The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 3
Chapter III
“Rainin’. B’Gosh! Rainin’ barrers an’ pitchforks.”
Tod pulled the blankets over his head with a sleepy mutter, and another blue roll three men off said something vivid and very distinct. Buck sprang upright, his goggle eyes staring.
“Rainin’. Who said rainin’?” He stuck a leg under the tent-flap and drew it back with a yell. “My daisy; it’s torrantin’! And them hosses in the yard. We can’t leave them hosses in the yard.”
Buck loved horses better than himself or any other man. According to popular superstition he had been one at the beginning of things. There are certain men whom the animals take into fellowship; and these are the only men who do not attempt to explain why.
“Shut yer head,” growled Scott, reaching a boot, and loosing it with insufficient aim. “Jes’ yer lie down an’ see ef we can’t leave ’em.”
It was Moody who caught the boot, and returned it emphatically; but Buck’s speech over-rode all complaint.
“I ain’t goin’ to hev my hoss harrered. I’ll take him up ter the bush———”
“By the Lord Harry—here—scrag him, somebody———”
Came a quick rustle among the blankets and chopped tussock, and a spurt of rain across Danny’s face where he lay by the flap. Then the unbelieving silence of the men. Lou broke it. He leapt for the opening.
“Come on, you fools. He’ll do it, sure as———”
Steve was shouting for his boots, and five pairs of feet battered Danny as they passed him. He grabbed the last ankle, and came out with it, sending a wild shout before him into the night. In the eight-by-twelve whare that made breakwind for the tent slept Ted Douglas, with Randal and Mogger. Douglas had the special comprehensive understanding of the ruler, and the bunk next the door as well. He cast on coat and boots with his senses half-waked, passed Conlon at the first creek, and learned essentials by one curt sentence flung piece-meal.
A wild half-lit sky was over the hills, with straight slivers of rain pelting through it, and a giddy dance of storm-clouds red above the bush. With the shout of the wind came the grunt of flying Paradise duck and the peculiar whish of blown birch-leaves. A tossing cabbage-tree marked out the yard-gate; and, head down, the boys swung for it, unspeaking as a pack of hounds in sight of the kill. Sleet mixed with the sleep in their eyes, and Danny lost both boots in the moss of a spring-head. They were stiff, each and each, with the saddle and with bruises; for in rough country a stockman takes falls in the work of most days; and well they know that not one man, though that man should be Buck, would hold thirteen horses when Nature was angry.
Down the acre-wide yard swept the horses, like ghosts without sound or shape. Behind, Buck was mad as the grey mare he straddled. The swing of her body and the smell of wet hair made him drunk with the joy of it, and he brought his mob to the gate with the longing for freedom clutching him too.
The gate swung in the wind, and Lou caught it as Ike’s cob struck it full with his chest. The rebound cast Lou three yards down the track where the pack-horse pinched his arm with a hind-shoe as it jumped him. Lou twisted; snatched at a mane that blew in his face, gripped the nostril; the mane; forced the bridle he carried between the teeth and over the ears, and came up astride, with the check-strap flapping. The men were gasping and giddy as they saw, and Tod spoke for them all when he said:
“Sure the divil is a swate kind frind to Lou. A or’nary good man wud ’a’got the neck broke off of him.”
Lou loosed his belt, and brought it down on the rump. He slung past them as a bullet from the rifle, and headed the rush on the lip of the bush. Then the grey dawn was pin-pricked by shouts and waving arms and the hiss and crackle of whips. The roar and the rain-beat dazed and cowed the mob. The corners were turned in, each on each, and Lou belted the last-comer into the yard with his strap. Then he came over the fence with his voice too soft.
“Where is Buck?” he said.
Danny sniggered, carrying a drowned boot in either hand.
“Where wud he be like ter be but promenadin’ inter the bush, an’ stayin’ there? He’s permiskious enough ter see as we ain’t pleased wi’ him, if he is dotty.”
Douglas swept up an armful of dead manuka and led the way to the hut. Here, while the water ran off them, the boys turned about and about before the fire that raged up the tin chimney to the dawn-sky, and Randal extracted a mic-a-mic thorn from Danny’s big toe to the tune of a half-hundred cheerful jokes. Lou fed the fire just below the swinging billy, and once he said:
“Buck will go home, I suppose. He knows we’re clearing Black Hill to-day; but he won’t come along to the party.”
“Yes, he will,” said Mogger suddenly. “Buck’s all sorts of a fool but a funk. He’ll carry his swag in all right—an’ what are we goin’ ter do ter him?”
