Capricornia

OSCAR held dominion over six hundred square miles of country, which extended east and west from the railway to the summit of the Lonely Ranges, and north and south from the horizons, it might be said, since there was nothing to show where the boundaries lay in those directions.

Jasmine had said that he worshipped property. It was true. But he did not value Red Ochre simply as a grazing-lease. At times it was to him six hundred square miles where grazing grew and brolgas danced in the painted sunset and emus ran to the silver dawn—square miles of jungle where cool deep billabongs made watering for stock and nests for shouting nuttagul geese—of grassy valleys and stony hills, useless for grazing, but good to think about as haunts of great goannas and rockpythons—of swamps where cattle bogged and died, but wild hog and buffalo wallowed in happiness—of virgin forests where poison weed lay in wait for stock, but where possums and kangaroos and multitudes of gorgeous birds dwelt as from time immemorial. At times he loved Red Ochre.

At times he loved it best in Wet Season—when the creeks were running and the swamps were full—when the multi-coloured schisty rocks split golden waterfalls—when the scarlet plains were under water, green with wild rice, swarming with Siberian snipe—when the billabongs were brimming and the water-lilies blooming and the nuttaguls shouting loudest—when bull-grass towered ten feet high, clothing hills and choking gullies—when every tree was flowering and most were draped with crimson mistletoe and droning with hummingbirds and native bees—when cattle wandered a land of plenty, fat and sleek, till the buffalo-flies and marsh-flies came and drove them mad, so that they ran and ran to leanness, often to their death—when mosquitoes and a hundred other breeds of maddening insects were there to test a man’s endurance—when from hour to hour luke-warm showers drenched the steaming earth, till one was sodden to the bone and mildewed to the marrow and moved to pray, as Oscar always was when he had had enough of it, for that which formerly he had cursed—the Dry! the good old Dry—when the grasses yellowed, browned, dried to tinder, burst into spontaneous flame—when harsh winds rioted with choking dust and the billabongs became mere muddy holes where cattle pawed for water—when gaunt drought loafed about a desert and exhausted cattle staggered searching dust for food and drink, till they fell down and died and became neat piles of bones for the wind to whistle through and the gaunt-ribbed dingo to mourn—then one prayed for the Wet again, or if one’s heart was small, packed up and left this Capricornia that fools down South called the Land of Opportunity, and went back and said that nothing was done by halves up there except the works of puny man.

Red Ochre was so named because an abundance of red ochre was to be found in the locality. Not far from the homestead was a cleft hillock of which the face was composed entirely of red ochre that was scored by the implements of men of the Mullanmullak Tribe who had gathered the pigment there for ages. From the hillock a score of red paths diverged as black ones do from a colliery, one of them leading to the homestead itself, trodden, so it was said, by Tobias Batty, founder of the Station, who went mad and took to painting his body after the fashion of the blacks.

Red Ochre was founded twenty years or more before Oscar settled there. His predecessor, who succeeded the mad Batty, was a man named Wellington Boots, formerly a Cockney grocer, who had a young wife whom he worked like a horse and five young children whom he kept perpetually in a state of virtual imprisonment. It was said that he used to weigh out the rations of his native riders in niggardly quantities on loaded scales. He was killed by a bull on the plain to the south and eaten by ants and crows and kites till buried in a sack by his wife.

The homestead stood in these days just as Batty had built it. It was of corrugated iron on an angle-iron frame. In the dwelling the materials even of the doors were such as could not be destroyed by termites. The windows had been sheet-iron shutters till Oscar glazed them. But in spite of the materials, the house was airy and cool; for the walls stopped short of meeting the sprawling roof by a foot or two, leaving a wide well-ventilated space between the iron itself and the ceiling of paper-bark, the entry of possums and snakes and other pests being prevented by wire netting. The walls were lined with paper-bark, pipeclayed and panelled with polished bloodwood. The floor was of ant-bed, the stuff of the termites’, or white-ants’ nests, which when crushed and wetted and beaten hard makes serviceable cement. Mrs Boots was responsible for most of the interior fittings. Oscar had improved on them. Carpets and marsupial skins lay about the floors; bright pictures and hunting trophies such as tusks of boars and horns of buffaloes adorned the walls. Broad verandas surrounded the house, each screened with iron lattice covered with potato-creeper, and decorated with palms and ferns and furnished with punkahs and rustic furniture made by Oscar.

The homestead was about twenty miles from the railway. It stood on the brow of a hill about which the Caroline River, hidden from view by a belt of scrub and giant trees, flowed in a semi-circle. It was the northern side of the house that faced the river, a side that was raised on a high stone foundation because of the rapid slope. The veranda on that side was the part of the house most used in dry weather. On the eastern veranda were the snowy mosquito-netted beds of the family, which now unhappily numbered only two. Peter Differ and his half-caste daughter Constance lived in a little house of their own at the rear. Differ worked on the run as foreman. Constance, who was aged about eleven, worked in the house as a sort of maid. The eastern veranda was sheltered by two great mangoes, part of a grove that led down to the river. On the opposite side were poinciana trees and cassias and frangi-panis and many other tropical growths that made the place very brilliant and fragrant in Wet Season.

