The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 11
Chapter XI
Mains was mustering for shearing, and only the man who has tramped a month through on a hundred-thousand-acre hill-run begins to understand what that means. And his explanations, though entirely vivid, are not always clear to the lay mind. It was Ted Douglas alone who knew absolutely the value of the work done and to do, and who drove the boys through the days on a straight bit, with a special wire-whip for the man who balked.
Through cold days and hot muggy days, and days of sudden tempers of sleet on the bare tops, and days of close-wrapping fog that made distance very blind and foothold unstable, and that brought clinging wet to soak each man to the chilled skin. And by the long hours that began and ended under the stars that stern mother that bred them tested and tortured and tempted them, and the slow brown mobs drew in to the low country and the gaping yards on the homestead block.
Moody said openly that Ted Douglas was a devil this muster. For he had no mercy where country was bad and sheep were sluggish and a hot wind blasted the earth. Scott agreed, with the additional assertion that he was sick of graft and meant to take it easy thereafter. And it was on the following morning that Ted’s hand fell heavier yet. This was when the cut tussock, bared to the starlight by the drawn tents, was yet warm with the weight of their bodies, and when the cooking-fire held flame to the chill that goes before dawn. Round the fire the boys gathered, sucking life into their pipes, and Ted Douglas came up with the roster.
“We’re takin’ the Brothers country to-day,” he said, “and out to the head of the Dome. It’ll be a brutal long day, an’ you chaps’ll have to put your backs into it. We got to get back to the station Friday, an’ it’ll take us all we know to do it.”
The shearers were booked for Mains in the week following, and all the draughting was yet to do. The boys knew it. But a sudden tension ran into the group round the fire, and talk and laughter died on their mouths. The Brothers country made the cruellest muster on Mains. It was slippery tussock and running shingle and rotten slag where no sane goat would climb. But the Mains sheep loved it with all their demon souls, and the Mains boys drew many thousands from it; climbing, hour after hour, hand over hand, through places where no dog would follow.
“It’s sinful country,” said Conlon at length. “Better break it into two days, Ted. We can’t do more than we can, you know.”
“Bein’ that near the sky it orter hev larned better,” added Ike. “But it seemin’ly ain’t. You’ll hev ter give us two days fur the Brothers, Ted.”
Ted Douglas’ hands were in his pockets, and his quiet eyes sifting round the group.
“We’re takin’ the Brothers an’ the Dome to-day,” he said. “Anybody got anythin’ more to say?”
A month’s hill-mustering will weed weaklings out of any camp under heaven. Indubitably, the boys were toughened, lung, sinew, and muscle, to any strain that might fall. But they were growing stale, and more than one was foot-sore, and the flame of mutiny was just a new-born flicker in the camp.
Three yards off Buck was strapping the last pack, and casting the great saddles athwart the horses with a jangle of chains. Mogger muttered underbreath, and through the smoke of his half-lit pipe Lou Birot was watching Ted Douglas.
“We can’t do it in a day,” said Scott, sulkily.
“Do you mean that you won’t?”
Scott looked round for support. He made no answer.
“Come on,” said Ted, kindly. “Don’t be shy. I got time to thump some sense into you ’fore we make a start. What way did they gene’ly get you goin’ in the war, Scott? Or was you runnin’ down to Capetown all the time?”
Somebody sniggered. Then Steve laughed, and the queer eager look went out of Lou’s eyes.
“Arrah! what’s the matter wid it, then?” cried Tod, jerking a match up his trouser-leg. “Jabberin’ here won’t mend the hours for us. An’ sure if the day’s long we’ll git home the sooner. An’ where will ye be puttin’ me at all, Ted, me boyo?”
Ted Douglas carried the whole map of Mains in his head, and no man need get his sheep into an impassable pocket or be blocked by a ten-foot gut if he laid his course by Ted’s words. He struck into the half-defiant silence with the decision of one who understands and handles men in all moods; gave place and position to each, ordered a squad out to load the packs on the saddles, and thereafter swept them over the raupo-rimmed creek with their lunches rammed in their side-pockets, and a half-hundred dogs of sorts at their heels.
Right, left, and straight forward, the rough spurs of the Brothers received them, and baffled them as they set their faces ever to the North and to the long harsh hours that waited. Down on the dead camp Buck took a last hole in a pack-strap, clambered into his saddle, and chirruped an order to the unreined pack-horses. They answered with the quick lift of feet to a trot, and passed down the creek-bed, to take, by low and winding ways, the desolate track to the Dome where it sat on the edge of the world with a scarlet wreath of sun-rays over its snow.
