第24章 No Place for a Woman(3)

He took no notice of the question. I thought it was a touch of rheumatic fever, or something of that sort.

"It's gone into my back and sides now -- the pain's worse in me back," he said presently.

I had once been mates with a man who died suddenly of heart disease, while at work. He was washing a dish of dirt in the creek near a claim we were working; he let the dish slip into the water, fell back, crying, "O, my back!" and was gone. And now I felt by instinct that it was poor old Howlett's heart that was wrong. A man's heart is in his back as well as in his arms and hands.

The old man had turned pale with the pallor of a man who turns faint in a heat wave, and his arms fell loosely, and his hands rocked helplessly with the knuckles in the dust. I felt myself turning white, too, and the sick, cold, empty feeling in my stomach, for I knew the signs.

Bushmen stand in awe of sickness and death.

But after I'd fixed him comfortably and given him a drink from the water bag the greyness left his face, and he pulled himself together a bit; he drew up his arms and folded them across his chest.

He let his head rest back against the tree -- his slouch hat had fallen off revealing a broad, white brow, much higher than I expected.

He seemed to gaze on the azure fin of the range, showing above the dark blue-green bush on the horizon.

Then he commenced to speak -- taking no notice of me when I asked him if he felt better now -- to talk in that strange, absent, far-away tone that awes one. He told his story mechanically, monotonously -- in set words, as I believe now, as he had often told it before; if not to others, then to the loneliness of the bush.

And he used the names of people and places that I had never heard of -- just as if I knew them as well as he did.

"I didn't want to bring her up the first year. It was no place for a woman.

I wanted her to stay with her people and wait till I'd got the place a little more ship-shape. The Phippses took a selection down the creek.

I wanted her to wait and come up with them so's she'd have some company -- a woman to talk to. They came afterwards, but they didn't stop.

It was no place for a woman.

"But Mary would come. She wouldn't stop with her people down country.

She wanted to be with me, and look after me, and work and help me."

He repeated himself a great deal -- said the same thing over and over again sometimes. He was only mad on one track.

He'd tail off and sit silent for a while; then he'd become aware of me in a hurried, half-scared way, and apologise for putting me to all that trouble, and thank me. "I'll be all right d'reckly.

Best take the horses up to the hut and have some breakfast; you'll find it by the fire. I'll foller you, d'reckly.

The wife'll be waitin' an' ----" He would drop off, and be going again presently on the old track: -- "Her mother was coming up to stay awhile at the end of the year, but the old man hurt his leg. Then her married sister was coming, but one of the youngsters got sick and there was trouble at home.

I saw the doctor in the town -- thirty miles from here -- and fixed it up with him. He was a boozer -- I'd 'a shot him afterwards.

I fixed up with a woman in the town to come and stay. I thought Mary was wrong in her time. She must have been a month or six weeks out.

But I listened to her. . . . Don't argue with a woman.

Don't listen to a woman. Do the right thing. We should have had a mother woman to talk to us. But it was no place for a woman!"

He rocked his head, as if from some old agony of mind, against the tree-trunk.

"She was took bad suddenly one night, but it passed off. False alarm.

I was going to ride somewhere, but she said to wait till daylight.

Someone was sure to pass. She was a brave and sensible girl, but she had a terror of being left alone. It was no place for a woman!

"There was a black shepherd three or four miles away. I rode over while Mary was asleep, and started the black boy into town.

I'd 'a shot him afterwards if I'd 'a caught him. The old black gin was dead the week before, or Mary would a' bin alright. She was tied up in a bunch with strips of blanket and greenhide, and put in a hole.

So there wasn't even a gin near the place. It was no place for a woman!

"I was watchin' the road at daylight, and I was watchin' the road at dusk.