Breakaway House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Ned’s eyes clouded with unshed tears which no amount of will-power could keep in abeyance. The policeman was amazed by this sign of weakness but it enabled him to understand a few things.

  Every penny Ned earned he spent on Nora, buying her the clothes she adored while he wore his own to tatters. He loved her as any man can love a woman, and was jealous of other men giving her things, as any man would be.

  “Give me the ribbon,” Tremayne said coolly, advancing towards Ned. “And don’t use the whip in here because you’ll raise too much dirt off the floor and the tucker is uncovered.” He held out his hand, and, after a slight hesitation, Ned placed over it the blue band. Then standing aside, so that the two lovers came to face each other, he tossed the ribbon into the fire.

  For a moment, while the flames destroyed the ribbon, there was utter silence.

  Then Tremayne sprang at Nora: “Now didn’t you promise Mrs Filson never to swear?” he asked quietly, his hands gripping her arms close to the shoulders.

  His question produced an amazing change in the passion-distorted face. Magically it softened and became beautiful. Miss Hazit began to cry. Tremayne released her. Ned dropped the whip and took her in his arms.

  “You won’t do it again, eh?” he said, pressing his face against hers. “When Ah Khan comes again I buy plenty of ribbons, and a new dress, too.”

  Fred Ellis sniffed.

  Tremayne smiled at this evidence of a romantic heart.

  Slowly Ned escorted Miss Hazit out of the hut, his soothing, penitent voice dying away as he led his sweetheart back to their camp.

  “They breaks out at different places at any old time,” explained Fred, sniffing again. “Goes on like a couple of pigeons for days – then wallop, one of ’em cops it, hell let loose, and then they’re canoodling for another spell.”

  “Why didn’t Ned make an effort to track the ribbon-giver?” Tremayne asked.

  “He knew the lover only come as far as the boundary fence, didn’t get off his ’orse, sings out for Nora and Nora goes to the fence to get the ribbon. Likely enough promised to meet him some other time and place. Tonger took Nora to Breakaway House once just after Miss Frances come back to live there. Miss Frances flew off the handle when Ned complained to her. Only time she had ’er way with ’er uncle. He’s gonna either get hanged or have a spear stuck in him. His sort always ends up that way.”

  CHAPTER IV

  THE CATTLE DUFFER

  THE night that Harry Tremayne stayed with Fred Ellis at Acacia Well was cold and starlit. The world slumbered in unbroken silence, undisturbed by the barking of a fox or the haunting, blood-chilling cry of a curlew. Set in an indigo sky, the stars gleamed unwinking; but low on the western horizon, some three miles south of Breakaway House, a solitary star danced, winked, danced, winked, vanished.

  The time was a quarter to midnight when a mopoke nesting on the top limb of a dead wait-a-bit bush witnessed the passing of three huge shapes, and then, a little later, a fourth huge shape, humped like a water buffalo, followed by a fifth shape, low to the ground, and small and quick in action.

  The mopoke on the dead bush was about midway between the Bowgada-Breakaway House boundary and the homestead of Breakaway House. To not one of Morris Tonger’s hands would those five shapes have presented a mystery. The first three were prime steers, the fourth was an old cow with its hooves wrapped in bags, saddled and bridled, and in its saddle a man known over half of Western Australia as Mug Williams. The fifth shape was Williams’ silently working heeler dog, Tiger.

  “Go on up, Tiger! Gee ’em off a bit!” the night-rider said conversationally, whereupon the dog slid forward into the darkness and the three shadowy beasts ahead edged to the right and eastward. And when the duffer whistled the low musical notes of a bellbird, the dog obediently came back to take its station behind the cow doing duty as a riding hack.

  Now and then Mug Williams looked over his left shoulder in the direction of that star which had danced and winked and finally vanished. The star was about six miles distant, placing Mug Williams three miles west of north of Acacia Well.

  This was not the first time he had seen that star, but it was the first time he had seen it unaccompanied by at least two others. On a former occasion in this same paddock, in which sheep roamed with cattle, Mug had almost blundered into another night-rider whom he had shrewdly suspected was not of Tonger’s stockmen.

