Joe Wilson and His Mates

by Henry Lawson

  Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, makingfor a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in oneof those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough tocut off a man's legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so wejust tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between ourshoulder-blades--from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags--andour boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along thetrack. We were settled to it--to drag on like wet, weary, muddy workingbullocks till we came to somewhere--when, just before darkness settleddown, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of atussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, without holding aconsultation.

  It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and waseither a deserted settler's home or a hut attached to an abandonedsawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumpedour swags under the little verandah and banged at the door, to makesure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:there was light enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulledoff some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked thecatch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in theswags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in throughthe broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried thepartitioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had beenlined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by sometimber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last; andthere were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.

  We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and putthe billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on thestretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fireto dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. Ihadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist init like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer itgrew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never sawa man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked aweird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, withthe billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread andmeat with clasp-knives.

  'I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, 'but this is the "whare"* where themurder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one wasto come along now and look in he'd get scared.' Then after a while helooked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratchedhis ear, and said, 'That looks very much like a blood-stain under yourstool, doesn't it, Jim?'

  * 'Whare', 'whorrie', Maori name for house.

  I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from thefire--it was too hot.

  I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Davewould have minded--he'd knocked round too much in the Australian Bush tomind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was morethan half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he'd mistookhim for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer.

  Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the twostools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smokedcomfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing inparticular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sittingup a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, anda black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked outagain; and the door closed behind it.

  Dave scratched his ear. 'That's rum,' he said. 'I could have sworn Ifastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.'

  'It looks like it,' I said. 'Neither of us has been on the booselately.'

  He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.

  The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob.Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened thedoor, and called, 'Puss--puss--puss!' but the cat wouldn't come. He shutthe door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught, and got intobed again.

  He'd scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black catwalked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out asthe door closed smartly.

  I looked at Dave and he looked at me--hard; then he scratched the backof his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scaredabout the head.

  He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand,sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there.Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn't see thecat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presentlythe cat answered him and came in from somewhere--she'd been outsidethe window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbedagainst his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way.He had a weakness for cats. I'd seen him kick a dog, and hammer ahorse--brutally, I thought--but I never saw him hurt a cat or let anyone else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Davewas round, he'd see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fairsurplus. He said once to me, 'I can understand a man kicking a dog, orhammering a horse when it plays up, but I can't understand a man hurtinga cat.'

  He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light closeto the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found akey on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, andthe cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drumgoing, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell herhe'd meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settleddown again.

  We had some books of the 'Deadwood Dick' school. Dave was reading 'TheGrisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch', and I had 'The Dismembered Hand',or 'The Disembowelled Corpse', or some such names. They were first-classpreparation for a ghost.

  I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement andsaw Dave's frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it onthe wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes.And that door was opening again--slowly--and Dave had locked it! I neverfelt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, andI drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. Wewaited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watchingfor the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on oneend, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.

  'You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,' I said, as he caught hold of thedoor--like one grabs a craw-fish.

  'I'll swear I didn't,' said Dave. But he'd already turned the key acouple of times, so he couldn't be sure. He shut and locked the dooragain. 'Now, get out and see for yourself,' he said.

  I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.

  I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struckhim. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against thedoor.

  'What are you doing that for?' I asked.

  'If there's a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any ofhis funny business, we'll hear him if he tries to come in while we'reasleep,' says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerveswith the 'Haunted Gulch' and 'The Disembowelled Corpse', and after awhile I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fellfrom the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendousclatter. I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so didDave--the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a littleway this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick,skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle,and the door wouldn't come!--it was fast and locked! Then Dave's facebegan to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire,and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into theother room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his wayslow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door andfound it locked.

>   'It muster gone by the winder,' whispered Dave. I noticed that he said'it' instead of 'he'. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it onlyneeded that to scare me bad.

  We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on thefloor, laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top ofthem, and started to roll up his swag.

  'What are you going to do, Dave?' I asked.

  'I'm going to take the track,' says Dave, 'and camp somewhere fartheron. You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.'

  I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on thetucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making anynoise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.

  'That comes of camping in a deserted house,' said Dave, when we weresafe on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandonedhomestead, or even near it--probably because a deserted home looksghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.

  It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.

  We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on thesheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been alandslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once wegot it started we knocked the wet bark off 'manuka' sticks and logs andpiled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a littledrier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks andthe oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through thenight pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, 'I'm going back tothat house.'

  'What for?' I said.

  'I'm going to find out what's the matter with that crimson door. If Idon't I'll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so longas I live.'

  So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough bydaylight--after a little watching and experimenting. The house was builtof odds and ends and badly fitted. It 'gave' in the wind in almost anydirection--not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough tothrow the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as tobring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-framewas of scraps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang ofit; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swungto--the frame easing just a little in another direction. I supposeit would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about byaccident. The different strengths and directions of the gusts of windmust have accounted for the variations of the door's movements--andmaybe the draught of our big fire had helped.

  Dave scratched his head a good bit.

  'I never lived in a house yet,' he said, as we came away--'I never livedin a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a goodtent.'