The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 8
Chapter VIII
Blake’s bar-parlour was empty, with fire-light cloaking the grease-stains on the walls, and the rings that the glasses and jugs had scored on the table. It was Lou who strolled in, unobserved, through the side-door, picked an accordeon out of the wood-box, and began to make music in the shadows. Strictly speaking, the accordeon belongs to hot evenings outside the whares, and the smoke and talk of loafing shearers, with the murmur of penned sheep to help out the halt of stiffened fingers. Or to black nights round the camp-fires, where the “honk, honk” of wild swan and the sudden slow roar of a landslip far up in the ranges are familiar as the old simple times. Or to dances in the Town Hall, with a girl to laugh back when Danny or Trefusis bang at “Daisy Ball” from the platform, and the throb of feet covers the bass. But the accordeon in Lou’s hands was a vivid restless something that roused strange unnameable desires and longings, such as no plain working man had any right to. For, everything having its compensations, evil done may teach a man the way to the heartstrings of his kind when a better duller soul draws blank.
Lossin came in from the bar, and blattered the fire into blaze with his heel.
“Yer too bloomin’ uncanny fur the dark, Lou,” he said. “Sing us somethin’ rousin’, can’t yer?”
Lou flung out “Nazareth” in a rollicking waltz with the double bass, and, Murray, on his way up to bed, came in to expostulate. For he had not quite forgot the reverence of his childhood. But instead, he stared at Lou in the light, saying:
“Heavens above, man! What old shaft have you been falling into?”
Lou’s forehead carried six colours, and his jaw was cut. Moreover, his clean-shaped nose looked lumpy. Ten voices gave virile explanation, and Murray picked up understanding piecemeal.
“What does Steve look like?” he asked.
“Faix, the divil’ll mend Lou fust,” cried Tod. “Did I not tell ye we wud git somethin’ out of North-o’-Sunday? Throth an’ bedad, Scannell will be like to putt you both out of that supposin’ there’s anny more of it.”
“And where do I come in?” demanded Murray, sizzling a wet boot-sole on the bars.
The laughing mock of the music caught Lou’s voice as he answered:
“Next time. There’ll be one of us to run to earth then, Murray—and a pop-gun or two at the end of it.”
“My lad, you’re a rip,” muttered Murray underbreath. “And Father Denis wants the handling of you! He’ll need gloves for it!”
Guise pushed open the side-door, and blinked round the room uncertainly. He was a “remittance man,” and that carries its own stigma in the Colonies.
“Blanky Revivalist Meeting?” he inquired politely. “Who’s doin’ the prayin’?”
“I am,” said Mogger. “Me dad’s talkin’ o’ marryin’ agin, an’ I’m prayin’ fur suthin’ as’ll stop him. Two granddads an’ a granny! I got the up-keep o’ them a’reddy. I can’t stand any more.”
Guise crossed to Roddy’s corner, and his blaring voice rose.
“I’ll show yer suthin’ as I can’t stand any more. Git out o’ this, you flappin’ box-man! Think I sat wi’ my head agin that wall for six years ter be turned out by you!” He caught Roddy by the collar, forcing his startled face to the grease-smudge on the wall. “Think I hall-marked it that way fur you?”
Tod received Roddy as Guise punted him across the room, and gave him the space on the floor between his own boots and Murray’s. There was neither authority nor conversation in Murray this night. He was dog-tired after a bitter ten days’ chase which had brought Dick Wepeha to justice, and the warmth of the fire was grateful. Tod’s soft brogue cut the smoke-reek.
“It is not wid elber-grease ye wud be after makin’ a mark annywhere. Guise, me bosthoon,” he remarked.
Lou grinned above the low-breathed accordeon.
“Truth is a good thing to have on tap,” he said. “But you need to draw it into the jug of tact. Ye’ll get kiboshed for———”
Here Guise knocked out his pipe on Tod’s head, and Blake came in from the bar to sort out disputants with an unsparing hand.
“Who’s looking for trouble?” he demanded, jerking Roddy out of the ruck with the decision of long practice. There was red pipe-ash inside Roddy’s collar; but his fear of authority was hotter.
