第47章 Part II.(11)

`He seemed to expect us to get down."Where are you off to?"he says.

`"Mulgatown,"I says."It will be cooler there,"and we sung out,"So-long,Poisonous!"and rode on.

`He stood starin'for a minute;then he started shoutin',"Hi!hi there!"after us,but we took no notice,an'rode on.When we looked back last he was runnin'into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.

`We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown,when we heard somebody gallopin'after us,an'lookin'back we saw it was Poisonous.

`He was too mad and too winded to speak at first,so he rode along with us a bit gasping:then he burst out.

`"Where's them other two carnal blanks?"he shouted.

`"What other two?"I asked."We're all here.What's the matter with you anyway?"`"All here!"he yelled."You're a lurid liar!What the flamin'sheol do you mean by swiggin'my beer an'flingin'the coloured can in me face?without as much as thank yer!D'yer think I'm a flamin'--!"`Oh,but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.

`"Well,we'll pay for your dirty beer,"says one of the chaps,puttin'his hand in his pocket."We didn't want yer slush.

It tasted as if it had been used before."

`"Pay for it!"yelled Jimmy."I'll --well take it out of one of yer bleedin'hides!"`We stopped at once,and I got down an'obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.

He was a nasty customer to fight;he could use his hands,and was cool as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off:besides,he had one squirmy little business eye,and a big wall-eye,an',even if you knowed him well,you couldn't help watchin'the stony eye --it was no good watchin'his eyes,you had to watch his hands,and he might have managed me if the boss hadn't stopped the fight.

The boss was a big,quiet-voiced man,that didn't swear.

`"Now,look here,Myles,"said the boss (Jimmy's name was Myles)--"Now,look here,Myles,"sez the boss,"what's all this about?"`"What's all this about?"says Jimmy,gettin'excited agen.

"Why,two fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an'put up half-a-dozen drinks,an'borrered a sovereign,an'got a can o'beer on the strength of their cheques.

They sez they was waitin'for you --an'I want my crimson money out o'some one!"`"What was they like?"asks the boss.

`"Like?"shouted Poisonous,swearin'all the time."One was a blanky long,sandy,sawny feller,and the other was a short,slim feller with black hair.

Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the blanky billy o'beer."`"Now,what's this all about,you chaps?"sez the boss to us.

`So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.

`I've heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin'-shed,but I never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he'd been left.It was enough to split stumps.He said he wanted to see those fellers,just once,before he died.

`He rode with us into Mulgatown,got mad drunk,an'started out along the road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller;but two mounted police went after him an'fetched him back.He said he only wanted justice;he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers till he could give 'em in charge.

`They fined him ten bob.'

The Ghostly Door.

Told by one of Dave's mates.

Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand,making for a sawmill where we expected to get work,and we were caught in one of those three-days'gales,with rain and hail in it and cold enough to cut off a man's legs.Camping out was not to be thought of,so we just tramped on in silence,with the stinging pain coming between our shoulder-blades --from cold,weariness,and the weight of our swags --and our boots,full of water,going splosh,splosh,splosh along the track.

We were settled to it --to drag on like wet,weary,muddy working bullocks till we came to somewhere --when,just before darkness settled down,we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill,back from the road,and we made for it,without holding a consultation.

It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill,and was either a deserted settler's home or a hut attached to an abandoned sawmill round there somewhere.The windows were boarded up.

We dumped our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door,to make sure;then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:there was light enough to see that the place was empty.

Dave pulled off some more boards,put his arm in through a broken pane,clicked the catch back,and then pushed up the window and got in.

I handed in the swags to him.The room was very draughty;the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs,so we tried the partitioned-off room --the bedroom --and that was better.

It had been lined with chaff-bags,and there were two stretchers left by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last;and there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.

We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside,made a fire,and put the billy on.We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the stretchers;and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire to dry.There was plenty in our tucker-bags,so we had a good feed.

I hadn't shaved for days,and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in it like an ill-used fibre brush --a beard that got redder the longer it grew;he had a hooked nose,and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),and he was very tall,with long,thin,hairy legs.We must have looked a weird pair as we sat there,naked,on the low three-legged stools,with the billy and the tucker on the box between us,and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.

`I shouldn't wonder,'says Dave,`but this is the "whare"where the murder was that we heard about along the road.

I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he'd get scared.'