The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 7
Chapter VII
The dust was bone-white on the road that boot, hoof and wheel had scored over. The hot day held a taint of Nor’west, and the new-clothed poplars along the sale-yard fence propped a sky blue and vivid as sapphire. The yards were without shade; breathless, clogged by panting sheep and restless-eyed cattle, and broken and unbroken horses. The air was rank with the smell of them, and with the smell of cheap tobacco and beer and moleskins and leather: for the township lay just round the corner, and the drovers sat along the rails with the give-and-take talk of a month in their mouths, and the high-pitched clatter of the auctioneers to deaden it.
Danny detached himself from a knot of women by the poultry-crates and climbed the rail beside Hynes, the Behar cook who had come down from the hills to get a tooth pulled. With Lou, Danny had brought over a draught of steers at daybreak, and the stockwhip round his arm showed wet hairs on it yet.
“Pic-nics they was ter land, too,” explained Danny, ramming twist into his half-bitten pipe. “See me talkin’ ter Mrs. Blaine over there? Two on ’em got waltzin’ round her back-yard, an’ I’m goffered ef she didn’t go fur ’em proper wi’ the fryin’-pan. Clouted ’em over the head all seraphic, she did.”
“Jimmie cud ’a’ done well wi’ some o’ his mother’s spare pluck,” said Hynes. “An’ what’ll he be sayin’ ’bout old Buggy, I wonder?”
Danny sucked fire into his pipe, and killed the match between slow fingers.
“Devil knows,” he said soberly. “I’m conducin’ as Jimmie don’t—ner won’t yet a bit. He’s been cleanin’ up the last o’ the rabbitin’ fur Robertson back o’ All Alone sence Scannell sacked him. ’Tain’t much news he’ll be gittin’ there ’cept what the wekas an’ keas has on tap.”
“Rum thing o’ Ted Douglas ter git his mate sacked that a-way,” said Pavit. “I can’t understand it myself.”
Pavit was a muddy dredge-hand from the Glory, and he sat the rail with his long hip-boots swinging, and the yellow clay caked on his cap. Danny turned on him fiercely.
“Never s’posed yer cud! It takes a man ter understan’ a man. What’d Ted hev done wi’ Lou and Scott an’ them rotters ef he hadn’t played the game? Can ye consplain that, now?”
“Jimmie was the wust rotter o’ the lot, anyways,” said Lossin, comfortably, and Hynes added:
“Same here. I’ll eat me false teeth if it weren’t Jimmie as sucked poor old Buggy dry an’ lef him ter starve———”
“Ted’s runner-up fur them stakes———” began Garron, and staggered back as Danny leapt for him.
“Tell him that ter his face, will yer, ye ———? An’ if he leaves the two jaws on yer it’ll be so as yer kin beg his pardon the way he kin onnerstan’ it! Ted! Ted Douglas! Doesn’t we know———”
“As he an’ Jimmie was the on’y two old Buggy’d ever hev inside his door,” ended Garron, holding the little man off. “And there’s one on ’em wheedled all his rhino outer him, poor old fool. An’ ‘Dun’t you throw it up ter the lad,’ says he. ‘He was kind ter the old man,’ says he.”
“Old ass, he should have said,” amended Hynes. “But Murray ain’t sure, else why is he grubbin’ high and low fur inflamation ’fore he knows if it’s wuth while ter bring Ted in from his musterin’ er Jimmie from All Alone?”
“Old Buggy knowed it was Ted, or would he have died with his mouth shut?” said Garron departing; and Lossin came into the talk.
“What d’yer expect ter git fur them steers, Danny?”
Danny showed a rip in his trouser-leg, and spat emphatically.
“Some more o’ that if we got ter deliver ’em. Scannell expects four-ten, and Pike don’t elucidate to it. He’s givin’ Art the wet side of his tongue over it, I guess.”
