II
There was a pause in the clearing work, after the early hot spell, and word from Lennie that there was to be a kangaroo hunt, and they were to come down. An Old Man kangaroo, a king of boomers, had been seen around, hoof-marks and paw-pad trails near the pool.
They met at dawn, by the well: Easu with two kangaroo hounds, like greyhounds on leash; Lennie peacocking on an enormous hairy-heeled roadster; a “superior” young Queenslander who had been sent west because his father found him unmanageable and who wasn’t a bad sort, though his nickname was Pink-eye Percy; Lennie’s “Comseed” friend, Joe Low; Alec Rice, the young fellow who was courting Grace; Ross Ellis, and Herbert, who was well again, then Tom on a grey stallion, and Jack, in riding breeches and gaiters and clean shirt, astride the famous Lucy.
Easu was born in the saddle, he rode easy on his big roan. He waved his hat excitedly at the group, and led off into the scrub, through the slender, white-barked trees of the open bush. The others rode fast in ragged order, among the thin, open trees. Jack let Lucy pick her way, sometimes ahead, sometimes in sight of the others. They rode in silence.
Then they came out unexpectedly into low, grey-green scrub without trees, and crisp grey-white soil that crumbled under the hoofs of the horses. There they were, all out in the blue and gold light, with billows of blue-green scrub running away to right and left, towards a rise in front.
“Hold hard there!” sang out Easu, holding up the whip in his right hand. He held the reins loosely in his left, and with the reins, the leash on which the dogs were pulling. Dogs and horse he held in that left hand.
“I want y’ t’ divide. Tom, y’ lead on a zigzag course down north. Ross, you work south.—And this—this fox-hunting gentleman——” He paused, and Jack felt himself going scarlet.
“Says thank ye, an’ hopes he’s a gentleman, since y’ve mentioned it,” put in Lennie, in his mild, inconsequential way.
There was a laugh against Red: for there was no mistaking him for a gentleman, in any sense of the word. However, he was too much excited by the hunt to persevere.
The fellows were stowing away their pipes in their pockets, and buttoning their coats, ready for the dash. Easu, thrilled by his own unquestioned leadership, gave the orders. All listened closely.
“Call up! Call up! Follow my leader and find the trail. Biggest boomer ever ye——”
“Come!” cried Tom.
“And I’m here!” cried Lennie.
Away they went into the gully and through the scrub, riding light but swift, in different directions.
“Let go th’ mare’s head,” yelled Tom over his shoulder. “We’re coming to timber, an’ she’d best pilot herself.”
“Right!” cried Jack.
“Don’t ye kill Lucy,” shrieked Lennie. “Because me heart’s set on her. Keep y’ hands an’ y’ heels off y’ horse, an’ y’ head on y’ shoulders.”
The bolt of horsemen through the bush sent parrots screaming savagely over the feathery tree-tops. Jack let Lucy have her way. She was light and swift and sure-footed, old steeplechaser that she was. The slim straight trees slipped past, the motion of the horse surging her own way was exhilarating to a degree.
But Tom had heard something: not the parrots, not the soft thud of the following horses. He must have heard with his sixth sense: perhaps the warning call of the boomer. With face set and eyes burning he swung and urged his horse in a new direction. And like men coming in to supper from different directions, the handful of horsemen came swish-swish through the scrub, toward a centre.
Lucy pricked one ear. Perhaps she too had heard something. Then she gathers herself together and goes like the wind after the twinkling grey quarters of Tom’s stallion. Her excitement mounts to Jack’s head, and he rides like a catapult on the wind.
Again Tom was reining in, pulling his horse almost on to its haunches. And Jack must hold like a vice with his knees, for Lucy was pawing the air, frantic at being held up.
“Coo-ee!” came Tom’s clear tenor, ringing through the bush. “Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!” A marvellous sound, and Lucy pawing and dancing among the scrub.
“Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!”
It seemed to Jack, this sound in the bush was like God. Like the call of the heroic soul seeking its body. Like the call of the bodiless soul, sounding through the immense dead spaces of the dim, open bush, strange and heroic and inhuman. The deep long “coo,” mastering the silence, the high summons of the long “eee.” The “coo” rising more imperious, and then the “eee!” thrilling and holding aloft. Then the swift lift and fall: “Coo-eee! Coo-eee! Coo-eee!” till the air rocks with the fierce pulse, as if a new heart were in motion, and the shriek and scream of the “eee!” rips in strange flashes into the far-off, far-off consciousness.
Much stranger than the weird yelp of the Red Indians’ war-cry was this rocking, ripping noise in the vast grey bush.
The others were coming in from right to left, like silent phantoms through the sunny evanescence of the bush, riding hard. Tom is displaced by Red. A few quick words given and taken. Easu has unleashed the dogs, slashed the long lash with a resounding crack in the air. The long lean dogs stretch out—uncannily long, from tip to tip. Tom lets go and away. Jack lets go and away, and unconsciously his hand goes down for the bow of the slippery saddle.
Lucy had the situation well in hand, which was more than Jack had. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud! Up, fly! Crash!—Hello?—All right. A beauty! A dream of a jumper, this Lucy. But Jack wished his seat weren’t so slippery.
They were turning into bigger timber: trees further apart, but much bigger, and with hanging limbs. “Look out! Look out f’ y’ head!” Jack kept all his eyes open, till he knew by second sight when to duck. He watched the twinkling hind quarters of Tom’s grey, among the trees.
There was a short yapping of the dogs. Lucy was going like the wind, Jack was riding light, but she was beginning to breathe heavily. No longer so young as she was. How hot the sun was, in the almost shadeless bush. And what was leading, where was the ‘roo? Jack strained his eyes almost out of his head, but could see nothing.
They were on the edge of the hills, and the country changed continually. No sooner were you used to scrub, than it was thin trees. No sooner did you know that Lucy could manipulate thin trees, than you were among big timber, with more space and dangerous boughs. Then it was salty paper-bark country—and back to forest again: close trees, fallen logs, blood-rat holes and sudden outcropping of dark-brown, ancient-looking rocks with little flat crags, to be avoided. But the other men were going full speed, and full speed you must follow, watching with all your eyes, and riding light, and swept along in the rim.
Up! That was over an elephant log, and down went a man at Tom’s heels. It was Grace’s young man. No matter. Jack was going to look over his shoulder when Tom again shouted “Up!” and Jack and Lennie followed over the fallen timber.
Suddenly they were in a great black blanket of burnt country, clear of undergrowth or scrubs, with skeletons of black, charred trees standing gruesome. And there, right under their noses, leapt three kangaroos, swerving across. The baby one, Joey, was first, lithe, light, apparently not a bit afraid, but wildly excited; then the mother doe, all out, panting, anxious-eyed, stiffly jumping; and behind, a long way, with the dogs like needles coming after, ran the Old Man boomer; a great big chap making mighty springs and in varying directions. Yes, he was making a rear-guard action for the safety of his mate and spawn. Leaping with great leaps, as if to the end of the world, leaning forward, his little hands curled in, his immense massive tail straight out behind him like some immense living rudder. And seeming perfectly calm, almost indifferent. With steady, easy, enormous springs he went this way, that way, detouring, but making for the same ridge his doe and Joey had passed.
The charred ground proved treacherous, holes, smouldering trunks of trees, smouldering hollows where trunks had been. Soon two horses were running loose, with men limping after them. But on went the rest. Thud and crackle went the hoofs of the galloping horses in the charcoal, as after the dogs, after the ‘roos they followed, kicking up clouds of grey ash-mounds and red-burnt earth, jumping suddenly over the still-glowing logs.
The chase paused on the ridge, for the drop was sudden and steep, with rocks and boulders cropping out. Down slid the dogs in a cloud, yelping hard, making Easu at all costs turn to try the right, Tom to try the left.