  The wonder of this nocturnal operation of stealing cattle was how Mug Williams was able thus to drive cattle from Breakaway House country with no visible landmarks to guide him. Here the earth was flat, the saltbush but a foot in height, with an entire absence of trees save here and there a wait-a-bit bush and a line of acacia trees bordering a shallow water-gutter. The world, blanketed by night, was as featureless as the ocean far from land where the mariner would be helpless without sextant and compass, or the heavenly bodies, to guide him.

  But, this clear night, Mug Williams was able to follow a course dictated by three stars moving in the track of the sun and known to bushmen as the “Three Sisters”. The Three Sisters, plus an intimate knowledge of every acre over which he operated, enabled Mug to move with sure confidence. When the duffer with his cattle reached the acacia-lined creek, in which water never ran except after very heavy rain, he figured his exact position from the lightning-smitten box-tree which they came to and passed by, and knew to cross the creek a hundred yards further up. And from this point it was comparatively easy for a man of Mug’s experience to cross his cattle over the intervening two miles to the great area of granite rock lying almost flush with the surrounding land. Two hundred acres Mug estimated this rock surface to be and the Bowgada boundary fence of Breakaway House bisected it. An ordinary paddock fence would have deviated round it, but not so a boundary fence accurately running over a surveyed line. It was a five-wire fence, the posts being set wide apart, and each post kept upright by slabs of granite set against it.

  Mug Williams was easily able to lay the fence flat by the removal of granite slabs from several of the posts, and thus pass from Bowgada to Breakaway House and back again, over the rock, without leaving a single track to betray his passage and the passage of stolen beasts. And should a curious stockman chance to observe three sets of cattle pads moving too far in what seemed to be an unnaturally straight line, how could his suspicions be further aroused when he saw no tracks of a following horse ridden by a man?

  To use a colloquialism, Mug Williams was not born the week before. As every bushman fully understands, the bush may be likened to an open book, on the flat pages of which every living thing that creeps and crawls, walks and runs, must leave its mark indelibly to remain until washed away by the following rain, which might not arrive until a year afterwards.

  Having reached the Bowgada paddock, in which only cattle ran, Mug re-erected the boundary fence, remounted his old cow, and, with the assistance of the dog, continued to drive the cattle on a north-easterly course, upwards over the lip of the breakaway, until they reached a wide, stony, empty creek crossed by the Bowgada-Myme Common boundary fence.

  Across the creek, the fence did not dip down into its bed but was suspended at bank’s height, its bottom wire at least eight feet above the bed. From bottom wire to creek bed hung strips of wire netting, the lower ends of which were fastened to lengths of timber. When water came down in flood, the timber lengths floated, lifting up the netting and permitting debris to pass without piling up against the wire barrier and eventually tearing it away.

  This being Williams’ return journey, the intelligent dog worked the cattle beneath the hitched-up netting with never a bark or a yelp, and halted them on the other side while Mug re-wired the netting bottoms to the timber lengths. He was now on common ground belonging to no squatter, and but four miles distant from the slaughter yard, on the outskirts of Myme, owned by Williams Brothers, butchers.

  It was possibly twenty minutes after they had left the creek when the dog slipped up beside his master and growled pe
rsistently.

  “Shut-up, you!” commanded the duffer, and with rein pressure brought the cow to a halt.

  Dog and man tensed, listening. At first he heard nothing, but then Mug finally caught the sound of clinking harness. It came from the direction of the town and was heading almost directly towards them. Mug dismounted. “Go forward, sit ’em,” he whispered.

  The dog wagged his tail once and disappeared after the three steers, obediently circling them so that without fright they began to graze. And when they were all placidly feeding the dog lay down, becoming invisible.

  Now on foot, Mug Williams leaned against the soft warm side of his “mount”, his eyes trying to pierce the darkness whence came the ever-increasing sound of jangling harness, which is not to imply that the noise was loud. Presently, out of the darkness, loomed a gigantic shape travelling westward, on a course which would take it between the cow and the steers.

