CHAPTER IV.
Matilda Breeze-Kenny Rye.
Table of Contents Next day I passed through Bald Hills, crossed Pine River, and two hours later crossed the North Pine-on a narrow plank. Being thirsty, I dropped on my hands and knees to drink; but the water was as salt as the sea. A sturdily-built, middle-aged woman in a poke bonnet had stood watching me. As I rose disgustedly to my feet, she came forward.
"I was just wonderin' if you could drink Pine River water," she said, speaking slowly. "No one about here can."
"Then you observe I am not a walking freak, madam," I returned.
She appeared to harbour a doubt about that point. "You're not like an ordinary swagman," she said, musingly. "I know you haven't been long on the track, for your blanket's new an' your billy's new." Her eye lingered awhile on my hat. "Are you lookin' for work?"
"What else would I be looking for! Do you think I'm trudging about just for exercise, and to give the shoe-maker a turn?"
She looked me up and down. "I don't know," she said. "I thought you might only be going somewhere, or having what they call a walkin' tour. There was a newspaper man went through here last week, carryin' his swag and billy, and wearin' a Johnny-come-lately hat, the same as yourself. He was spendin' his holidays on a walkin' tour, he told me, and he was inquirin' if we had anything special around here in the way of scenery. I took particular notice of him because he tried to drink the river water, too. A very affable man; but I thought it was a queer way of enjoyin' himself. I don't suppose you're enjoyin' it?"
"No; with me it's compulsory. That makes all the difference."
A Chinaman here came jogging down the road towards the crossing plank. On his shoulder he carried the customary bamboo, from one end of which his swag dangled, and from the other his tucker-bag and campware. The sole of an old boot was lashed with greenhide and string to each brown foot. Putting his load down, he wiped his perspiring brow and inquired:
"You savee Blisbane?"
"Yes," I said.
"How muchee far-how long?"
"About thirty miles."
"O cli!" He picked up his load again, wobbled across the plank, and went on at a great pace.
"A queer lot you meet on the track," the woman remarked. "You won't lack for company when you get out a bit. But you want to be careful who you pick up with. Swagmen are generally good fellows, as straight and trusty as you could meet anywhere; but there's an odd bad one among them, as there is everywhere else, even in the highest society, as my husband says, and you can't ways tell good eggs from bad ones by their looks. I often wonder when I see a young fellow passin' out along here, what will become of him. So many travellers die of thirst; some get lost and perish, and now and again a poor unfortunate gets killed accidentally or otherwise. What might your name be, young man, if it isn't rude to ask?"
"Edinbury Swan," I informed her.
"I'll put it down in my traveller's book," She said. "It's a little hobby of mine. I've got pages of names down-of men I've talked with at this crossing or who've called at my house just up among the trees there. A few write to me when they get settled, and it's really wonderful where some of them do get to. There was the Trooper, as we call him now. He camped in our back room one wet night. Twelve months afterwards he wrote to me from McKinley, where he was stock-ridin', and he said he'd tramped three thousand miles before he unrolled his bluey there. I didn't get another word of him, good, bad or indifferent, for three years; and then one day he rode up to the house in uniform. Ah, and a fine man he was. He'd come down with cattle, and, meetin' a chum of his who was in the force, he went straight away and joined the mounted police.
"It's only an odd one I get tidings of, you know. Two of the nicest chaps I met here died of thirst out back. Seven more were advertised for by their anxious relatives, who'd never heard any more of them. One, it seemed, had left a wife to go to a job, and she was tellin' him wherever he might be to take notice that she intended to get married again. And there was Dr. Bunglo-a wanderin' specialist he made out to be. My husband bought some pills from him, and he reckoned they did him a lot of good, too. Imagination works wonders with some people. It seems, in his wanderings about the bush, this Dr. Bunglo saw the need of a mighty pill for station hands and rouseabouts, who are always complainin' about something or other, and imagining they've got half the ailments under the sun, when in reality there is nothing more wrong with them than that tired feeling. All work and no play will give any man that complaint, as my husband says. So Dr. Bunglo set to work; got an acre of ground in a quiet corner, and grew a ton or so of Indian shot. You've seen them, I suppose? Round black grains like pills, hard as nails, and grow in black pods. Then he got some thousands of boxes, packed and labelled his product, and travelled round with 'em in a light waggonette. His celebrated Indian pills was the only genuine remedy for 'shearer's back,' 'barcoo,' bad eyes and failin' memory. He was making a fortune-by degrees, till a doctor got hold of some, and let the cat out. He posted a camp of musterers ahead of Dr. Bunglo, and when the old fraud got among them with his Indian grain, they made a bonfire of his cargo, put the station brand on him so they would know him again, and flung him into the waterhole.
