Bush Studies

by Barbara Baynton

  She struck the track she was on when her first doubt came. If this were the right way, the wheel-ruts would show. She groped, but the rain had levelled them. There was nothing to guide her. Suddenly she remembered that the little clump of pines, where the cattle were, lay between the two roads. She had gathered mistletoe berries there in the old days.

  She believed, she hoped, she prayed, that she was right. If so, a little further on, she would come to the “Bendy Tree”. There long ago a runaway horse had crushed its drunken rider against the bent, distorted trunk. She could recall how in her young years that tree had ever after had a weird fascination for her.

  She saw its crooked body in the lightning’s glare. She was on the right track, yet dreaded to go on. Her childhood’s fear came back. In a transient flash she thought she saw a horseman galloping furiously towards her. She placed both her hands protectingly over her heart, and waited. In the dark interval, above the shriek of the wind, she thought she heard a cry, then crash came the thunder, drowning her call of warning. In the next flash she saw nothing but the tree. “Oh, God, protect me!” she prayed, and diverging, with a shrinking heart passed on.

  The road dipped to the creek. Louder and louder came the roar of its flooded waters. Even little Dog-trap Gully was proudly foaming itself hoarse. It emptied below where she must cross. But there were others that swelled it above.

  The noise of the rushing creek was borne to her by the wind, still fierce, though the rain had lessened. Perhaps there would be someone to meet her at the bank! Last time she had come, the night had been fine, and though she had been met at the station by a neighbour’s son, mother had come to the creek with a lantern and waited for her. She looked eagerly, but there was no light.

  The creek was a banker, but the track led to a plank, which, lashed to the willows on either bank, was usually above flood-level. A churning sound showed that the water was over the plank, and she must wade along it. She turned to the sullen sky. There was no gleam of light save in her resolute, white face.

  Her mouth grew tender, as she thought of the husband she loved, and of their child. Must she dare! She thought of the grey-haired mother, who was waiting on the other side. This dwarfed every tie that had parted them. There was atonement in these difficulties and dangers.

  Again her face turned heavenward! “Bless, pardon, protect and guide, strengthen and comfort!” Her mother’s prayer.

  Steadying herself by the long willow branches, ankle-deep she began. With every step the water deepened.

  Malignantly the wind fought her, driving her back, or snapping the brittle stems from her skinned hands. The water was knee-deep now, and every step more hazardous.

  She held with her teeth to a thin limb, while she unfastened her hat and gave it to the greedy wind. From the cloak, a greater danger, she could not in her haste free herself; her numbed fingers had lost their cunning.

  Soon the water would be deeper, and the support from the branches less secure. Even if they did reach across, she could not hope for much support from their wind-driven, fragile ends.

  Still she would not go back. Though the roar of that rushing water was making her giddy, though the deafening wind fought her for every inch, she would not turn back.

  Long ago she should have come to her old mother, and her heart gave a bound of savage rapture in thus giving the sweat of her body for the sin of her soul.

  Midway the current strengthened. Perhaps if she, deprived of the willows, were swept down, her clothes would keep her afloat. She took firm hold and drew a deep breath to call her child-cry, “Mother!”

  The water was deeper and swifter, and from the sparsity of the branches she knew she was nearing the middle. The wind unopposed by the willows was more powerful. Strain as she would, she could reach only the tips of the opposite trees, not hold them.

  Despair shook her. With one hand she gripped those that had served her so far, and cautiously drew as many as she could grasp with the other. The wind savagely snapped them, and they lashed her unprotected face. Round and round her bare neck they coiled their stripped fingers. Her mother had planted these willows, and she herself had watched them grow. How could they be so hostile to her!

  The creek deepened with every moment she waited. But more dreadful than the giddying water was the distracting noise of the mighty wind, nurtured by the hollows.

  The frail twigs of the opposite tree snapped again and again in her hands. She must release her hold of those behind her. If she could make two steps independently, the thicker branches would then be her stay.

