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In the sixties, two men called Burke and Wills lay down and died in the Queensland Never-never country for want of a few pounds of food; and a few tons of bronze and granite were set up in Melbourne to their memory. In the heart of barren plenty they died of hunger; for the land where they left their bones-in those days geographers called it a "Great Stony Desert" in the maps-was knee-deep with the finest native pasture in the world. The bookkeeper who writes the roll of Fame thus squared accounts in his extra-terrestrial, inscrutable way; he gave them posthumous celebrity; and to some of those who peopled the grassy province they had helped to open to the world, and who throve where Burke and Wills had perished, gave he Fortune.

In the early days of settlement, some few tasted a freshness of living out there, such as, it is written, was in the lives of men before the world grew old; they lived there, and left, young enough to keep forever sweet the memory ofwhat to most men is a tale of bitterness-their pioneering. Jasper Townshend was, and still is, one of these. He went thither in a golden moment; the single stain that lies upon his recollection of those days is linked with his tenderest memory.

It is a great day in a squatter's life when he first rides, upon his own cattlerun, the first horse of his own breeding, that has ever carried saddle and horseLIVING AGE. 421

VOL. VIII.

man. That day had dawned and declined most gloriously on Townshend, and was near its waning as he drew rein upon a crest of a long, low rise and looked about him, with a lifting of the heart, upon his squatter's kingdom in the Barcoo country, many years ago.

On every hand, clear to the sky-lineexcept where great gum-trees marked the winding chasm of the riverbed - the whole earth was laid as if in cloth of golden green as the sunlight fell aslant upon an ocean of ripe pasturage. Out and out over the great expanse the eye was drawn until the whole appeared immeasurable; and yet, Townshend from where he sat, did not look upon a tithe of his dominions. Knee-deep in rich grass cattle were drawing in to water in slow processions; the further files showed in the vast prospect merely as gay-colored moving specks. Down in the echoing channel of the river the notes of a bellbird struck upon the great silence like a call to prayer. The colt, Norseman, first of the Oontoona station-breds-and surely from the lines and looks of him, the leader of a noble race that was to rise in this squatter's paradise-paused in the track and whinnied toward the homestead. There it was, a mile away; the bridle road went trailing down to it, dwindling to a thread as it neared the squat brown buildings and the stockyards, all of them rough-hewn and hard won by

axe and saw from virgin timber; yet all looking now in the spacious distance, like children's playthings. A column of blue wood-smoke climbed from the kitchen chimney and poised above it, a filmy cloud in the dead, still air. There came to Townshend's ears a tiny clash of bells, and-infinitely remote, yet as if within the passage of his ear-he heard the eager barking of a dog; the milkers were being yarded. Utter peacefulness was abroad; and yet the horseman shrugged discontentedly. He brought his heels on the colt's ribs with a thud, and the animal went down the long slope at a swinging canter-one would say the rider's happy notions had been dashed with sourness by the coming within sound and sight of

Lome.

As he rode now he faced the southwest; there, between the gold of earth and blue of heaven, the horizon was belted in by a strip of denser blue, where a line of ridges lay, marking one boundary of Oontoona. Above the distant ranges now, the clear heaven was flawed by a smoke-pillar-for it could be no water-born cloud that stood thus, clean-cut and stone-gray, in such a stainless air. And even before the strange thing was hidden from Townshend by his descent, the column suddenly crumbled downward on its base, then spread and lay like a pall above the hills. Townshend pulled the colt to a walk.

"Blacks," he said; "is it blacks at last?" Then he braced himself strongly up. "Let 'em come; we want a rousing here;" and he laughed somewhat bitterly.

But he closed his teeth upon the laughter, and bit something like a sob; he was near the house, and on the veranda was a woman sewing busily. She did not look up; Townshend went to unsaddle and turn loose the colt; as he did so he said many times below his breath-with varied intonations, as

if the words were fraught with many meanings, most of them sinister"Blacks?" Then he went to his wife.

She offered him no welcome; she rose, fastened the needle in her work and threw it and her thimble hurriedly into the chair. She rubbed her palms together slowly and looked at her husband.

"Are you tired? Won't you go and wash? Supper's ready," she said. Voice and manner were perfectly indifferent.

Her face was not so; there were two little upright lines between the eyebrows and two more running slantwise from the corners of the mouth; these, and a hardness in the eyes, told plainly enough of a woman whose nature was being soured at its very source-or frozen or dried up. There was a sickness of the soul upon her that looked out from her eyes and held the man aloof. Upon his last utterance of the strange word he had hurried round to her anxiously, and had come upon the veranda as if he would run and take her in his arms; as he saw her face his hands fell down and his steps lagged. They shared their supper in silence or spoke lifelessly.

