During the morning he had expressed great disapproval that a woman should
be idle, while men dragged heavy weights about. "White fellow,
big-fellow-fool all right," he said contemptuously, when Mac explained
that it was generally so in the white man's country. A Briton of the
Billingsgate type would have appealed to Jackeroo as a man of sound
common sense.
By the time the men-folk appeared, he had decided that with a little
management I would be quite an ornament to society. "Missus bin help ME
all right," he told the Sanguine Scot, with comical self-satisfaction.
Mac roared with delight, and the passage of the Fergusson having swept
away the last lingering torch of restraint he called to the Maluka;
"Jackeroo reckons he's tamed the shrew for us." Mac had been a reader of
Shakespeare in his time.
All afternoon we were supposed to be "making a dash" for the Edith, a
river twelve miles farther on; but there was nothing very dashing about
our pace. The air was stiflingly, swelteringly hot, and the flies
maddening in their persistence. The horses developed puffs, and when we
were not being half-drowned in torrents of rain we were being parboiled
in steamy atmosphere. The track was as tracks usually are "during the
Wet," and for four hours we laboured on, slipping and slithering over the
greasy track, varying the monotony now and then with a floundering
scramble through a boggy creek crossing. Our appearance was about as
dashing as our pace; and draggled, wet through, and perspiring, and out
of conceit with primitive travelling - having spent the afternoon
combining a minimum rate of travelling with a maximum of discomfort - we
arrived at the Edith an hour after sundown to find her a wide eddying
stream.
"Won't be more than a ducking," Mac said cheerfully. "Couldn't be much
wetter than we are," and the Maluka taking the reins from my hands, we
rode into the stream Mac keeping behind, "to pick her up in case she
floats off," he said, thinking he was putting courage into me.
It wasn't as bad as it looked; and after a little stumbling and plunging
and drifting the horses were clambering out up the opposite bank, and by
next sundown - after scrambling through a few more rivers - we found
ourselves looking down at the flooded Katherine, flowing below in the
valley of a rocky gorge.
Sixty-five miles in three days, against sixty miles an hour of the
express trains of the world. "Speed's the thing," cries the world, and
speeds on, gaining little but speed; and we bush-folk travel our sixty
miles and gain all that is worth gaining - excepting speed.
"Hand-over-hand this time!" Mac said, looking up at the telegraph wire
that stretched far overhead. "There's no pulley here. Hand-over-hand, or
the horse's-tail trick."
But Mine Host of the "Pub" had seen us, and running down the opposite
side of the gorge, launched a boat at the river's brink; then pulling
up-stream for a hundred yards or so in the backwash, faced about, and
raced down and across the swift-flowing current with long, sweeping
strokes; and as we rode down the steep winding track to meet him, Mac
became jocular, and reminding us that the gauntlet of the Katherine had
yet to be run, also reminded us that the sympathies of the Katherine were
with the stockmen; adding with a chuckle, as Mine Host bore down upon us.
"You don't even represent business here; no woman ever does."
Then the boat grounded, and Mine Host sprang ashore - another burly
six-foot bushman - and greeted us with a flashing smile and a laughing
"There's not much of her left." And then, stepping with quiet unconcern
into over two feet of water, pushed the boat against a jutting ledge for
my convenience. "Wet feet don't count," he laughed with another of his
flashing smiles, when remonstrated with, and Mac chuckled in an aside,
"Didn't I tell you a woman doesn't represent business here?"
CHAPTER IV
The swim being beyond the horses, they were left hobbled out on the north
banks, to wait for the river to fall, and after another swift race down
and across stream, Mine Host landed every one safely on the south side of
the flood, and soon we were clambering up the steep track that led from
the river to the "Pub."
Coming up from the river, the Katherine Settlement appeared to consist
solely of the "Pub" and its accompanying store; but beyond the "Pub,"
which, by the way, seemed to be hanging on to its own verandah posts for
support, we found an elongated, three-roomed building, nestling under
deep verandahs, and half-hidden beneath a grove of lofty scarlet
flowering ponchianas.
"The Cottage is always set apart for distinguished visitors," Mine Host
said, bidding us welcome with another smile, but never a hint that he was
placing his own private quarters at our disposal. Like all bushmen, he
could be delicately reticent when conferring a favour; but a forgotten
razor-strop betrayed him later on.
In the meantime we discovered the remainder of the Settlement from the
Cottage verandahs, spying out the Police Station as it lurked in ambush
just round the first bend in a winding bush track - apparently keeping
one eye on the "Pub"; and then we caught a gleam of white roofs away
beyond further bends in the track, where the Overland Telegraph
"Department" stood on a little rise, aloof from the "Pub" and the Police,
shut away from the world, yet attending to its affairs, and,
incidentally, to those of the bush-folk:
