IN NO MAN’S LAND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue VII, 17 February 1900, Page 290

IN NO MAN’S LAND.

(An Australian Story.)

By

A. B. PATERSON (Banjo).

Author of “ The Man From Snowy River.”

SYNOPSIS OF OPENING CHAPTERS. The scene opens at the Cassowary Club, Sydney, in blazing midsummer. A certain member, nicknamed "The Bosun, has been detained in town to meet and entertain a new chum named Carew, who who is out from Home to go to one ot the numerous stations belonging to a wealthy squatter yclept "Old Gordon," ot Kuryong. Gordon's son, a typical "tar-out man” from "No Man’s .Gand," meets young Carew at the Bosun’s dinner party, and each takes immensely to the other. Carew is the typical Oxford athlete and sturdy, impassive Englishman; Gordon, a specimen Australian gentleman ot the best bush type. After dinner they agree to try and see something of Sydney "push” society, and attend a push dancing saloon. Carew’s attentions to one of the "donahs” results disastrously, and the two friends are Ignominiously cnucked out. Both men are much afraid of the story getting about and making them ridiculous. Carew agrees to accompany Gordon back to a station in No Man’s Land, and next day they leave for the "way-back” country. Chapters 111. and IV. relate the experiences of Carew and Gordon on the trip up the coast. They make the acquaintance of Miss Harriott, who is journeying northwards to take a governess’s place on an up-country station. Carew, being a new chum, is made the butt of some practical jokes concerning a relative named Considine he is going to look for, but he shows his tormentors that he is able to look after himself, and thereafter enjoys peace. Chapter IV. closes with the cancellation of Miss Harriott’s engagement by her employer, and Gordon at once engages her for his nieces and nephews on the home station in New South Wales. She goes back in the steamer, and the two friends make a start on their journey inland. CHAPTER V. describes the arrival ot Gordon Carew at Barcoo, a typical upcountry town. Mr Paterson is here in his very element, and a remarkably realistic picture is drawn of the wretched little galvanised iron township, and the extraordinary antics of a blackfellow after a debauch of rum. The description of the subsequent Police Court proceedings, where Gordon as the Jap Pee, a mounted policeman and the black delinquent all behave in a remarkably unconventional manner, is related with great spirit. Carew takes the repentant blackfellow, who is called Fryingpan, for his servant, and all adjourn from the court to the hotel for drinks. Chapter VI. tells how “old Gordon’’ made his money by buying cattle during a drought just before rain came,and what a disagreeable, purse-proud, violent-tem-pered tyrant his money made him. Chapter VII. relates a misfortune to a roast turkey and old Gordon’s departure from the station for Sydney in a violent temper. Miss Harriott, the governess whom Charlie engaged on the boat, arrives, and proves to be charming but somewhat of a mystery, as she has such very smart things for a governess. She explains how she was brought up by an aunt and how that aunt lost her money, and Miss Harriott being too proud to go about amongst her old friends poor and a dependent, emigrates to Australia. CHAPTER VIII. Describes the pursuits of Bush children, and what their new governess thought of them. Poss and Binjie Hunter, two typical bush lads, arrive at the Gordons’ station, and also fall in love with Miss Harriott. Dater in the day Charley Gordon’s brother Hugh arrives home, and is introduced to Miss Harriott. Hugh is a reader and a thinker besides being a bushman, and interesting developments are promised. ® ® ® CHAPTER IX. THE DOYLES AND THE DONOHUES. At breakfast next morning there was no sign of the overnight trouble, and no one made any reference to it. Poss and Binjie, who had said good-bye all round the night before, on the plea that they had to make a daylight start for home, turned up at breakfast smiling, and explaining that they had decided to stop and help Hugh muster the river paddocks—a two days’ job. They departed on this errand as soon as breakfast was over. It was holiday time for the children, so for that day and for some days thereafter there were no lessons. The new governess went about with the children a good deal, to study their habits and peculiarities. They had no “bringing up“ as English people understand the term. They practically ran wild a.II over the run, spending whole <lays in long tramps to remote parts in pursuit of game. They had no “play” as that term is known to English children. They didn’t play at b<‘ing hunters. They were hunters in real earnest, and their habits a.nd customs had come to resemble very closely the habits and customs of the