Two yards off was Art Scannell with his dogs at heel and a red-whiskered man opposite. Art was booted and breeched, and his dark delicate face and small head carried the charm and the grace of his sister. But his walk and his speech were uncertain, and the pupil of his eye too dull. Danny watched the rising storm cheerfully, and he chuckled as Art kicked, his dogs apart and moved off with a curt-flung entence.
“Sell ’em himself, will he? I seen him do that wonst. I seen him balustradin’ on the rails sellin’ pigs. ‘One-four,’ he yells out; ‘one-four—one-four,’ and smack! over he pitches atop of the pigs, an’ old Backrip, he yells out—‘Darn it. Art, but it’s one for you this time.’ Then Randal—being allers superflous—goes in an’ yanks him out an’ cleans him down. That's young Art doin’ sellin’.”
The Packer stuck his lean eagle-face over Hynes’ shoulder.
“There ain’t no men these days,” he said. “We cud drink proper when I was young. Big Jos Creer—you know Jos?”
Danny nodded. Jos Creer’s name was green up in the shut miners’ cemetery on the hill, with the date 1869 against it.
“He was a man,” said Packer. “I seen him knock down a twenty-cheque in Mullin’s bar—wot stood where the Crescent dredge is now—an’ go straight away out an’ carry a sack o’ flour two mile over the hill ter Chinaman’s Gully fur a bet. An’ the hills reekin’ wi’ shafts and scrub in those days, not to be speakin’ o’ cows strayed off of the commonage. That’s what I calls a man.”
“That’s what I calls a fool,” said Danny, politely, and cast himself headlong through six wedges of men to drag a fox-terrier off the ear of his blue Smithfield. The fox-terrier belonged to Roddy Duncan, who had come up from the township with Art, and it was Murray’s crisp tones that cut the wrangle in half. Roddy was more flushed and excited than he should have been; but he straightened before the keen eyes, for they wore the look of the hunter of men.
“What yer after?” said Danny, recovering his temper.
“Dick Wepeha. Sheep-stealing—again. Danny, can you tell me the brands and ear-marks of Jackson’s new draught—an’ anything about Behar or Mackay’s?”
Danny knew the signs of all sheep within fifty miles. Each holder in the distance desired him for a day or an hour at branding-time, and—came the sheep in a mixed draught from Westland or Wairarapa or Nelson—Danny laid his finger unerringly on each, and told off the present owner. Every man has his own gift to cultivate. Danny had cultivated his into genius. It was polyglot jabber to Roddy; but Murray jotted it down, quick-fingered.
“Thanks,” he said, snapping his note-book. “I might find some stray skins round Dick’s paddocks.”
“Yer keep yer eyebrows shiftin’ for Pipi Wepeha,” said Danny, wisely. “He curses chaps as he don’t like.”
“We all do that,” said Murray, and laughed.
“Yer conspirin’ enough ter know the differ when a old Maori tohunga starts that game, ain’t yer?” demanded Danny, tartly. “If Pipi puts his foolery on ter you, Murray, yer’ll smart fur it.”
“Bah!” said Murray, and swung off, clean-limbed and alert.
Roddy, having fear of all things which he did not understand, fed that fear on all possible occasions.
“W-what would Pipi do?” he asked nervously.
Lou’s clear laugh sounded behind him.
“Do? He’d put makutu on him for a start. Then Murray———”
“Shut it, Lou, an’ don’t go swabbin’ what brains he’s got out o’ him———”
But Lou backed to the fence, crossed his legs, and began to speak slowly, his hands in his pockets, and a half-score men listening. And he did not guess he was loosening the sod for more graves than one. Lou came from the North, where the pakeha learns the beliefs and the hates of the Maori, on land soaked in the blood of both races; and what he had to tell he told cleverly, to trouble the wide-eyed boy before him. So that in the end Roddy went away, sick and shaken; and giddy with the unfolding of a horror too vivid for his sensitive brain.
“Brute yer are, Lou,” said Danny, fiercely; and Lou grinned, filling his pipe.