It is not every man who dares be alone with Nature. For Nature is God, and man, very often, is of himself and the devil. Lou Birot knew this with the absolute certainty of a man who discovers a thing first-hand; and because he knew it he loathed the great merciless silences, and the dark secret gullies, and the terrible purity of the uplifted snow-mountains that no touch of man could subdue nor smirch.
The smell of heat was in the air before dawn. The burden of it was on the shelterless hills ere ever the fog was torn from the crests. Across the broken miles of shingle-tops it made mirage of cabbage-tree and swaying toi-toi beside still water; and more than one man halted with his stick on the grating shingle to curse it, and to curse the sheep pelting by above him, and to trudge steadily on with lips that cracked when he whistled his dogs.
To the lay understanding a man’s conscience is his only goal on the hills. The expert knows that he no more dare burk his fair labour there than in the branding-yards with the full station at gaze. But thrice was Lou tempted far up on the naked shoulder of the Brothers. For the sun burnt on the black rotten rocks and the stiff tufts of heather and the savage brown thistle between; and the sparkle of a creek in cool fern, seven miles off as the foot must go, was a torment that dried his tongue in his mouth. His flask was empty long since. But he up-ended it again before putting it away with his untasted lunch. Then he dropped under shelter of a bull-nosed scarp, and lay there.
“And if the sheep get back on me I won’t be the only one who mucks things this day,” he said.
Below and before him his dogs ranged wide, harrying little mobs that ran together and trickled forward like spilt coffee from a cup. Very far down a trained eye might pick up occasional flickers of life on the heat-run flanges. There lay Conlon’s beat where he kept touch with the man below, even as, on terrace and jagged terrace above, Mogger and nine more held the linked chain unbroken until it touched down to the bush-gully on the farther side. The heat turned Lou’s bones to water; and all the wonder of heliotrope and violent purple in the gullies, and saffron on the spurs, and flashing diamond where distant waterfalls leapt in fern, were things of emptiness and derision. He lay on his face with his eyes shut, and cared not for the strenuous life beating above and below.
Over the near vivid crests cutting the skyline, quick black clouds came reefing up. Sunlight struck them to the glistening green of a starling’s wing. Into the wide-spaced silence volleyed the sudden roar of musketry; snatching echoes from the splintered rocks; tossed back and out again by the gullies, and live-leaping down the length of the ranges with a broken handful of lightning to chase it. Lou came to his feet with quick hands seeking the rifle-butt, and lust red in his eyes. No man on Mains knew ever that Lou had ridden the Boer war through, there earning praise and secret shame and open disgrace. No man knew that, because each soul must love something or it will die—Lou loved, with all the wild godless heart of him, the ring of the rifle and the gobble of the field-guns growing nearer. He was shouting straight-flung command as in years past, when the next thunder-rattle brought explanation and black disgust. Then a quick snicker of lightning laughed with him.
“Does Ted think he will muster the Brothers to-day?” he said.
Strung across the great head and shoulders of the Brothers the boys saw the storm coming, and each and each, after their own kind, they denounced it, and hesitated, or took action promptly. For there is no man in the Back-country who does not know what may be when a water-spout bursts on a range-top, and, without any possible doubt, there was water in these black low-bellied clouds. Ted Douglas was on the high shingle faces, where a man carries a stick and places his feet with cunning. Here were a score little flowering heaths to mark danger, for the hillsman knows that they grow only on running shingle. Below, tussock lived on two inches of earth. Below that sprang rocks that sank to tussock and shingle again. But the Mains sheep grew fat on it, and the merciless heat had wearied them; so that they strung along the slim tracks in a slowness that no dog could hasten. One moment Ted stood drawing sharp breath.
“If any of them boys goes back on me Mains’ll limp nex’ lambin’,” he said. Then his up-flung arm sent his dogs forward to nose out stragglers from behind rocking boulders.
A tense hum sounded over the tops, as though someone plucked the strings of a bass-viol. A sudden jolt of thunder came sheer underfoot before the whistle of the lightning was past. Then, deliberate and separate, and so solid that Ted looked to see them roll down hill, followed the rain-drops.
