THE SUNDOWNER’S ROMANCE

Otago Witness, Issue 2983, 17 May 1911, Page 98

THE SUNDOWNER’S ROMANCE

By C. Oscar Palmar.

Tie Thatch gave the twine a hitch round the bottom peg of the last layer of thatch he had put on, and took a glance toward the sunward break in the cloud that hung low and sombre hiding the hills. "It ought to be about 12," he soliloquised. "I'll take a peep at the time." Step by step backwards he oarne down the ladder and turned his waistcoat over on the heap of rushes. "Ten past! By gum, time does bump along when a chap is busy. Well, I havent done bad this morning anyhowall by myself, too. A wonder the boss didn't send young Bush Lifter along. I suppose he was wanted at the yards or tome where." Tie Thatch dipped a billy of water where it ran clear and cool between the swaying lines of whiteflowered cress, and broke handfuls of bush from tine dead manuka bushes. He hung his billy on a cross stick between two wild Irishmen, and soon the ruddy flames were leaping around and up its blackened sides. Tie Thatch, threw his pinch of tea leaves into the boiling water, untied his lunch, and settled leisurely back into a rush bush to have his dinner. The rapid click-click-ing of locusts, the cheery note of the skylark, and the solemn droning of the everpresent fly alone relieved the almost depressing silence. Far off the smoke from the homestead and station cookhouse chimneys rose slowly into the heavy air. Tie Thatch was weil on with his dinner when a swagger came along, a bow-legged, squat. bodied, stubble-whiskered swagger. The rush bush in which Tie Thatch sat was but five yards from the road, and when he of the track came opposite to our thatoher he could not but say, " Hey, mate, will you sit down and take a drink?"

" Right you are, young chap," and the worn back' and the grey blanket, threadbara where the swag-strap gripped it, company, slowly and with 'seeming rchjiLance.. lie of the swag fumbled in his greasy coat pocket for a paper of broken mutton bones and bread, but Tie Thatch put him off with:

" Take the rest of.my tucker, old man. I've just had a feed, and am sure of a good meal at sor half-past at the latest. Have you travelled far?" "I've tramped the flaming island from Picton to Riverton, and round by way of the Otina and the Coast, and haven't had a tap of work this last nine months." " Good Scotland man, what a life and how the dickens did you come to this? Drink, I'll be bound?" "That's the way of the world—blame a chap every time. There's many a 'man on the road, better men nor me and you, through no fault of their own. Look at me, stone broke on this sanguine track—tussock, fern, manuka scr-üb, and a station outhouse or the township, and the bobby with .his eye on a bloke; but I was once a decent chap, who had a cheque-book and bank account, too. I got good gold at the Dunstan, and put it into an hotel of my own down south. What's more, I married a quiet, respectable girl, and, as I thought, was settled down for life; but wimmin's . ways are not our ways,, and you never know what is at the bottom of their minds. Well, after we'd been married a year or- so, and she ought to have been settling down in comfort, her temper, which even from, the first, as I began to -find to my ! cost, was none of the best, broke out at any time — in fact, every hour of the day, in any part of the house, from the front parlour to the scullery. Up the stairs aid down stairs she had her lamps on me, more pertickler if I were laughiffg and talking with any of the gels, and at last she would give me a tongue-banging in front of any of them, even in the dining room, when I would be a-carving the turkey for the Sunday dinner." "Mary," I said at last, "this has got to stop, or I'm off to America by the next boat."

Then she fairly fired up, and she said "Go, and good rid to you. You are loafing around the tap-room getting a corporation while I am slaving from daylight to dark to make ends meet." Well, I put up with it from month to month, till at last I could stand it no longer, and I've stood a good lot in my time. I strapped ~a few of my traps together and a brand new billy and pannikin for the occasion. Then I went to her and I said, " Mary, I've always loved you, and I'm always going to love you, but this everlasting nagging has fair duffered me out, and I'm off on the road in the morning." I thought that she would have come round at that, but no 6uch thing. " It's best for us both," she said. "I'll run the business."

.Well, I went, and hick went against me. For twenty years. I tramped these roads, then I went through the old place. The old hotel had changed hands; she had befn gone for yeans. I've tramped these roads for years, and never had any word of her or any luck since, and I don't suppose I ever will." Young Tie Thatch gulped back the lump that gathered in his throat, took a glance at his watch, and looked toward, the ladder. "I must be at it again," he said; "just you take your time, and don't leave till you've done."

Some time later he saw Dusty Roads get under way. and he sympathetically soliloquised: "Poor old beggar, he can hardly put one foot -before the other!" At the station tea table that night he heard shepherd and rab biter/talking : "Did you see old Kill Time' th' day, Dinnie?"

"See the old waster! I couldn't very well be off it, Jack. He put in three solid hours in the river-bed scrub, just below where I was with the dogs and gun this evening. Wouldn't get on up to Sim's for fear he would be asked to clean

out the whare, -where he will put in the night. He's tramped these roads for 30 years or more, asking for work and hoping that he wouldn't get it." "Thirty years! Get out! He was', running a pub. down south less than 25 years ago." "You get out, Jade! You don't swaller that lot, do you?" "He tells it well about the nagging wife and the turkey he used to carve Sundays, and the traps he strapped together to frighten the missus into peace and quiet- I ness, and how it wouldn't work. Him leave a. pub, eh!" j "Many's the pub he has left, but not while there was a stiver in his pocket or t a hope, of credit, and that missus of his was one who knew it was no good' of sue- [ ing for maintenance, so slaved to keep his youngsters, till now they can keep their mother in comfort; and she well deserves the little comfort she now enjoys. But as for him, he will cadge round station and pub, pub and station, comae summer and dust, winter and frost —too blamed lazy to clean up a, hut or cut a bit of firewood for an evening's lodging." < i Tie Thatch stepped out into the stillness of the autumn evening. The heavier cloud had drifted off from the foothills. The rose and. gold faded from the mountain summits, and the light clouds that arched above the hills behind which the sun had set. A nor'-westerly breeze came down over them, mild and fragrant with that soft, warm smell that' told of the camp fire, the sizzling of a mutton chop, and the boiling of a billy behind the manuka scrub under the splendid canopy | of the eternal stars. i