Snow thought again. It was plain that the Stray had taken unto herself power to add to their numbers. She had instigated the busker’s offer. On the other hand, Duke would be masculine moral support.
‘I don’t care who comes,’ Snow said deliberately. ‘As long as it ain’t that ruddy, potato-faced Dora Phipps. She grates on me’ — he thought deeply — ‘like a rim-bound wheel.’ He pushed half the parcels on to the busker. ‘C’mon.’
III
All up and down the street the alien infiltration in the town was plain to be seen. Shabby-looking men, with the half-defiant cheerfulness or the tired slinking of the unwanted, crouched in little groups on the edge of the gutter, talking and smoking and comparing ‘handouts’ and ‘bites’ and good towns and ‘hungry tracks.’ Not only men but the women and children of the travellers waited about the street corners. The men who travelled with their families mostly owned some means of conveyance — old sulkies, carts, vans or broken-down motor-trucks. They were the aristocracy of the track, ranking above the single men who rode bicycles or jumped trains, or merely walked and begged lifts, although you could not have persuaded any of these latter that it was so. The single bagmen called the men with families ‘horse-bagmen’, and accused them of living on the earnings of their wives and children. The women ‘faked’ small articles, such as clothes-hangers, potholders and jug-covers, and the children went out selling with their mothers. They were worn, hard-faced, loud-voiced women for the most part, and the children, whining about their skirts, were all suffering from running colds and sores. Their clothes were obviously assembled from half a dozen charities in half a dozen different towns. The women, too, as they waited, exchanged the gossip of the track, advising each other of softhearted farmers or householders who could be coaxed into buying trifles from pity or who would give old clothes.
‘The town’s pretty full,’ the busker observed.
‘It’s the sergeant’s fault,’ Snow answered. ‘Why couldn’t they send the lists down from the station? Keeping this mob waiting half the afternoon before they could get their rations.’
The busker eyed the ‘dole-chasers’ critically. His mind was running on the vague item in the newspaper. All over the country he had seen such men as these, footing it with a swag over their shoulder or jogging along with their wives and children in old vans. It is easy enough to pick a traveller by the sharpened, hungry face of him. He is either toothless or his gums have drawn back from his teeth, giving him the look of a wolf. His lips have drawn back dry and cracked and stiff in a perpetual half-snarl; the skin of his face is stretched taut as vellum over the projecting bones and is burnt almost black by the sun. His eyes under an old felt hat are sharp pinpoints in a network of glare-wrinkles. He is bitter against society, but unswervingly loyal to his mates; dull and suspicious at any hint of patronage, but talkative and shrewd enough to his equals; at enmity with all police, but courteous to strangers; passionately generous and open-handed; a liar when it suits him, and a trusty friend. A man able to walk along the knife-edge of starvation and make a joke of it.
‘I wouldn’t like to be the one to put these coves into a labour camp,’ the busker decided slowly.
‘Arr, they’ve been talking labour camps for years,’ Snow said contemptuously. ‘They won’t ever do anything about it. Ever driven a horse?’
‘Well, no,’ the busker admitted, somewhat startled. ‘But you just hold the reins, don’t you?’
Snow made no answer. He rather liked Duke, and he was cheerful company, which was more than could be said of the Stray, who had been sitting in the cold waiting for them and was inclined to be bitter about it.
Snow knew of a camp three miles out of Currawong, on the way to Milidgee, and it was, like all his camps, secluded from the road and known to but a few travellers. So secluded that he considered it unlikely that pests such as Miss Phipps, ignorant of these parts, would ever find it. But if he hoped to dodge Miss Phipps by such a simple little device, he was mistaken. The cortège had left the town behind it and was plodding slowly up a steep hill, when Snow, with a startled oath, spied a figure with a sack in one hand and a small, blackened billy in the other, waiting at the top of the hill.
‘It’s her,’ he said morosely, remembering how Miss Phipps the night before had loftily refused the loan of any bedding and had lain down in the church porch, after piling on the fire all the wood he had dragged up, and how, in the middle of the night, he had been roused in time to extinguish the wooden wall of the church porch where it had caught alight.
