An Outback Marriage by Banjo Paterson (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📕

he raised himself inch by inch. It is a feat that requires a good man to perform, and the strain was very great. Grimly he kept at it, and drew nearer and nearer to the top. Then, at last, a hand seized him; half-sick with overexertion, he struggled out and fell gasping to the ground. For a minute or two the universe was turning round with him. The Chinee and the strange white man moved in a kind of flicker, unreal as the figures in a cinematograph. Then all was blank for a while.

When he came to, he was lying by the well with a bag under his head, and the strange white man was trying to pour some spirits down his throat.

“I’m⁠—all right⁠—thanks!” gasped Hugh.

“By Gord, Mister, it’s lucky I happened to come along,” said the stranger. “You an’ Sampson’d ha’ both been drownded. That Chow couldn’t haul him up. Dead beat the Chow was when I came. I jis’ come ridin’ up, thinkin’ to get a few pound of onions to take out to the camp, and I see the Chow a-haulin’ and a-haulin’ at that windlass like as if he was tryin’ to pull the bottom out of the well. I rides up and sings out ‘What ho! Chaney, what yer got?’ And he says, ‘Ketch hold,’ he says, and that was all he could say; he was fair beat. And then I heard you singing out, and I says to meself, ‘Is the whole popperlation of the Northern Territory down this here well? How many more is there, Chancy?’ I says. And then bung goes the old windlass, and lucky it ketched in the top of the well; if it had fell down on the top of you, it’d ha’ stiffened you all right. And how you got up that well beats me. By Cripes, it does.”

“How’s the⁠—man that⁠—was down with me?” said Hugh slowly.

“What, Sampson? ’E’s all right. Couldn’t kill’m with a meat-axe. He must ha’ swallowed very near all the water in that well. Me an’ the Chow emptied very near two buckets out of him. He’s dead to the world jes’ now. How do you feel, boss?”

“I’ll be all right in a minute,” said Hugh. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Tommy Prince,” said the stranger. “I jist kem in from my camp today for them onions.”

Hugh drew a long breath. The luck had turned at last.

XXV In the Buffalo Camp

“You’re just the man I was looking for,” said Hugh, taking in the stranger with his eyes. “I want to get out to Reeves’s buffalo camp, and I hear you’re the only man who knows that country at all. Can you get time to come down with me? I’ll make it worth your while.”

He waited for the reply with a beating heart. If this man failed him he saw nothing for it but to go back. The stranger lit his pipe with the leisurely movements of a man who had never been in a real hurry in his life.

Then he spoke slowly.

“Well, it’s this way, boss, you see. I’m just startin’ off in no end of a hurry to go and take a team of bullocks to the Oriental to draw quartz.”

“Can’t you put it off for a while?” said Hugh. “It’s getting near the wet season.”

“Well, I’d like to go with you, boss, but I couldn’t chuck ’em over⁠—not rightly I couldn’t.” He stroked his beard and relapsed into thought.

“Let’s go in and get a drink,” said Hugh. “I suppose there is some square-face inside.”

The square-face settled it. They had one drink, and the stranger began to think less of the needs of the Oriental. They had another, and he said he didn’t suppose it’d matter much if the Oriental had to wait a bit for their stone, and the bullocks were all over the bush and very poor, and by the time he got them together the wet season would be on. They had a third, and he said that the Oriental had been hanging on for six months, and it wouldn’t hurt it to hang on for seven, and he wouldn’t see a man like Hugh stuck.

So the shareholders in that valuable concern, the Oriental Mine, were kept in pleasing suspense for some months longer, while the mine-manager (whose salary was going on all the time) did nothing but smoke, and write reports to the effect that “a very valuable body of stone was at grass, awaiting cartage to the battery, when a splendid crushing was a certainty.” Meanwhile Tommy Prince was gaily journeying with Hugh down to the buffalo camp.

Prince, a typical moleskin-trousered, cotton-shirted, cabbage-tree-hatted bushman, soon fixed up all details. He annexed the horses belonging to the store, sagely remarking that, as Hugh had saved their owner’s life, he could afford to let him have a few horses. He also helped himself to packsaddles, camping gear, supplies, and all sorts of odds and ends⁠—not forgetting a couple of gallons of rum, mosquito-nets made of cheese cloth, blankets, and a rifle and cartridges. They fitted out the expedition in fine style, while unconscious Sampson slept the sleep of the half-drowned. The placid Chinese cook fried great lumps of goat for them to eat, heedless of all things except his opium-pipe, to which he had recourse in the evening, the curious dreamy odour of the opium blending strangely with the aromatic scent of the bush.

At daylight they started, and for three days rode through the wilderness, camping out at night, while the horses with bells and hobbles grazed round the camp. Tommy Prince steered a course by instinct, guided as unerringly as the Israelites by their pillar of fire.

By miles of trackless, worthless wilderness, by rolling open plains, by rocky ranges and stony passes, they pushed out and ever further out, till at last, one day, Tommy said, “They ought to be hereabouts, some place.” So saying, he dropped a lighted match into a big patch of