Tom Gerrard

CHAPTER X

Douglas Fraser was a widower, his wife having died when Kate was only four years of age. She was now nineteen, and had been her father’s constant companion and helpmate ever since the death of her mother. Fraser, who to all appearance was only the ordinary type of working miner common to all Australasian gold-fields, was in reality a highly-educated man, who had been not only a successful barrister, but a judge of the District Court of New South Wales. The death of his wife, however, to whom he was passionately devoted, changed the whole course of his existence. Resigning his appointment, he withdrew himself absolutely from all society, sold his house and such other property as he possessed, and then, to the astonishment of his many warm friends, disappeared with his little daughter from Sydney altogether. A year or so later one of these friends came across him riding down the main street of the mining township of Gympie (on the Mary River in Queensland). He was in the ordinary diggers’ costume, and the once clean-shaved, legal face was now covered with a rough, strong beard.

“How are you, Favenc?” said his ex-Honour the Judge, quietly, as he pulled up his horse, and dismounted; “have you too, caught the gold-field fever, that I see you in Gympie?”

“No! I’m here on circuit with Judge Blakeney—Crown-Prosecuting. And how are you, Fraser?”

“Oh, very well! I’ve gone in for mining; always had a hankering that way. So far I have had no brilliant success, but hope to get on to something good in the course of time.”

For some years after this he wandered from one gold-field to another, always getting further northward, and always accompanied by his child, to whom he was able to give a good education, though not in a style that would have met with the approbation of the principal of a ladies’ school. He had finally settled at Fraser’s Gully, where he had discovered a large, but not rich reef, and for the past five years he and some half a dozen miners had worked it, sometimes doing very well, at others their labour yielding them a poor return. On the whole, however, he was making money, and the life suited him. Very often he would urge Kate to go to Sydney for a year or two, and see something of the world, under the care of her mother’s people, but she steadfastly refused to leave him.

“It would be simply horrible for me, father. I could not stand it for even a month. I am very, very happy here with you, and only wish I had more to do.”

“You have quite enough I think, little woman—keeping house for me, milking and dairy work, and making bread for seven hungry men.”

“I like it. And then I am the only woman about here now that Mrs Tallis has gone, and I feel more important than ever. But I do wish I were a man, and could help you more than I do.”

Between father and daughter there had ever been the greatest love and confidence, and their existence, though often monotonous, was a happy one. To her father’s miners, “Miss Kate” was a fairy goddess, and consternation reigned among them when one day a passing Jewish hawker told them that it was rumoured that Parson Forde was “a stickin’ up ter Miss Fraser, and the match was as good as made.”

The men had bought a couple of bottles of whisky from the hawker when this portentous announcement was made, and little “Cockney Smith” the youngest man of the party, who was just about to drink off the first grog he had tasted since his semi-annual spree at Boorala, set it down untouched.

“I thought the bloomin’ Holy Joe was a comin’ ‘ere pretty frequent,” he said, “but didn’t think he was after Miss Kate. Well, all I can say is,”—he raised his glass—“that suthin’ll ‘appin to ‘im. I ‘ope ‘e may be bloomin’ well drownded when ‘e’s crossin’ a creek.”

“Shut up, Cockney,” growled Sam Young, an old grey-haired miner, “it’s only a Boorala yarn, and Boorala is as full of liars as the bottomless pit is full of wood and coal merchants. And it doesn’t become you to call the parson a Holy Joe. Maybe you’ve forgottten that when you busted your last cheque at Hooley’s pub in Boorala, and had the dilly trimmings, that it was the parson who brought you back here, you boozy little swine. Didn’t he, boys?”

“You bet he did,” was the unanimous response.

“And come here and give you four good nips a day outer his own flask until you was rid of the green dogs with red eyes, and flamin’ fiery tails that you was screechin’ about,” went on Sam, relentlessly. “If she’s going to hitch up with the parson it can’t be helped. Anyways he’s the right sort of a sky pilot; a white man all over, and can shoe a horse, and do a bit of bullocking3 as well as he can preach.”

“Wasn’t there some talk about her and the Black Police officer being engaged?” said the hawker, who was a great retailer of bush gossip.

“Wasn’t there some talk of you havin’ done time for trying to do the fire insurance people?” angrily retorted Young, who was wroth at the hawker’s familiar way of speaking of the goddess of Fraser’s Gully.

“It vasn’t me at all,” protested the hawker. “It vas another Isaac Benjamin altogether.”

“What did he do?” asked Cockney Smith.

“He had a store in Brisbane,” said Young, “and insured the stock for about two thousand quid,4 and made an awful fuss about his being so careful of fire. He bought about fifty of them round glass bottles full of a sort of stuff called fire exstinker—bottles that you can hang up on a nail with a bit of string, or put on shelves, or anywhere, and if a place catches on fire, they burst, and the exstinker liquid sends out a sort of gas which puts out a fire in no time. One’ll do the trick.