‘Let’s just drive by,’ the Stray suggested comfortably. She had settled down beside Snow in the van, leaving Harley Duke to drive the sulky.
But it was far from Miss Phipps’s intention to be left behind. ‘Ah-ha, there you are at last, dear people,’ she called, waving her bundle in a way that caused the sulky horse to start and swerve. ‘You have been a long time. Now, I suppose I ride in the sulky. How kind of you to have foreseen, Mister Snow, that you would need extra accommodation. Don’t you dare hit that horse, Mr Duke. I won’t see any poor animal ill-treated. I’ll break the whip over your head first.’
‘Either shut up or walk,’ the exasperated youth was replying, but Miss Phipps had heaved her cumbersome form into the sulky.
‘I suppose it ain’t no good,’ Snow said pessimistically. At the very next town, he was thinking, he would sell the sulky, give the Stray half the money to get back to the city and free himself of all this so-suddenly-acquired and unwelcome company. The Stray, he thought, was anyway a damn sight better than the madwoman who had attached herself to the party. He could hear Miss Phipps’s unceasing flow of talk floating back from the sulky which had gone ahead.
‘I followed Mr Snow’s advice and made the sergeant give me a track-card, so that I could travel from town to town,’ she was saying. ‘He seemed, queerly enough, to be relieved. But it’s shameful how little these stores give you for a five-shilling order. Things are much cheaper in the city. By the time I had bought a pound of raisins, and some cigarettes, and a packet of Health-Wheat and some nuts — so good for the figure and full of vitamins — and a pot of face-cream and some chocolates, it was all gone. However, I intend to put my All in the common fund and share it with you good people. Leave that horse alone!’
‘Who’s driving the horse? Get out and walk if you don’t like it.’
‘I’d sooner walk than ride with a rude, overbearing boor. Stop beating that horse.’
‘I wasn’t beating her. I just drew the whip across her flank.’
‘I’ll teach you to be cruel to animals.’ Miss Phipps had seized the whip and was endeavouring to beat Duke across the head with it.
‘Look out!’ Snow shouted. ‘Hey, you bloody rat-bag!’ He would not have made this obvious remark except under the stress of anxiety. The horse, its driver’s attention distracted by the unpleasant assault, had wheeled round and was backing the sulky over the edge of a deep ditch. Miss Phipps had stood up, exasperated by the tight clutch which the busker maintained on the butt of the whip. She found herself flung sideways, as the sulky tilted at an angle and, with a loud shriek, fell heavily, escaping the wheel by inches. The horse, abandoning its intention of dashing the sulky backwards, strained suddenly forward again, jolting Mr Duke face downwards over its rump, and then bolted down the road.
‘Hang on to the bloody reins,’ Snow yelled; and whether the shaken busker heard him or not, he clung in his fright to the reins, as though they were his only hold on life, as indeed they were.
The two watching could scarcely breathe; but as the sulky hurtled round the bend, the busker was holding just as firmly to his end of the reins as the horse was to the bit.
‘Mi-Gord!’ Snow wiped his brow. ‘What a mess!’ He glanced at the moaning bulk of Miss Phipps, who, in a scatter of nuts and raisins, and with Health-Wheat in her hair, lay half in and half out of the ditch. ‘I hope she’s broken her flamin’ neck.’
‘Don’t you dare use that language,’ a feeble voice re
sponded.
‘Leave ’er there,’ Snow said harshly. ‘Let’s see what’s happened to the kid.’
But the Stray had sprung down and was supporting Miss Phipps’s head. ‘You all right, dearie?’ she was asking unnecessarily. It was obvious that Miss Phipps was more frightened than hurt. ‘You can’t leave ’er ’ere, Snowy.’ Dancy turned doubtfully to the van’s owner.
‘Well, help me shove her in the back.’ He bundled Miss Phipps in, while she cried out that her back was broken.
Snow was more worried about the busker. He pushed Don to his fastest pace, hoping against hope that no smashed wreckage would greet his eyes when he rounded the bend. Instead he beheld the busker trotting back with the horse under control. Snow felt that never before had he heaved such a sigh of relief.
‘I’ve raised a fam’ly,’ he rumbled, ‘and I’ve knocked round the west for thirty years, and that was the craziest damn thing I ever seen.’
