The Battlers

By Kylie Tennant

In 1939, with rumours of war circulating, the poor souls who have been displaced by the Great Depression are still on the tracks. Across New South Wales, a ragged army of those who 'battle' for a living are still on the lookout for work, making things to sell, pursuing a con or busy planning a new one. 'Battlers' not only struggle against all the e

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Walmer
• Release date: Jan 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994430632

Kylie Tennant

Kylie Tennant was born in Manly, NSW, in 1912. A self-described radical always drawn to the unemployed, she immersed herself in the lives of her characters, and during the 1930s travelled the road with groups of battlers. Kylie Tennant wrote a number of fiction and non-fiction works.

Book preview

Chapter I

IF S NOW had taken the road through Belburra, instead of the track through Currawong, his whole life would have run a different course. He had pulled in his horse at the fork of the road, and for a minute he sat thinking. True, the road to Belburra was the shorter way home, and he had been away nine months. But Snow was not any too eager to reach home. His return was never the scene of wild enthusiasm. One of his sons might stroll inside and announce: 'Hey, Mum, Dad's here.' And his wife would remark grimly: 'Hello! so you're back, are you?' and Snow would say: 'Yeah, I'm back.'

He had come over the black-soil plain; the plain that stretches from Narrabri to Moree in a loneliness where the mirages smoke and the great brown kangaroos leap away from the road, where the enfiladed telegraph-poles dwindle to a pinpoint and disappear over the rim of the earth, where the ground is baked like a tile in summer, and in winter forms a black bog that the drovers dread. Snow had crawled slowly across it in the lumbering van he had got in exchange for his sulky. It was slow, but, as Snow said to himself, he was a man who 'liked a bit of comfort.' He was of that singular breed who travel alone for preference; and as he reined Don in at the fork of the road, there was no mate to influence his judgment which way he should go.

There was the wind, of course—the vicious westerly that makes winter a hell, a westerly biting with all the malice of the thousands of miles of barbed wire over which it had blown. Whichever way he turned, that wind met him face-on. The track through Currawong was more sheltered than that through Belburra.

Then also Don, the horse, was tired; even Bluey, the cattle-dog, was tired, panting and dusty at the end of his chain under the van. Five miles this side of Currawong, Snow knew of a camp where there was good feed and water for the horse. But more important than grass or water, it offered that privacy and retirement so essential to anyone who meditates an onslaught on someone else's sheep. Snow was a big man, six feet one, and every inch of him meat-hungry. To his mind, there had always been something contemptible about buying mutton when it was walking about in the paddocks all around him. Visions of roast mutton floated before his eyes. He clicked his tongue to Don and turned him along the left-hand track to Currawong. All his life, with that decision, veered into a different course.

When Snow made camp late that afternoon, it was in a hollow between two ridges where a high steel windmill whirled above the tank provided for travelling stock, clanking the pump-rod up and down with a lonely clatter, like a ghost rattling in chains. All along the track there had been a scarcity of feed because, although it was the middle of June, not enough rain had fallen to break the drought. But here was a clearing green with tender grass and, in the grass, patches of reedy, red garden flower and a few overturned stones to tell of a forgotten homestead. Beside the stones two great coral trees lifted naked grey branches that showed, instead of leaves, clusters of flowers, curved blades of scarlet around the stamens, as though a flock of fiery-coloured birds were tilting their tail-feathers in council.

At a decent distance from the civilised trees, all about the open space, a grey-green wall of gums reared up, roaring with the ridges behind under an intermittent surf of wind. Now the wind was thunderous as city traffic; then there was only a faint hissing as the topmost leaves of the gums boiled over in silver spray, flashing like a mackerel shoal that ruffles a dark sea. A pause, and then once more the boughs would leap and whine as though some small animal were caught in their crotch, straining and lashing until the very trunks groaned again.

Snow cared little for the wind, as it hushed his fire sideways like a mother soothing a rowdy child in its cot. All day the wind might fluster the road dust and level the tussocks; but at sundown there would be a breathless, tranquil silence, as the world turned over on its side for the night, with the sky like a translucent bubble of pale green glass, so fragile you would think that, at the tap of a finger-nail, it would ring and shiver the first stars down in trails of fire like water-drops on a window-pane.

Snow, busy making camp, congratulated himself that there were no other travellers on the reserve. It was a cold night, with a frosting of stars, and Snow waited for the wind to come up again before he began his walk towards the homestead a mile back, where he had marked a paddock of promising wethers. Noiselessly he climbed over the barbed-wire fence and made his way across a stubblefield smelling like new bread. Behind the field was the paddock, darkly blotted with trees.

