. Stevenson had foreclosed, but was willing for a year or two, until a tenant he had in view was ready to occupy, that Cameron should remain on the place. In the meantime, however, he, Stevenson, must be at liberty to make any alteration or improvement he saw fit to the property.
The present letter was excited in tone. ‘After all, dad,’ the boy wrote, ‘I believe it’s the best thing that could have happened. The place is looking up no end, there are quite ten men at work on it, so the chances are the mater and Challis won’t quite die of the shock of seeing it. And what do you think? You know that calf we gave Hermie two years ago? Well, I never knew there was good blood in it, did you? It’s the last thing you’d think to look at it. But that Stevenson knows a thing or two. He comes down here and pokes about pretty often, and he saw it, and what did you think? Offered me ten pounds down for it! I couldn’t believe my ears. Don’t you remember I tried to sell it when you were ill, and Small offered two for it? But I wasn’t going to let on I was so green as not to know it was a good sort, and I said straight that we could not let it go under fifteen. He looked at me in that queer, sharp way of his, and he poked at the calf a bit, and then said, “Say twelve ten.” But I’d got my mettle up by that. I knew if a close-handed, hard chap like that offered twelve ten, it must be worth quite twenty-five. I just turned round and went on digging up the potatoes for dinner and said, “Fifteen pounds,” for all the world like Small does at the sales. He went round to Dimple and began poking at her again, and examining her like anything, and then he said, “Fourteen pounds, sonny.” I’d got enough potatoes out for Miss Browne by then, so I put them in the basket and just said, “Good morning, sir,” and pretended to be going.
‘Then he began laughing fit to kill himself, and in between the laughs he said, “Fifteen,” and I said, just like Small, “She’s yours, and you’ve got a bargain.” And he laughed again, and said, “I have.” I hope you’re not vexed, dad, at me doing this on my own. I’ve been feeling very anxious ever since, for she must have been a really valuable little thing—he’s not the man to be deceived; they say he’s the best judge of stock in the country. I told Daly about it, and he wanted to know if Stevenson was drunk at the time. He doesn’t drink at all, does he? But I thought you’d agree that the fifteen would be more use to us now than twenty-five later, and that’s why I closed with him. I’m sending five down in this, thinking it will come in usefully for you. And Hermie and Miss Browne have gone off to Wilgandra to get new dresses and cups and sheets and whips of other things with the rest. You should have seen their list. The mater and Challis’ll think we’re no end of swells after all.’