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

Their father⁠—well, he isn’t very steady; and they like to get over here when they can, and each tries to come without the other knowing it. Binjie will be here before long, I expect. They’re great admirers of Miss Harriott, both of them, and they come over on all sorts of ridiculous pretexts. Poor fellows, it must be very dull for them over there. Fancy, week after week without seeing anyone but their father, the station-hands, and the sheep! Now that you’re here, I expect they’ll come more than ever.”

As she spoke, the tramp of a horse’s hoofs was heard in the yard and, looking out, Miss Grant saw a duplicate of Poss dismounting from a duplicate of Poss’s horse. And Mrs. Gordon, looking over her shoulder, said, “Here’s Binjie. I thought he’d be here before long.”

“Why do they call him Binjie?” asked Miss Grant, watching the new arrival tying up his horse. “What does it mean?”

“It’s a blackfellow’s word, meaning stomach,” said the old lady. “He used to be very fat, and the name stuck to him. Good day, Binjie!”

“Good day, Mrs. Gordon. Hugh at home?”

“No, he won’t be back till dark,” said the old lady. “Won’t you let your horse go?”

“Well, I don’t know if I can,” replied the new arrival thoughtfully. “I’ve left Poss at home clearing the sheep out of that big paddock at the Crossing. There’s five thousand sheep, and no water there; I’ll have to go back and help him. I only came over to tell Hugh there were some of his weaners in the river paddock. I must go straight back, or Poss’ll make a row. We’ve a lot of work to do.”

“I think Poss is here,” said Mrs. Gordon.

“Poss is here, is he? Well, if that don’t beat everything! And when we started to muster that paddock I went to the top, and he went the other way, and he reckoned to be at it all day. He’s a nice fellow, he is! I wonder what the old man’ll say?”

“Oh, I expect he won’t mind very much. This is Mr. George Hunter, Miss Grant.”

Binjie extended much the same greeting as Poss had done; and by dinnertime that evening⁠—or, as it is always called in the bush, teatime⁠—they had all made each other’s acquaintance, and both the youths were worshipping at the new shrine.

At tea the talk flowed freely, and the two bush boys, shy at first, began to expand as Mary Grant talked to them. Put a pretty girl and a young and impressionable bushman together, and in the twinkling of an eye you have a Sir Galahad ready to do anything for the service of his lady.

Lightheartedly they consented to stay the night, in the hope of seeing Hugh, to deliver their message about the weaners⁠—they seemed to have satisfactorily arranged the question of mustering. And when Miss Grant said, “Won’t your sheep be dying of thirst in that paddock, where there is no water?” both brothers replied, “Oh, we’ll be off at crack of dawn in the morning and fix ’em up all right.”

“They always say that,” said the old lady, “and generally stay three days. I expect they’ll make it four, now that you’re here.”

X A Lawyer in the Bush

Gavan Blake, attorney and solicitor, sat in his office at Tarrong, opening his morning’s letters. The office was in a small weatherboard cottage in the “main street” of Tarrong (at any rate it might fairly claim to be the main street, as it was the only street that had any houses in it). The front room, where he sat, was fitted up with a table and a set of pigeonholes full of dusty papers, a leather couch, a small fireproof safe, and a bookcase containing about equal proportions of law-books and novels. A few maps of Tarrong township and neighbouring stations hung on the walls. The wooden partition of the house only ran up to the rafters, and over it could plainly be heard his housekeeper scrubbing his bedroom. Across the little passage was his sitting-room, furnished in the style of most bachelors’ rooms, an important item of furniture being a cupboard where whisky was always to be found. At the back of the main cottage were servants’ quarters and kitchen. Behind the house, on a spare allotment, were two or three loose-boxes for racehorses, a saddle-room and a groom’s room. This was the whole establishment. A woman came in every day to do up his rooms from the hotel, where he had his meals. It was an inexpensive mode of life, but one that conduced to the drinking of a good many whiskies-and-sodas at the hotel with clients and casual callers, and to a good deal of card-playing and late hours. The racehorses, too, like most racehorses, ate up more money than they earned. So that Mr. Gavan Blake, though a clever man, with a good practice, always seemed to find himself hard up.

It was so on this particular morning. Every letter that he opened seemed to have some reference to money. One, from the local storekeeper, was a pretentious account embracing all sorts of items⁠—ammunition, stationery, saddlery and station supplies (the latter being on account of a small station that Blake had taken over for a bad debt, which seemed likely to turn out an equally bad asset). Station supplies, even for bad stations, run into a lot of money, and the store account was approaching a hundred pounds. Then there was a letter from a horse-trainer in Sydney to whom he had sent a racehorse, and though this animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty⁠—once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race⁠—on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake’s money had been lost in betting. For Blake