As he listened for the faint bleating that betrayed the presence of the flock, and moved, with a low word to Bluey, towards that uneasy sound, Snow's big, loose, slouching body knitted into the swift decision of the born hunter. Even his face altered. Usually Snow's face had no notable handsomeness, resembling closely the countenance of a particularly sleepy shark. His little, light-coloured eyes, each side of a huge, jutting nose, were half shut, just as his mouth—he breathed through it—was half open to a gape of big, yellow teeth above an almost imperceptible chin. His forehead did not count in the assembly of features, as it was either hidden by an old felt hat or by a growth of straw-coloured hair which had earned him the usual bush name for fair-haired men: 'Snow.' His words were few and his speech slow. If he became excited, he stuttered. He seldom spoke a sentence without three 'bloodys' in it, but he never knew he was swearing. It was as natural as his stutter.

In sheep-stealing, however, he took the quiet pleasure of an artist exercising his skill. Returning with a plump yearling over his shoulders, he had something of the benevolent aspect of a good shepherd in a church window. He was at peace with all the world. As he cut his find's throat and flung the entrails to Bluey, he was thinking that life 'on the track' was not so bad, with good places to camp and 'cockies' sheep to knock over.' He reflected wistfully that in a week or so these good things would be put away from him, and the vacant space filled by his wife's nagging, until restlessness seized him and he started out on the track again. He had posted home from Narrabri no less than ten dirty pound notes, and the thought of the surprise his wife would get made him more than ever feel that life was good.

He hung the carcase in a tree removed far enough from the clearing to escape the notice of any inquisitive visitors. Snow had been 'in for meat' several times, and another gaol term was something he did not welcome. It was different in Queensland, where a man could always take a sheep for food as long as he left the skin hanging on the fence.

They had reached the edge of the clearing when Bluey stiffened with a low, warning growl. Instantly Snow stopped in his tracks, peering towards the camp. There was someone there. Snow's great fist tightened round his butcher's knife. Someone was at his tucker-box, noisily and unhandily rummaging in it. A virtuous indignation seized him. Some thieving (adjective) robber was 'ratting' his tucker-box! He leant down and gripped the dog's collar as he trod cat-footed into the fire-light and contemplated the dim shape.

'What the hell you think you're doing?' he asked angrily.

A long-drawn shriek as the figure straightened up gave him nearly as great a fright as he had given the thief.

'Cripes! it's a woman!' he said out loud, half in relief.

The object huddled in terror by the tucker-box, babbling at him, did not look like a woman. It looked like something the darkness had spewed forth in disgust. Its hair hung in bedraggled wisps through which the eyes stared bulging with horror. A toothless mouth gaped at him as the creature panted and stammered. A shapeless mass of ragged clothing covered a body so insignificant that it looked like that of a child.

'Oh, mister, don't, don't . . . hit me. I was that hungry. And I been walkin' and walkin' . . .' the thing gasped, '. . . in the dark.'

'Here,' Snow said, quietening the snarling Bluey, 'take it easy.'

He removed from the fire a blackened billy, from which he poured a no less blackened brew of tea.

'Drink some of this.'

His captive gulped it down. 'He chucked me out,' she mumbled. 'Jus' left me by the side of the road hundreds of miles from nowhere an' says: Get to hell out of this, you whore. And I ain't. Nobody ain't got any right to call me that. I was married to 'im. I was. And I come away cos he says it's a great life on the track, an' . . .' She broke off. 'I ain't had nothin' to eat since yestiday morning . . . An' it was dark. . . .'

'You stay there,' Snow admonished. 'I won't be long.' The meat might be a bit tough, as it was so fresh, but if the hobgoblin hadn't had anything to eat for two days, she wouldn't be fussy.

He had just cut off a leg, and was turning back, when another scream brought him back the rest of the way at a run.

'He bit me!' the woman screamed furiously. 'You damned blasted mongrel of a dog!'

At Snow's voice Bluey laid down his head on his paws, his yellow eyes still jealously turned on the interloper. Viewing the teeth-marks on the leg held out for his inspection, Snow assured himself that the stranger was more frightened than hurt.

'It's just a nip,' he told her. 'Why'd you try to sneak away?'

The woman ignored the question. 'I 'ates damn dogs,' she said sullenly.

She was so small—merely a bag of bones; and as she shiveringly accepted the old coat Snow passed her, he asked curiously: 'How old 'ud you be?'

'Nineteen.'

'You look more.' She looked about sixty. 'What's your name?'

'Dancy. And me married name's Smif.'

'Well, listen 'ere, Dancy Smith, or whoever you are. I'm a married man, and I'm making 'ome to me wife, so it ain't no use you campin' with me, see? But I wouldn't turn a dog away if it was hungry.'