***

One afternoon a few days after that of the incidents at the Siding, Oscar was sitting on the front veranda with his daughter Marigold, watching an approaching storm, when the child pointed to the scrub by the river and said, “Look Daddy—dere’s a niggah wit sumpin on his back.”

Oscar looked and saw a blackfellow in a red naga toiling up the flood-bank with a strangely clad half-caste child on his back. The man came to the veranda steps, panting and sweating profusely, and set his burden down. “What name you want?” asked Oscar. For answer the blackfellow stooped and took from the waist-band of the spotted blue breeches of his burden what proved to be a crumpled letter. He gave it to Oscar, who opened it and read

Dear Oscar, Herewith my nigger Muttonhead. I sent him acrost you with little 1/2 carst boy belong to your brother Mark his names No Name and belongs to Jock Driver of the Melisande Ma McLash reckons you knows all about it he got lef here in a truck we found him and trid keep for Jock nex train but carnt do it because hees too much damn trouble here Oscar hees gone bush 3 times allready and wats kwonskwence we friten for sponsbility to lose him plese you keep him there for Jock I will tell him if I heres from him hees good kid No Name and got good sense for yeler feler but too damn cunin like a dingo be a long way corse if hees look after I reckon heel be O.K. corse you see we gotter go out to work and Ma McLash wont have no truck with him and no good of putin him with nigers seen hees your nefew and seen as how hees one for goan bush like he does. Plese you give my niger Muttonhead a feed and a stick of tobaco or he wont do nuthen more hees cheeky swine thet Muttonhead belt him if he givs you trouble excuse pensl and hast hoppen to find you as it leves me at present. I remain Your obediant servent Joe Ballest Ganger 80-Mile.

Oscar raised a flushed face and looked at Nawnim, who was standing with hands clasped behind him and dirty yellow-brown face elevated and black eyes staring intently at Marigold. In a moment Nawnim became aware of Oscar’s gaze and lowered his face slightly and regarded him slantwise, assuming an expression almost baleful that reminded Oscar of Ballest’s reference to a dingo.

Then a stream of white lightning poured from the heavens. The dead air stirred. Nawnim started, looked at Muttonhead. Thunder crashed, and monster echoes pealed through valleys and caverns of the mountainous clouds. Nawnim thrust his head into Muttonhead’s belly. Again the white lightning poured; the thunder crashed; a blast of cool wind struck the trees and whisked a few leaves on to the veranda. Then rain came rushing across the river—humming drumming rain—and up the hill and over the house—hissing roaring rain.

“Round the back,” yelled Oscar, pointing. Muttonhead took Nawnim’s hand and ran.

Oscar and Marigold went into the house and through and out to the back veranda, from which through the teeming rain they saw Muttonhead and Nawnim crouched under the eaves by the wall of the detached kitchen. In spite of what Ballest had said about Muttonhead, he was evidently too well-aware of his humbleness to enter a whiteman’s shelter uninvited. Oscar had meant that they should go to the back veranda. Seeing that they were fairly well sheltered where they were, he let them stay.

Oscar bent to Marigold when he heard her reedy voice.

“Is dat a lil boy Daddy?” she cried in his ear.

He nodded and smiled weakly; and, because the wind had changed and was blowing the rain in on them, he led her inside to the dining-room, where he sat and held her between his knees.

“Dat not a lil niggah boy, Daddy?” she asked.

“No.”

“What kind lil boy is he den Daddy?”

“Little half-caste.”

“Like Conny Differ?”

He nodded, began to roll a cigarette.

“Is dat Mister Differ’s lil boy Daddy?”

Unpleasant subject. He frowned and said, “Now don’t start asking silly questions.”

She fell silent, and gazing through the back door at the rain, turned over in her mind a mass of thoughts about this boy, who, since he did not look like one of those prohibited Dirty Little Niggahs, might make a playmate. She was allowed to play with Constance, which was very pleasant, although Constance was more than twice her age and evidently not as eager to play as she herself. Carried away by her thoughts she asked, “Daddy—who dat lil boy’s farver?”

The question came as a shock, because it interrupted thoughts of Mark. He looked at her almost suspiciously, then said, “Go and play with your toys and don’t worry me.”

He went outside and lounged about, occupying himself alternately with looking for leaks in the roof and studying his crouching nephew, till the rain stopped; then he went into the yard. After looking at Nawnim for a while as best he could—Nawnim slunk behind Muttonhead at his approach—he said to the blackfellow, “You takim piccanin back longa you boss.”

“Wha’ name?” asked Muttonhead, shaking Nawnim from a leg.

“Takim back longa Mister Ballest. Me no wantim. Him no-more belong me.”