“Tell you, it’s a real joke to rattle that kid. He gathers up every egg you chuck at him, and sits on it.”
“He’ll hatch trouble out o’ that one, belike,” said Hall. “’Tain’t right———”
“Bah! Those steers are sold, Danny, so we’re right; and that’s all I care about. Let the kid go to blazes if he likes.”
Roddy chased his shadow swiftly up the white road. At the corner Gordon’s wife stood at a cottage-door, merry-eyed and cleanly, with children tumbling at her feet. The scent of hawthorn came over the gate with her voice.
“Roddy! Tell Gordon to hurry up home. I got a bit o’ chicken for his tea.”
Roddy grunted reply without looking up, and tramped on. Over the tussock hill the sunset lay red, and the cool of the spring evening grew as the Nor’west died. Roddy climbed the stiff slope with its needly spines, beat through gorse and broom until the thunder of the dredges in Changing Creek filled the air, and the tent that he shared with Fysh showed in the shingle gully at his feet. By the fire Fysh was feeding already. He paused with his knife at his mouth to say:
“Yer ain’t got much time ter go wastin’, kid.”
Roddy poured strong tea from the billy; drank again and again; clawed oilskins and long boots from beneath the bunk, and fixed on a loose button with wire. Fysh ate with noise and cheerful haste, and Roddy’s nerves twitched in irritation and disgust.
“Did yer tell Ormond ’bout that shovel yer broke the ’andle off of?” demanded Fysh, licking the sugar out of his pannikin audibly.
“Curse the shovel,” said Roddy.
Fysh stared. Then he rose and boxed Roddy’s ears.
“I got ’nother ’and for the other side if you give me any back-talk,” he said. “Come up out o’ that, an’ get to yer work.”
Roddy followed over the hill uncaring; jumped the five-foot tail-race with a stagger; dragged on the hip-boots and the oilskins, and stood by the boxes until the moment when Gordon should toss him the shovel. The Lion had been ground-sluicing these seven months, and Roddy loathed box-work above all things invented. He turned his back on the jet and the great sullen pipes, and stared downhill at the yellow of the tail-race where it touched the zinc-blue of the Creek. In the manuka below he heard the complaining voice of Kiliat, and Ormond’s quick virile answers. Then the wet shovel met his hands, and his eyes fell on the boxes mechanically.
There was heavy stuff coming down, and the shake of the trestles and the spume of the water made him giddy. Twice the race ran abrim, choking. Once she slopped over with a roar that brought Kiliat up to see. He said that to Roddy which set the boy’s fingers itching on the shovel and his eyes drawing to the sleek head under the check cap. Ormond guessed the desire for connection, and sympathised.
“Sheer clumsiness and inattention,” wound up Kiliat. “I’ve had my eye on you for some time; and—ah—I could do your work better myself.”
“Do it, then,” said Roddy, and cast down the shovel.
Ormond was weary and irritated himself; but there was that in Roddy’s face which made him anxious.
“Pick that up and go on with your work,” he said, sharply. “Leave him alone, Kiliat, and go an’ spring your little jokes on someone else. Roddy hasn’t any sense of humour.”
“He has insulted me,” raved Kiliat.
“You’d better go and handle a slave-gang if you want soft answers to your lip. Roddy won’t offend again. I’ll vouch for him. Good-night.”
But Ormond had stern words for the boy when Kiliat had gone.
“If you play up with your work and your masters as you are doing, you’ll find yourself fired out very shortly,” he said. “Art Scannell’s to blame for this, I suppose———”
“He’s my mate,” said Roddy, sullenly.
“Then your mate will have to find you another billet before long, if you’re not careful. Remember what I say, Roddy. If I sweat myself I make my men sweat too, and you haven’t tightened your traces this fortnight.”
He left Roddy alone in the darkening night, with the work that took toll of the boy’s body and freed his mind to search in morbid terror through Lou’s words. Down in the desolate creek-bed each clump of flax and slender cabbage-tree was alive with its Maori birthright of mystery and gloom, and the roar of the water shut him in on himself relentlessly.
