An Outback Marriage - Banjo Paterson (epub e reader txt) 📗

live, with all that luggage. What’ll the Gordons say? The old lady won’t like it, will she? This’ll be a bit of news, won’t it?” And she went off to tell the cook, while Maggie darted to the door to meet Dan, and tell him.

Dan told the stationmaster when he went back for the next load, and when he had finished carting the luggage he got on a horse and went round telling everybody in the little town. The stationmaster told the ganger of the four navvies who went by on their trolly down the line to work. At the end of their four-mile length they told the ration-carrier of Eubindal station, who happened to call in at their camp for a drink of tea. He hurried off to the head-station with the news, and on his way told three teamsters, an inspector of selections, and a black boy belonging to Mylong station, whom he happened to meet on the road. Each of them told everybody that they met, pulling up and standing in their stirrups to discuss the matter in all its bearings, in the leisurely style of the bush; and wondering what she had come out for, whether the Gordons would get the sack from Kuryong, whether she would marry Hugh Gordon, whether she was engaged already, whether she was good-looking, how much money she had, and how much old Grant would leave her. In fact, before twenty-four hours were over, all the district knew of her arrival; which possibly explains how news travels in Africa among the Kaffirs, who are supposed to have a signalling system that no one has yet fathomed; but the way it gets round in Australia is just as wonderful as among the Kaffirs, in fact, for speed and thoroughness of information we should be inclined to think that our coloured brethren run a bad second.

At last, however, Tracey had finished shoeing the coach-horse, and Miss Grant, with part of her luggage, took a seat on the coach behind five of Donohoe’s worst horses, next to a well-dressed, powerfully-built man of about five-and-twenty. He looked and talked like a gentleman, and she heard the coachman address him as “Mr. Blake.” She and he shared the box-seat with the driver, and just at the last moment the local priest hurried up and climbed on the coach. In some unaccountable way he had missed hearing who the young lady was, and for a time he could only look at her back-hair and wonder.

It was not long before, in the free and easy Australian style, the passengers began to talk to each other as the coach bumped along its monotonous road⁠—up one hill, through an avenue of dusty, tired-looking gum-trees, down the other side through a similar avenue, up another hill precisely the same as the last, and so on.

Blake was the first to make advances. “Not much to be seen on this sort of journey, Miss Grant,” he said.

The young lady looked at him with serious eyes. “No,” she said, “we’ve only seen two houses since we left the town. All the rest of the country seems to be a wilderness.”

Here the priest broke in. He was a broth of a boy from Maynooth, just the man to handle the Doyle and Donohoe congregation.

“It’s the big stations is the roon of the country,” he said. “How is the country to go ahead at all wid all the good land locked up? There’s Kuryong on ahead here would support two hundthred fam’lies, and what does it employ now? Half a dozen shepherds, widout a rag to their back.”

“I am going to Kuryong,” said the girl; and the priest was silent.

By four in the afternoon they reached Kiley’s River, running yellow and froth-covered with melting snow. The coachman pulled his horses up on the bank, and took a good, long look at the bearings. As they waited, the Kuryong vehicle came down on the other side of the river.

“There’s Mr. Gordon,” said the coachman. “I don’t think he’ll try it. I reckon it’s a trifle deep for me. Do you want to get across particular, Mr. Blake?”

“Yes, very particularly, Pat. I’ve told Martin Donohoe to meet me down here with some witnesses in a cattle-stealing case.”

“What about you, Father Kelly?”

“I’m go’n on to Tim Murphy’s dyin’ bed. Put ’em into the wather, they’ll take it aisy.”

The driver turned to the third passenger. “It’s a bit dangerous-like, Miss. If you like to get out, it’s up to you to say so. The coach might wash over. There’s a settler’s place up the river a mile. You can go and stay there till the river goes down, and Mr. Gordon’ll come and meet you.”

“Thanks, I’ll go on,” said the lady.

Preparations for crossing the river were soon made. Anything that would spoil by getting wet, or that would float out of the coach, was lifted up and packed on the roof. The passengers stood up on the seats. Then Pat Donohoe put the whip on his leaders, and calling to his two wheelers, old-seasoned veterans, he put them at it.

Snorting and trembling, the leaders picked their way into the yellow water, the coach bumping over the rubble of the crossing-place. Hugh Gordon, watching from the far-side of the river, saw the coach dip and rock and plunge over the boulders. On it came till the water was actually lapping into the body of the coach, roaring and swirling round the horses’ legs, up to their flanks and bellies, while the driver called out to them and kept them straight with voice and reins. Every spring he had a similar crossing, and he knew almost to an inch at what height it was safe to go into the river. But this time, as ill-luck would have it, the offside leader was a young, vicious, thoroughbred colt, who had been handed over to him to be cured of a propensity for striking people with his forefeet. As the horses worked their way into the river, the