‘I will not have cruelty to animals,’ a weak voice retorted from behind him. ‘And I will report both of you to the R.S.P.C.A.’
‘Drive on,’ the busker said, still white about the lips, but grinning in a sickly way. ‘Troubles were sent to try us.’ His hands were shaking as he turned the horse’s head. He addressed his steed. ‘Come on, Horehound.’
‘Don’t you dare call it that name. I’ll get out and walk.’
‘Shut up,’ Snow roared, ‘or I’ll finish off the job the ’orse ought to a done.’
There was a blessed silence and peace as they headed through the gathering dusk towards Snow’s chosen camp.
4
Snow failed to sell Ricky Smith’s turnout in Bylong, and it was due to the Horehound’s fault that he did. The mare was a big, clumsy half-draught with a wicked eye and a will of her own. She was cunning. She would clop along untiringly and sedately for days; and then, when opportunity offered, stage a scene that made the tantrums of a prima donna look like a church service. She would sit down in the road, walk round in circles, refuse to be caught, gallop in hobbles as much as ten miles over the roughest country. Snow had cured her of sidling round and round in a circle by sneaking up on her blind side, as she came round, and catching her an unmerciful blow with a log of wood that nearly stunned her. He had hopes in time of ridding himself of that mare at a profit seven times over. What he did despair of was ridding himself of his three hangers-on, particularly Miss Phipps.
He must shake them off before he reached home. There would be too many questions asked if he didn’t. The busker was waging a private war with the Horehound and was determined to fight it out to a finish. He could have caught a train down to Logan at any time, but he preferred to stay with Snow. He liked Snow for some queer reason, and Snow rather liked him. As for the Stray, she had fulfilled her boast of being a good beggar. Something about the abject look of her stirred charity, and she would return from a tour of any little settlement with eggs, stale bread, broken biscuits, old clothes and, sometimes, even meat and butter. She was industrious about a camp, friendly and good-tempered. To offset these advantages, she was also a most mischievous liar and, at the moment, engaged in a discreet search of Snow’s possessions, being convinced that he must be a person of hidden wealth.
Snow was not worried by her probing about for a secret pocket in the van, since there was no pocket nor any hidden wealth to find. He tolerated the Stray as other men might a badly trained puppy; but he could not endure Miss Phipps. Neither could the Stray; nor the busker. Ways of getting rid of Miss Phipps occupied all their minds.
The trouble with Miss Phipps was that she knew when she was well off. She still limped about ostentatiously with the help of a stick, and this annoyed them all the more, as Miss Phipps could waddle fast enough if a meal was toward. Never once had she offered to help in the work of the camp. She sat and brewed innumerable cups of tea or coffee for herself in the filthy little billy she had always on the fire. She borrowed everyone’s tobacco, ate of the best, and was abusive into the bargain. By contrast, Dancy and Duke looked like angels of light; and at Bylong, after one particularly painful passage of arms, Snow called Duke aside to consider measures for ending the menace.
‘We could ask the sergeant to send her to a home for loonies,’ the busker suggested morosely.
Snow shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t put no one behind bars,’ he replied slowly. ‘I been there meself.’ He stroked the head of Bluey. ‘You see that there dog. Well, once when I’d gone in for meat, that there dog came and waited outside for me for six weeks. The sergeant was one of them talkative coots what try to get bagmen to be confidential, see? He’d got his stripes out of information bagmen give him, top-offs that thought he was a good cove. But he didn’t catch me. When he found I wasn’t sayin’ nothin’, he turned nasty. ‘I’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut,’ he said, and he cuts down on me rations. I wasn’t gettin’ nothin’ but bread and water. ‘Keep it up,’ I says, ‘I’ve only got a month to go, and a man can do without any food for four weeks.’ But what made me mad was that poor bloody dog o’ mine. He was on’y getting scraps that I’d chuck him through the little winder in the cell, and you could count every rib of him when I got out.’ He gave a dry chuckle. ‘You could pretty near count every rib on me.’ He shook his head again. ‘No, I wouldn’t put no one behind bars.’
He considered for a moment. ‘Hain’t she got no people?’
The busker deftly appropriated his tobacco. ‘Would you want to get her back if she belonged to you?’
‘Gawd, no!’
‘Well, there you are. Maybe her people died of the shock of losing her.’
There was a silence. No more ideas seemed to be forthcoming.
Snow regarded the busker lazily. ‘How did you come to be on the track, son?’ he asked. There were times when the busker’s swagger and bluster dropped from him and faint traces of another layer showed through.
‘Me?’ The busker rolled himself a cigarette. ‘I was led astray. There I was with a good job, waiter at Sherry’s Hotel, trying to get on at a radio station in my spare time. You see, I’d been educated at one of these expensive colleges, and when the Dad died — went bankrupt and shot himself — I’d never learnt anything except to row in the eight; there was hardly any money for mother, so I got this job as a waiter, and then, as I was saying, this public dinner —’
Snow was bewildered. ‘What dinner?’
‘Aren’t I telling you? A bang-up affair for all the distinguished blokes in the city of Melbourne. If they didn’t have a string of letters after their name, they had a Sir or Right Honourable in front of it. There were aldermen and politicians and university professors and big business heads, and I said to myself, ‘Hallo,’ I said …’
He paused reflectively and shook his head.
‘Well, get on with it,’ Snow demanded impatiently.
‘Well, I think, see, that now I’ll have a chance to find out just how these big bugs get to be big bugs. So I keep my ears wide open. Not for the speeches — they’re only a lot of blurb about Democracy and the Commonwealth and so on — but just what one man’s saying to another. Mostly it’s about the next election and how bad business is, and racehorses; but pretty soon I spot a little group in a corner all excited about something, and I edge over to listen.’ He paused to caress his black crop of whisker. ‘And what do you s’pose those eminent old coves were yawping about?’
‘Search me.’ Snow was interested.
‘Well, one old cove is saying how when he was carrying his swag along the Darling in Nineteen-One there was a drought on, and another old chap is saying, ‘Nonsense, nonsense, Sir Everard, that was the best year they had out that way,’ and Sir Everard gets hot under the collar about it and asks the honourable member did he mean he was lying, and the honourable member says, No, but he was droving out there himself a year after, and the grass was four feet high. Then two more chipped in, and they started quarrelling about the way to roll a swag.’
‘There’s only one way,’ Sno
w interposed.
‘Well, I carry a knapsack. But would you believe it, they’d soon got half the table talking about swags and showing how you rolled them with the serviettes. You never saw a mob so excited about anything. And every one of those starchy old Johnnies talking about the time he humped his bluey and slapping each other on the back, and saying, “That was the life, my boy.” ’ He broke off gloomily.
‘Well?’ Snow encouraged.
The busker made an impatient gesture. ‘I was mug enough to think there might be something in it. That’s all. Hoary old liars!’
Snow had taken a blanket and was didactically folding it. ‘You take the end like this, and turn it in,’ he said fondly. ‘Then you know nothing can fall out of the swag.’
The busker gave an inhuman scream. ‘For Crisake, don’t! I never want to learn.’ He quietened down. ‘All the same,’ he said reflectively, ‘as a busker, I’m right at the top of the tree.’
With this satisfactory summing-up of his standing in the community, they returned to the problem of Miss Phipps.
Finally it was decided that Duke should stroll into town that afternoon and see if he could wheedle a lift for Miss Phipps from any big truck going in the direction of Sydney, or try out the hotels for a commercial traveller who might give a free ride citywards.
Miss Phipps, however, would probably refuse to go unchaperoned, since she had declared that the only reason she stayed with their own party was the presence of the Stray. ‘It would not be nice, deah, for a lady to be travelling unchaperoned with two men.’ If they could not get rid of Miss Phipps on a big truck, they would try to find a job for the Stray at the local Labour Exchange.
‘Some cocky’s wife might be mug enough to take her on,’ Duke said doubtfully. And then perhaps Miss Phipps would leave of her own accord.
They had in this manner mentally disposed of their load and were feeling more cheerful when the figure of the Stray appeared down the road, returning from ‘bumming’ the town of Bylong. Miss Phipps, scenting food, appeared from behind a tree where she had been reading a novelette picked up by the roadside.
The Battlers Page 5
