第7章

All the same, poor old Mr.Howard wasn't always on the booze, not by any manner of means.He never touched a drop of anything, not even ginger-beer, while he was straight, and he kept us all going from nine o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon, summer and winter, for more than six years.Then he died, poor old chap --found dead in his bed one morning.Many a basting he gave me and Jim with an old malacca cane he had with a silver knob to it.We were all pretty frightened of him.He'd say to me and Jim and the other boys, `It's the best chance of making men of yourselves you ever had, if you only knew it.You'll be rich farmers or settlers, perhaps magistrates, one of these days -- that is, if you're not hanged.

It's you, I mean,' he'd say, pointing to me and Jim and the Dalys;`I believe some of you WILL be hanged unless you change a good deal.

It's cold blood and bad blood that runs in your veins, and you'll come to earn the wages of sin some day.It's a strange thing,'

he used to say, as if he was talking to himself, `that the girls are so good, while the boys are delivered over to the Evil One, except a case here and there.Look at Mary Darcy and Jane Lammerby, and my little pet Aileen here.I defy any village in Britain to turn out such girls -- plenty of rosy-cheeked gigglers --but the natural refinement and intelligence of these little damsels astonishes me.'

Well, the old man died suddenly, as I said, and we were all very sorry, and the school was broken up.But he had taught us all to write fairly and to keep accounts, to read and spell decently, and to know a little geography.It wasn't a great deal, but what we knew we knew well, and I often think of what he said, now it's too late, we ought to have made better use of it.

After school broke up father said Jim and I knew quite as much as was likely to be any good to us, and we must work for our living like other people.We'd always done a pretty fair share of that, and our hands were hard with using the axe and the spade, let alone holding the plough at odd times and harrowing, helping father to kill and brand, and a lot of other things, besides getting up while the stars were in the sky so as to get the cows milked early, before it was time to go to school.

All this time we had lived in a free kind of way -- we wanted for nothing.

We had plenty of good beef, and a calf now and then.About this time I began to wonder how it was that so many cattle and horses passed through father's hands, and what became of them.

I hadn't lived all my life on Rocky Creek, and among some of the smartest hands in that line that old New South Wales ever bred, without knowing what `clearskins' and `cross' beasts meant, and being well aware that our brand was often put on a calf that no cow of ours ever suckled.Don't I remember well the first calf I ever helped to put our letters on? I've often wished I'd defied father, then taken my licking, and bolted away from home.It's that very calf and the things it led to that's helped to put me where I am!

Just as I sit here, and these cursed irons rattle whenever I move my feet, I can see that very evening, and father and the old dog with a little mob of our crawling cattle and half-a-dozen head of strangers, cows and calves, and a fat little steer coming through the scrub to the old stockyard.

It was an awkward place for a yard, people used to say; scrubby and stony all round, a blind sort of hole -- you couldn't see till you were right on the top of it.But there was a `wing' ran out a good way through the scrub -- there's no better guide to a yard like that --and there was a sort of track cattle followed easy enough once you were round the hill.Anyhow, between father and the dog and the old mare he always rode, very few beasts ever broke away.

These strange cattle had been driven a good way, I could see.

The cows and calves looked done up, and the steer's tongue was out --it was hottish weather; the old dog had been `heeling' him up too, for he was bleeding up to the hocks, and the end of his tail was bitten off.

He was a savage old wretch was Crib.Like all dogs that never bark -- and men too -- his bite was all the worse.

`Go and get the brands -- confound you -- don't stand there frightening the cattle,' says father, as the tired cattle, after smelling and jostling a bit, rushed into the yard.

`You, Jim, make a fire, and look sharp about it.I want to brand old Polly's calf and another or two.' Father came down to the hut while the brands were getting ready, and began to look at the harness-cask, which stood in a little back skillion.It was pretty empty;we had been living on eggs, bacon, and bread and butter for a week.

`Oh, mother! there's such a pretty red calf in the yard,' I said, `with a star and a white spot on the flank; and there's a yellow steer fat enough to kill!'