"Another who came into my book was big Jim Winton. He was very hard up, with scarcely a boot to his foot, poor man. He'd been engaged to a nice lookin' girl, the daughter of a publican, and she threw him over for a useless sort of a fellow who'd drawn a prize in Tattersalls' Sweep, an' set himself up as a general storekeeper. That business lasted about five years, and then he lost it all, and had to take to hawkin' for a livin'. Well, Jim Winton seemed to go to rack and ruin after bein' jilted, and he looked very weary and down-hearted when he went through here. But he got on all right. He's managin' a big sheep station now out west.
"And then there was Bert Mundy who was carryin' a fruit tin for a billy can when I registered him. A month before that he was makin' home to get married after two years' mining up north, and he lost his two horses, everything but what he stood in, crossin' a flooded creek. I felt real sorry for him, I did; but he said it couldn't be helped, and he went away whistlin' as if the girl was waitin' round the next corner, and everything ready for the weddin'. He's a boss drover now. I often see his name in the paper. If anything should happen to you, which I hope will be nothing calamitous; or if you should find a nugget of gold as big as your head, or ever do anything, out of the ordinary, I'm bound to read about it in the paper, and I'll remember the day when you stopped for a drink at the North Pine."
"I should like to remember you, too," I said, as a hint to her to complete the introduction. Her hobby, as strange a one surely as a person could take up, interested me.
"I'm Mrs. Matilda Breeze-Happy Valley, North Pine River. You might meet my husband on the road out from Caboolture. He's haulin' timber. Everybody knows Bob Breeze. He's a tall, thin man, with a wisp of black beard-which I often tell him he ought to shave off, seeing he'd improve his appearance by doin' so; and he wears a cabbage-tree hat with a snake skin band around it."
Curiously enough, though I did not have the honour of meeting her husband, who happened to be cutting timber at the time. I met his commissionaire while making a few small purchases at a store in Caboolture, which busy little town I reached shortly after I had said good-bye to Mrs. Breeze. The commissionaire was an aborigine, who came in with a slab of pine, three feet long by a foot wide, which he dumped on the counter with the explanation that it was a letter. On one side of it was written in charcoal:
Please send me one pound of tobacco and a tin o golden syrup. Money enclosed.-Yours truly, ROBERT BREEZE.
"Where's the money?" the bearer was asked.
"No money," was the answer.
"Your boss says 'money enclosed' here," said the storekeeper, tapping the charcoaled lines.
The blackfellow repeated that no money had been sent; nothing, in fact, had been said to him about money.
Surmising that the writer did not trust his henchman, I carefully examined the slab, and in one end discovered a plugged augur hole. The slab was then split with an axe, and the enclosed money, which was in shillings, was revealed to the utter amazement of the man who had brought it.
In Caboolture also I found a mate-a heavily-built man of middle age, with a dark-gingery beard, who was going to the Riggings near Xanango. He had been spelling for a week in Caboolture, mainly for the purpose of breaking the monotony of camp and track life by the enjoyment of civilised quarters. The longing to taste again the joys of home comes to most travellers after a lengthy experience of primitive conditions. The majority are far from their real homes; some of them have no homes at all, only the memory of a parental home they left long ago, perhaps in another State or in another land, and too often the public house is their only substitute.
My mate's name was Kenny Rye. He was a happy, improvident person, who made good money at times, and enjoyed it to the last cent during his periodical spells in town, he apparently had no other ambition than to drift simply down the river of life, and find a temporary, glorified harbour here and there.
He had made a good impression on the townsfolk during his brief stay in Caboolture, and it began with...