savage tribes who live by the chase. With them she had numberless new experiences. She got accustomed to seeing the boys climb big trees by’ cutting little niches or “steps” in the bark with a tomahawk, going rignt away out on to the most g.duy heights after birds’ nests, or to drag the opossum from his sleeping place in a nollow limb. She learnt to hold a gasping and frenzied fox terrier at the mouth of a log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo rat which had taken refuge there, and which flashed out as it shot from a catapult on being poked from the other end with a long stick. She learnt to mark the hiding place of the young wild ducks that scuttled and dived and hid themselves with such supernatural cunning in the reedy pools. She saw the native companions, those great solemn, grey birds, go through their fantastic and intricate dances, forming squares, pirouetting, advancing, and retreating with the solemnity of professional dancing masters. She lay on the river bank with the gang, gun in hand, breathless with excitement, waiting for the rising of the duck-billed platypus, that quaint combination of fish, flesh and fowl, as he dived in the quiet waters of the river bank, a train of small bubbles marking his track. She fished in the deep pools for the great, sleepy 1001 b codfish that sucked down the bait, hook and all, holus bolus, and then were hauled in with hardly any resistance, and lived for days, contentedly, tethered to the bank by a line through their g-ills. In these amusements time passed pleasantly enough, and by the time school work was resumed the “new governess” had become quite one of the family. Of Hugh Gordon she at first saw little. His work took him out on to the run all day long, looking after the sheep in the paddocks, or perhaps toiling clay after day in the great dusty drafting yards. In the cool of the afternoon the two girls would often go out for a ride, and would canter over the four miles or so of timbered country to the yards, and wait till Hugh had finished his day’s work. As a rule Poss or Binjie, or perhaps both, were in attendance to escort Mary Gordon, with the result that Hugh and Miss Harriott found themselves paired off to ride home together; before long he found himself looking forward to these rides with more anxiety than he cared to acknowledge, and in a very short time he was head over ears in love with her.

Any sort of man, being much alone with any sort of woman in a country house, will fall in love with her; but a, man such as Hugh Gordon, ardent, imaginative and very young, meeting every day a woman as beautiful as Ellen Harriott, was bound to fall a victim. Hugh soon became her absolute worshipper. All day long in the lonely rides through the bush, in the hot and dusty hours at the sheep yards, and the pleasant lazy canter home in the cool of the evening, his fancies were full of her—her beauty and her charms. It was happiness enough for him to be near her, to feel tne soft touch of her hand, to catch the faint scent that seemed to linger in her hair. And he was so absolutely happy. It was an ideal love making. After the day’s work they would stroll together about the wonderful old garden, and watch the sunlight die away on the western hills, and the long strings of wild fowl hurrying down the river to their nightly haunts. Sometimes he would manage to get home for lunch, and afterwards, when the children’s lessons were done, they would saddle a horse for her, and off she and Hugh would go for a long rtde through the mountains, leaving Mary at home to entertain Poss and Binjie. Hugh never lacked an excuse for these excursions. There were always sheep to inspect, boundary riders to interview. and fences to look nt. and off they would go, swinging along through the fragrant long grass, with the old white capped mountain towering above them, and looking down

like a friendly sp-rit. For Hugh these rides were glimpses of paradise. He had for a long time been trying to scrape enough money together to buy a small station of some 10,000 acres further down the river—a bit of splendid land, mostly rich river flat, with a little white walled homestead nestling in among wonderful fruit trees. Here he pictured life with her—the days of cheery exertion and the evenings of content with this beautiful woman by his side.

Such were his dreams. The girl was less conscious of her own feelings—she loved to be near him and to counsel him, but she hardly realised whether she was in love or not. There was nothing by which to try the strength of her feelings —no rival, no jealousy, no absence, -ne course of affairs seemed to run too smoothly for true love, and yet —when he did not eome home at night she found herself vaguely unhappy, and when he was late she found her eyes constantly straying down the road to watch for his horse. It only wanted a crisis, a trial of some sort, to let her know what her feelings really were. For the present she was quite contented to act as his confidante and his adviser, and many a long talk they had together over the various troubles that beset the manager of a station. It would hardly be supposed that a girl could give much advice on such matters, and at first her absolute ignorance of the various difficulties amused him; but when she came to understand things better her eool common sense compelled his admiration. His temperament was nervous and excitable, and he let things worry him. She took everything in a cheery spirit, and laughed him out of his troubles. One would not expect to find many troubles in the rearing of sheep and selling their wool; but the management of any big station is a heavy task, and the management of Kuryong would drive a Job to frenzy. The sheep themselves, to begin with, sieem always in league against their owner. The merino sheep, though apparently estimable animals, are, in reality, dangerous monomaniacs, whose sole desire is to ruin the man that owns them. Their object is to die, and to die with as much trouble to their owners as they can possibly manage. They die in fhte droughts when the grass, roasted to a dull white by the sun, comes out by the roots, aild blows about the bare paddocks; they die in the wet, when the long grass in the sodden gullies breeds "fluke” and “botltle” and all sorts of hideous complaints. They get burnt in bush fires by sheer malice, refusing to run in any given direction, but charging round and round in a ring till they gelt; burnt up. They get drowned in the Hoods by refusing to leave flooded country, though hunted and dogged and chivied with frenzied earnestness.

