Such Is Life - Joseph Furphy (philippa perry book txt) 📗

teams and went on to survey the place. “The (adv.) thunderin’ ole morepoke he goes crawlin’ into the rottenest place he could fine. You shove your team in nex’ the polers, an’ I’ll hook our lot on in front. Your chains’ll stan’ to fetch (sheol) out by the (adj.) roots. Please the pigs, we’ll git out o’ sight afore that ole (overseer) comes.”

Thompson did as desired; and the first pull brought the wagon on to solid ground. Meanwhile Dixon and Willoughby had taken their team through, and were hurrying along. Cooper, growling maledictions on everything connected with Port Phillip⁠—roads in particular⁠—had selected his route, and started his team. Thompson hooked on to his own wagon, and crossed safely, but with very little to spare.

“Touch-and-go,” he remarked to me; “another bale would have anchored her. Ah! Cooper’s in it, with all his cleverness.”

Cooper was in it. The two-ton Hawkesbury, with seven-and-a-half tons of load, was down to the axle-beds; and the Cornstalk was endeavouring, by means of extracts from the sermons of Knox’s soundest followers, to do something like justice to the contingency. Thompson sighed, glanced toward the ram-paddock, and hooked his team in front of Cooper’s. Mosey, who had been mending his broken chain with wire, now came over with Price.

“We’ll give you a lend of our whips,” said he with cheap complaisance. “Take the leaders yerself, Thompson. Stiddy now, till I give the word, or we’ll be fetching the (adj.) handle out of her. Now⁠—pop it on⁠—to ’em!”

Then thirty-six picked bullocks planted their feet and prised, and a hundred and seventy feet of bar chain stretched tense and rigid from the leaders’ yoke to the pole-cap. The wagon crept forward. A low grumble, more a growl than a bellow, passed from beast to beast along the team⁠—sure indication that the wagon wouldn’t stop again if it could be taken through. The off front wheel rose slowly on harder ground; the off hind wheel rose in its turn; both near wheels ploughed deeper beneath the top-heavy weight of thirty-eight bales⁠—

“She’s over!” thundered Cooper. “Keep her goin’⁠—it’s her on’y chance!”

Then the heavy pine whipsticks bent like bulrushes in the drivers’ skilful hands, while a spray of dissevered hair, and sometimes a line of springing blood, followed each detonation⁠—the libretto being in keeping. A few yards forward still, while both off wheels rose to the surface, and both near wheels sank till the naves burrowed in the ground; then the wagon swung heavily over on its near side.

“Goodbye, John,” said Cooper, with fine immobility. “Three-man job, by rights. Will you give us a hand, Collins?” For Price and Mosey were silently returning to their teams.

“Certainly, I will.”

“Well, it’s a half day’s contract I’ll git some breakfast ready, while you (fellows) unloosens the ropes.”

Thompson and I released the bullocks from the pole, unfastened the ropes, and brought the wagon down to its wheels again. Then Cooper summoned us to breakfast.

“You’ll jist take sort o’ potluck, Collins,” he remarked. “I should ’a’ baked some soda bread an’ boiled some meat last night, on’y for bein’ too busy doin’ nothing. Laziness is catchin’. That’s why I hate a lot o’ fellers campin’ together; it’s nothing but yarn, yarn; an’ your wagon ain’t greazed, an’ your tarpolin ain’t looked to; an’ nothin done but yarn, yarn; an’ you floggin’ in your own mind at not gittin’ ahead o’ your work. That’s where women’s got the purchase on us (fellows). When a lot o’ women gits together, one o’ them reads out something religious, an’ the rest all wires in at sewin’, or knittin’, or some (adj.) thing. They can’t suffer to be idle, nor to see anybody else idle⁠—women can’t.” Cooper was an observer. It was pleasant to hear him philosophise.

The work of reloading was made severe and tedious by the lack of any better skids than the poles of the two wagons⁠—was, indeed, made impossible under the circumstances, but for Cooper’s enormous and wellsaved strength. Our toil was enlivened, however, by an argument as to the esoteric cause of the capsize. Cooper maintained that nothing better could have been hoped for, after leaving Kenilworth shed on a Friday; Thompson, untrammelled by such superstition, contended that the misadventure was solely due to travelling on Sunday; whilst I held it to be merely a proof that Cooper, in spite of his sins, wasn’t deserted yet. Each of us supported his argument by a wealth of illustrative cases, and thus fortified his own stubborn opinion to his own perfect satisfaction. Then, descending to more tangible things, we discussed Cleopatra. Here we were unanimous in deciding that the horse had, as yet, disclosed only two faults, and these not the faults of the Irishman’s horse in the weary yarn. One of them, we concluded, was to buck like a demon on being first mounted, and the other was to grope backward for the person who went to catch him after delivery of loading.

In the meantime, four horsemen, with three packhorses, went by; then two horse teams, loaded outward; then Stewart, of Kooltopa, paused to give a few words of sympathy as he drove past; then far ahead, we saw two wool teams, evidently from Boolka, converging slowly toward the main track; then more wool came in sight from the pine-ridge, five or six miles behind. By this time, it was after midday; and Cooper, having tied the last levers, looked round before descending from the load.

“Somebody on a grey horse comin’ along the track from the ram-paddick, an’ another (fellow) on a brown horse comin’ across the plain,” he remarked. “Wonder if one o’ them’s Martin-an’ he’s rose a horse at the station?”

“I was thinking about tonight,” replied Thompson. “I’d forgot Martin. Duffing soon comes under the what-you-may-call-him.”

“Statute of Limitations?” I suggested.

“Yes. Come and have a drink of tea, and a bit of Cooper’s pastry. His cookery doesn’t fatten, but it fills up.”

“O you (adj.) liar,” gently protested the Cornstalk, as he seated himself on the ground beside the