While the Billy Boils. Henry Lawson

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СКАЧАТЬ traveller up-ended his bluey against his knee, gave it an affectionate pat, and then straightened himself up and looked fixedly at the cabman.

      “Now, look here!” he said, sternly and impressively, “can you see anything wrong with that old swag o' mine?”

      It was a stout, dumpy swag, with a red blanket outside, patched with blue, and the edge of a blue blanket showing in the inner rings at the end. The swag might have been newer; it might have been cleaner; it might have been hooped with decent straps, instead of bits of clothes-line and greenhide—but otherwise there was nothing the matter with it, as swags go.

      “I've humped that old swag for years,” continued the bushman; “I've carried that old swag thousands of miles—as that old dog knows—an' no one ever bothered about the look of it, or of me, or of my old dog, neither; and do you think I'm going to be ashamed of that old swag, for a cabby or anyone else? Do you think I'm going to study anybody's feelings? No one ever studied mine! I'm in two minds to summon you for using insulting language towards me!”

      He lifted the swag by the twisted towel which served for a shoulder-strap, swung it into the cab, got in himself and hauled the dog after him.

      “You can drive me somewhere where I can leave my swag and dog while I get some decent clothes to see a tailor in,” he said to the cabman. “My old dog ain't used to cabs, you see.”

      Then he added, reflectively: “I drove a cab myself, once, for five years in Sydney.”

STIFFNER AND JIM

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(Thirdly, Bill)

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      We were tramping down in Canterbury, Maoriland, at the time, swagging it—me and Bill—looking for work on the new railway line. Well, one afternoon, after a long, hot tramp, we comes to Stiffner's Hotel—between Christchurch and that other place—I forget the name of it—with throats on us like sunstruck bones, and not the price of a stick of tobacco.

      We had to have a drink, anyway, so we chanced it. We walked right into the bar, handed over our swags, put up four drinks, and tried to look as if we'd just drawn our cheques and didn't care a curse for any man. We looked solvent enough, as far as swagmen go. We were dirty and haggard and ragged and tired-looking, and that was all the more reason why we might have our cheques all right.

      This Stiffner was a hard customer. He'd been a spieler, fighting man, bush parson, temperance preacher, and a policeman, and a commercial traveller, and everything else that was damnable; he'd been a journalist, and an editor; he'd been a lawyer, too. He was an ugly brute to look at, and uglier to have a row with—about six-foot-six, wide in proportion, and stronger than Donald Dinnie.

      He was meaner than a gold-field Chinaman, and sharper than a sewer rat: he wouldn't give his own father a feed, nor lend him a sprat—unless some safe person backed the old man's I.O.U.

      We knew that we needn't expect any mercy from Stiffner; but something had to be done, so I said to Bill:

      “Something's got to be done, Bill! What do you think of it?”

      Bill was mostly a quiet young chap, from Sydney, except when he got drunk—which was seldom—and then he was a customer, from all round. He was cracked on the subject of spielers. He held that the population of the world was divided into two classes—one was spielers and the other was the mugs. He reckoned that he wasn't a mug. At first I thought he was a spieler, and afterwards I thought that he was a mug. He used to say that a man had to do it these times; that he was honest once and a fool, and was robbed and starved in consequences by his friends and relations; but now he intended to take all that he could get. He said that you either had to have or be had; that men were driven to be sharps, and there was no help for it.

      Bill said:

      “We'll have to sharpen our teeth, that's all, and chew somebody's lug.”

      “How?” I asked.

      There was a lot of navvies at the pub, and I knew one or two by sight, so Bill says:

      “You know one or two of these mugs. Bite one of their ears.

      “So I took aside a chap that I knowed and bit his ear for ten bob, and gave it to Bill to mind, for I thought it would be safer with him than with me.

      “Hang on to that,” I says, “and don't lose it for your natural life's sake, or Stiffner'll stiffen us.”

      We put up about nine bob's worth of drinks that night—me and Bill—and Stiffner didn't squeal: he was too sharp. He shouted once or twice.

      By-and-by I left Bill and turned in, and in the morning when I woke up there was Bill sitting alongside of me, and looking about as lively as the fighting kangaroo in London in fog time. He had a black eye and eighteen pence. He'd been taking down some of the mugs.

      “Well, what's to be done now?” I asked. “Stiffner can smash us both with one hand, and if we don't pay up he'll pound our swags and cripple us. He's just the man to do it. He loves a fight even more than he hates being had.”

      “There's only one thing to be done, Jim,” says Bill, in a tired, disinterested tone that made me mad.

      “Well, what's than” I said.

      “Smoke!”

      “Smoke be damned,” I snarled, losing my temper.

      “You know dashed well that our swags are in the bar, and we can't smoke without them.

      “Well, then,” says Bill, “I'll toss you to see who's to face the landlord.”

      “Well, I'll be blessed!” I says. “I'll see you further first. You have got a front. You mugged that stuff away, and you'll have to get us out of the mess.”

      It made him wild to be called a mug, and we swore and growled at each other for a while; but we daren't speak loud enough to have a fight, so at last I agreed to toss up for it, and I lost.

      Bill started to give me some of his points, but I shut him up quick.

      “You've had your turn, and made a mess of it,” I said. “For God's sake give me a show. Now, I'll go into the bar and ask for the swags, and carry them out on to the veranda, and then go back to settle up. You keep him talking all the time. You dump the two swags together, and smoke like sheol. That's all you've got to do.”

      I went into the bar, got the swags front the missus, carried them out on to the veranda, and then went back.

      Stiffner came in.

      “Good morning!”

      “Good morning, sir,” says Stiffner.

      “It'll be a nice day, I think?”

      “Yes, СКАЧАТЬ