Then there were the neighbours. To understand Hugh Gordon’s position, it must be explained that the only neighbours within 15 miles of Kuryong head station were a clan of Irish Doyles and Donohoes, bona fide settlers, who lived among the mountains, whose name was legion, whose selections were little paitiches of a couple of hundred acres of rich land hidden away among the rough gorges, and who lived by simple plunder—finding horses that nobody had lost, shearing sheep that they did not own, and branding and selling other people’s calves. They added to their resources by travelling about the country shearing, droving, fencing.

tank sinking, or doing any other job that offered itself; but always returning to their mountain fastnesses ready for any bit of work “on the cross ’ (i.e., dishonest) that happened to turn up. When they stole sheep, they moved them on through the mountains with great celerity, always having a brother, or an uncle, or a cousin, Jerry, or Timothy, or Martan, or Patsy, who had a selection “beyant”—which meant further into the mountains; and by these means they could shift stolen stock right across the great mountain range, and dispose of them among the peaceable folk who dwelt in the good country on the other side, and whose stock they stole in return and brought back. Many a. good horse and fat beast had made 'the stealthy mountain journey, lying hidden in gaps and gullies when pursuit was hot, and being moved on when things were quieter. These people were a standing trouble to Hugh Gordon. The only man they feared was the priest; and it was remarkable what splendid horses Father Fitzgerald used to be able to buy cheap from Ithem. Besides him, they feared nobody, and the great Kuryong Estate lay open to the raids of the Doyles and the Donohoes much as England in the old days lay open to the attack of the Danes. The original Donohoe had arrived in the colony by virtue of a system of immigration which resembled the colonial education system, in that it was secular, free of charge and compulsory; in other words, he had been “sent out” for his country’s good in the early days, had served his time, and become possessed of a small holding among the mountains above Kuryong, about 20 miles from anywhere in particular. Here he had taken unto himself a wife, and, like Ham, in the Bible, had bred and mustered. The clan as it grew had acquired other selections and leases in scattered holdings all among the mountains—owned, in fact, a good large area of country, but 'the greater part of it was barren, rugged, timbered land. Inasmuch as like gathers to like, there soon established themselves close handy a clan of Doyles; and these had intermarried themselves with the Donohoes, and spread themselves over the district till no man could keep tally of them. There was Red Mick Donohoe and Black Mick Donohoe, and Red Mick's son, and Black Mick’s son Mick, and Red Mick’s son Pat, and Black Mick’s son Pat; and there was Gammy Doyle, meaning Doyle with the lame leg, and Scrammy Doyle, meaning Doyle with the injured arm, and Bosthoon Doyle and Omadhawn Doyle, a Bosthoon being a man who never had much sense to speak of, while an Omadhawn is a man who began life with some sense, but lost most of it on his journey. It was a ronunon saying in the countryside that, on nieetting a man on those mountains, one should begin by saying, “Good-day, Doyle!” and if the man replied, “That is not my name,’ one should ait once say, “Well, I meant no offence, Mr Donohoe.’" One could generally make a rough guess as to which was which of the original stock, as the Doyles were flat-featured, bigfooted, Herculean Irishmen, while the Donohoes were little, foxy-faced, hardbitten, wiry fellows, great horsemen, enterprising and quick-witted. But when they came to intermarry, there was no telling it’other from which. Startling likenesses cropped up among the relatives, and it was widely rumoured that one Doyle who was known to be in gaol, and who was vaguely spoken of by the clan as being “away,” was in fact serving an accumulation of sentences for himself and a lot of other members of the family, whose sins he had, for a consideration, taken upon his own shoulders. It was a great sight to see the joint clans make their annual descent on the little mountain town of Kiley’s Grossing at the race time. They took command of the whole place, and woe to the unfortunate who interfered! As a rule, they fought peaceably among themselvqf; but if any intruder ventil-

