Joe Wilson and His Mates [21]
and when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy,
or too tired and worried, or full of schemes for the future,
to take much notice of Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes.
`You never take notice of the child,' she'd say. `You could surely find
a few minutes of an evening. What's the use of always worrying and brooding?
Your brain will go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it,
it will teach you a lesson. You'll be an old man, and Jim a young one,
before you realise that you had a child once. Then it will be too late.'
This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with her,
because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself --
only for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by,
I said to myself, `I'll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time,
just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.' And the hard days
went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years ---- Ah, well!
Mary used to say, when things would get worse, `Why don't you talk to me, Joe?
Why don't you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting yourself
up in yourself and brooding -- eating your heart out?
It's hard for me: I get to think you're tired of me, and selfish.
I might be cross and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble.
How am I to know, if you don't tell me?'
But I didn't think she'd understand.
And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums closing
over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of sunlight and shade
passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of the load,
over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again --
Jim and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges,
some fifteen miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy Creek
for the night. I got the horses out and took the harness off.
Jim wanted badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load;
for one of the horses -- a vicious, red-eyed chestnut -- was a kicker:
he'd broken a man's leg. I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts,
and the chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round
with their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts,
munching and switching their tails. We use double shafts, you know,
for horse-teams -- two pairs side by side, -- and prop them up,
and stretch bags between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes.
I threw the spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side,
letting about half of it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making
a floor and a break-wind. I threw down bags and the blankets and 'possum rug
against the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup,
and got a gin-case we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down,
and made a good fire at a log close handy, and soon everything
was comfortable. Ryan's Crossing was a grand camp. I stood with my pipe
in my mouth, my hands behind my back, and my back to the fire,
and took the country in.
Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here
were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars,
boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those gnarled,
grey-barked, dry-rotted `native apple-trees' (about as much like apple-trees
as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit of sand-dusty road
that I was always glad to get over in wet weather. To the left
on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs croaking,
and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended
in steep `sidings' coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road
that skirted them, running on west up over a `saddle' in the ridges
and on towards Dubbo. The road by Lahey's Creek to a place called Cobborah
branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the left,
just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the Cudgeegong
were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line,
and so they gave small carriers