  “Will you?” yelled the wind. A sudden gust caught her, and, hurling her backwards, swept her down the stream with her cloak for a sail.

  She battled instinctively, and her first thought was of the letter-kiss she had left for the husband she loved. Was it to be his last?

  She clutched a floating branch, and was swept down with it. Vainly she fought for either bank. She opened her lips to call. The wind made a funnel of her mouth and throat, and a wave of muddy water choked her cry. She struggled desperately, but after a few mouthfuls she ceased. The weird cry from the “Bendy Tree” pierced and conquered the deep-throated wind. Then a sweet dream-voice whispered “Little woman!”

  Soft, strong arms carried her on. Weakness aroused the melting idea that all had been a mistake, and she had been fighting with friends. The wind even crooned a lullaby. Above the angry waters her face rose untroubled.

  A giant tree’s fallen body said, “Thus far!” and in vain the athletic furious water rushed and strove to throw her over the barrier. Driven back, it tried to take her with it. But a jagged arm of the tree snagged her cloak and held her.

  Bruised and half-conscious she was left to her deliverer, and the back-broken water crept tamed under its old foe. The hammer of hope awoke her heart. Along the friendly back of the tree she crawled, and among its bared roots rested. But it was only to get her breath, for this was mother’s side.

  She breasted the rise. Then every horror was of the past and forgotten, for there in the hollow was home.

  And there was the light shining its welcome to her.

  She quickened her pace, but did not run—motherhood is instinct in woman. The rain had come again, and the wind buffeted her. To breathe was a battle, yet she went on swiftly, for at the sight of the light her nameless fear had left her.

  She would tell mother how she had heard her call in the night, and mother would smile her grave smile and stroke her wet hair, call her “Little woman! My little woman!” and tell her she had been dreaming, just dreaming. Ah, but mother herself was a dreamer!

  The gate was swollen with rain and difficult to open. It had been opened by mother last time. But plainly her letter had not reached home. Perhaps the bad weather had delayed the mail-boy.

  There was the light. She was not daunted when the bark of the old dog brought no one to the door. It might not be heard inside, for there was such a torrent of water falling somewhere close. Mechanically her mind located it. The tank near the house, fed by the spouts, was running over, cutting channels through the flower beds, and flooding the paths. Why had not mother diverted the spout to the other tank!

  Something indefinite held her. Her mind went back to the many times long ago when she had kept alive the light while mother fixed the spout to save the water that the dry summer months made precious. It was not like mother, for such carelessness meant carrying from the creek.

  Suddenly she grew cold and her heart trembled. After she had seen mother, she would come out and fix it, but just now she could not wait.

  She tapped gently, and called, “Mother!”

  While she waited she tried to make friends with the dog. Her heart smote her, in that there had been so long an interval since she saw her old home that the dog had forgotten her voice.

  Her teeth chattered as she again tapped softly. The sudden light dazzled her when a stranger opened the door for her. Steadying herself by the wall, with wild eyes she looked around.
Another strange woman stood by the fire, and a child slept on the couch. The child’s mother raised it, and the other led the now panting creature to the child’s bed. Not a word was spoken, and the movements of these women were like those who fear to awaken a sleeper.

  Something warm was held to her lips, for through it all she was conscious of everything, even that the numbing horror in her eyes met answering awe in theirs.

  In the light the dog knew her and gave her welcome. But she had none for him now.

  When she rose one of the women lighted a candle. She noticed how, if the blazing wood cracked, the women started nervously, how the disturbed child pointed to her bruised face, and whispered softly to its mother, how she who lighted the candle did not strike the match but held it to the fire, and how the light-bearer led the way so noiselessly.

  She reached her mother’s room. Aloft the woman held the candle and turned away her head.

  The daughter parted the curtains, and the light fell on the face of the sleeper who would dream no dreams that night.