a ted any opinions against the Doyles or the Donohoes, he stood a first-class chance of going home in a stunned eondirtion, under the seat of the public house waggonette, with several Doyles and Donohoes wiping their new heavy boots on him. Once word came that a district full of Kellys, whose headquarters were over the ranges beyond Kiley’s Crossing, had spoken slightingly of the Doyle-Donohoe faction, and when the clans met at the Kiley’s Crossing races there was trouble. At first both parties were distant and civil 'to each other, and things went right enough, except for a few isolated fights, until the principal race of the day came on, in which the Donohoes had entered their famous champion “Faugh-a-ballagh,” a big horse of undoubted breeding, for whose pur chase nc member of the family could ever shew a receipt; while the Kellys ran their celebrated nag Toe-lthe-Mark, about whose ownership there was tne following history:—When the last bushranger was shot in the district, he was riding a very fine mare. As no owner was forthcoming for her, Kelly the Gafler —which means means KeLy the Fitch-and-Toss artist —claimed her. and in default of a better claimant, the mare was handed over to him. she produced Toe-lthe-Mark, whk>, under the name of Happy Joe, Hard Times, Come-by-Chance, and so on, had been disqualified at every meeting in the country-side, and — constantly re P pearing under new names—had made himself a terror to the district. It was. looked upon as a certainty that he would beat Faugh-a-ballagh, and as the horses went out, Kelly the Gaiter called out to Red Mick Donohoe, who, for the time being, figured as owner of Faugh-a-ballagh, “I’ll give fifteen bob for that hor-r-se, and chance how you kem by him,” which in itself was enough to rouse a sensitive and honourable crowd like the Donohoes to boiling point. Bult worse remained behind; for Kelly the Gaffer, seeing no chance of making any money betting, had instructed his J y pull Toe-lthe-Mark, and let Faugh-a-ballagh win; while Red Mick Donohoe, thinking his horse must be beaten, had backed the opposition animal, and told his jockey to pull Faugh-a-ballagh, and let Toe-the-Mark win. As there were only two starting, and neither wished to win, the first half-mile was run at a slow hard pulling canter; then the excited clansmen in the bough and sapling grandstand saw both riders pull up, indulge in a good deal of excited gesticulation, and finally jump off and tie up their horses and set about each other with their fists. In a moment every man, woman and child on the course set on across the track to the fight, where young Patsy Kelly, the rider of Toe-the-mark, was giving little Martin Donohoe, who rode Faugh-a-ballagh, the father of a hiding. Martin was doing his best for the family credit, and was fighting as gamely as a bull terrier: but he was clearly overmatched; and as the combatants clinched, the first Donohoe that arrived on the scene hit Patsy Kelly an awful clip on the head. Immediately all hands “chipped in,’ and—blue gum and stringy bark saplings being available in millions—as elegant a faction fight as one might wish to see was soon in progress. The women screamed encouragement, and rushed clawing at each other. The very dogs on either side rolled into each other; and before long the Doyles and Donohoes drove the Kellys before them, like chaff before a gale. They belted every Kelly above 3 feet high that they could find. They took control of the township, and made every person that they eould catch say “Hurray for the Doyles and the Donohoes!” Then they went back to the racecourse and set fire to the grand stand, which was made of dried saplings and bark, and roofed with dry boughs, and consequently blazed merrily; and several prominent Kellys', who had been peacefully sleeping oft’ the effects of drink in the back of the stand, came near lieing roasted alive. In fact they enjoyed themselves thoroughly, and the Kiley’s Crossing races was a great day in the annals of the district.

These were the neighbours whose constant depredations were drawing lines on Hugh Gordon’s face. “1 wouldn't care,” he confided to Miss Harriott, “if they only took a lienst or two. But the' sheep are going by the hundreds. We mustered five hundred short in one paddock this month. And there isn’t a cow among the

Doyles and Donohoes but has three calves at least, and two of each three calves belong to us.” He dared not prosecute. No local jury would convict in face of the hostility that would lie aroused in every member of the clan. They had made alibis a sjiecial study; the very judges were staggered at the absolute calmness and plausibility with which they would get themselves out of difficulties. Besides, they were too dangerous to provoke. A big station, with a lot of hostile neighbours, is like a whale with the killers round it; it is open to attack on all sides, and cannot retaliate. A match carelessly dropped in a patch of grass would set miles of country in a blaze. Hugh Gordon, as he missed his stock and saw his fences cut and his grass burnt, could only grind his teeth and hope for a lucky chance putting some of the enemy! in his power; and the chance came sooner than he expected. (To be continued.)