Muttonhead gaped for a moment, then said, “Carn do it.”

Oscar frowned and snapped, “Don’t be cheeky or I’ll crack you.”

Muttonhead cringed and said, “Mist Ballest him say, ‘Takim dat one pic Tonga Boss Chilnsik—him belong him brudder.’”

“I don’t give a damn what he said. Takim back. Here’s some baccy—now then—what say?”

“Tahng you very mush Boss,” said Muttonhead, placing a stick of tobacco behind each ear. Two sticks of tobacco valued at tuppence each were perhaps small reward for a forty-mile walk with a child on his back, but no more than he expected. But he continued to protest, saying, “Carn do it, Boss. Me no-more go back longa railer line lo-ng time. Me go foot-walk longa Lonely River country for lookim up Ol’ People.” He jerked his thick lips in the opposite direction to that in which he had come.

“Then take the brat with you,” snapped Oscar, and walked off.

Muttonhead turned out to be quite as bad as Ballest said. Oscar found that out some hours after dismissing him. He was superintending a job in the smithy when he heard a commotion in the kitchen and went to investigate and found Nawnim being belaboured by the lubra cook. The lubra turned an angry face when he entered the kitchen. Nawnim’s howls died in his gaping mouth.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Oscar.

“Him come sinikin longa brett,” cried the lubra, pointing to bread-tins that stood on the table ready for the oven. Nawnim tried to get behind her. She seized him, flung him back into exposure. He yelled.

“Shut up!” shouted Oscar.

There was dough on Nawnim’s face and hands, and on a leg of the table. Oscar stepped up and grabbed one of his skinny arms and demanded, “What name you no-more go away all-same me talk?” Nawnim blubbered and shrank away. “Which way Muttonhead?” demanded Oscar of the cook.

“Him go longa Lonely River, Boss.”

“Blast him!” cried Oscar. “Left me with the brat after all!” He looked at his captive, stared at him sourly for a while, then sighed and said, “Well I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, poor hungry little devil. God help you! Oh give him some tucker, Princess, and don’t hurt him. Get someone to wash him—he stinks.”

Nawnim spent his first night at Red Ochre in the quarters of the native servants. It was not the servants’ choice, nor a particularly good one of their master’s, since the place was not so far away from the house as to leave the occupants unaware of what was going on there when the going-on was as loud as Nawnim’s. He wailed all night, set the dogs barking in the camp on the river and the dingoes howling in the bush and the pigs squealing in the sty and the horses snorting in the yards. The servants could pinch and punch and smother him into periods of silence, but could not still the external racket he had raised, which seemed to be worse when he was silent and to his ears quite devilish, so that before long he would be moved to start again. The red day dawned on a red-eyed household and on a half-caste brat who was covered with red wales and regarded with general malignity.

Oscar gave him into the care of Constance Differ. All went well throughout the day, because he slept. When he woke at sundown he set up a worse wailing than ever, and tried to escape, so that Constance had to lock him in. He would neither sit nor lie, but stood in a corner with hands clasped behind, watching Constance and venting his incessant tearless grief. Constance was gentle and patient as no-one he had ever known but Anna. But she looked rather too much like Yeller Jewty. Differ tried his hand with him, first with food, then with dancing and singing and playing tricks, finally with a strap. At last Oscar rushed in and spanked by hand, and because the matter had become much worse, took Nawnim by the scruff of the neck and threw him at a blackfellow for removal to the camp. There was some peace in the homestead that night, but none on the river.

Three days passed, during which the people of Red Ochre adapted themselves to broken sleep and kept away from the native camp. Oscar sent a message to the Siding to learn whether Jock had inquired after his uncoveted property, and learnt that he had not. He settled down to wait for word, hoping that Jock might not be drinking at Copper Creek and that he might not go on his way forgetting his responsibilities.

On the afternoon of the fourth day Oscar was wakened from his siesta on the front veranda by sound of cat-like moaning in the yard below, and, rising to investigate, saw little Nawnim standing in the reddish shadow of a poinciana near the steps. Nawnim stopped moaning for about five seconds when Oscar’s head appeared, then resumed. Oscar stared in astonishment. It was obvious from the way in which the child was studying him that the moaning did not interfere with his ability to take an interest in things about him. In fact he was not so much weeping as expressing a vague sense of misery he had felt ever since parting with Fat Anna. He stood in his usual attitude of hands behind back and eyes glancing sideways. When Oscar came to the head of the steps the moaning rose a note higher; but the moaner did not move. Oscar saw Marigold peeping from the hall and told her to go inside, then went down the steps, muttering. Nawnim did not move till Oscar reached the ground, when he retired slowly, walking sideways, watching with one eye and gouging the other with a grubby fist.

“Come here,” said Oscar.

The moan rose by another note. Nawnim continued to retire. Oscar hurried. Nawnim yelled and ran. Oscar stopped. So did Nawnim, and dropped his voice to the moan.