“Well, this chap—of course it isn’t your fault, Ikey, that your name is the same as his—was dead set on getting that two thousand quid for his stock, which was only worth about five hundred. But he was such a downy cove—did you ever come acrost him, Ikey?”

“No, never,” emphatically replied the hawker, “and he vasn’t no relation of mine either.”

“Well, as I was saying, he was always making a fearful fuss about a fire, and as he was a member of the Fire Brigade Board, he was always bringing forward ressylutions at the Committee meetings for a better water supply, and all that sort of thing, and he gave a five pound note to the driver of the fire engine because he was a temperance man of fifteen years’ standing, and set a noble example to the Brigade. Did you hear about that, Ikey?”

“No, I didn’t,” answered the hawker uneasily.

“Well, he did. He hated liquor in any shape or form, he said, and wouldn’t sell any in his store on no account whatever, and wanted all the Fire Brigade men and other public servants to take the pledge. And the noosepapers said he was a great-hearted phillyanthropist.

“He had two boys in the store to help him—was it two, Ikey?”

“I don’t remember, Mr Young. I vas never much interested in reading about rogueries of any kind.”

“Just so! Well, one Sunday night one of the boys came back to the store for suthin’ or other, and he sees you—I mean the feller as has the same name—emptying out the fire liquid in the exstinkers, and fillin’ em up with kerosene. So, being a cute young nipper, he slips away to the Fire Brigade station and says to the Superintendent, ‘Give me ten bob an’ I’ll tell you a secret about Ikey Benjamin and his fire exstinkers.’ The Super gave him the money, and the boy tells the yarn, and about two o’clock in the morning the fire bells starts ringin’, and Ikey was aroused from a dead sleep with the noos that his store was alight in seventeen places, but that the firemen was puttin’ it out vigorously. How many years did you—I mean the other cove—get, Ikey?”

“I don’t know,” replied the hawker, “but I do know that I must be getting along to Boorala,” and hurriedly gathering together his effects, he departed in a bad temper.

Young gave his mates a solemn wink, and then laughed.

“He’s the chap, boys; and if he hadn’t started gassin’ about Miss Kate, I wouldn’t have started on him. As for what he said about her and Mr Aulain, there’s some truth in it. The Inspector is dead sweet on her, I know, but whether she cares for him is another matter. Anyway she hasn’t seen him for nigh on two years, so I think it must be off. And you all know what she thinks of the Nigger Police, don’t you?”

The arrival of the Goddess of the Gully with her two companions created quite a little stir at the camp. As soon as Forde and Gerrard had finished their refreshing bathe in the crystal waters of the creek, and returned to the house, they found Kate had supper ready. She had changed her riding dress for a white skirt and blouse, and looked as Forde said, “divinely cool and refreshing.”

“Father will be here in a few minutes,” she said, as going to a small overmantel she deftly re-coiled her hair, which had a way of becoming loose. “What a nuisance is a woman’s hair, isn’t it, Mr Gerrard? Now, Mr Forde, why don’t you say it is her glory? Don’t be shocked at me, Mr Gerrard, but the fact is I am short of hair-pins, and this morning when the filly began bucking, I lost nearly all I had. I think I shall do my hair à la Suisse.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said her father, who just then entered after a hasty “wash down” in a tub placed at the back of the house, “there are a lot of native dogs about, and you might lose it.”

Both Forde and Gerrard, and Kate as well, laughed loudly, for they all knew that in the winter time, when the dingoes5 were hungry they would often bite off the tails of calves not old enough to kick off their assailants.

Kate clenched her little sunbrowned hand, and punched her father on his mighty chest. “You rude man! You don’t deserve any supper.”

Late in the evening, as Forde and his host were walking to and fro outside the house, and Kate was reading Aulain’s letter in her room, Gerrard was stretched out upon his bed, smoking his pipe, and talking to himself.

“I wish I had never seen you, Miss Kate Fraser. And I wish Aulain, my boy, that you were safely married to her. And I wish that there were two more like you, Miss Kate—one for me, and one for the parson. And I wish I was not such an idiot as to wish anything at all.”

CHAPTER XI

Just as dawn broke, the deep note of a bell-bird awakened Kate from a somewhat restless and troubled slumber; but quickly dressing, she took up a bucket and set off to the milking-yard.

The ground and the branches of the trees above were heavily laden with the night-dew, and in a few minutes her feet were wet through, and then, ere she had walked half the distance to the yard, several long-legged, gaunt kangaroo dogs, who were watching for their mistress, made a silent and sudden rush to welcome her, leaping up and muddying her shoulders with their wet paws, and making determined efforts to lick her hair and face.

Presently a loud whistle sounded from somewhere near, and “Cockney Smith” appeared driving before him two cows, and in an instant the dogs darted off to him, and let the girl enter the yard in peace.

“Why, Miss Kate, them ‘ere dorgs will bite the ‘ed off’n you if you don’t use a whip on ‘em when they get prancin’ around like that,” and he lashed out at them with the whip he carried.

Kate laughed. “Poor doggies! they badly want a day’s kangarooing, so I must not mind their roughness. I think, Smith, if we can only find the missing horses this week we’ll have at least half-a-day’s run with the dogs on Sunday. To-day I am going with my father to Kaburie.”

“Right you are, Miss!” said the young miner, who, like his mates, revelled in a kangaroo hunt. “On’y yesterday near the claim, I seed an old man kangaroo as big as a house, but er course, bekos I was on foot, and hadn’t got no dorgs with me, ‘e took no more notice of me than if I was a bloomin’ howl. ‘E just stood up on ‘is ‘ind legs, and looked at me for about five minutes with a whisp o’ grass hangin’ outer ‘is mouth; then ‘e goes on feedin’ has if ‘e didn’t mind dorgs or ‘orses, or men, and hadn’t never heerd o’ kangaroo-tail soup in ‘is life.”

“Perhaps we may get him next Sunday, Smith. Now, bail up, Maggie, and if you try to kick over the bucket you’ll feel sorry, I can assure you,” and she smacked a jet black little cow on the ribs with her strong, shapely brown hand. The beast put her head through the bail; “Cockney” quickly pinned her in, then secured her “kicking” leg with a green hide leg rope, and the Goddess of the Gully began to milk. “Cockney” stood by watching, pipe in mouth, and waiting till Kate was ready for the second cow to be put in the bail.

“Here’s Jackey and ‘is missus, as usual, Miss Kate,” he said, pointing to the slip rails of the milking yard, on which a large “laughing jackass,” and his mate had perched, and were regarding Kate with solemn attention.

“Oh, the poor things! I forgot their bread this morning. I was thinking about something else.”

“Don’t you worry about ‘em, Miss,” said Smith, with a grin, “they can take care ‘o themselves, Miss Kate.”

“Yes, Smith.”

“I went to look at that ‘ere guinea hen what was sittin’ on eleven eggs under that sort o’ cotton bush in the ‘orse paddock.”

“Did you? The chicks will be out in three or four days.”

“They are out already, Miss; them two laughin’ jackasses ‘as heaten up every blessed egg, and on’y the shells is lef. I thought I saw ‘em flying about the nest, and went to see.”

“Oh, the wretches!” cried Kate in dismay.

“Next ter halligaters, laughin’ jackasses his the mischievioustest, and cunnin’est things hin creation,” observed Mr Smith; “hif I ‘ad my gun ‘ere now I could take ‘em both hin a line. Look at ‘em setting there like two bloomin’ cheerybims, who ‘adn’t never seen a hegg o’ any kind but their own.”

“Oh, no, don’t shoot them, Smith. I feel very mad with them, but wouldn’t hurt them for the world. They kill and eat such a lot of snakes—bad snakes, ‘bandy-bandies’ and ‘black necks.’”

“So I believe, Miss. And perhaps that is wot fills ‘em with such willianly; they himbibes the snakes’ cunning after they ‘as digested ‘em. I onct heerd a naturalist cove as was getting birds on the Diamantina River say that he was dead certain there wasn’t no laughin’ jackasses in the Garden o’ Eding, which was a smokin’ great pity.”

“Why?” asked Kate, as she rose, put the milk bucket aside, and let Smith bail up the second cow.

“Oh, he says, says he, as he was skinnin’ a jackass which had a two foot whip snake inside him, ‘if one o’ you fellers ‘ad a been in Eding, poor Heve wouldn’t ‘ave got hinter no trouble, hand we ‘uman bein’s ‘ud go on livin’ for hever like Muthusalum. The old serpant,’ says he, ‘wouldn’t a ‘ad the ghost of a show hif han Australlyian laughin’ jackass ‘ad copped him talkin’ to Heve, and tellin’ ‘er it was orlright, and to go ahead an’ heat as much as her stomach would accomydate.’”

“Oh, I see!” said Kate gravely, “I must tell that to Mr Forde.”

“‘E won’t mind—‘ell on’y larf,” said Mr Smith, who was a talkative young man for an Australian bushman, native to the soil. (The nickname of “Cockney” had been bestowed upon him on account of his father being a Londoner, who, like a true patriot, had left his country for his country’s good.) He was a good-natured, hard-working man like the rest of the hands at the camp, but was the “bad boy” of the community as far as liquor was concerned. Every three months, when Fraser “squared up” with his miners, and handed them their share of the proceeds from the gold obtained, he gave them all a week’s leave to spend in Boorala, or any other township in the district. Not more than two or three would elect to go, but of these Cockney Smith was always one. On such occasions Kate would stand at her father’s door on the look-out—to see that Mr Smith did not ride off without being interviewed.