The girl Dancy snarled at him. 'Oo wants to camp wiv you? I 'ates men—'ates the 'ole bloomin' lot of 'em. Wot do they ever do but sit back and watch women work? I ain't never seen a man yet what was any good. The whole schemin', lyin', crawlin' lot of 'em. I 'ates 'em. And women, too,' she added liberally. 'Camp wiv you? Oo wants to camp wiv you?'

Snow was frying the mutton, and she fell silent, watching it ravenously. Then she snivelled a little. 'I'm that scared of the dark. Something went Yow!' She imitated the sound.

'That'd be a 'possum.'

'I fought it was a ghost.' She shuddered. 'I got thinking of the time Dad come 'ome. Walked out of the asylum 'e did, wiv a coat over his asylum cloves. He come 'ome to the residential where Mum was stayin' wiv me and the other kids. I was twelve. He come home on the Friday, and Saturday afternoon, when we was at the pi'tures, he cut her throat, and then he cut his own throat afterwards. The landlady made me go in wiv a mop and a bucket and clean up the floor. Bled to death he had, all over it. And me wringin' out the mop wiv me own farver's blood on it. The landlady said they was my parents and I had to do it.'

With Snow's repugnance there mingled a tiny strain of pity. He said nothing, but turned the meat on the fire.

'Then me married sister took us. She 'ated the sight of me. Thought the day wasn't lucky if she didn't find somefing to frash me for. I'll put you, she says, where they'll make you sorry you was born. And she told all the lies in court!' Dancy broke off. 'Ain't that meat done yet?'

'Give it a chance. What happened then?'

'I went to Parramatta. I was in an' out up to the time I was eighteen. The other girls taught me plenty. A edjucation I 'ad.'

Snow interestedly contemplated this visitation from another world as it rambled on in a smattering of filthy words and bitterness, discoursing of alley and slum and reformatory.

'You ain't had much of a fair go,' he said slowly at last. 'You's what you might call a Stray.'

The creature spat. 'It's men,' she said. 'Everywhere you go they're runnin' things. Tryin' to down you. An' women, too. All of 'em rotten.'

Snow took the mutton from the frying-pan and gave it to her. She ate wolfishly, only interrupting the meal to remark that 'the dog looked at her sumfin' fierce'; so that Snow ordered Bluey away. The man could feel the protuberant eyes, with their red rims and pale lashes, inspecting him calculatingly. She looked, he thought, like a trapped, fierce little animal.

'Where's your teeth?' he asked.

'I broke 'em.'

'You'd look a lot better with 'em than without.'

'Well, who the hell d'you think's got the money to go round buyin' sets of teef?'

This closed the conversation.

Snow pondered. 'I could go back through Belburra,' he said aloud, 'and leave you with Father Paul.'

'One of them parsons?'

''E's a priest.'

'Ooh! Not one of them. I 'ates them.' Something about Snow's ugly, unshaven countenance seemed to have raised her spirits. 'Ow'd you get here? You working?'

Snow gave the hard, dry croak that served him for a laugh. 'Work, eh?' he said. 'It's funny about work.' This novel situation had loosened his tongue. 'I got a sickener of it when I was a kid. My father was one of them half-starved wheat-cockies out from Temora. Graft! He grafted like a team of bullocks, and when I wasn't knee-high to a grasshopper he had me out ploughing and clearing and fencing.' He fell silent contemplating that never-ending work. 'It was: Theodore, go harness them horses, or, Theodore, haul the timber, and me managing great big Clydesdales with tempers just like his (an' his temper was something fierce). Why, I didn't come up as high as the horses' belly! Geeze! I had enough of work to last me a lifetime when I was a kid. Then I married, and a married man, when he can get work, he's got to take it. It's different when you're single. I been workin' on and off ever since.'

These were more words than he had spoken for weeks, and he paused, surprised at himself. Then he rose yawning. 'Well, I'll give you a lift to Currawong to-morrow, and you can make your way back to Sydney from there.'

He was sorting his blankets into two heaps. 'There's yours. And if you try to sneak away, the dog'll get you. Understand?'

He rolled himself a last cigarette before turning in, and then tossed the tobacco and papers across to his guest. She caught them eagerly. Then, looking up from licking the cigarette into shape, she remarked:

'You think you'll be well rid of me, don't you?'

There was something in her tone that aroused in Snow a faint feeling of alarm. Rolling up in his blankets, he comforted himself with the thought that no creature as little and skinny as that girl could worry him. He travelled alone.

'G'night, Stray,' he said austerely, tilting his hat over his eyes. He did not trouble to remove his boots. He might need to get up in the night to put wood on the fire.