When he brought a wife from old green England out into this unfurrowed land, Townshend had thought that his three years' delving had made the place inhabitable, so that even an Englishwoman of finer blood might come to it and not be broken in heart and spirit by the rudeness of the change. He had seen too many women broken that way; and he worked with a tigerish energy, and planned, built and waited, until he had a weather-proof house and neighbors within ride, a trustworthy cook and-since the seasons had been glorious and his cattle increased like magic -prospects that royalty might envy. He wrote to her, and she came. She found tokens of his thought of her at every turn; they were a sound, sweet

blooded pair; they were very happy on Oontoona for many months.

Townshend's life was full to the brim; his wife's-once her new conditions were familiar to her-was not. She had all the healthy woman's horror of sitting idle-handed; when, after six months or so of bush-life, she found herself often moved to stare idly across the changeless and featureless out-ofdoors, while flat despondency or an almost savage restlessness possessed her in turn, she was afraid. Loyalty bade her hide the fear; it was easy to hide, at first, from a man who, the very self of ingenuousness, was much away and often very tired. Being hidden, it became harmful, and flourished in the silence; and thus a shadow fell between the pair. Before the blunter perceptions of the man had felt it, it was irremovable by any arts of his. Α couple blessed with cruder sensibilities than these might have kept whole the bond of sympathy, even by quarrelling and reconciliations; their fineness denied them that. Solitude and monotony and yearnings unfulfilled for things of home had touched the woman's soul, and it was drying up within her; and the soul touched the body with deeprooted sickness; often she would start out of horrid dreams into a racking clearness of perception and, hearing her husband breathing at her side, would feel a very horror of repulsion at thought of the touch of his limbs; and could neither weep nor wake the man and tell him. Dumbly her eyes told him such things sometimes, and dumbly he acknowledged them, and was miserably helpless.

She had come to Oontoona as a broadbrowed, deep-bosomed girl, born for motherhood or-failing that-for misery. When Townshend saw the smokepillar above the hills, she had been two years on Oontoona; she was childless still, and growing almost gaunt in body. It was a bundle of tiny garments that

she rolled up hastily and threw into her chair when he came home that day; of late he had often found her thus occupied; but in the almost angry eagerness with which she worked, and in the forbidding silence she maintained as she rose up from it, there was only hopelessness. It was as the action of a prisoner plucking at the prison bars.

That night he was alone on the veranda; having smoked savagely to the bitter heel of his tobacco, he was biting morosely on the pipe-stem; the wife was sewing, sewing in the lamplight within; she bit off her threads with the little vicious, worrying wrench that tells in women of white-hot nerves. The first angry word had passed between them; it was his, flung behind him as he came out-flung at her stony irresponsiveness when he had told her of his day and of his pride in the first Oontoona colt-and had met with the cruellest rejoinder, that of silence.

She heard him rise suddenly and stride away, and she listened with a strange startled look and with both hands raised to thread her needle. Out in the darkness Townshend's heart was pounding at his ribs; for he heard a far-away splashing and trampling of many horses at the river-crossing where the bridle track led westward, away out to some big cattle-runs that marked then the very outposts of settlement. Now the sound of many horses on a track where, ordinarily, only the mailman or a solitary stockman rode, was a thing to wonder at. The stir of unsaddling and the chink of hobble-chains came up to Townshend's ears, and he saw the flicker of a camp-fire strike up and broaden; the strong sound of a cantering mounted horse grew towards him, and a man's voice, fresh and clear, hailed from the darkness

"Oontoona homestead, ahoy?"

"Right you are," Townshend called back, invigorated-the sound of that

unknown voice was as wine to him"and I'm delighted to see you, whoever you are; I'm Townshend, of this place of the many o's."

The horseman towered above Townshend now against the stars.

1

"Owes?" the rider repeated, joyously, "sounds like bills and mortgages. beg your pardon. I'm Brown of theah-Blacks." He dismounted.

"Not the dashing white trooper of—" "Of the dashed black troop. The same."

"But," Townshend stammered, "that voice, these bad jokes-Brown of nigger-hunting fame I've heard of-isn't it? My sainted aunt Jemima-Crackey Brown of "

"My aunt, though; this budding squatter prince ain't old Jep Townshend?"

Mrs. Townshend came to the door to find the two men-lost to one another since their school-days-shaking hands and laughing idiotically in one another's face.

"Barbara," said Townshend, choking in his joy, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, "here's old Crackey Brown; he blackened my right eye, God bless him, fifteen years ago."

"Mr. Crackey Brown is very welcome all the same," she said; and Townshend hustled him into the lighted

room.

He was the very pattern of a soldier, clear-eyed, clean-run, as fair as flax, tanned and splendidly healthy, with fearless, straight-looking blue eyes. His scarlet-edged uniform of rough serge, of the Native Police, showed up a figure lithe as a grayhound's; from his narrow shapely head to his spurred heel, every line and turn proclaimed the fighting Englishman.