“I never did—I didn’t mean to make a row———”
“’Tain’t necessary to unload excuses on the market till we tell you we’re asking for unadulterated lies,” said Blake. “You get away home, Roddy———”
“You let Roddy alone,” struck in Lou, “unless you want to chuck me too, Blake. Roddy’s my guest———”
“Which is why Randal ain’t bin down these ten nights,” explained Ike. “Why ain’t yer on night-shift, Roddy?”
“Fluming’s broke in Paddy’s Gully,” said the Packer. “Yer could hear Ormond swearin’ from here till day before yest’d’y if yer stood out in the wind. ’Sides, it’s Guise’s blame—an’ Tod’s.”
“Bedad, if it’s foight ye’re spilin’ for, come here,” cried Tod. “I’ll be afther aitin’ ye up wan be wan, an’ niver knowin’ it.”
“Go an’ hit somethin’ yer own size, little man. Where’s Danny?”
“Where should he be but tellin’ Suse ’bout his ballotin’? He’s in for land what they say’ll carry three sheep to the acre, an’ p’raps a calf———”
“Sure then, he’s a sheep-farmer a’ready,” crowed Tod. “Catched a tick on to himself yesterday an’ sint clane away for his wool-sacks. Nothin’ loike takin’ toime be the tail—an’ hangin’ on—if ye want to git there.”
The amble of hoofs came down the street, and Rogers spoke with the certainty of observation.
“That’s Pipi Wepeha’s old hoss. Bring him along in, Blake. He’s a three-act comic hopra when he gits goin’.”
The Packer blinked over to Murray.
“He’s come along ter thank yer fur givin’ his son free lodgin’, Murray,” he wheezed.
Murray yawned, his head against the chimney-piece.
“Let him,” he said wearily. His shield was down for the time, and he did not care who knew it. For there was nothing more shameful than body-ache behind. But this was the last day that Murray laid aside his armour before man.
“He’s thursty be the sound of corks,” said Tod. “Lou—ye’re all koinds of a villain.”
The accordeon crept slowly, mysteriously into one of the old, old Maori chants that few Europeans dare meddle with. Above it Lou was singing softly in the liquid Maori tongue. To the pakeha who did not understand, the tune carried a quiver and throb that hurried the blood in the veins. To him who knew, it was a call to strip the clothes of civilisation off his senses. And this call comes more often than the world guesses. Ted Douglas frowned.
“You’re going to give Murray a tough bone to chew, Lou,” he said.
“Well, it’s a free show. You can watch him chew it,” said Lou, cheerfully.
Ike shivered, and Mogger noticed the tension of his body with a puzzled contempt. To three Colonials in ten the great Things that God has made, and that man cannot conquer, send their souls awash with secret gropings and beliefs in more than can be lathered into shape by the tongue. The remainder take their schooling because the State orders it, and their wetting on the wild ranges because Nature orders it, and gain just so much knowledge from both Teachers as enables them to be treated with parallel indifference. This nails the understanding flat on the bed-rock of fact; and, although a new country can desire no better foundation, it is the touch of mystery and the forward-flung desire to make out to the unknown—to the Back of Beyond, that will shape the battlements and the cornices in a new free strength that has no copy.
“Begorra,” cried Tod, promptly, “if he’s clane an’ clever enough to shmack that smoile of yersilf’s into another shape, me boyo, I’ll take him out, an’ trate him till he’ll niver be foindin’ his way to the saddle at all, at all.”
Someone sniggered approval; then the door swung wide, and Pipi Wepeha came through.
To Murray all Maoris were a beastly nuisance, and Pipi was a dirty one as well. But he cut his nails and his hair thrice yearly, and his slop-made clothes were knotted together with flax. He squatted by the fire with soft words and coarse cunning jokes; and Lou, playing tenderly, guessed well what was to come of it all.
Pipi’s speech held the halt of a tongue learnt over-late, and he helped it forward with the dumb vivid talk of brown lean arms and fingers. Wild stories he told; and Lou gave the keynotes unerringly; and the crowd round the fire fell silent, drew closer, flinched, or shut up their hands as the red fire of sin and courage and lust and mystery flicked round them to Pipi’s swift words. When the brain is overwrought, the body is more fitted to touch that universe of meaning which lies behind speech and movement. A man bears this learning alone and unshowing, as Murray bore it now in his corner, with one booted leg crossed on his knee, and a numb dread sliding down on the thickening shadows and the tightening silence of the men.