  SQUEAKER’S MATE

  THE woman carried the bag with the axe and maul and wedges; the man had the billy and clean tucker-bags; the cross-cut saw linked them. She was taller than the man, and the equability of her body, contrasting with his indolent slouch, accentuated the difference. “Squeaker’s mate”, the men called her, and these agreed that she was the best long-haired mate that ever stepped in petticoats. The selectors’ wives pretended to challenge her right to womanly garments, but if she knew what they said, it neither turned nor troubled Squeaker’s mate.

  Nine prospective posts and maybe sixteen rails—she calculated this yellow gum would yield. “Come on,” she encouraged the man; “let’s tackle it.”

  From the bag she took the axe, and ring-barked a preparatory circle, while he looked for a shady spot for the billy and tucker-bags.

  “Come on.” She was waiting with the greased saw. He came. The saw rasped through a few inches, then he stopped and looked at the sun.

  “It’s nigh tucker-time,” he said, and when she dissented, he exclaimed, with sudden energy, “There’s another bee! Wait, you go on with the axe, an’ I’ll track ’im.”

  As they came, they had already followed one and located the nest. She could not see the bee he spoke of, though her grey eyes were as keen as a black’s. However, she knew the man, and her tolerance was of the mysteries.

  She drew out the saw, spat on her hands, and with the axe began weakening the inclining side of the tree.

  Long and steadily and in secret the worm had been busy in the heart. Suddenly the axe blade sank softly, the tree’s wounded edges closed on it like a vice. There was a “settling” quiver on its top branches, which the woman heard and understood. The man, encouraged by the sounds of the axe, had returned with an armful of sticks for the billy. He shouted gleefully, “It’s fallin’, look out.”

  But she waited to free the axe.

  With a shivering groan the tree fell, and as she sprang aside, a thick worm-eaten branch snapped at a joint and silently she went down under it.

  “I tole yer t’ look out,” he reminded her, as with a crow-bar, and grunting earnestly, he forced it up. “Now get out quick.”

  She tried moving her arms and the upper part of her body. Do this; do that, he directed, but she made no movement after the first.

  He was impatient, because for once he had actually to use his strength. His share of a heavy lift usually consisted of a make-believe grunt, delivered at a critical moment. Yet he hardly cared to let it again fall on her, though he told her he would, if she “didn’t shift”.

  Near him lay a piece broken short; with his foot he drew it nearer, then gradually worked it into a position, till it acted as a stay to the lever.

  He laid her on her back when he drew her out, and waited expecting some acknowledgment of his exertions, but she was silent, and as she did not notice that the axe, she had tried to save, lay with the fallen trunk across it, he told her. She cared almost tenderly for all their posessions and treated them as friends. But the half-buried broken axe did not affect her. He wondered a little, for only last week she had patiently chipped out the old broken head, and put in a new handle.

  “Feel bad?” he inquired at length.

  “Pipe,” she replied with slack lips.

  Both pipes lay in the fork of a near tree. He took his, shook out the ashes, filled it, picked up a coal and puffed till it was alight—then he filled hers. Taking a small fire-stick he handed her the pipe. The hand she raised shook and closed in an uncertain hold, but she managed by a great effort to get it to her mouth. He lost patience with the swaying hand that tried to take the light.

  “Quick,” he said “quick, that damn dog’s at the tucker.”

  He thrust it into her hand that dropped helplessly across her chest. The lighted stick, falling between her bare arm and the dress, slowly roasted the flesh and smouldered the clothes.

  He rescued their dinner, pelted his dog out of sight—hers was lying near her head—put on the billy, then came back to her.

  The pipe had fallen from her lips; there was blood on the stem.

  “Did yer jam yer tongue?” he asked.

  She always ignored trifles, he knew, therefore he passed her silence.

  He told her that her dress was on fire. She took no heed. He put it out, and looked at the burnt arm, then with intentness at her.

  Her eyes were turned unblinkingly to the heavens, her lips were grimly apart, and a strange greyness was upon her face, and the sweat-beads were mixing.

  “Like a drink er tea? Asleep?”

  He broke a green branch from the fallen tree and swished from his face the multitudes of flies that had descended with it.