The pale saffron of the after-glow called Ormond from his hut to the power-house. Here he switched on the electric light, locked the door, and went over to Fysh at the jet. The spark of light jumped before him from lamp to lamp, shutting out the wild hills of dead manuka and distance with a solid wall of black. Under the near lamp-post the jet spouted from a four-inch nozzle, scoring up the rock and down as Fysh’s hand swayed it. Ormond watched for two minutes with keen eyes and tight lips. He had been up at the penstock all day, and that was an eighteen-mile walk all told. The clipped hour since his return had been crowded with Kiliat’s complaints; and Ormond steadied himself under the light before he trusted his voice to speak.
The rock shivered where the jet struck it, and sunk forward in a puddle of yellowish wash. Fysh dipped his wrist a fraction, and the water dug out a big manuka bush, tossing it over into the night beyond. Then the steady roar blattered on rock again, sending a comb of white smoke above the light-arc.
“What’s all that waste water doing round the junction?” demanded Ormond, bringing his mouth to the other’s ear.
“She’s leakin’,” explained Fysh.
“Leaking! The ———! Why, you’re using the second head, you eternal ———!” Ormond jumped for the two-way cock. “Get up to the other nozzle, I tell you.” He swung the handles round with a jerk, and at the ceasing of the thunder Fysh spoke.
“Kiliat said as we was to use this beast;” he shook the dribbling nozzle: “said as how it was bigger.”
“Kiliat be—oh, all right. He didn’t know it was leaking, I suppose. Change over. Keep her at that, and I’ll overhaul this in the morning. Just the bolts worked loose, I expect.”
Fysh sniggered as he turned, and Ormond’s hands came out of his pockets in a flash. But he dropped them, swung on his heel, and tramped through clayey mullock until the tail of light flickered out over yellow wash in the boxes and the white of Roddy’s face. The understanding of Fysh’s half-laugh sung through Ormond’s head, and brought a roughness to his voice.
“Roddy! There’s heavy stuff in the corner. Watch it below the half-way, for one ripple is cracked.”
“Yes,” said Roddy, and hopped into the boxes, loosing a block with one masterly kick of the shovel.
Ormond dropped his head on his chest, and went down-hill with a sure swift foot among the raffle of dead scrub and fallen-in shafts and stones. The grate of wash and the snarl of the jet passed out behind, and down on the level of the Changing Creek was pale starlight and a muggy chill dampness. He slung along the half-yard track under the bank, and came to the two dredges that sat at the corner, glaring electric light, and pouring out muddy water unendingly. Ormond cursed their fat squat prosperity, swung himself up to the gorse and broom of the hill-top, took the township street at its lower end, and hammered on Father Denis’ door, A candle glimmered in the dark passage, and Ormond spoke to the glint of it.
“Anyone here. Father? I’m coming in to talk.”
The priest’s quick ear caught the tension in Ormond’s tone. He laid a fat hand on the door, and shut it.
“There is not, then. I’m just after finishing me tea—you’ll wait for a pipe, Ormond? Sure, you’ve let me smoke alone these ten nights. Busy? Uh-h! When were ye anything else? Not that chair. Ye cracked it last toime wid yer fooleries—there’s tobacco behind ye, man. Aye; that tin’s the brand ov yer own.”
Ormond lit up with unsteady hands, drawing the life in broken, impatient puffs. Father Denis lowered his bulk into the worn leathern chair opposite, and made a blue veil of smoke between the two. For a good pipe loosens the tongue and shelters the face: and these are the two essentials for an unburdening of the spirit.
The little bee-clock on the mantel-shelf made troubled conversation, and once in every few minutes a cart rattled an answer from the street. The fire-light was on Father Denis’ treasures; and the face of the girl on the wall laughed once, as though, from across the Great Space, she saw and approved the shaping of the lives before her. But the two men smoked silently.