“How much have you this time, Smith?” she would ask.

“Forty-five quid, Miss.”

“I’ll take ten.”

“Thirty-five pound don’t go far in Boorala, Miss,” he would plead, uneasily.

“It will go far enough for you to see the Police Magistrate, and be fined five pounds, or take fourteen days for disorderly conduct, and also enable you to pay that wicked wretch of a Hooley for the poisonous stuff he gives you to drink, and keep him from taking your horse and saddle. In fact I think you might go with thirty pounds this time.”

“Oh, ‘Eavens, Miss!” and Cockney’s features would display horrified astonishment as he hurriedly handed her ten one-pound notes. “Why it’s the winter meetin’ of the Boorala Jockey Club, and I’ll want an extra ten quid to put on a couple o’ ‘orses; one is a bay colt that won–”

“That will do, Smith. You are a bad lot. You tell me horrible stories. Instead of going sober to the race-course, you go drunk, and are robbed, or lose your money, or fight the police, and–”

“Didn’t I pull it orf, larst Christmas, Miss, with Banjo in the ‘urdle race? Didn’t I collar a hundred and five quid from that Melbourne bookie?”

“Yes. And what became of it? How much of it did you bring back? Just thirty shillings! And you couldn’t do any work for nearly two weeks; and you had delirium tremens. Now, go away, and if you come back as you did last time father won’t have any more to do with you—and neither will I.”

Smith would ride off with his companions. “She made me ante up ten quid this time,” he would observe—expecting sympathy.

“Well, it’s ten pound to the good for you, you boozing little owl,” would be the reply. For all the men at the camp knew that during two years Kate had placed various sums to the credit of Smith at the Boorala bank, and had extorted a solemn promise from him not to attempt to write a cheque for even one pound without her consent. But, as she felt she could not trust Cockney, she had also taken the bank manager into her confidence, and asked him to refuse to honour any cheque drawn by “the bad lot” unless it had her endorsement.

The bank manager, who was another of Kate’s adorers, promised to observe her wishes. “It’s not banking etiquette, Miss Fraser, but that doesn’t matter in North Queensland. We do many things that we ought not to do, and if Smith draws a cheque you may be sure that I will refuse to pay it as ‘signature illegible’—as it is sure to be. But I’ll lend him a few pounds if he breaks out again, and is laid up in this abode of sin, so that he may get home again to your protecting care.”

The milking was finished, and Smith, taking up the heavy bucket of milk, was just about to carry it to the house, when he set it down again.

“My word, Miss,” he said admiringly, “look there; there’s that Mr Gerrard a-gallopin’ ‘is ‘orse down to the creek for a swim bareback. My oath, ‘e can ride.”

Kate turned just in time, and saw Gerrard, who was in his pyjamas with a towel over his shoulders, disappearing over the ridge at a full gallop. She did not know that he had risen long before she had, walked in the grey dawn to the horse paddock through the dew-soaked grass, caught his horse, and had been an interested spectator of her dairy work.

“Yes, Smith, he can ride, as you say. And his horse wanted a swim after such a hot ride from Port Denison.”

As they walked back to the house, Kate saw her father coming towards them, and let Smith go on.

“Father,” she said, “I am glad to see you before breakfast as I shall not perhaps have a chance to speak to you if we are going to Kaburie to-day with Mr Gerrard.”

“What is it?”

“Mr Aulain has written to me. He wants me to marry him.”

“So does Forde, who asked me for you last night.”

Kate laughed.

“We’ll talk about it by and by, my girl,” said Fraser gravely, as he stroked her head.

“There will not be much to talk about, father,” was the decisive answer. “I am never, never going to leave you for any man—no matter who he is.”

CHAPTER XII

Fraser, his daughter and their two guests were on the road to Kaburie, and within a few miles of the turn-off to Boorala. Kate and the clergymen were together, her father and Gerrard some hundreds of yards in advance, and all were walking their horses slowly, for the sun was beating fiercely down upon them through the scantily-foliaged gum trees, and Kaburie was yet twenty miles away. The girl sat in her saddle with bent head, and there were traces of tears on her cheeks.

“I am very, very sorry, Mr Forde, for I do like you very, very much—more than any other man in the world except my father. You have always been so kind to him and to me; but I never thought that you would ask me to be your wife. And it hurts me to–”

Forde placed his hand on hers. “Never mind, Kate. It was a foolish dream of mine, that is all. But you were always the one woman in the world to me ever since I first met you two years ago. And it grieves me that I should have made you shed one single tear.”