Joe Wilson and His Mates [24]
and there were yarns about her. Some said
she got the sack for exposing the doctors -- or carrying on with them --
I didn't remember which. The fact of a city woman going out to live
in such a place, with such people, was enough to make talk among women
in a town twenty miles away, but then there must have been something extra
about her, else Bushmen wouldn't have talked and carried her name so far;
and I wanted a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way,
thinking like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels
of the waggon.
I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack,
following the team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled;
I tied the end of a half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end
and dumped it on to the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim;
I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled into the saddle with him.
The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank,
clattering and splashing over the crossing, and struggling up
the opposite bank to the level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer,
but broken-winded -- she must have run without wind after the first half mile.
She had the old racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company
I'd have to pull her hard else she'd race the other horse or burst.
She ran low fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode.
She ran like wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then
-- like a railway carriage -- when she settled down to it.
The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose,
and I let the bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way.
Let the strongest man, who isn't used to it, hold a baby in one position
for five minutes -- and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt
the ache in my arms that night -- it must have gone before I was in
a fit state of mind to feel it. And at home I'd often growled
about being asked to hold the baby for a few minutes.
I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby at the same time.
It was a ghostly moonlight night. There's no timber in the world
so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight -- or just about daybreak.
The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged, twisted boughs;
the ghostly blue-white bark of the `white-box' trees;
a dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out
here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road
that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse
laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight --
every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:
you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk
of a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off,
would start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost
glistening on these things, according to the season. Now and again
a great grey kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch
down by the road, would start with a `thump-thump', and away up the siding.
The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night -- all going my way --
and being left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim:
I just sat back and the mare `propped' -- she'd been a stock-horse,
and was used to `cutting-out'. I felt Jim's hands and forehead;
he was in a burning fever. I bent forward, and the old mare
settled down to it again. I kept saying out loud -- and Mary and me
often laughed about it (afterwards): `He's limp yet! -- Jim's limp yet!'
(the words seemed jerked out of me by sheer fright) -- `He's limp yet!'
till the mare's feet took it up. Then, just when I thought
she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she suddenly started forward,
like a cable tram gliding along on its own and the grip put on suddenly.
It was just what she'd do when I'd be riding alone and a strange horse
drew up from behind -- the old racing instinct. I FELT the thing too!
I felt as if a strange horse WAS there! And then --
the words just jerked out of me by
she got the sack for exposing the doctors -- or carrying on with them --
I didn't remember which. The fact of a city woman going out to live
in such a place, with such people, was enough to make talk among women
in a town twenty miles away, but then there must have been something extra
about her, else Bushmen wouldn't have talked and carried her name so far;
and I wanted a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way,
thinking like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels
of the waggon.
I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack,
following the team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled;
I tied the end of a half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end
and dumped it on to the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim;
I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled into the saddle with him.
The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank,
clattering and splashing over the crossing, and struggling up
the opposite bank to the level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer,
but broken-winded -- she must have run without wind after the first half mile.
She had the old racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company
I'd have to pull her hard else she'd race the other horse or burst.
She ran low fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode.
She ran like wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then
-- like a railway carriage -- when she settled down to it.
The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose,
and I let the bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way.
Let the strongest man, who isn't used to it, hold a baby in one position
for five minutes -- and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt
the ache in my arms that night -- it must have gone before I was in
a fit state of mind to feel it. And at home I'd often growled
about being asked to hold the baby for a few minutes.
I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby at the same time.
It was a ghostly moonlight night. There's no timber in the world
so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight -- or just about daybreak.
The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged, twisted boughs;
the ghostly blue-white bark of the `white-box' trees;
a dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out
here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road
that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse
laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight --
every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:
you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk
of a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off,
would start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost
glistening on these things, according to the season. Now and again
a great grey kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch
down by the road, would start with a `thump-thump', and away up the siding.
The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night -- all going my way --
and being left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim:
I just sat back and the mare `propped' -- she'd been a stock-horse,
and was used to `cutting-out'. I felt Jim's hands and forehead;
he was in a burning fever. I bent forward, and the old mare
settled down to it again. I kept saying out loud -- and Mary and me
often laughed about it (afterwards): `He's limp yet! -- Jim's limp yet!'
(the words seemed jerked out of me by sheer fright) -- `He's limp yet!'
till the mare's feet took it up. Then, just when I thought
she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she suddenly started forward,
like a cable tram gliding along on its own and the grip put on suddenly.
It was just what she'd do when I'd be riding alone and a strange horse
drew up from behind -- the old racing instinct. I FELT the thing too!
I felt as if a strange horse WAS there! And then --
the words just jerked out of me by