The priest moved first; grunted; heaved himself forward in his chair.
“If I were behind the gratin’, Ormond, I’d have ye up tu the confessional in less toime than this. Have ye killed a directhor, then?”
Ormond started. Then he recrossed his legs and lay back.
“Oh, it’s only the same old thing;” his voice was carefully careless. “Don’t you know what I’ve come to you for? You can’t do anything.”
“I don’t mean tu thry, sure. The sowls ov men take all the tinkerin’ I can give widout goin’ sakin’ tu the dredges an’ sluices.”
“You’d find your work cut out if you came seeking to the Lion,” said Ormond, bitterly. “She’s going to pieces. To pieces, poor old girl! Just for want of a little of the money those confounded directors are sucking out of her. I’ve written to them;” he sat up, and his words came with a rush. “I’ve written and written. And I’ve laced Bert Kiliat till I marvel that he doesn’t try to stoush me. I sometimes wish he would.”
“I believe ye,” said Father Denis dryly.
“Heaven knows how he has the face to call himself a manager. Manager! Taking it all through, he doesn’t put in more than one half-day a week at the claim. One half-day! Then he goes back to the hotel, or up to the Scannells’, and writes up reports. Manager! There’s not a sluicing-hand in all Otago knows less about hydraulics than he does.”
O’ coorse. Every man wud like tu be the handle ov the spade. It’s niver that easy worrking wid a fut on yer shoulder all the day. But there’s betther men than yersilf done ut, Ormond.”
“I don’t want to be the handle. D’you think I’m minding what it is to me? Kiliat can call me a digger instead of working overseer, if it pleases him. I don’t care. But it’s the old Lion herself—the claim—and all the shareholders who will suffer for this rotting. That’s what’s driving me wild!”
He flung through the half-lighted room restlessly. The priest bit his thumb-nail and frowned. He was a worker himself, and he understood.
“Can’t ye git howld on the bhoys anyways? A man in his sinses wud see ye can’t worrk a claim widout money, sure.”
“They are not in their senses, then I suppose. They are idiots. Blind, deaf idiots—and I wish to Heaven they were dumb too. They stew away in their own juice down in town, an’ put all my letters in the waste-paper basket. What? Bert Kiliat’s the only one of ’em all who has been up to see it, and he’s about as much good as a sick-headache. His father has told him that expenses must be kept down. That’s all he can say when I show him a leaky pipe spitting like a cat. Curse him!”
“Tut-t-t!”
“I beg your pardon. Father. But—you don’t see the futile puerility of it all. Twenty-three miles of race, and two and three quarters of pipes, and a twelve-inch plant. I tell you, it needs constant outlay to keep it in order. And this has had nothing spent on it for a year. I’m sick of asking———”
Ormond came back to the mantel-shelf, crossed his arms on it, and dropped his head. His nerves were strung to the tightness which in a woman would be hysteria. Father Denis got up heavily, and put his hands on the stooped shoulders.
“There’s no credit owin’ ye in takin’ yer whippin’, Ormond. We all have tu du that wan toime or another. Bhut ye can boite on the bullet, can’t ye? Or there’s nothin’ of a man tu ye bhut the clothes.”
Ormond did not move. He was squarely and strongly built, with the spade fingers and lean set jaw of the practical engineer. But to-night he was weak as a little child. Just the half-laugh of one of the men that he ruled had overset his strength for the time.
“It’s a great thing to be a man, isn’t it?” he said, indistinctly. “And to slave out your soul to do your work honestly—and to get no credit—no help———”
“This isn’t the talk ye gave Randal an’ me once, Ormond. Where’s yer belief in yersilf gone tu, bhoy?”
Ormond laughed hysterically.
“Oh, go on! Go on! Tell me how much we’ve got to thank God for!”
“Ut’s yersilf hasn’t much, if that’s all the spirit that’s in ye. Let it go, then. Ut’s a man’s worrk, an’ not yours at all, at all.”
