The Sands of Windee. Arthur W. Upfield
Читать онлайн книгу.
greatest respects! Er—did you pay?”
The history of these two men, so far as the people of Windee Station and Mount Lion knew, dated back some five years. Dash’s right name was Hugh Trench, and he received a letter precisely five weeks after every quarter-day from a firm of lawyers in London. He came to Windee with a letter of introduction to Jeffrey Stanton, and it was understood that he was to be a jackeroo.
Dot, whose christian name was William, was at that time a dingo-trapper employed on Windee, and between these two, so different in stature, mentality and social position, there sprang up a very close friendship. For a reason that none knew, when Trench had been at Windee some three years he gave up the position he had occupied as jackeroo, with its attendant privilege of living with the squatter, and joined Dot as a trapper and shooter of vermin for profit. Their physical contrast, so accentuated when they were together—and they were rarely apart—won for them the nicknames Dot and Dash.
There was one thing that they kept to themselves in spite of their friendship, which was never clouded by a quarrel or serious difference, and that was their history before they came to Windee. Neither of them knew why the other had migrated to Australia, although Dot was aware that Dash originated in Hampshire, and Dash knew that Dot was reared in Arizona, U.S.A.
When Mr Bumpus entered the bar, each of them was flanked by three empty bottles on the counter, and the sum of twelve shillings reposed on the shelf above the cash register. Mr Bumpus was still in his striped pyjamas and not yet thoroughly awake. He was a large florid man of uncertain temper, and to Dash’s polite good morning he grunted. Without smiling, the tall partner said:
“Ah, Mr Bumpus, a faint discoloration on the liver this morning. Trade exceedingly good to a late hour, apparently. Yes, we will have a bottle apiece with you with pleasure. You will find our account settled on the shelf there.”
“Why can’t you let a man have a little bit of sleep? I can’t go night and day, and besides, to-day is Sunday.”
“A very excellent day for beer,” Dash reminded him, still unsmiling. “Did young Jeff have a sporting evening?”
“He’ll be thinking so this morning,” Mr Bumpus said a little less sleepily, producing a further round of bottles. “The road he’s travelling leads to Suicide Corner. It’s my business to sell liquor, but I hate to see a young feller like him getting outside so much of it.”
“Still hogging the whisky?” questioned Dot.
“Yes, worse luck, and vermouth and gin and rum.”
“Quite a mixture,” Dash murmured. “What room does he occupy?”
“Number two.”
“Well, if you will be so kind as to pour me out a nobbler of whisky in a large glass of soda-water, I will endeavour to persuade him to have breakfast. Presently he must return with us to Windee, as we are due to-night at Nullawil.”
“Wa’ for?”
“The overseer and his wife, as you know, were recently married. We are to tin-kettle them.”
“Well, for heaving’s sake take young Jeff with you.” Bumpus added two further liquids to the whisky-and-soda. Mixing it well with a glass rod, he gave it to Dash, adding: “If young Jeff keeps going on like this, I’ll be falling foul of the old man, and that I can’t afford.”
“Leave him to me, Mr Bumpus,” Dash proclaimed in his grand manner. “Youth and folly go together. We were all young years and years ago.”
When he had gone, Dot said:
“We sure are gettin’ old, Bumpus. I’ll shout this time.”
Chapter Nine
Father Ryan Leaves Town
Without knocking, Dash opened the door of room No. 2 and entered, closed the door, and, going to the bed, stood silently looking down on the occupant. The bed lay lengthwise beneath the wide-open window, through which the intermittent breeze came to belly the lace curtains over the recumbent figure, still dressed in trousers and shirt.
Jeffrey Stanton, junior, was a young man of twenty-two. His robust frame made him bigger than his father, but it lacked the leanness and the wiry muscles still characteristic of the owner of Windee. There was in the face of this young man, whilst he lay breathing strenuously, pride and obstinacy, but no trace of the moral weakness to be expected in one in his condition. His forehead was low and broad as that of his sire, and in regarding the chin and slightly open mouth Dash was reminded of Marion Stanton. Seating himself in a chair at the head of the bed, he put down the tumbler of Mr Bumpus’s “reviver” on the washstand and said, in his soft grandiloquent manner:
“The hour is nine o’clock, my very debauched friend. Arise and suffer your ablutions before we break our fast.”
No alteration in the sleeper’s breathing indicated that he heard. Dash removed his wide-brimmed hat with one hand and ran the fingers of the other through his hair, thereby revealing the sunburn of his features and the rim of white, hat-protected skin at the summit of his forehead. His mouth then was like a spring rat-trap, but when he spoke again the even white teeth softened its grim outlines.
“Your appearance reminds me of a particularly dear old sow on the pater’s home farm,” he said loudly.
This time the sleeper stirred and, as the porcine mentioned by Dash, grunted.
“I would really like to smoke a cigarette, but I fear, should I strike a match, that your breath would cause an explosion,” the tall man observed in yet louder tones.
The response this time was a groan combined with a grunt. Dash sighed, and when the sigh was concluded his mouth was again hinting at a rat-trap. Slowly he turned his body away from the bed, and, stretching out a long arm, took from the washstand an enamelled ewer. It was a large ewer and full of water, but it required no effort for Dash to move it in a circular motion, his arm still outstretched, until it hovered over the sleeper’s face. Then from its lip there fell a gentle stream.
Young Jeff moved aside his face as though a fly walked his nose. The stream of water followed. Quite suddenly he opened his eyes. The water fell into them. He opened his mouth and the water filled it. The stream was endless, apparently inexhaustible. The young man guggled and writhed, clawed at the saturated pillows, finally sat up with wildly glaring eyes and waving hands. On the crown of his head fell the stream of water. It splashed as a jet from a garden-hose, washed his hair into his eyes, and streamed down his back and chest, saturating an expensive tussore-silk shirt. And then suddenly the stream subsided to a trickle, from a trickle languished to single drops. The empty ewer was replaced on the washstand, and Dash turned back to find himself regarded with bloodshot grey eyes and a passion-distorted face.
“You—you—you!” he cried, rage making him inarticulate.
“Softly, softly, my dear Jeff!” Dash admonished unsmilingly. He reached for the glass, this time keeping his eyes on the young man. Young Jeff saw a light in the hazel orbs, and from a raging lion became a sulky pup. It was then that Dash smiled and offered him Mr Bumpus’s concoction, which he took without thanks and drank. The whisky constituent made him shudder violently, and when the glass had been as violently thrown against the wall he threw himself back again on the pillow.
“I had an uncle,” remarked Dash, “who during the two closing years of his life was carried up to bed by two footmen every night at eleven o’clock. My uncle was a gentleman and a man. He drank beer all day long, and eighteen sixty-two port after dinner, yet he arose at six o’clock in the morning and spent an hour galloping round the park.”
“Oh—shut up!” cried young Jeff, flinging one wet arm across his eyes to banish the light.
“The trouble, I believe, is that your reading is wrong,” continued Dash. “You have been studying the lives of the strong silent men portrayed by romantic ladies, who (the men, not the ladies) invariably order their valets to bring them whiskies-and-sodas. In real life the strong silent man