Lou sat back on his heels, whistling softly. Ted Douglas turned on him.
“You’ll not mess wi’ the boy on yer own, Lou,” he said.
“You’ll mind your own business, perhaps,” suggested Lou, sweetly.
“I am. Buck’s ter my charge. He’s a idjit clean through; but he’ll come up ter his whippin’ like a good sheep-pup. And it ain’t you ter give it———”
“Want to kill him yourself?” asked Lou with a delicate sneer.
“We all wants ter kill him,” explained Moody. “And we’re all goin’ ter. But not the same way as yer’d do it.”
“Perhaps not,” said Lou, lightly.
Ted Douglas thrust his hands deep in his pockets.
“If you goes hurtin’ Buck, I’ll sack you,” he said slowly.
Lou’s lip upturned from his even teeth; but no man saw his eyes. He stooped to the fire again.
“It sounds so well to write a big cheque, doesn’t it? But it’s better to remember that it might possibly be dishonoured at headquarters.”
“It’s you as is more likely ter be dishonoured,” said Douglas in sudden wrath.
Lou came to his feet with a face that brought three men between him and the other. Danny laughed, rocking on the bunk.
“Can’t yer stand chiackin’ yet, Lou? Wi’ all the efforts I’ve taken to substantiate yer in it, too! Ike, put some tea inter that billy, and guv me a drink, for I’m fair climaxed wi myself.”
But a half-hour later, when they got to saddle with wet oilskins abroad in the wind, Danny muttered to Mogger:
“Ted’ll pay for that. Pay through the nose, he will. Lou is darnation clever.”
Mogger glanced at a little cramped figure atop of a big bony roan. He hoped that Lou would hit there when the chance came. For—saving always Ted Douglas—no man on Mains had any love for Jimmie.
When man first put foot on her the Back-Country made some rules and she had kept them. They that serve her shall love her, for she will have no divided tribute. In their strong youth they must take her yoke gladly; nor may they bend under it nor break. And in return she gives them little rest and much danger, and—many times—death. She gives too the power to be steadfast against self—which is the greatest power of all; and the child-wisdom that finds joy in the Little Things that lie along every track. And that is why the hills-men can play with the rocks and the big bush and the mountain rivers, and then go down and take the townships to pieces in a gaiety of heart which an occasional night in the lock-up does not dim.
A savage day’s work rode with the boys over the downs and up cutting by cutting. From the receiving paddocks, two round miles from the hut, the cry of already pent cattle blew down wind, and the throb of impatient hoofs below it was over-like the beat of far-distant surf. On the down-top Ted Douglas slung the chase clear for the snows where they blanketted the gnarled ranges and peaks. Tod and Jimmie swept in the van, flinging coarse jokes which Lou tossed back tipped with venom that no man but Randal had wit to see. And Randal’s mind was on sharper things. A man may walk blind where the scent of roses pull his senses, until a chance thorn-prick opens his eyes to the knowledge that he is on forbidden ground. But Randal had broken into the garden wilfully, and well he knew the smart of the thorns among the roses. He lifted his head to the free wind beating down from God’s own snows, and the sting of it eased him. For Nature in storm knows how to comfort her son when his soul is in storm also.
Through manuka-scrub and savage matakuri the track lay to Black Hill, where it rose behind the rain; stark with bare rock, and rotten with papa, and slippery with blue tussock that lay flat to the wind. One by one the boys swarmed it, as white ants swarm a wall; riding headlong up the dried water-courses, swinging aside from the sky-flung bluffs, and taking each man his separate beat, with the rain spurting off his oil-skins, and the wet gear harsh in his hands.
Above the cry of startled duck and the occasional anger of a kea, rocketted the stock-whip talk as the lashes licked after the heaving flanks. From the sheltered lea of great bluffs they started the cattle; from age-hollowed limestone caves; from deep guts ripped out by water-spouts and yet pallid with snow in the meadows, and from little gully-bottoms where the drowned scrub baptised them into new pains and sorrows. Scott strained his colt’s stifle on a shingle slip where he tried to prevent a stampede, and Mogger put out his elbow when he left the saddle in a blind creek. But he pulled it in again by aid of a stirrup-leather, and collared his bolting mob on the slope below.
Beyond a patch of mic-a-mic Ted Douglas saw a horseman whom he had not sent. He stood in the stirrups with the rain blowing across him.
“Buck,” he shouted.
Buck came, his blank face more blank than before.
“I got a cow and a calf over there,” he said.
Douglas grinned. No man argued with Buck. As a horsebreaker he was the pride of both Islands. Beyond that he was a child, and all true men gave him gentleness therefor.