Father Denis knew when to use the whip. But it did not rouse Ormond.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve given her so much that I—I can’t go back on her. She’s had seven years of my life, and I believe she knows it. I could never work for another claim as I’ve worked for her. You don’t know what it is to fight for her back in the hills when the rains are stripping the faces, and there’s an even chance of losing half the race in a few minutes. I’ve done that six times this year. And the flume up near the pent-stock is getting shaky—I was up to my middle in it most of to-day. That accounts for the drivel I’m talking. Why don’t you kick me out, Father?”
“Faith! there’s niver an inch of ye softer than the toe of me boot—unless ut’s yer head. Ye’ve got somethin’ out of servin’ the Lion, Ormond.”
“Yes,” said Ormond. He picked up his pipe, and sat down again, laughing half-ashamed. “For a chap has no right to kick up a shine over his daily work,” he said.
Then as the light caught the priest’s face, he added quickly: “You’ve a trouble of your own to-night. Father?”
“I have, then. Did ye hear ov ut? A sob blows news quicker than ahl the laughs of the worrld will du—aye; ye foight for yer iron scrapin’s an’ driftwud wid Nature, Ormond. I’m foightin’ worse down here—wid the divil thrippin’ sowls be the heels, an’ ahl the evil ov the earth tu give power tu his elbow when ut’s needed.”
“What is it?” asked Ormond, blowing the smoke aside.
“Ould Buggy was found dyin’ in his bed this mornin’, along—ye know the lonely road where he lived? Clane starved tu a shtick he was, wid niver a penny an’ niver a crust tu bless him. An’ he that kep a servant an’ was rowlin’ in money.”
“Poor old beggar! What’d he done? Sunk it in mines?”
“Ut is Jimmie Blaine or Ted Douglas sunk ut for him. Niver a man he let into his dure bhut they two an’ his body-servant. An’ sorra a truth cud they git out ov him. ‘Niver scowld the lad,’ he says. Bhut which lad he niver said. Sapped him dhry, and left him tu starve. Ut’s Jimmie they’re blamin’—I had the ould mother ov him down on me just now. He’s the only choild she iver had—saints help her!”
“Which does Murray think it was?”
“Sure did ye iver know Murray say what he did not want tu? He is on the thrack ov somethin’—an’ Jimmie is wan ov me own bhoys. If ut is him, I’ll break his head on him though he comes tellin’ me at the Confessional—God forgive me. And yit—if ut’s because I’ve failed somewhere in me duty———”
“That’s rot,” said Ormond promptly. “You’ve got the heart of every Roman in the district—and of half the other denominations too. You just spend yourself for them, Father———.”
“And wudn’t I du ut twice over—for ivery mother’s son ov thim?” The yearning tenderness of his face shook his voice, and Ormond’s eyes drew unthinkingly to the picture on the wall. “Aye, luve shpells bigger worrds than the four letthers ov ut’s name—how’s that bhoy ov yours that Randal shpoke tu ye about?”
“I’ve switched him on to night-duty, and he doesn’t like it. And I’ve rowed him, and he doesn’t like that. I can’t do more. A chap isn’t responsible for his men when they’re not under his eye.”
“Bedad! if more ov ye were ut’d be a different worrld from wan round corner tu the other! Du ye iver see Randal these days?”
“Sometimes. He’s granite. I’ll never get any hold on him, Father.”
“He’s been hoeing a shtiff row of his own if there’s anything in township talk. Ormond, if iver he comes tu ye for help, give ut. He will not be comin’ tu many, that same bhoy.”
“All right. It’s not likely, though.” Ormond got up, and shook himself. “I must scoot. Father. And—I wish I hadn’t worried you to-night.”
The priest looked round the low room with the dance of the fire in its corners.
“It’ll be a bad day for me when I turrn me face from a man wantin’ annythin’ that I can give tu him,” he answered.