Above the accordeon Lou’s face alone was bright in the flame-light. It was beautiful and wicked as the stories that Pipi told. Stories of centuries on centuries of uncleansed lives with their desire and their strength and their elusive horror which slips between words as sand between the fingers. Pipi’s white hair twitched on his scalp. He leaned where the light on the shrunken skin struck the tattoo-spirals to the likeness of fibres from whence the leaf-greenness has rotted. His eyes were as the yolk of a stale egg—blotched, blood-flecked, and smurred, and his speech plaited coarse white-man talk with the delicate imagery of the Maori.
They were things new to Murray that he told. Things that no Englishman has yet learnt—nor will learn while English soil gives him birth. For they are the breath of New Zealand. They come in the glad winds, and the long sweep of tussock over billowed downs, and the awful purity of the snow-ranges, and the evil derision of the keas, and the gay recklessness of the gallopping winds. All this is in the blood of a Colonial. But an outsider cannot tabulate it when he comes to the handling of the man.
The fire fell, and out along the street noises lessened and died. And yet Pipi held the men while the stillness ran prickly on each spine, and stared, horror-wide, in Roddy’s eyes. Lou laughed, drawing a great double-chord from the keys.
“You’re an immoral old devil, Pipi,” he said. “And Roddy will have a fit very shortly if you feed him any more of that stuff.”
“He aha———” began Pipi, clutching a dirty claw on Roddy’s collar.
Murray slung the boy aside.
“Don’t you play up with him, you old heathen,” he said. “The kid has never done you any harm. I’m your meat if you want to sharpen your teeth.”
The easy defiance of the man showed in the back-swing of his shoulders, and the smile on his lips. But every nerve in him was awake.
Pipi’s hands went out in quick gesture. Then he turned.
“For you—apopo,” he said. “E noho ra.”
“Haere ra,” said Murray cheerfully, and went up the passage, drawn by the click of billiard balls where Danny was fighting the marker on level ground.
In the dark by the door when the men had passed Pipi caught Roddy’s sleeve.
“You know te room—te place where Murray sleep?” he demanded, underbreath.
“Ye-es,” said Roddy.
“Ah! Kapai. You go then. Kia tupato koe. Bring me Murray’s sock—his handkerchief—his necktie. Haere. Bring one thing. Anything. Go, then.”
The ground was heaving under Roddy’s feet, and he knew that his voice was uncertain. So did the tohungas of old take a half-worn thing from the man whom they meant to destroy.
“I can’t,” he said, his words bobbing in his throat.
Pipi whipped a handkerchief from the boy’s side-pocket.
“No? Kore rawa? Then I have—this.”
“I will go,” said Roddy, and ran upstairs, and snatched a red necktie from the hook by Murray’s looking-glass. The sweat was cold on his face when he received his handkerchief again and went out alone into the night.
Fysh reported next day that Roddy had come into camp with eyes blank as a tea-cup, and a tongue that could not join two words straightly. He further remarked that if Roddy was going to get the horrors from seeing other men drink—his own breath being sweet as a baby’s—the matter would be delivered into Ormond’s hands very promptly.
“Ask Murray if Roddy is the only fellow likely to get the horrors without drink,” suggested Lou; but he gave no explanation whatever when Fysh demanded it.
It was in the next week that Murray determined to go up to the All Alone and call on Jimmie—quite privately and artlessly—to elicit information. He had drawn blank on forty-two counts already, and only the last extremity would have made him insult Ted Douglas by questions where he mustered with his fellows out back on the ranges.
Night caught Murray in the flax-gully where the first blink of Jimmie’s light showed on the spur, and he stumbled up through scratching matakuri and Wild Irishman, jerked the door-latch, and cast his swag on the mud floor.
“I’m wanting a feed and a shakedown, Jimmie,” he said, “for I can’t make Lachlan’s camp to-night.”
Jimmie was squatted by the fire with his little pinched face solemn. But he kicked the sticks together in haste, slung the billy, swept packages of rabbit-skins out of the half-cask chair, and set Murray in it. And there was no hint of fear in his welcome.
“Took in over this job, I was,” he said, swaying on his heels, and thumping more crackling skins into a square. “Rafferty contracted from Robertson fur the season, a’ I tuk the tail-end over from Raff. He telled me there was good pickin’s in it.”