The mere sound and sight of him sweetened the homestead instantly. As they bustled about to get him supper and a bed, Townshend, with an armful of blankets, met his wife, with a loaded

tray, on the gangway that led from house to kitchen. They pulled up short, and in the semi-darkness the eyes of each sent and accepted messages of repentance and reconciliation to the other. She held her tray aside and suddenly leaned against him, standing on tiptoe and holding up her face. As he kissed her she made the little murmur of contentment that he knew, but had not heard for many a day.

The three sat till it was very late and talked of England. Brown, though he had been tossed by the luck of roving Britons into a wild career-to command savages in making savage raids at an outpost of the Empire-was as changeless in his texture as a well-kept sword-blade. The wilderness had left no mark upon him, as it had upon the other two. Until the men were alone together the talk, inspired by Brown's look and voice, was as English as Piccadilly over the beautiful white cliffs of Dover.

Even after Barbara had left the two men were boys together for a while. Then the talk ran onward to the present; Townshend told his tale of stubborn fight to make and hold a cattlerun, and Brown praised and envied him as a man of grit and purpose, and planned a gorgeous future for Oontoona; Brown told strange tales of his fights against marauding blacks, and Townshend's blood sang war-songs in his ears. What was the squatter's life but stagnation, he asked, with all the odds against him?

"I've sunk my last shilling, Crackey; yea, I'm borrowed to the neck. A couple of bad seasons-the bank turns rustyand-good-night. Exit Jasper T., pioneer, enter some pot-bellied speculator. Yours is the better part, Crackey. Action; life going like a cavalry charge!"

"To what, Jep? Bankruptcy, by Jingo. No, worse; the likes of me pass on generally to rot in the Civil Service;

or grow a liver as police magistrate." He rose up and stretched himself, and yawned mightily. "Yah-ha-a-action, eh? Ouch! Is it well to talk of England, home and-" he stooped and shook Townshend by the shoulder, "and to see beauty face to face."

"Yes," Townshend said, quietly, “it is well."

Brown looked away into the darkness; the troopers' fire glowed now, sullenly, a crimson star. The men were silent for a space.

"To be sure," Brown said, briskly, "yes, it's a rum trade; oh, yes, I've had great times occasionally, but now, this seven months, I suppose, I've been overeating myself, and haven't seen the face of a warrigal nigger. It's seven months since I hunted the last lot in among the western side of the McCausland ranges, and I can't get word of a speared beast ever since. I drifted over here because some day soon these niggers'll leave the rangesmust be getting hungry-and most likely they'll give you a turn this time. If I don't see signs of 'em before long, I shall resign my commission and look for active work, pew-opening, for instance."

The smoke-pillar leapt suddenly into Townshend's memory, and he mentioned it.

Brown rattled off a fire of questions, and as Townshend's replies came short and to his liking, he jumped to his feet and softly did a war dance on the clay floor of the veranda.

"Ho!" he called, "I smell blood. Why in thunder didn't you-"

"Not so loud." Townshend stole to his wife's room-she lay as if in deepest slumber-he touched her hair ever so lightly with his lips, and returned to Brown.

"It's the first sign of Blacks we've had on Oontoona,' he said; "I didn't know it meant anything particular."

"Well, it means this: 'Policemen no

come up here long time,' see? Oh, ho! there's sport ahead; I know it, gadzooks, by the twitching of my triggerfinger. In the southwest, you say, near about your boundary? That's the eastern side, I take it, of the broken country that rises to the McCausland ranges in the west, where they front Bindool and Daryindie and Teneriffe, and all that lot of stations on the George River watershed? Very well; I've hunted 'em all along that country till they daren't show a nose outside the ridges. Now, you bet your best cabbage-tree hat that some of 'em have worked west, and my prophetic soul urged me along the very day they've turned up on your side. You'll soon find their trademark."

Long before daylight Townshend rose. He left a note for his wife, roused the stockman, to whom he assigned business to keep him all day about the homestead; and before the stars were off the sky he and Brown were ahorse and on the road, with six uniformed black troopers behind them. Each trooper had a carbine slung at his back and a cartridge-belt round him. They were full of glee, and gibbered and played pranks on one another incessantly.

"I'm generally supposed," Brown exclaimed, "to go alone, unbeknown to station-holders, and to carry out the Queen's regulations on the quiet. But with old schoolmates it's otherwise. You shall see the Australian adaptation of the verb 'to disperse,' if that smoke said true and we strike a hot trail."

By sunrise they were skirting the southwestern ranges, and still all the country wore its usual aspect of unbroken peace. Then, beyond a little scrubby promontory of the hills, a kite screamed in the morning stillness, and Townshend's horse rattled in his nos

trils.

"Carrion," said Brown, as he sat up

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