Capricornia. Xavier Herbert

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      Back from the engine with the din and smoke and soot and steam were flung the chink of glass and the sound of whitemen’s voices raised in song; and similar sounds joined the whirlwind that followed the van; for the progress of the train to Copper Creek was not so much a business as a pleasure, not so much a journey as a locomotive picnic for the passengers and crew.

      Sometimes the engine stopped for water, or to drop stores at fettlers’ camps, or to accumulate the steam to take it up a heavy grade. It was an old machine and badly strained and prodigal of its vitality. On account of the prodigality, stops were sometimes made to give the fireman a rest and a chance to damp with something from a bottle the fire he stoked within himself while feeding the greedy furnace. And at least two stops were made while the engineer went back with water to extinguish fires that had broken out in axle-boxes missed by the Inspector of Rolling-Stock. When the train was stopped, the clinking and singing could be heard to better advantage by the people in the trucks, who looked towards the source and licked their sooty lips.

      So the hours passed. Little Nawnim, worn out in body and mind by buffetings and sights and sounds, at length fell asleep with head on the weary dog. And while he slept the niggers ate his sweets.

      At two o’clock in the afternoon the train bowled over the Caroline River Bridge and rolled into the 80-Mile Siding, just as Mrs Pansy McLash, the keeper of the Siding House, was flogging a herd of goats from her garden. The goats surged on to the railway, intent on escaping the stockwhip whistling behind; and Mrs McLash went after them, intent on teaching them the lesson of their lives. The small crowd waiting before the Siding House yelled at the woman and the goats. The woman turned and saw the train, tripped on a rail and fell. The crowd, among which was Oscar, rushed to her assistance,

      Finding that the chase had ceased, the goats drew up and looked to see what had happened. The track was packed with them. Mrs McLash screamed as she was raised, “My God—my goats!”

      “Goats!” yelled the fireman to the engineer.

      The engineer looked, then shot a hand to a valve and released a mighty jet of steam. The goats looked interested, but did not move. The engineer laid hold of the reversing-gear. Fireman and passengers rushed to the hand-brakes. The locked wheels raged against the strain. Every bolt and plate of the engine rattled. Coal crashed out of the tender. Water shot out of the tank. The engine halted in an atmosphere of goats. The goats themselves were well on the way to Copper Creek.

      Mrs McLash came up to the engine fuming, vowing to report the engineer for neglecting to whistle on the bridge. He promptly silenced her by presenting her with two wet bottles of beer, saying winningly, “Tchsss! Off the ice in town, Ma, and all the way up in the water bag. All chilly and bubbly and liquidy—and all for you, my heart.”

      She swallowed, and staring at the bottles muttered, “Don’t try to blarney me.”

      “Now who’d do that!” cried the engineer. “But where’s young Frank? Ah! There he is.” He looked at a figure, clad in khaki pants and sleeveless cotton singlet, bent over the driving-mechanism. It was Frank, son of the widow McLash, or her Pride and Joy as she called him. He was a low-browed youth of about twenty, very big for his age, swarthy as a Greek, and shaped rather like a kewpie doll, having a rotund pendulous paunch and a distinctly egg-shaped head. He looked around.

      “Good-o Frank,” said the engineer. “Water her up and have a look see what’s knockin’ back of the steam-chest there. There’s a couple of waggons to come off. Charlie’ll tell you.”

      Mrs McLash’s anger was gone completely, douched not nearly so much by the beer as by this attention to her son. She loved alcoholic liquor next to her Pride and Joy, but would have gone and lived for ever on salt-bush and dew in a desert for his sake. Indeed she had done something like that by coming to live in Capricornia, because she had forsaken a cosy little shop she had owned in her native city of Flinders and friends of a lifetime and a perpetual supply of cheap liquor, to save him from a life of crime. His last place of residence in Flinders was the Spring Hill Reformatory, where he was sent for the second time in his young life for committing burglary. His mother had secured his release by swearing to take him away to what they called down there The Land of Oppurtunity. She had done well. Two years before it had been his ambition to become a first-class criminal; now it was to become the engineer of the Copper Creek train.

      People who had come to hear the siding-mistress assail the engineer, turned with the pair and followed them to the house. Oscar was not one of them. He had been at the brakevan getting his stores and the district mail. He met the others on the veranda.

      When Jock Driver saw Oscar he shouldered his way to him. He and Oscar had lately quarrelled over a mixed-up train-load of imported breeding bulls. He bawled at Oscar, “Why—there’s the big Mister Shillingsworth——hey there, I wanner word wi’ you!”

      Oscar looked and scowled. Jock was drunk. He tripped on the mat at the dining-room door, and staggering, crashed into the iron wall. After sprawling against the wall for a second or two, he stood erect and bawled at Oscar, “By jees Orscar—j’know you’n me’s relairted?”

      Again Oscar scowled.

      “Aye,” cried Jock. “S’blunny fact. I’m fawster fawther y’ lil nevvy No-name—so’m fawster brither t’you—aint it? Ha! Ha! Ha! You’n me gawstrewth—n’y’dunno it—Ha! Ha! Ha!”

      He reeled against Oscar, who flung him off crying, “What’s wrong with you—gone mad?”

      Jock laughed till he wept, and while doing so staggered to the wall. “Uncle Orscar,” he gasped. “Gawd—thaht’s it—Uncle Orscar! Hey guard—hey Chawlie—where’s lil yeller bawstid—lil No-name—bring’m lennim see’s grea’ big gennelmally Uncle Orscar—Ha! Ha! Ho!”

      “Shut your meaty moosh or I’ll shut it for you,” cried Oscar.

      Jock stopped laughing and glared, then lurched into a fighting attitude and bawled, “I’ll crack ye—big flash coo!”

      Oscar blew out his big moustache contemptuously, snapped, “Rat of a Pommy!” and picked up the mail-bag and walked down the veranda to the little room at the end called the Post-Office.

      In the dining room Jock attempted to make more trouble, choosing as his victim the half-caste waiter Elbert, a mottled-brown-faced youth of about the same age as Frank McLash, though of nothing like the same physique, as could be seen at once, because he wore a ragged khaki shirt and trousers that betrayed by extraordinary looseness at the waist the fact that they had belonged to Frank.

      “Yeller scoom!” bawled Jock, making a rush at him. “By jees——”

      Mrs McLash pushed Elbert into the kitchen and stepped in front of Jock and drove him protesting to a seat.

      “Him!” bawled Jock. “Why thaht’s the yeller bawstid——”

      “I know what he done, my good man. He pinched his wife back off you who pinched her off of him. I’m surprised at you. Sit down’n eat your dinner and leave the poor skelington thing alone. He never had a decent feed in his life till he come here.”

      “I tell you——”

      “Shut up or I’ll kick you out!”

      Jock obeyed. For a while he mouthed about Elbert, then remembered Oscar and began to mouth about him, explaining why he had called him Uncle Oscar, СКАЧАТЬ