he laughed with another of his flashing smiles, when remonstrated with, and Mac chuckled in an aside, “Didn’t I tell you a woman doesn’t represent business here?”
Chapter 4
The swim being beyond the horses, they were left hobbled out on the north banks, to wait for the river to fall, and after another swift race down and across stream, Mine Host landed every one safely on the south side of the flood, and soon we were clambering up the steep track that led from the river to the “Pub.”
Coming up from the river, the Katherine Settlement appeared to consist solely of the “Pub” and its accompanying store; but beyond the “Pub,” which, by the way, seemed to be hanging on to its own verandah posts for support, we found an elongated, three-roomed building, nestling under deep verandahs, and half-hidden beneath a grove of lofty scarlet flowering ponchianas.
“The Cottage is always set apart for distinguished visitors,” Mine Host said, bidding us welcome with another smile, but never a hint that he was placing his own private quarters at our disposal. Like all bushmen, he could be delicately reticent when conferring a favour; but a forgotten razor-strop betrayed him later on.
In the meantime we discovered the remainder of the Settlement from the Cottage verandahs, spying out the Police Station as it lurked in ambush just round the first bend in a winding bush track—apparently keeping one eye on the “Pub”; and then we caught a gleam of white roofs away beyond further bends in the track, where the Overland Telegraph “Department” stood on a little rise, aloof from the “Pub” and the Police, shut away from the world, yet attending to its affairs, and, incidentally, to those of the bush-folk: a tiny Settlement, with a tiny permanent population of four men and two women—women who found their own homes all-sufficient, and rarely left them, although the men-folk were here, there, and everywhere.
All around and within the Settlement was bush: and beyond the bush, stretching away and away on every side of it, those hundreds of thousands of square miles that constitute the Never-Never—miles sending out and absorbing again from day to day the floating population of the Katherine.
Before supper the Telegraph Department and the Police Station called on the Cottage to present compliments. Then the Wag came with his welcome. “Didn’t expect you to-day,” he drawled, with unmistakable double meaning in his drawl. “You’re come sooner than we expected. Must have had luck with the rivers”; and Mac became enthusiastic. “Luck!” he cried. “Luck! She’s got the luck of the Auld Yin himself—skinned through everything by the skin of our teeth. No one else’ll get through those rivers under a week.” And they didn’t.
Remembering the telegrams, the Wag shot a swift quizzing glance at him; but it took more than a glance to disconcert Mac once his mind was made up, and he met it unmoved, and entered into a vivid description of the “passage of the Fergusson,” which filled in our time until supper.
After supper the Cottage returned the calls, and then, rain coming down in torrents, the Telegraph, the Police, the Cottage and the “Pub” retired to rest, wondering what the morrow would bring forth.
The morrow brought forth more rain, and the certainty that, as the river was still rising, the swim would be beyond the horses for several days yet; and because of this uncertainty, the Katherine bestirred itself to honour its tethered guests.
The Telegraph and the Police Station issued invitations for dinner, and the “Pub” that had already issued a hint that “the boys could refrain from knocking down cheques as long as a woman was staying in the place” now issued an edict limiting the number of daily drinks per man.
The invitations were accepted with pleasure, and the edict was attended to with a murmur of approval in which, however, there was one dissenting voice: a little bearded bushman “thought the Katherine was overdoing it a bit,” and suggested as an amendment that “drunks could make themselves scarce when she’s about.” But Mine Host easily silenced him by offering to “see what the missus thought about it.”
Then for a day the Katherine “took its bearings,” and keen, scrutinising glances summed up the Unknown Woman, looking her through and through until she was no longer an Unknown Woman, while the Măluka looked on interested. He knew the bush-folk well, and that their instinct would be unerring, and left the missus to slip into whichever niche in their lives they thought fit to place her. And as she slipped into a niche built up of strong, staunch comradeship, the black community considered that they, too, had fathomed the missus; and it became history in the camp that the Măluka had stolen her from a powerful Chief of the Whites, and, deeming it wise to disappear with her until the affair had blown over, had put many flooded rivers between him and his pursuers. “Would any woman have flung herself across rivers on wires, speeding on without rest or pause, unless afraid of pursuit?” the camp asked in committee, and the most sceptical were silenced.
Then followed other days full of pleasant intercourse; for once sure of its welcome, bushmen are lavish with their friendship. And as we roamed about the tiny Settlement, the Wag and others vied with the Măluka, Mine Host, and Mac in “making things pleasant for the missus”: relating experiences for her entertainment; showing all there was to be shown, and obeying the edict with cheerful, unquestioning chivalry.
Neither the Head Stockman nor the little bushman, however, had made any offers of friendship, Dan having gone out to the station immediately after interviewing the Măluka, while the little bushman spent most of his time getting out of the way of the missus whenever she appeared on his horizon.
“A Tam-o-Shanter fleeing from the furies of a too fertile imagination,” the Măluka laughed after a particularly comical dash to cover.
Poor Tam! Those days must live in his memory like a hideous nightmare! I, of course, knew nothing of the edict at the time—for bushmen do not advertise their chivalry—and wandered round the straggling Settlement vaguely surprised at its sobriety, and turning up in such unexpected places that the little bushman was constantly on the verge of apoplexy.
But experience teaches quickly. On the first day, after running into me several times, he learned the wisdom of spying out the land before turning a corner. On the second day, after we had come on him while thus engaged several other times, he learned the foolishness of placing too much confidence in corners, and deciding by the law of averages that the bar was the only safe place in the Settlement, availed himself of its sanctuary in times of danger. On the third day he learned that the law of averages is a weak reed to lean on; for on slipping round a corner, and mistaking a warning signal from the Wag, he whisked into the bar to whisk out again with a clatter of hobnailed boots, for I was in there examining some native curios. “She’s in there next,” he gasped as he passed the Wag on his way to the cover of the nearest corner.
“Poor Tam!” How he must have hated women as he lurked in the doubtful ambush of that corner.
“How he did skoot!” the Wag chuckled later on when recounting with glee, to the Măluka and Mac, the story of Tam’s dash for cover.
Pitying Tam, I took his part, and said he seemed a sober, decent little man and couldn’t help being shy; then paused, wondering at the queer expression on the men’s faces.
Mac coughed in embarrassment, and the Măluka and the Wag seemed pre-occupied, and, fearing I had been misunderstood, I added hastily: “So is everyone in the Settlement, for that matter,” thereby causing further embarrassment.
After a short intense silence the Wag “thought he’d be getting along,” and as he moved off the Măluka laughed. “Oh, missus, missus!” and Mac blurted out the whole tale of the edict—concluding rather ambiguously by saying: “Don’t you go thinking it’s made any difference to any of us, because it hasn’t. We’re not saints, but we’re not pigs, and, besides, it was a pleasure.”
I doubted if it was much pleasure to Tam-o-Shanter; but forgetting he