“Whale away at ’em then, an’ kip clear o’ Lou. He’ll get his knife into you if he can.”
“I jes wanted ter take the hosses out’r the rain,” explained Buck, and rode on.
But Lou was looking for stronger meat that day. There was Douglas to pay for words said some hours back. And, by the nature of a man, he cannot forgive evil truth, though the evil of lies may not touch him.
To the heel of the day they worked; soaked and rain-beat; riding each man with his life in the hand that carried his rein, and watching eternally for the spear-glint of horns and the skin-flash through loose bush and crowding manuka.
Near sunset, when the storm gave to a scarlet evening of blown clouds and clucking wind, Lou found his chance and took it. Where a humped spur ran clear into the western sky Jimmie cautiously wheeled his mob, bringing them back, slow-paced. Lou, on the breast of the hill above, looked down to see deep gullies either side the spur and the gleam of rock-bound water at bottom. The blue glint that all men hated shot into his eyes as he rounded his own haul with haste. They were a mixed haul: two-year-olds, poddies and pikers; a half-dozen moth-eaten mothers, and a scrub bull of ten years which had never been branded. Lou had played with him all down the hill, putting a blind deviltry into him with the lash, and the sweat and foam mixed with the blood on his quarters. Skilfully, and unseen, Lou switched the drive on to Jimmie’s spur, and drew in to watch developments. And in all the hush of sky washing round the bare scrubby spur, and the jutting breast of the hill, there was only the dry clack of hoofs, and the great bell-note of the red piker as he shouldered through the young bulls and the cows.
With dust to guard and cover them the frightened mob broke down the tussock for the spur-tip. Above Lou four men came into sight on the hill-top. Lou laughed. The game was not then for him only. A choice lay with Jimmie. Had it been another man there would have been no choice; but Lou, sitting easy in the saddle, knew the fall of the die before it was thrown.
The roar and crackle of broken scrub blew out on the wind. A dead rimu jarred when the crush struck it. The toss of glinting horns and white spume made foam above the billowing backs. Stray cabbage-trees and low whanae-clumps sifted and parted them; and here the determination of a twelve-foot whip could block and swing a hundred—two hundred—with the coming army to help.
Mogger was roaring from the scarp above. Ike, standing in his stirrups, whistled frantic appeals. Then Ted Douglas pelted past head-long. Lou took some payment at sight of his face.
Nakedly in sight of his fellows, the coward in Jimmie fought with his training. He fell back from his own mob where it stopped, pawing earth uneasily. He pulled the reins this way and the other; beat his mare; wrenched her back. Once he swung out his whip, but it dropped unspeaking.
Lives out-back are run on the army lines, and a man who fears his enemy—be it bucking horse or charging cattle or a plough in stony ground—takes something of the grade of a deserter in battle. Ted Douglas knew it. He had seen men out-casts on the cattle-camp before this day. Jimmie knew it. But his tongue was dried leather in his mouth, and his hands turned clammy on the reins. Down the hog-backed spur he saw Douglas coming, and the chill air bore a shout with a prayer in it. The charging mob crashed into the loafers, bunched and turned them, and the red, roaring thunder swerved away to the right. Along the very lip of the gully Douglas was coming. his old bay full-extended. His spurs dripped blood, and his bitten lip was blood-spotted. On the brink the red piker pulled up with a jerk and a bellow that broke to a scream as the mob behind swamped him and pitched over with him.
On the hill-side Scott was left in charge of ninety head, whilst six men tore down the spur, slung their reins to the scrub on the rim, and went over to the cold dusk made awful by the rage of mad brutes in the hand of death. For a full hour they strove in the slippery rock-bottoms; giving the keen knife to those beyond help, gentling and beating the rest up to the gathering night on the ranges. Then came the wet saddles again, and the fierce alert ringing and wheeling and flogging that brought all at last to the jaws of the paddocks far down on the flat. Jimmie said once to Douglas:
“I — I couldn’t help it.” And Douglas made answer:
“You’ll have the chanst to say that to-night, I reckon. Git down to your work now.”
Scannell’s boys knew how to give and how to take. They usually did both crisply; rounding off the episode, and casting it behind them as a thing past. But first was the day’s work to hold up to the end; and the boys were saddle-stiff and weary and sweating before the gates swung close and the last weaner cried inside the bars.
Jimmie’s punishment had gathered in intensity as the sting of a black icy night folded round, to find each man unresting yet, and empty with hunger. And through the dark and the aching exhaustion more than shame dogged Ted Douglas.
