Part 25

To refuse a man hospitality in the bush--such a thing was never heard of, and, though Stanesby said no welcoming word, it never occurred to Turner to doubt that he was more than welcome.

“It’s right out of your way.”

Turner stared.

“Good Lord! What’s ten miles, and we haven’t met for years. I must say, old chap, you don’t seem particularly pleased to see an old chum.”

“I--they ain’t so plentiful I can afford to do that. No, I was thinking of going in to the station with you.”

“Right you are, old man, do you? Only we’ll put up at your place for the night--my horse’s pretty well done--and go on in the morning.”

Stanesby said nothing, only turned his horse’s head slightly to the left. Save the red bluffs away to the east there was nothing to mark the change of direction. There was no reason apparently for his choosing one direction rather than another.

They rode in silence, these two who had been college chums and had not met for years. Possibly it was the one man’s good fortune that raised a barrier between them. It was not easy for Turner to talk of present difficulties and troubles when, as Stanesby said, he was going to “cut it all”; it was not easy for him to speak of bygone times when the other man was going back to them, and he would be left here without a prospect of a change. And Stanesby said nothing, he could only think of the great difference between them; and yesterday there was nothing he would have liked better than this meeting with his old friend, which to-day fell flat. No, he had nothing to say. Already their paths lay wide apart.

An hour’s slow riding brought them to the creek Stanesby had spoken of. There was no gentle slope down to the river, the plain simply seemed to open at their feet, and show them the river bed some twenty feet below. Only a river bed about twenty yards wide, but there was no water to be seen, only signs, marked signs in that thirsty land, that water had been there. Down where the last moisture had lingered the grass grew green and fresh, and leafy shrubs and small trees and even tangled creepers made this dip in the plain a pleasant resting-place for the eye wearied with the monotony of the world above it.

“By Jove!” cried Turner, surprised.

“Told you so,” said his companion, “but it ain’t much after all. Fancy calling that wiry stuff grass in England, and admiring those straggly creepers and shrubs. Why we wouldn’t give ‘em house-room in the dullest, deadest corner of the wilderness at home.”

“Lucky beggar!” sighed the other man. “But you see they ‘re all I ‘m likely to have for many a long year to come. Hang it all, man, I bet you ‘d put that shrub there, that chap with the bright red flower, into your hot-house and look after him with the greatest care, or your gardener would for you.”

“It’d require a d----d hot house,” said Stanesby laconically, wiping his hot face.

They did not descend into the bed of the creek, the ground was better adapted for riding up above, and a mile further along they came upon a large blackfellows’ camp stretched all along the edge of a water-hole.

“The brutes,” said Turner; “bagging the water of course.”

“They ‘d die if they didn’t, I suppose. This, and the hole by my place is the only water I know of for forty miles round. After all they were here first, and if I had my way they’d be left to it.”

“All very well for you to talk,” grumbled Turner. “Do they look worth anything?”

Certainly they did not. The camp was a mere collection of breakwinds made of bark and branches, more like badly-stacked woodheaps than anything else, and the children of the soil lay basking in the sun, among the dogs and filth and refuse of the camp, or crouched over small fires as if it were bitter cold. The dogs started up yelping, for a blackfellow’s dog doesn’t know how to bark properly, as the white men passed, but their masters took no notice. A stark naked gin, with a fillet of greasy skin bound round her head, and a baby slung in a net on her back, came whining to Turner with outstretched hands. She had mixed with the stockkeepers before, and knew a few words of English.

“Give it terbacker along a black Mary. Budgery{1} fellow you,” but he pushed her away with the butt end of his whip.

“My place’s not above a mile away now,” said Stanesby, as they left the precincts of the camp behind them.

“I wouldn’t have those beggars so close, if I were you. Some fine morning you’ll find yourself--”

“Pooh! They’re quite tame and harmless. I ‘ve got a boy from them about the place, and he’s very good as boys go. Besides, I ‘m off as soon as possible.”

1 Means “good.”

“Well, I bet you the man who takes your place thinks differently.”

“Very likely.”

“Got a decent hutkeeper?”

“What? Oh yes. Pretty fair.”

Clearly Stanesby was not in the mood for conversation, and Turner gave it up as a bad job. It was about two o’clock now, the very hottest hour of the day, and all nature seemed to feel it. Not a sound broke the stillness, not the cry of bird or beast, nothing save the sound of their horses’ hoofs on the hard ground was to be heard.