On the hog-backed top beyond all men Tod quailed for an instant and covered his eyes. For the thunder walked the ranges with shaking feet, and each flash of the lightning sang like a sword-cut on the air. All the great tops were sinking, crumbling under the blackness of cloud; and to the men on the Brothers came a sudden giddiness and horror, as though this sucking sea would draw them under also for Eternity.
“Bedad,” said Tod, pulling up his waist-strap, “it’s mesilf wud be sooner befure the whare foire than aitin’ me meat wid this knife an fork. An’ what will come of us at all when the rain gits in behint of the shingle?”
There was no man on the Brothers was not thinking of this. There was no man was not hurrying his sheep by sharp command to his dogs, and cast stones, and quick-stumbling feet on the rough underway. The ridges lay across the Brothers like the bones of a cat’s tail, and very swiftly the gutters filled with dribbling streams that baulked and held the sheep. The straining dogs hounded them over, and down the slopes, and forward, with the storm roaring on their quarter and the thunder charging through the wild bluffs and gullies as mobs of wild brumbies charge headlong. On the far side one of Steve’s worn boots gave from the sole. He had brought two new pairs for this muster; but he was a heavy man, and shingle is more strong than calf-hide. Thereafter he blundered on bare-foot, and watching, with the keen-trained sight that is the property of every musterer, for the weak-hearted falter that would bring him down through flint and thistles to slay Scott.
The rain pelted to hail that came after the manner of shingle poured from a sack. Ted Douglas stopped one instant; blind, and sick, and with a lump in his throat that meant tears in a woman. Well he knew the men who would flinch before this, and before the certain danger that gathered. Every fibre in him ached for power to take the slack of that unseen chain in his hands, and to wrench it tight, and to sweep it forward by weight of his own savage strength for the good of Mains.
“I must trust ’em. But the Lord only knows if I can trust ’em. Scott’ll burk if he thinks the faces are goin’ to start; an’ there’s Raplin, an’ Lou—’nless the whole thing takes his fancy; an’—oh, God! Can’t I do no more than jest walk?”
But over near twenty miles of high bitter hill-country the boys were running true; and, although they did not know it, the glory of this lay to Ted Douglas’ charge.
The hail shut off with the suddenness of a beaten stick dropped from a kerosene tin; and the boys gasped, stood upright, shook the blood from battered faces and hands, and took hold of the mobs again. Round and underfoot thumped the thunder with the earnestness of a steam-hammer in full work, until the throb was cut now and again by the sharp crackle that made the boys jump, and the outflung anger of lightning. Far over on an unseen face came the roar that was neither thunder nor wind nor the roll of balls down a skittle alley. The top of a big tree sliced the mist for an instant as it pitched forward. Then the mighty groan of the parted slip filled earth, and rang against the sky until it settled to silence far down in a gully-bottom.
“There’ll be jes’ the naked skull o’ that hill grinnin’ at us in the mornin’,” said Moody, startled to speech. Then he shivered in the soaked rags that clung to him. For it was quite possible that the Brothers might also stand up skull-bare, and grin over the death that lay hid at the bottom.
The shingle tread where four men worked was sloppy as the wash in a dredge-bucket; and the sheep stumbled on it, weighted with water, and crying against the unwearied menace of the dogs. And still the chain dragged forward, pulling all life with it; and still the rain pelted straightly, settling in behind the earth; loosening, loosening; and still the boys counted the ridges yet to be won before the easy slope of the Dome shoulder gave clean foothold of tussock and broom.
It was Tod who heard first from the tops where the wind blew the sound gustily. First the groan as of a calving iceberg; then the quick snarl of shingle, and the following roar that widened and grew faint and died out in the river below.
“Now sorra a bit of sheep will we be takin’ off of that shoulder this great while,” he said. “An’ it’s bad it’ll be for anny misfort’nit crathur what we left there. But will we git off out of that befure another will be comin’, I wonder?”
Scott heard it, and fear caught, him by the nape of the neck. He wheeled, saw the tail-end of it, and began to run. A straight-flung stone fleshed his ear, and he blinked up at Steve, blocked out on the scarp above. Then a greater fear caught Scott. For payment for all things would be required in camp this night, and there would be Ted Douglas to face after. He dropped back sullenly, swarming up the lean ridge before him with the wet wind cutting his eyes and chilled hands.
