The Sands of Windee. Arthur W. Upfield
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one of the nicest men I’ve met,” was Marion’s verdict; and then she laughed at the look in Jeff’s face, and added: “I really can’t marry him, Dad, because he has a wife and three children already.”
“That’s a good thing!” Jeff growled, leading the way to the veranda.
Twenty minutes later they all got into a car that represented Jeff Stanton’s single extravagance, a straight-eight Royal Continental. Young Jeff drove this superb car, and seated next him was Bony, who volunteered to open the many gates. Behind them sat Sergeant Morris with Mrs Poulton as companion, and in the rear Father Ryan sat between Jeff and his daughter.
The sun had set and almost to the zenith the western sky was aflame with crimson, gold and purple. Thousands of galahs wheeled and fluttered about the two tall windmills built beside the great hole in the creek which was Windee’s permanent water supply, and their screeches were so vociferous that the excursionists found difficulty in making their own voices heard until they drew away from the homestead and slid on to the great salt-bush plain.
Bathed in the magic fleeting twilight, the great car sped towards the range of hills cutting Windee in halves, and for a little while the members of the party were silent; for, almost as swiftly as they were carried to the couch of King Sol, so the purple and blue shades of the sky sank to the horizon, curved and humped by the ridges of the low hills.
At the wheel young Jeff lounged as though he were handling the steering-wheel of a bath-chair; yet there was no hint of carelessness in the behaviour of the car, and he made it difficult for one to remember that most of his last night had been spent in wild drinking. Two miles out, he pulled up before a gate, and when through that, and Bony again in his seat, they had a run of fifteen miles across to the farther side of the paddock and the next gate.
To anyone used to Australian tracks, to ride in Jeff Stanton’s car was an experience to remember. After their recent ride in the ton-truck owned by Dot and Dash, the sergeant and Father Ryan undoubtedly appreciated the difference. The old priest sighed and made himself a little more comfortable.
“I wish,” he said with studied seriousness, “I wish I were a millionaire.”
“I don’t. Why do you wish you were a millionaire?” Jeff inquired with his habitual grimness, which was so often assumed.
“So that I could own a car like this one. May I be forgiven the sin of envy! But why do you not wish I were a millionaire?”
“If you were, Padre, you wouldn’t be here,” Jeff told him simply. “Anyway I offered to present you with a car and you declined it.”
“I know you did, Jeff, but if I had a car I’d have to be after drivin’ it, and I couldn’t be drivin’ it and sittin’ back looking at the scenery at the same time.”
“Well, if that’s all, I’ll supply you with a driver.”
“It’s kind of ye, Jeff, but I’d only be takin’ the man from productive work. No, I’ll be content just to wish I were a millionaire. There’s pleasure in wishing, and less pleasure in having.”
Night had come, the warm caressing night of early summer after the fierce heat of the day. The headlights stabbed the darkness lighting up the track for two hundred yards and revealing the startled amazed rabbits. They jumped, crouched down, or raced ahead of the on-coming, whirring monster; and Bony, watching, never for one second saw fewer than fifty of them. Remembering the poison-cart incident, he turned in his seat and remarked to Jeff:
“The rabbits are very thick about here.”
“Yes, they’re bad this side of the range, and worse on the farther side,” Jeff agreed, also remembering the poison-cart incident. “Poison-carts though are useless on big areas of open country. We’ve had three good years, and during that time they’ve had splendid chances to breed up. Now we’re due for a drought, and King Drought will kill them off. I’ve seen rabbit plagues so many times, and I’ve seen so many thousands of pounds wasted in trying to do what nature does for nothing that I no longer worry about them. The work of a thousand poison-carts would be like dipping a bucket of water from the Indian Ocean.”
“But it is legally compulsory to use them,” interjected Sergeant Morris.
“You’re right, Morris, you’re right,” Jeff admitted, with a mocking sigh. “Someone once said the law was an ass. Whoever he was, he was a wise man. In last week’s paper a man serving a sentence for arson was released because it was proved he was innocent. And he received a free pardon from the fool law. I am wondering what he was pardoned for.”
“For wrongfully occupying gaol space, I expect,” Morris laughed.
Chapter Eleven
Stars and Shadows
The car began to climb; the song of the engine was like the low hum of a child’s top; and now, when the track twisted round the slopes of the hills boulder-strewn and supporting a growth of stunted wattle and mulga, it seemed to the travellers that constantly they rushed towards a black precipice, and always at the last second, the precipice fled ahead once more, a further intervening stretch of the track being revealed to them. The blackness of the hills at first lay on one side towering above them; and on the other side a lighter shadow was more menacing, for it was the emptiness of a void, and a little later the hill shadows closed on both sides, leaving but a narrow margin of star-studded sky above.
Half an hour later the glare of several fires came into view, and when the headlights swung round in a wide arc in taking the curve the ruddy glow of the fires vanished and there leapt into reality the figures of several scantily clad blackfellows standing facing them, and to one side a huddled collection of squatting gins, outside a few ragged humpies built of tree-boughs and discarded sheets of corrugated iron. Young Jeff stopped the car before a substantial stone house, now occupied by two stockmen, wherein he had first seen the light of day. It was Jeff Stanton’s first home, Range Hut.
“Good night, boss!” a voice said, and there standing beside the car was a little wiry white-haired and white-bearded aboriginal.
“Good night, Moongalliti!” Stanton replied affably. “The trucks pass short time ago?”
“Ya-as, boss. Tree—one—two—tree. Gettin’ plurry crowd on this track, eh?”
Father Ryan chuckled. Several younger bucks loomed behind the patriarch.
“Only two, Moongalliti,” Stanton corrected.
“The two station trucks and Dot and Dash,” a young man said in clear English.
“Ya-as. Dot and Dash. Him tree.”
“Humph! That you, Ludbi?”
“Yes, boss.”
“When are you going back to the homestead? I’ve work to be done, and I want you and Harry.”
“We go bimeby,” old Moongalliti said importantly.
“We’re going to-morrow, boss,” the more civilized Ludbi informed them with greater precision.
“Ya-as, to-morrow, boss,” Moongalliti instantly agreed. “’Nother blackfeller come—long—way away. Beeg feller corroboree. We go homestead to-morrow. Cook ’em up tucker—marloo—bungarra. Plenty blackfeller—plenty tucker—beeg feller corroboree.”
“Sounds cannibalistic,” growled Sergeant Morris.
“Well, look here, Moongalliti: you understand you throw-um spear your beeg corroboree, I come and use-um beeg waddy,” Stanton said sternly.
“Na-na, boss. Blackfeller all right. Plenty good feller. You gibbit flour, eh?”
“I’ll see. On the way in, you keep all them dogs at heel, or I’ll be throwing out some poison baits.”
The threat raised a squeal from an invisible gin. “We keep orl dogs tied, Mithther Stanton. You no poison ’em. Poor dog—poor