They dropped awkwardly and joltingly down, between rocks, in loose charcoal powder and loose earth.
“Ain’t that ole mare a marvel, Jack!” said Tom. “This nag is rode stiff, all-under my knees.”
Jack’s face was full of wild joy. The stones rattled, the men stood back from the stirrups, the horses seemed to be diving. But Lucy was light and sure.
Down they jolted into the gully. Easu came up swearing—lost the quarry and dogs, Jack pulled Lucy over a boulder to get out of Easu’s way: a thing he shouldn’t have done. Crack! went his head against a branch, and Jack was bruising himself on the ground before he knew where he was.
But he was on his feet again, intently chasing Lucy.
“Here y’are!” It was Herbert who leaned down, picked up the reins of the scampering mare, and threw them to Jack. Jack’s face was bleeding. Lennie came up and opened his mouth in dismay. But somebody coo-eed, and the chase was too good to lose. They are all gone.
Jack stiffly mounted, to find himself blinded by trickling blood. Lucy once more was stirring between his knees, stretching herself out, and he had to let her go, fumbling meanwhile for a handkerchief which he pushed under his hat-brim, and pulled down the old felt firmly. Wiping his eyes with his sleeve, he found the wound staunched by the impromptu dressing.
The scene had completely changed. Lucy was whisking him around the side of a huge dark boulder. They were in the dry bed of the gully, on stones.
Lucy stopped dead, practically on her haunches, but her impetus carried her over, and she was slithering down into a loose gravelly hole. Jack jumped off, to find himself face to face with the biggest boomer kangaroo he had ever imagined. It was the Old Man, sitting there at the bottom of the gravel-hole, in the hollow of a barren she-oak, his absurd paws drooping dejectedly before him and his silly dribbling under-jaw working miserably.
“He’s trying to get the wind up for another fly,” thought Jack, standing there as dazed as the ‘roo itself, and feeling himself very much in the same condition. Then he wondered where the doe and Joey were, and where all the other hunters. He hoped they wouldn’t come. Lucy stood by, as calm as a cucumber.
Jack took a step nearer the Old Man ‘roo, and instantly brought up his fists as the animal doubled its queer front paws and hit out wildly at him. He wanted to hit back.
“Mind the claws!” called somebody, with a quiet chuckle, from above.
Jack looked round, and there was Lennie and the heavy horse, the horse head-down, tail up, feet spread, like a salamander lizard on a wall, slithering down the grade into the hole, Lennie erect in the stirrups. Jack gave a loud laugh.
And the Old Man, either possessed of a sense of humour or terrified to death, seized the nearest thing at hand—which happened to be Jack; grabbed him, gripped him, hugged him in desperate fury, and tried to get up his huge, flail-like hind leg, to rip up the enemy with the toe claw. One stroke of that claw, and Jack was done.
In terror, anger, surprise, Jack jumped at the kangaroo’s throat, as far as the animal’s grip would let him. The ‘roo, trying all the time to use his hind legs, upset, so that the two went rolling on the gravel together. Jack was in horrid proximity to the weird grey fur, clutched by the weird-smelling, violent animal, in a sort of living earthquake, as the kangaroo writhed and bounced to use his great, oar-like hind legs, and Jack clung close and hit at the creature’s body, hit, hit, hit. It was like hitting living wire bands. Somebody was roaring, or else it was his own consciousness shouting: “Don’t let the hind claw get to work.”—How horrible a wild thing was, when you were mixed up with it! The terrible nausea of its powerful, furry, violent-blooded contact. Its unnatural, almost obscene power! Its different consciousness! Its overpowering smell!
The others were coming back up the stream-bed, jumping the rocks, towards this place where Jack had fallen and Lennie had come down after him. Easu was calling off the dogs, ferociously. Tom rushed in and got the ‘roo by the head.
Lennie was lying on the gravel laughing so hard he couldn’t stand on his legs.