Among the rotten rock and the flint and mica where the lightning zipped and the rain gallopped down in deep channels, Lou was finding purer joy than had been his since the day that broke him in open square before two troops of Irregulars and one Home regiment. For always a brave man loves to stand up to a force that is greater than he. Ted Douglas heard the slip, and a pain beyond body-weariness set in his face. Quite certainly he knew that the sheep must have got back on them, again and yet again, though each man did his utmost. And who could know until the hour was past whether or no each man had done his utmost?
“I jes’ got to trust ’em,” he said, over and many times over. “But, by———, I’ll kill the man what don’t bring in his mob, I will. I will.”
The wind plucked their skins with wet sharpened fingers; it spread the gutters into froth, and spun shingle abroad, and flattened the tussocks where straining hands grasped at it. The boys’ eyes stung and blinded in the sockets, and the whistle fell dumb on their lips. But the dogs worked by the arm-swing and the jerked stone, and by their own stout-hearted wisdom; and slowly and very heavily, the line drew forward and together, and ran, stream by stream, to the slope of the Dome’s western flank.
Night was very near, and the wind blew by in great scuds of rain. Perhaps none but Ted Douglas could have picked each separate lot and the man in charge, and he said little as the sodden mobs tailed in. But Danny, tripping on the first mouthful of speech to his fellows since daybreak, declared:
“Ted’s feelin’ good down ter the bottom of his spines, he is. An’ so is we feelin’ good, an’ why not? ’Tain’t every periodic set o’ fellers as cud ’a’ mustered on the Brothers ter-day.”
“Well, now, an’ cock you up,” cried Tod, stumbling, exhausted and lame, through the snow-grass. “It’s illigant hayros we are an’ all not to be runnin’ from the work cut out on us wid our tails down betune our legs—more be chance that Ted wud be afther us wid the big fisht of him, too.”
“’Twouldn’t hev taken him long ter hev catched me,” said Steve, going by with his waistcoat strapped round his bare foot by flax-withes. “Is that Buck wi’ the tents over by the whare, or is it the top of the Dome come down for an airin’?”
It was the tents glimmering like moths on the dark, and Buck came from the sod hut at the shout, leaving three billies sputtering on the leaping flames, and a damped turning black in the ashes. With the fear of all things in his mouth he cast himself upon the van, demanding how many were killed in the slip, how many sheep they had brought down, how many hours———
Here Mogger took him by the collar.
“Rouse up all the feed an’ drink yer kin fin’ while we gits the sheep inter the gully,” he said. “An’ jes’ be rememberin’ as we wants fillin’ from our toe-nails up ter our back-teeth.”
The gully-mouth was stoppered by tied dogs, spent and foot-sore, but unconquered yet. Then the boys stormed the whare; stripping their soaked clothes to the heat, and singing the song of the Homeward Bound when the last great fight is won. And without doubt, it is a song to make the pulses gallop.
No man thought to thump Buck because he had packed candles, butter and cutlery loose in one sack.
“Sure, it’s all good aitin’ when ye shut ye’re eyes fast enough,” said Tod, and was forthwith pitched into a corner for stepping on Conlon’s new-made damper. The content of all the world was in Ted Douglas’ face and in his voice. And this was quite to be understood; for the boys had proved themselves, one and all, for the honour and good of Mains and of their manhood. Steve muttered four words to him that made his eyes flame.
“It’s you helt ’em,” he said.
Then someone kicked the door open, crying:
“Can you chaps put up three more to-night? We’re out o’ our reckonin’, an’ it’s brutal dark.”
“Ach, come in be all manes,” cried Tod; “if so be ye’ll excuse as we ain’t dressed for callers.”
His coat and shirt smoked before the fire; but Lou wore a blanket only, and Raplin was still wringing the water out of his trousers. A couple of swags rolled inside the door, and Steve bounced across the hut promptly.
“Ain’t got a spare pair o’ boots in there, are yer?” he demanded. “Big ones?”
“You be blowed, Steve Derral,” said the first man. “I didn’t was a ellerfunt ever. But perhaps Jimmie———”
Then the boys gasped. For two men were musterers from Glenhula, and the third man was Jimmie Blaine.
Danny rescued from the flame the shirt that Ted Douglas dropped as he jumped forward.
“Jimmie! Hello, Jimmie, old boy———”
Jimmie swung his back to the eager hand.
“I ain’t talkin’ wi’ you,” he said.
Silence cut sheer down through talk and movement, so that the shudder of the tent-flaps out in the wind sounded loudly. Murray had sworn secrecy on the boys who had come up from the township in the last week to bring the sheep in to Mains. But Scott broke his oath with deliberation. It was Danny’s unshaken opinion that Scott would cause dissension even among the worms that should eat him.
“Per’aps Ted ain’t any too keen hisself ter be speakin’ ter a liar an’ a thief,” he said.
Jimmie slid out of his oilskins, and his peaked face flamed.
“Who you callin’ names?” he demanded.
“You,” said Scott, in simple explanation; and Lou, propped against the wall in his grey blanket, grinned on the pipe-stem. He had seen a court-martial before, with himself on the drum-head. Then Mogger paid in his contribution:
“Did yer tell Murray as it was Ted lifted all Buggy’s rhino, an’ let the old chap peg out wi’ his ribs stickin’ together? Did yer, you——— Spit it out, or we’ll make yer.”
Ted was staring, the colour gone from his face, his hand shut on Mogger’s shoulder. Steve saw only that the shock of this had caught him full-flood and unprepared.
“Ted,” he cried. “Ted, old man, yer needn’t think there’s one o’ us believes it! If it was twenty thousand gone ’stead o’ two, we’d not think as you took it, Ted.’
Ted put him aside.
“Jimmie,” he said. “What are they sayin’, Jimmie?”
“We’re tellin’ him as he stole it himself———”
“That’s a lie,” said Ted, speaking through his teeth. “Are you going to take it back, Raplin?”
“Ask Jimmie will he plaze tell Raplin that same,” suggested Tod, and Scott laughed.
“Jimmie’s got other fish to fry,” he said. “How yer goin’ ter prove in Court as Ted tuk it, Jimmie? Yer telled Murray yer would, yer know.”
Lou put aside the smoke- wreath gently, looking over at Jimmie. And Jimmie stood with loose hands, and a brain that would tell him nothing. Once before the boys had had the handling of him in their wrath, and he had been very much afraid. But there was that in the faces now clogged his blood, and made his tongue dumb.
“Jimmie,” said Ted, “you hear what they’re sayin’ of yer? Give them the lie, lad, an’ I’ll take it through fur you. I’ll take it through on them all if you’ll tell ’em, Jimmie.”
“What would you have him tell?” said Conlon in contempt. “He fleeced the poor old beggar right and left, and then tried to put the blame on you. D’you think we’re fools that we can’t see that?”
“He never did! Jimmie, you must stand up to it now! Tell ’em, lad. Tell ’em it’s lies—lies! We’ll take it through together, Jim!”
The firelight was full on Ted’s drawn anxious face, and flickering on the faces around. To Lou it was very funny that unbuttoned shirts and half-clothed bodies should belong to those faces. For they were purely savage in their just anger. Jimmie was glancing round with swift hunted eyes; but still he did not speak.
“Musha, it’s the foine hayro an’ all he is,” said Tod. “Is it for a wake ould man only that ye have an answer on ye, me boyo?”
“Jimmie, haven’t yer a word in yer, man? For God’s sake give him that in his teeth!”
Jimmie opened his lips; but no sound came, and only Lou was beating a little time on the back of his hand with his pipe-bowl.
“Jimmie!”
It was a cry that lifted even Lou’s eyebrows with the pain of it. Then Scott stood up.
“Reckon as he ain’t got no back-talk fur onst,” he said. “An’ reckon as we ain’t chummin’ wi’ one o’ his kidney what’s not got the pluck ter stan’ up ter his words. Tie him up, an’ chuck him in a corner. We’ll take him along ter Murray in the mornin’!”
Ted Douglas put aside the eager hands.
“Holt on a minute,” he said; and a thread in his voice steadied them. “Jimmie told Murray under oath, I suppose; but he wouldn’t guv me away here. He’d sooner take what yer said o’ him than that. So I tells yer meself. I tuk all old Buggy’s cash, an’ he wouldn’t tell, fur he knew as folks’d be offerin’ him charity. Fur his dyin’ like he did it’s me to answer come Settlin’ Day. Me—not Jimmie. But Jimmie was the on’y one as knowed it. Now ye all know.”
Then he wheeled, and went out into the black night where the wind raved.
“And that’s the biggest lie Ted Douglas ever told,” said Steve.
But Lou answered for more than one when he said:
“Where’s your voucher for that, eh?”