The MAN from the GULF

Evening Star, Issue 22880, 11 February 1938, Page 15

The MAN from the GULF

by A.E.YARRA

CHAPTER XV

All hands adjourned to the refreshment rooms when Ned made known the fact that he was a teetotaller, - and strangers soon learned of the scheme to buy a racehorse. They slapped him on the back when he told them of his promise to Molly O’Toole and how it led to the necessity of his securing an interest in life. Ned even warmed to the strangers enough to give them a sketchy description of life on Red Ridges, and when it came to racehorses his new companions were with him all the way. 'They knew every horse in the racing game. Ned told them how he had taken an interest in the Bluestone mare, through the pages of the ‘ Weekly Sportsman ’; and when it transpired that the taller of the two was the owner of that mare and that he had decided to sell her because she was too slow to win in Brisbane, Ned’s eyes were, in his own words, sticking out like two corks from two bottles. He showed them the bulge made by the hundred pounds in notes which he had sewn in the lining of his coat, as a precaution against spielers, and accepted a tip for the Welter, and an invitation to take a look at the races the next day. The Bluestone mare was not running, but the tip he had received, won (it was an odds-on favourite) and he collected his modest winnings with a surge of pride and gratitude in his heart. The following day they saw the town, and Ned broached the matter of the Bluestone mare, Heather Belle. He had made up his mind to buy her if he had to mortgage his pay at Red Ridges for the rest of his life to get her. He was sorry now he had told his two new friends that for the last two years he jhad watched the career of Heather Belle, and had hardly dared to hope that he could buy such a mare, though he had dreamed, many a time in his tent, that he owned her and was winning station races with her. This knowledge might cause them to raise the price beyond his capacity to pay. Horse owners were like that, as Ned had cause to know. The tall Mr Johnson was loth to take a hundred pounds. He had paid two hundred for the mare as a two-year-old, and she had cost him at least a thousand more, in upkeep and bets. The short, jovial Mr Kennedy urged him not to be a blasted fool, and to get rid of her before she finally broke him so broke that he would have to get out of the racing game for good. He mustered all the arguments at his disposal, and frankly gave his opinion that the mare was a waster, and her owner a mug not to jump at the first offer of monev and rid himself of the incubus. Finally the short Mr Kennedy broke the tall Mr Johnson’s resolution down from two hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. Ned, however, was not altogether a mug himself, he belieyed, and when he saw signs of weakening, he decided to hang on a bit. He might get the mare for a hundred after all. If not he could easily raise his bid and send to Red Ridges for the balance of his cheque and a loan. “ Oh, no, you ain’t no mug, Ned,” jeered Joe Hird, at this stage of the inquisition, and there was an explosion of laughter and ironic approval. Ned turned a little red when somebody told him he needed a nursegirl to take him out. Almost everybody in Number Four had some smartness to shoot at | him as he stolidly ate his corned beef and cabbage and answered their questions. , . .

SWAN NECK BUTS A RACEHORSE. The long, hot summer day was fading out in pink and gold, over the western scrub fringe. The sunset breeze ' wafted across the plain the scent of pin® trees on the sandhill, and the sweet, mysterious perfume of wattle cedar from the depth of the grey-green mulga scrub. , The widow Eyan, her spotless white apron and apple pink cheeks shining with health and good _ humour, rolled her sleeves above a pair of plump and dimpled elbows, and took her seat on the step at the door of the woolshed cottage kitchen. She had prepared supper for the musterere, eating there during the temporary indisposition of the cook of Number Four, who was “ suffering a recovery ” in Mulga West, where he had gone to see the sights, with his year’s cheque in his saddle Presently a cloud of dust would announce that the musterers of Number Four were coming at the gallop from the. drafting yards, down on the flat. In the meantime the widow sat on the step, knowing that she had everything ready to the minute, and threw_ scraps of meat to a cheeky wild magpie that came every evening to warble at her door for his supper. The shy mate sat on the limb of a big gum, where their nest was, and watched for the breadwinner to first gorge himself and then bring home the family supplies. Swan Neck Ned was due that night from Crooked Creek with his racehorse. Mrs Eyan was watching the narrow, winding wagon track that went up the river to Crooked Creek, 1 and her eyes were soft and shining. She felt that she had a personal interest in that racehorse and in its owner. From the direction of the yards, presently, came Galloping Bob, the jackaroo, riding a black-and-white horse, which he stripped and turned into the creek paddock. Then he strolled to the cottage, his spurs jingling musically, washed his face and combed his hair before a glass nailed to the outside of the kitchen wall, grinned at the widow, and asked: i “ Heard the noos?”