“And aren’t there?” Murray was watching him keenly.
“Aren’t there?” Jimmie spat on the grey fur contemptuously. “No, there ain’t! An’ me sweatin’ wi’ trappin’ an’ shootin’ an’ phosphorus—mixin’ me own bloomin’ stuff, too. Look at me hands.”
Murray looked at the deep burns that the frost had turned to living sores, and he looked at the narrow peaked face above. Then he glanced round the little whare. For the place where a man lives tells his character, let his face and speech lie as they will.
There were holes in the sod walls through which past legions of rabbiters had let the moon poke her fingers, uncaring. Jimmie had stuffed each crack with tussock, and cut a wedge for the cranky door. The hut was desolate, dirty and empty. There were sacks in the bunk with the blankets, and no reading anywhere save a newspaper that had been used to wrap fat. All these things were explained by the darkness back of Jimmie’s eyes, and the restlessness of his fingers.
Murray was tender as a woman, for all the stern life that held him. But he balanced the two finely; and just now, against knowledge of the loneliness that eats to the core of a man, stood the belief that the death and starvation of the old proud-hearted Buggy was Jimmie’s sin alone.
“What’s troubling you, Jimmie?” he demanded suddenly.
Jimmie hesitated. Then he kicked out the wedge, and the door fell open to the night.
“Wouldn’t them blanky ole mountings trouble Ole Nick hisself?” he said.
It was not a world for a man to handle. It was alive with its own strong desolation and its unbroken pride. Peak on glistening peak of everlasting snow; black rugged ridges; slopes pallid with the rain-death that had stripped the earth from them, and reefs of sullen cloud smudging the cold stars. The snarl of the river fighting through its boulders came over the shingle that sloped from the door, and a couple of Paradise duck showed for an instant against the grey breadth of it as they fled down to the lower country for nesting.
“I’d sooner hear silence than that river,” said Murray, and shivered. “It’s ghastly to think you’re the first living man who’s heard its waters go by. I don’t like being so near the beginning of things myself.”
“You’re generally nearer the end,” said Jimmie, tartly. Then his voice changed. “It’s runnin’ past the township thirty-odd mile down, yer know. An’ it’s bin makin’ me dream o’ nights. There—there ain’t any bad news down ter the township, o’ course?”
The keenness of the tracker ran into Murray’s eyes. He shaded them, watching the little man folding the rabbit-skins.
“Bad news? Let’s see. The Corin girl has hooked Pat Armstrong from the Glory, and the keas are rough on the Mains ewes all along the river downs. Scannell has squads out shooting every night, and Ted Douglas is nearly off his head———”
Jimmie spilt the tea that he was shaking into the sputtering billy.
“Let him go off his head,” he said. “I ’ope he will, an’ die of it. He got me the chuck-out from Mains. He as allers called hisself my mate.”
“There are folk who say that he’ll get himself the chuck-out before long.” Murray’s every nerve was set to observe the man opposite. “Old Buggy is dead. Died alone of starvation. He sent away the woman who looked after him because he couldn’t pay her wages, and he starved, the proud old fool, because he wouldn’t ask for help. He kept all his money in the house, and—some—men—say that Ted Douglas took it.”
Jimmie thumped a skin very flat, and he did not look up. At last he said:
“Ain’t they ’cusing me too?”
For the first time in memory Murray’s brain was knocked flat.
“Yes,” he said, weakly.
“An’ that’s what yer here fur? Roped in Ted yet?”
“No.”
“Well, Ted done it. You put Ted and me face ter face an’ I’ll tell you how. I’m through wi’ my contrac’ next week, an’ I’ll be along then, if that’s soon enough. Are it?”
“How am I to know that you won’t run?” said Murray, lightly.
Jimmie stood upright, and his uneven breaths shook the loose shirt.
“Ted Douglas put shame on me ’fore all the fellers,” he said. “D’yer think as I’ll ever furgive him fur that? I’d kill him ef I was big enough. D’yer think I’d lose this chanst? Murray, I’d walk my feet raw but I’d git the nick on him ef I had ter go down ter the township barefoot.”
Murray got up and flung the door open.
“I call for you this day week,” he said. “Ted Douglas will be down from the mustering then. And now, I am going on to Lachlan’s. There’s not room in this place for you and me.”