  In a heavy way he wondered why did she sweat, when she was not working? Why did she not keep the flies out of her mouth and eyes? She’d have bungy eyes, if she didn’t. If she was asleep, why did she not close them?

  But asleep or awake, as the billy began to boil, he left her, made the tea, and ate his dinner. His dog had disappeared, and as it did not come to his whistle, he threw the pieces to hers, that would not leave her head to reach them.

  He whistled tunelessly his one air, beating his own time with a stick on the toe of his blucher, then looked overhead at the sun and calculated that she must have been lying like that for “close up an hour”. He noticed that the axe handle was broken in two places, and speculated a little as to whether she would again pick out the back-broken handle or burn it out in his method, which was less trouble, if it did spoil the temper of the blade. He examined the worm-dust in the stump and limbs of the newly-fallen tree; mounted it and looked round the plain. The sheep were straggling in a manner that meant walking work to round them, and he supposed he would have to yard them tonight, if she didn’t liven up. He looked down at unenlivened her. This changed his “chune” to a call for his hiding dog.

  “Come on, ole feller,” he commanded her dog. “Fetch ’em back.” He whistled further instructions, slapping his thigh and pointing to the sheep.

  But a brace of wrinkles either side the brute’s closed mouth demonstrated determined disobedience. The dog would go if she told him, and by and by she would.

  He lighted his pipe and killed half an hour smoking. With the frugality that hard graft begets, his mate limited both his and her own tobacco, so he must not smoke all afternoon. There was no work to shirk, so time began to drag. Then a “goanner” crawling up a tree attracted him. He gathered various missiles and tried vainly to hit the seemingly grinning reptile. He came back and sneaked a fill of her tobacco, and while he was smoking, the white tilt of a cart caught his eye. He jumped up. “There’s Red Bob goin’ t’our place fur th’ ’oney,” he said. “I’ll go an’ weigh it an’ get the gonz” (money).

  He ran for the cart, and kept looking back as if fearing she would follow and thwart him.

  Red Bob the dealer was, in a business way, greatly concerned, when he found that Squea
ker’s mate was “’avin’ a sleep out there ’cos a tree fell on her”. She was the best honey-strainer and boiler that he dealt with. She was straight and square too. There was no water in her honey whether boiled or merely strained, and in every kerosene-tin the weight of honey was to an ounce as she said. Besides he was suspicious and diffident of paying the indecently eager Squeaker before he saw the woman. So reluctantly Squeaker led to where she lay. With many fierce oaths Red Bob sent her lawful protector for help, and compassionately poured a little from his flask down her throat, then swished away the flies from her till help came.

  Together these men stripped a sheet of bark, and laying her with pathetic tenderness upon it, carried her to her hut. Squeaker followed in the rear with the billy and tucker.

  Red Bob took his horse from the cart, and went to town for the doctor. Late that night at the back of the old hut (there were two) he and others who had heard that she was hurt, squatted with unlighted pipes in their mouths, waiting to hear the doctor’s verdict. After he had given it and gone, they discussed in whispers, and with a look seen only on bush faces, the hard luck of that woman who alone had hard-grafted with the best of them for every acre and hoof on that selection. Squeaker would go through it in no time. Why she had allowed it to be taken up in his name, when the money had been her own, was also for them among the mysteries.

  Him they called “a nole woman”, not because he was hanging round the honey-tins, but after man’s fashion to eliminate all virtue. They beckoned him, and explaining his mate’s injury, cautioned him to keep from her the knowledge that she would be for ever a cripple.

  “Jus’ th’ same, now, then fur ’im,” pointing to Red Bob, “t’ pay me, I’ll ’ev t’ go t’ town.”

  They told him in whispers what they thought of him, and with a cowardly look towards where she lay, but without a word of parting, like shadows these men made for their homes.

  Next day the women came. Squeaker’s mate was not a favourite with them—a woman with no leisure for yarning was not likely to be. After the first day they left her severely alone, their plea to their husbands, her uncompromising independence. It is in the ordering of things that by degrees most husbands accept their wives’ views of other women.