Mrs Ryan shook her head. “How could I hear any news? There’s not been a soul near -the place hut the mailman, a week ago.” Galloping Bob was the son of a wealthy storekeeper in Mulga West. He had money and lands coming to him, and he was very self-confident, with reason. He had ridden MacKenzje’s grey to a finish at the Gidyeaville annual buckjumping competitions: fought Dug Cameron four rounds in the amateur' tourney and beat him; travelled down with a mob of fats on the cattle train to Sydney and seen the sights; all before he was past 21 years of age-. “ About Ned,” he laughed. “ There’s a smart feller, now, if you was to ask me. He was going to buy a racehorse that would donkey-lick us all at the next station races, an’ here he comes back, with his tail between his legs, an’ no cheque an’ no racehorse. The spoilers got his money from him in Brisbane.” ' Mrs Ryan’s face had turned a curious dead white, but she held her peace until Bob continued: “ The boys will laugh Ned off of the station over this. He simply walked down Queen street an’ asked ’em to take it away from him. They tell me he might as well have wrote ‘ Help yourselves ’ on to a piece of cardboard an’ hung it round his flamin’ neck.” Bob’s boast was that he was mulga bred and mulga fed, steel to the heel, and leather to the pants—and he had been in Brisbane for a whole month! At the sound of galloping hooves both looked up to see the musterers round the corner of the creek paddock as Ned on a borrowed horse rod© into view from the rise that hid the timber on Greasy Creek. The musterers uttered wild yells and surrounded Ned’s mud-fat, flea-bitten grey, long past middle-age, flogged it with their hats until it joined in the wild stampede that pulled up in a cloud of dust at the kitchen door. There the riders poured out their hilarious wit on the head of their victim, while Ned sat in the saddle and grinned sheepishly like a schoolboy. Joe Hird walked his agile stockhorse around the ancient grey and looked him over with mock care from head to foot. Then, with the gravity of a hors© dealer, he gave his verdict: “ He’s a winner all over, if you was to ast me. Look at the head of him. An’ look at the shinin’ coat. What do you use to shine him up all like that, Swan Neck?” ■.

Alone of all that laughing, peering crowd of virile men, Clarence Welsby, the newchum jackaroo, sat silent, and looked at Ned with sympathy and understanding in his eyes. Mrs Ryan put in her spoke, more than once, on terms of equality with the best of them, but in defence of Ned. «* Well,” said Ned, at last, “ you’ll read about it in the papers, when the mail gets here, to-nignt. The police told the reporters, an’ the papers printed it. We went out an’ saw the mare, an’ I knowed her by her pitchers, as soon as I clapped me lamps on to her. She had a star an’ three white socks, an’ the prettiest head you ever seen on a mare. Finally the little cove persuades his mate to take a hundred cash, an’ I handed it over an’ got a receipt. We hadn’t brought no bridle or saddle, so they told me I could let her stay in the paddock till Monday, an’ then take her straight down to the railway yard. They gave me a receipt an' we all went back to .town. “ On Monday, when I goes out, with a halter, there was a feller there who said he was the owner of the mare, an’ proved it. He blew up his boiler when I told him I’d bought the mare for a hundred notes, an’ he reckoned I’d been stung be a couple of smart spielers that had no more right to the mare than they had to this station an’ the horses on it. We went to the police, an’ they got the two fellers, an’ they got six months each, but there was no money on them, so I never seen the colour of my hundred again, an’ what’s more, I won’t.” . .

“ A horse don’t gallop with his head,” continued Galloping Bob. “ Look at the bandage on his forelegs.. You must be takin’ care of him for the Christmas races, Ned!” Nugget Brown said something funny about taking a bet there and then 'that the horse would win the Squatters’ Cup. One Horse Gilligan gravely pointed out that this was not the horse Ned had bought, but a boundary rider’s mount from Crooked Creek Station. Ned’s racehorse must be coming along later with his trainer and jockey. The widow tore herself away when ;the badinage had got so far. By the time the men had turned out their horses and washed their faces she had supper set out. As she waited on them, with the assistance of her buxom daughter, there wa an angry glitter in her eye and a flush on her cheek, though her heart was like lead in her breast. Her maternal eye alone detected the deep hurt under the grinning replies of the elderly stockman as they dragged the story of his shame from him while they ate large quantities of food and laughed uproariously at each section of the story, as it was revealed by question and anNed had been warned especially against speilers when he set out on his tnp, for his 30 years in the cattle country had softened the memories or town life and made him to all practical purposes a bushnian, with the guiltlessness of the native. He had carried out Clarence’s instructions to avoid staying at a hotel, to shun the approaches of well-dressed strangers with glib tongues and schemes for making money. He had met at the dinner table of a temperance hotel, in the heart of the city, two men who had a first-class knowledge of the boxing game, and who warmed to him instantly, when they leanrt that he had taken an interest all his life in the manly art and had been at one time a capable exponent himself.