  Doubtless the man riding the horse and leading four pack-animals did observe the grazing steers and the grazing cow, but that he did not observe Mug Williams pressed against the cow was certain. Four pack-animals led by one horseman here on the Myme Common at a quarter past two in the morning! Mug’s lips were drawn into a thin straight line, and his eyes were but narrow slits.

  Not until the last faint jingle had ceased to reach him did he again mount his cow and continue the drive towards the slaughter yard. And when at daylight the senior member of the firm of Williams Brothers reached the yard, he found six sides of three steers hanging, the tongues, hearts and offal in the brine tub, and three hides draped limply on a rail. Mug was asleep in a blanket on the ground.

  The senior partner was a big and powerful man. With ease he lifted the heavy sides into a spring cart, covering them with a tarpaulin. He examined the three hides and saw that instead of bearing Tonger’s brand, they bore the brand of one named Clark, which was quite correct, as they had formerly covered beasts owned by Clark and been legitimately sold by him to Williams Brothers. The hides Mug had taken from Tonger’s cattle were now carefully buried half a mile from the yard.

  Later, out of the blanket cocoon there emerged a little tubby man with grey eyes twinkling from a mahogany-tinted face that a painter could have used for a model of Buddha. The dog, which had made no sound on the arrival and departure of the senior member of the firm, now leaped against its master in affectionate play.

  “Speak up! Speak up!” cried Mug. The dog at once vented deep-throated barks and raced in narrow circles round the man as he crossed to the bush stable to water and feed his horse. “That will do. I-s-s-s! I-s-s-s!”

  Immediately the dog was silent. An obedient animal, carefully trained never to bark at night, Tiger was worth his weight in Myme gold to the junior partner and cattle buyer of Williams Brothers, butchers.

  A little before seven o’clock in the evening of that day, Mug Williams turned up at Bowgada station, entering the kitchen to find the cook, Soddy Jackson, and Filson’s half-caste housekeeper, Millie English, cleaning up. If Brett’s inheritance of the station was due to his father who had created it out of the wilderness, it was wholly due to his mother that he now retained the services of this golden-hearted cook and the housekeeper, whom she had enslaved with her personality, even as she had enslaved the girl so aptly named Miss Hazit by Harry Tremayne.

  “Good night, Mug! Now why the devil couldn’t you get here when the tucker was on the table?” demanded Soddy Jackson, half turning from the large basin in which he was washing crocks. How the sobriquet became affixed to Jackson’s surname was a mystery, but his fame as a cook was great, and although he professed passionately to be a Communist, Brett Filson, and his mother before him, knew that his expressed views were not a genuine reflection of his mind.

  When Mug Williams answered the cook’s sharply put question he was sitting comfortably at the table and Millie English was placing eating utensils before him. “Because, Mr Lenin, I was detained. But don’t get narked, I don’t mind eating by meself.”

  “Well you want to be earlier next time.”

  “Being in time smacks too much of capitalism, Soddy, and you being a good Boshivict shouldn’t expect a comrade to be punctual.”

  “We’re not having no cattle duffers in our Sovet,” the cook pointed out loftily.

  “You ain’t!” Mug’s expression was indicative of amazement. “Why, I thought cattle duffers and fire-stick wielders would be welcomed. Now, here am I, duffing the capitalists’ cattle for all I’m worth, and you refuse to admit me into the fold. Why?”

  “Cos the cattle you steals you sells to the down-trodden miners at Myme for money. That’s why. If you duffed cattle to give to them poor slaves, it would prove that you was one of us.”

  That the cook’s views on political economy were sincere would, to a stranger, be certain. It would also be evident that Mug Williams’ views were not sincere. Mug’s round ugly face was softened in appearance by his twinkling grey eyes which conveyed not the slightest perturbation at being called a cattle duffer.

  “Now how can I give the meat away when every time I comes here you robs me at poker?” he inquired with assumed gravity. “You knows you robs me with them marked cards you and the others have been using all the winter. Going to have a game later, when I’ve ’ad a word or two with Mr Filson?”