For every head of stock and every inch of brown earth on Mains was dear to him, and this night he doubted for the first time whether or no Jimmie was dearer still.
The boys rode back to camp unspeaking. They fed in silence until Lou gave the lead from where he lay in a bunk, his eyes eager, his long lithe limbs at ease. The sternness of coming judgment was on the other men to make them awkward and dumb, and into the tenseness Lou slid his cool voice.
“Any fellow going to ask Jimmie questions?”
“There’s lots of men can’t———” began Douglas; but Randal’s speech cut the words.
“You’re out of this, I think, Douglas. Jimmie has lost Mains twenty head of cattle, and it’s he who has to answer for it.”
Danny was a Heaven-built peacemaker. He took his teeth from a hunk of bread, saying:
“Leave it till ter-morrer, yer peripatetics, can’t yer? We ain’t none on us up ter ancient hist’ry ter-night.”
Jimmie spoke from the candle-box near the fire. His unhallowed wit had given him a certain holding among the boys, but they had no ears for it to-night. There was no loop-hole in this disgrace which had come upon Mains, and no flicker of fun on any face beside Lou’s. Lou sat up and flung the stone.
“I’ll lend my blanket for thirty pitches,” he said.
Ted Douglas gasped where he stood behind Jimmie, his strong bony face white under sweat that had not been wiped away. Buck shivered.
“Thirty’d tear the inside out’r him,” he said. “I had it done ter me wonst up North—an’ that was on’y twenty. But I didn’t hev no stummick fur a week.”
Jimmie was using talk that brought all the men to their feet. Lou sprang up.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Bring him outside. It’s starlight.”
“Ted—Ted—stop them———”
Steve gathered Jimmie in his great arms.
“He can’t answer fur yer no more, Jimmie,” he said. “Yer playin’ off yer own bat ter-night.”
Ted Douglas ruled his life by the ethics of fairplay. But it was needful for Randal to block him at this moment.
“You can't stop it, Douglas,” he said. “Stay in here, if you like; but they’re going to take it out of Jimmie to-night. If Lou had brought along his whip they’d have used it.”
Then he went out and shut the door.
Randal had neither hate nor pity for his kind. He saw the justice in this, and stood by in the cold bright-starred night; but he gave no help, nor yet any hindrance. Sheer behind the whare the bush rose up to the sky. The babble of a creek two yards off mixed with the distant roar of the shingle river and the low brush of horses cropping long grass. The little sod whare was sallow in the faint light. Each step and word rang in the frosty air. But there was no mercy for Jimmie in the night, nor in the faces and the quick hands about him.
Within, Ted Douglas stood against the narrow chimney-shelf, his head down on his arms. Originally, blanket-tossing is a school-boy trick; but the fun goes out of it very swiftly when a man is delivered to the punishment. Each soul is made dual that it may understand other souls if it will; and if the man in Ted Douglas stood firm for the honour of Mains, the woman in him shook at foreknowledge of Jimmie’s pain. Through the shut door came the shout of the old-time furmula. First Scott’s voice, loud and clear:
“Who lost twenty head o’ cattle fur Scannell?”
Then a full-bodied shout of “Jimmie!” a gasping wait, a thud, and Scott’s voice again.
Lou sat on a dead tree, watching the hard faces in the starshine. And, having more than ordinary perceptions, he knew that in the dumbness of the whare someone suffered more than Jimmie. At the second pitch Jimmie was cursing. By the sixteenth sobs and prayers galloped together, and Danny said:
“A lot of sense there is in takin’ the use out o’ him, isn’t there? Give him one more fur luck, yer galapods, an’ be done with it.”
“Nineteen,” said Mogger, and Scott took up the burden again.
It was a scream of agony that brought Douglas out with a face that the boys did not know.
“For God’s sake—stop it—stop it! Or chuck me ef you want to kill someone.”
Mogger grinned with his hard hands gripped on the blanket.
“He’s takin’ his gruel alone ter-night, Ted,” he said. “There ain’t no use in yer comin’ along wi’ the spoon. We’ll give him every bit he kin carry—there’s more blankets ef this one don’t hold.”
All was done with in time, and Jimmie lay on the frosty earth, helplessly sea-sick. Lou chased the pitiful Danny before him to the tent.
“Don’t you fret,” he said. “Jimmie’ll sleep in Ted’s bunk to-night.”
And Jimmie did. But Ted Douglas sat staring at the dead fire-ash until dawn-break, and twice a man roused in the night to hear Lou laughing like a child in his sleep.