A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 227, 8 July 1942, Page 6

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

ill!!];i!llll!lll!li!lllll!llllllll!lilll!limi!ll!l!IIIIIilliilll!!lllliN|l 1 SERIAL STORY. 1

= By A. E. YARRA. =

= (Copyright). = TfiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiHiiiHHHitiini CHAPTER! I. GOODBYE TO TAMPORINA. The reason I had picked on Sunrise was that on the remains o£ the fly-leaf of the delux volume of Shakespeare found clutched in my hand when they dragged me, a baby, out of the railway accident and set me adrift on the world an orphan, with no parental background and no clue to liis identity, was a rather good pen-and-ink sketch of a sunrise. The top of the fly-leaf had been torn off, roughly, by accident or design, and with it, apparently had gone the name of the owner. Sunrise, I had deduced, might be the address, and the sketch a whimsical way of expressing it in a manner befitting the inscribed gift of one friend to the other. So when I learned there was a town called Sunrise which I had never visited and only heard of rarely, without noticing it, X decided that it was time for me to make the move I’d been planning. For years, now, during my annual vacation, I’d searched north, south, east, and west, in a steadily growing effort to find for myself a real father who would put me on a par with the others who had fathers and family backgrounds, some of them even ancestors. Even Bogan Billy, the horsetailer on Tamporina, had a father, and Minnie, his gin. Long John Wilson’s father was, a pioneer, with, a pedigree as long as a brumby’s tail in the off season, and a tablet to his memory in the church at Westernville. Drovers still talked of the trip he’d made from Victoria Downs to Adelaide with five thousand head to the Big Drought. Long John’s wife’s father was a, Methodist parson, and she had his picture, in clerical dress, in the sitting room to prove it. Everybody I knew had had a father but I, who seemed to have been hatched in an incubator, or something. I was fairly fed up with it. Wasn’t I the best cattle man and horseman on the Four Rivers, fully acknowledged by all hands and the cook at every test that had been made in four hundred miles square? Hadn’t I earned the reputation of being a slashing bushman, and a “scliolard,” able to work out percentages in my head more quickly than the bookkeeper could do it on paper with a pencil? Hadn’t the Wreck taught me as much of books as, he knew himself, and Long John set me to every task there' was in the six million acres of Tamporina until I knew every phase of the work as well as he knew it himself?

Here was I, twenty-five-years-old, with close up to three thousand pounds that I had made skinning smart cattle dealers, beating the weather prophet, mapping out the course of dry spells down the rivers where stock were travelling, and using my brains. I was all ready to take up a good slice of Tamporina in the next resumption ballots and find me a wife and settle down to De a young cattle king in the making, with all the backing and help from Long John, his son, the heir to Tamporina,. and any amount of banking men and squatters. There was nothing to stop me being one of the biggest men on the Four Rivers in time, except that I couldn’t settle down without a father.

So, after thinking it over for half-a-dozen seasons. I decided to try out the clue of the rising sun, and at the 'same time see the world for myself. 1 took my last dip into the thousand books that The Wreck had in his hut on the rise, kissed Long John’s wife on the left ear and told her not to weep for me as I could do all the weeping I needed for myself, stowed away my passbook and the references Long John had given me, put down south a wad of ready money that ’would choke a bullock, and strapped my valise across the top of the packbags on Diamond. The delux Shakespeare which was the only clue to my parentage, I slipped into my pocket as usual.

Then I thanked the Wreck, Hon. Cyril Montfort, for the education he had given me through the twenty years I had been a kind of foster son to him, promised him I would muster the bookshops for rare volumes for him when I got to the bookshop country, and went out and said good-bye to Bogan and his gin, and the pieanninies, and Yellow Jack the horsetailer, and Rosie, whose husband had taught me more tricks than you could shake a stick at when it came to bush work. I went down to the men’s hut and shook hands all round, and nearly shed some of the tears I’d promised Ma Wilson when they gave me a speech and a presentation of a set of brushes and shaving gear, all silver and blue enamel, done up in yellow leather with a zip fastener. ■" Stumpy Martin, the mustering boss, made the speech, and it was a good one, I remember word for word, parts of it, and every time I think it over I understand more and more what it must mean to have a father when you are young. “Fathers,” said Stumpy, “Why, you got more fathers than that there ol’ cattle bitch o’ mine’s got fleas. Aint I yer father? Aint Morgan, the foreman, yer father? Yer got Long John Wilson for a father, an’ Roughhorse Abe, an’ Yankee Skeets and Yerber Bill Bronson from Nowhere. What y’ want with fathers more’n yer got all round yer I can’t make out nohow. Howsomever, Bill, if it would be any comfort for yer ter know, we got a lotta time for yer, more time for yer than any kid we seen this side o’ the big drought, an’ if yer ever git stumped down inside the coast country send a. telegraft, to this part of the world, an.” we’ll he

on yer tail quicker’n me an’ Lofty Simmons ketched the nigger that ran away with the rum the night we camped in Jerusalem with Allenby. An’ now that we’re rode up ter the partin’ o’ the ways for a time it’s my pleasure an’ gratification ter hand yer this silver-mounted groomin’ set an’ inform yer that we think yer the sweetest young colt we have seen foaled on the Four Rivers, an’ there’s no kiddin’ about that part of it.” So we shook hands all round, and finally I got away and had it out with Long John, down by the woolshed, while Diamond kicked at the flies in the shade and Bessy scratched herself against the loading dump. (To be continued). The characters m tins story nre entirely imaginary. No reference is in tended to any living person or to any public o'* private pi-onerur.