  Shrewdly he noted the gleam leap into the cook’s eyes, the unmistakable expression of the gambler at the prospect of play; an expression which would instantly fade when the gambler’s fingers touched the cards.

  “I suppose so,” Soddy Jackson said, as though bored. “I delight in taking your ill-gotten wealth. I ain’t had no luck since the time that bikeman was here who the boss refused a job.”

  CHAPTER V

  A DEAL IN CATTLE

  NODDY JACKSON’S political views provided Harry Tremayne with ceaseless entertainment but, probably because he had known the Bowgada cook for a much longer period of time, Brett Filson no longer found him humorous. Jackson’s views were entirely divorced from his actions. At the slightest provocation he would enlarge formidably on his dream of world revolution in which he was to take a prominent part, and yet he would not allow anyone else to set Filson’s table, wait upon him, or clear the table afterwards, although Millie English, the wife of the half-caste boss stockman, might dust and scrub and wash.

  When he entered the dining room that evening in which the squatter and Tremayne were smoking their after-dinner cigarettes, he said: “Mug Williams ’as come. Wants to see you. We’re gonna play cards afterwards, although he’s bit me more than once. Luck! Why, if I have ’is luck, I’ll be the Chief Justice in the coming Sovet Republic of Orstralia.”

  “You would, I know, fill the office with credit,” Brett remarked shortly. “But I thought your ambition was to be the public executioner?”

  “I aim to be both, Mr Filson. I dreams of ’anging all the capitalists. Up they’ll go. No droppin’ ’em. No ’anging on their legs will be allowed. For centuries they have ground…”

  “Get out, and send in Williams,” Brett directed.

  “…the workers into the dirt. The time is coming…”

  “Get out!” repeated Brett with raised voice.

  “…when the oppressors of the people…”

  “Get out, for the last time, Jackson!”

  “…sink beneath the heel of freedom. I’m getting out now.” The door was closed softly.

  Brett smiled dryly at Tremayne who lay back in his comfortable chair chuckling delightedly.

  “He was with me during 1918 on the Somme,” explained Filson. “And then he was cracked on ‘universal brotherhood’ and ‘love your enemies’ stuff and nonsense. Ran down our own king and royal family and praised everything German, even while he worked a machine-gun. He’s the kind of Britisher whom no foreigner can understand.”

  “Good soldier?”

  “The very worst, but he could manage a machine-gun. He brought me out of hell when I got smashed up, and when they told him he was
to be recommended for a decoration, they gave him seven days extra fatigues for abuse and his views on decorations in general. Turned up here one day in twenty-two asking for a job, and got it. He shocked my old-fashioned, loyal old mother with his politics, and drew every pound he had on the books to buy a wreath when she died in twenty-six.”

  Tremayne was studying his host through the blue tobacco smoke, coming to understand a little the nature of the hell which had caused this man’s mutilation. Old Humpy had described Filson to Tremayne as he was before he left Bowgada to go to war; abnormally powerful, a rodeo rider and a dancer of exceptional merit. And now here sat a man prematurely white-haired, one shoulder higher than the other, and incapable of walking without a stout stick.

  “There’s another person, too, who still thinks a great deal of your mother,” he said steadily.

  “Everyone did, but to whom do you refer?”

  “Miss Hazit – I mean, Nora, Ned’s woman.”

  “Ah! You’ve met her. But why Miss Hazit?”

  “Because she has IT in full measure. A more adept coquette than the average white woman!”

  “You’ve named Nora well, Harry. However, go slow.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m less interested in her than I am in Tonger’s character. Trouble over there once?”

  “I believe so, although I’m not familiar with the facts,” Filson replied slowly. “Ever since Tonger’s wife eloped on the arm of a shearer shortly after I came back from hospital, Morris Tonger has been gradually going downhill. All men are animals, but he’s more so. Before he offered his niece a home at Breakaway House, he was always in trouble with one or other of the Aborigines. But after Frances came back to live there I believe there was some sort of scene concerning his moral habits and he did at least have the decency to discontinue his romantic affairs at the homestead itself.”

  “How did Miss Frances come to stay at Breakaway House with such a man as he obviously is?” Tremayne inquired.