“ The detectives said the two spielers was ‘ Snakes Kelly ’ an’ ‘ Con Wilson,’ from Sydney, an’ they thanked me for the way I give ’em the information to put them two eggs in the cooler. I feel a regular fool, fellers, an’ you are entitle to laugh, if you feel like it. But one thing I did; I never got on the spree! ” The roar of laughter that followed the abrupt conclusion of Ned’s story was cut short by the voice of the widow Ryan raised in anger, and her tin dipper banging on the clean boards of the kitchen table. A startled silence followed, which the widow broke, while she pointed an accusing finger at Joe Hird, the foreman:—

“ I got news for you, Joe,” she said, and the tone might have meant that’she had a bullet or a dose of poison for him. “ That long feller that skinned you out of two Hundred dingo scalps when you was on Crooked Creek, by sellin’ you half of the scalps the first time and the other half of the same the second time, after he had doctored them up to look like four hundred instead of two hundred, an’ cost your job as overseer on Crooked Creek; he_ was here, yesterday, makin’ up the river; an’ he sent his respects to you an’ reremarked that it was the easiest money he ever made in the scalpin’ line. I was goin’ to keep it to mesclf, hut I changed me mind.” There was a breathless silence; anl then a roar of laughter that eclipsed anything that had gone before; and then it transpired that Joe had forgotten to hobble his horse. He went out to repair the error, in case the animal might wander too far and take the others with him. >

[Author of ‘The Vanishing Horsemen,’ ‘The Valley of Lagoons,’ etc. All rights reserved.]

When the laughter had subsided a little Mrs Ryan shoved a plate of food under the nose of Stiff-fingered Jimmy, the horse-tailer, and, with arms akimbo and jnalice in her eye and voice, said: “ How’s Mary gettin’ on with her millionaire husband, Jimmy?” Mary was the buxom daughter of the boss of the scrub cutters, who had thrown'Jimmy over three weeks before the date set for their wedding and married the owner of three huge stations, who had seen her at a time when ho had discarded his gin and was seriously needing a whitp woman for a wife, to establish a respectable household and carry on the line. Jimmy, in the strained silence that followed, began to look for his pipe, and extended the search out as far as the men’s hut, where he lost himself for the night. A smothered giggle was cut short by the widow, who turned her_ batteries on One Horse Gilligan and his two immediate neighbours without warning; “ They tell me the Mombala mob was cornin’ over to win some more money at the Christmas races on Red Ridges, but pulled out when they heard Ned here was bringin’ up a racehorse from Sydney,” she probed, with eyes like bayonets and her head cocked sideways. “ They reckon that if you was made president and these two goats committeemen again this year they might leave you the last race, hut would take all the others, Gilligan.” It was more than enough. Three portions of the favourite food of cattlemen, plum duff, suddenly appeared to have lost their attraction, for there was not a man in front of any of the three plates. All had gone to see if the rails of the horse paddock had been put up after the last musterer had let his horse go for the night. The station had never forgiven Gilligan and his fellow-committeemen for allowing the Mombala station riders to assist them to frame the race rules last Christmas in such a way that when the Mombala station horses won every race on the Red Ridges programme, and all the prize money, the committee had. no redress, because a clause prohibiting corn-fed horses bad been overlooked and omitted.

It was a sore point with Red Ridges horsemen, and was a long time in being forgotten. The only excuse that had been offered was that the Mombala mob had got the committee and the president mellow with whisky at Mulga West about the time they were drawing up the rules and getting them printed. The general exodus from the kitchen into the star-spangled night set in about this time. It left at the table Clarence Welsby, Greenhido Harry, and the loudest and wittiest critic of them all, Galloping Bob, the other jackaroo.

Bob choked over his duff, two or three times, as he looked through the window towards the hut, where the vanquished army was taking cover from the artillery of the widow. “ Mrs Ryan,” he ventured, gallantly, “ you must have said sompin’ to spoil the appetites of them fellers, or did you put sompin’ in the tea?” The widow Ryan jerked her head vigorously in the direction of Bob and said, sharply to Ned, as though she had arrived at the end of her patience : “ If you are half a man, Ned, punch me this coot on the nose an’ shut him up. He reminds me of a sheep pup on the chain, for the first time, yap, yap, yap!” Ned rose to his feet. Afterwards it transpired that his purpose was, to escape to the outer night before the widow started a fight between him and the jackaroo. But Galloping Bob mistook his intention and got in first with a wild swing for Ned’s jaw. Ned moved his head aside a fraction and the swing passed over his shoulder, harmless. Ned’s big, square, bony fist crashed full on the point of Bob’s chin, after feinting for his waistline and swerving upwards with lightening speed. Bob sank to his back on the floor, cased by Welsby, who caught him as he collapsed. The three men carried the jackaroo to the hut, and worked over him for half an hour, with waterbags and rum, before they restored consciousness. / Ned returned doggedly to the remainder of his plum duff, followed by Clarence and Greenhide, but when Ned was inside the kitchen the widow rudely slammed the door in the faces of the other two, and locked them out. She set before Ned butter-milk scones, heaped on a great dish. “ Try ’em,’ she advised. “ I bet they are better than any you got down in Brisbane.” Clarence went back to the hut, where Galloping Bob was very silent and morose, leaving the widow alone on the field of glory. He returned at 10 o’clock for his spurs, which he had left hanging on the back of the door, and the sight that met his eyes amazed him. The widow and Ned sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, and on the white pine boards, undfer the swinging kerosene lamp, was a cribbage board, with wooden matches for pegs, and stacks of matches to represent the stakes. So engrossed were the players that they did not notice him enter and take his spurs from the peg behind the door. As he stepped out again into the soft, starry night, Welsby heard Ned in tones of fierce triumph shouting, while he banged the table with his fist: ‘‘Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, and six for three fives!” (To be continued.) Next issue: The Pool of the Stars.