Weary and wasted,worn and wan,Feeble and faint,and languid and low,He lay on the desert a dying man,Who has gone,my friends,where we all must go."That's a grand thing,Jack.How does it go?--"With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,And the film of death o'er his fading eyes,He saw the sun go down on the sand,"'--The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn --`"And he slept and never saw it rise,"'
--speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.Then maybe he'd stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
`"What mattered the sand or the whit'ning chalk,The blighted herbage or blackened log,The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?"They don't matter much,do they,Jack?'
`Damned if I think they do,Boss!'I'd say.
`"The couch was rugged,those sextons rude,But,in spite of a leaden shroud,we know That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms'food Where once they have gone where we all must go."'
Once he repeated the poem containing the lines --`"Love,when we wandered here together,Hand in hand through the sparkling weather --God surely loved us a little then."
Beautiful lines those,Jack.
"Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,And the blue sea over the white sand rolled --Babble and prattle,and prattle and murmur'--How does it go,Jack?'He stood up and turned his face to the light,but not before I had a glimpse of it.I think that the saddest eyes on earth are mostly women's eyes,but I've seen few so sad as the Boss's were just then.
It seemed strange that he,a Bushman,preferred Gordon's sea poems to his horsey and bushy rhymes;but so he did.I fancy his favourite poem was that one of Gordon's with the lines --`I would that with sleepy soft embraces The sea would fold me,would find me rest In the luminous depths of its secret places,Where the wealth of God's marvels is manifest!'
He usually spoke quietly,in a tone as though death were in camp;but after we'd been on Gordon's poetry for a while he'd end it abruptly with,`Well,it's time to turn in,'or,`It's time to turn out,'or he'd give me an order in connection with the cattle.
He had been a well-to-do squatter on the Lachlan river-side,in New South Wales,and had been ruined by the drought,they said.
One night in camp,and after smoking in silence for nearly an hour,he asked --`Do you know Fisher,Jack --the man that owns these bullocks?'
`I've heard of him,'I said.Fisher was a big squatter,with stations both in New South Wales and in Queensland.
`Well,he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago without a penny in his pocket,or decent rag to his back,or a crust in his tucker-bag,and I gave him a job.He's my boss now.
Ah,well!it's the way of Australia,you know,Jack.'
The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him;he was `bred'on the Boss's station,they said,and had been with him practically all his life.His name was `Andy'.I forget his other name,if he really had one.Andy had charge of the `droving-plant'(a tilted two-horse waggonette,in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),and he did the cooking and kept accounts.The Boss had no head for figures.
Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five,or anything in between.
His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round,and his big grey eyes also had an inquiring expression.His weakness was girls,or he theirs,I don't know which (half-castes not barred).He was,I think,the most innocent,good-natured,and open-hearted scamp I ever met.
Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp about the Boss.
`The Boss seems to have taken to you,Jack,all right.'
`Think so?'I said.I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
`I'm sure of it.It's very seldom HE takes to any one.'
I said nothing.
Then after a while Andy said suddenly --
`Look here,Jack,I'm glad of it.I'd like to see him make a chum of some one,if only for one trip.And don't you make any mistake about the Boss.He's a white man.There's precious few that know him --precious few now;but I do,and it'll do him a lot of good to have some one to yarn with.'And Andy said no more on the subject for that trip.
The long,hot,dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains --big clearings rather --and through the sweltering hot scrubs,and we reached Bathurst at last;and then the hot dusty days and weeks and months that we'd left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,--as I suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney.
We were all one long afternoon getting them into the trucks,and when we'd finished the boss said to me --`Look here,Jack,you're going on to Sydney,aren't you?'
`Yes;I'm going down to have a fly round.'
`Well,why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning?He's going down in charge of the cattle.The cattle-train starts about daylight.
It won't be so comfortable as the passenger;but you'll save your fare,and you can give Andy a hand with the cattle.You've only got to have a look at 'em every other station,and poke up any that fall down in the trucks.You and Andy are mates,aren't you?'
I said it would just suit me.Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed anxious to have my company for one more evening,and,to tell the truth,I felt really sorry to part with him.I'd had to work as hard as any of the other chaps;but I liked him,and I believed he liked me.
He'd struck me as a man who'd been quietened down by some heavy trouble,and I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.
`Come and have a drink,Boss,'I said.The agent had paid us off during the day.
He turned into a hotel with me.
`I don't drink,Jack,'he said;`but I'll take a glass with you.'
`I didn't know you were a teetotaller,Boss,'I said.
I had not been surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink on the trip;but now that it was over it was a different thing.
`I'm not a teetotaller,Jack,'he said.`I can take a glass or leave it.'