After the camp had sunk into a silence punctuated by the heavy bass snore of Snow and the treble snore of the intruder, Bluey lay with one eye cocked suspiciously at the bundle of bedding that represented, in his canine view, a new and hateful complication to life. If Snow could not see trouble ahead, Bluey could.

Chapter II

TOWARDS morning a cold, drizzling rain began to fall. Snow was not at all disturbed. He would have pulled his hat farther over his eyes and slept on, had it not been for the restless stirrings and mumblings of his guest.

'What's up?' he demanded.

'It's raining.'

'Well, if you don't like it, hop up in the van. Get back there, Bluey.' He aimed a rock at his faithful hound, who had approached with the intention of guarding the van from all marauders. Bluey fled with a yelp, and Snow relapsed peacefully into his dreams again.

The rain was coming down in earnest when he awoke, but there was still a red ember glowing under the big log he had dragged across the fire. It had been his intention to stay quietly in camp all day and eat mutton; but the rain, falling with the heavy deliberation of an after-dinner speech, reminded him that there was a deserted church a few miles along the road. One of his reasons for coming through Currawong had been to remove that church door and fashion from it an upper decking for his waggon. Snow was nothing if not a handy man.

He decided to move on to the church, camp there and eat mutton until the rain stopped, remove the door for his waggon decking and then jog pleasantly on. After all, there was no hurry, and he did not like the idea of turning the Stray, as he privately termed her, away in the rain. Courtesy to women had once been thrashed into him with a leather strap, and some of the scars still remained.

The Stray slid out of the van just as he came to this decision.

She rubbed her fists into her eyes, swore, and lounged over to inspect the chops Snow was preparing for breakfast.

'You cud do with more fat,' she observed.

If there was one thing Snow disliked, it was interference with his cooking.

'You could do with a wash,' he retorted. 'There's the soap and towel.'

The Stray was about to point out that it was raining. There was a reproachful look in her eye; but she trotted away obediently, and returned with part of the surface soil removed from a countenance that was by daylight worse, if anything, than the night before. In more fortunate circumstances, Dancy Smith might have had a delicate pink-and-white complexion, but it was the type of complexion that will not brown, but turns the colour of beetroot, then blisters. Her nose was peeling, and the deep red sunburn made her look, as Snow put it, as though 'she had been on the beer.' Her lips were cracked and sore. There were deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

Snow eyed her furtively as she ate and, glancing up suddenly, she caught him.

'Who yer staring at?' she asked dangerously.

Snow chuckled. 'Your nose is peelin',' he observed. 'You ought to put a bit of fat on it and that 'ud cook it proper.'

When breakfast was over, he wrapped away in clean flourbags those portions of the sheep which he intended to take with him. The Stray washed the dishes and dried them and helped break camp. She seemed dejected, and finally remarked:

'Well, I guess I'll be getting along.'

Snow looked surprised. 'I said I'd give you a lift into Currawong, didn't I?'

'You'd sooner get rid of me.'

This was so true that Snow felt in honour bound to deny it.

'Arr. The horse don't mind a bit extra. You ain't that heavy. Hop in the van and don't let's hear no more about it.'

The Stray climbed up into the van. She was still wearing Snow's old coat, and as she crouched down beside him, a small bundle of bones, clothing, and dejection, Snow set himself to cheer her up.

'I been thinkin' of goin' down into Victoria to cy'nide some 'possums,' he said chattily. 'There's more of them down there than here in New South.'

His guest did not bite noticeably at this conversational bait.

'Of course,' Snow continued, 'there's always some cocky's son who wants to buy the skins off you at sixpence each and sell them at three bob himself, and if you won't give them to him, he's likely to top you off to the police. But there's risks to everything.'

'You can be put in gaol for catching 'possums,' the Stray said lugubriously.

Snow nodded. 'Well, the way I look at it is this: You can be put in gaol for almost anything, if you ain't got no money. And why? 'Cos it's a crime to have no money. That's why. I thought it out.' He nodded again deliberately. 'No vis'ble means of support. You go in for it, see?'

'I been vagged,' the Stray mentioned.

'Oh! you have? Well, there you are. If you ain't got any money, they run you in, and if you try to get any, they run you in. It ain't safe to be poor in this country. That's why I work if I can get a job.'

'What do you do?' the Stray asked, her curiosity aroused.

'Anythin',' Snow answered, gratified to see that she was interested. 'Anythin' I can get: relief work, droving, fencing, clearing.'

They had been plodding along, Don splashing sturdily through the puddles, the rain running down his coat in dark trickles. It beat in on the man and woman in the van, but with the tarpaulin across their knees they were well enough protected.

On either side were fields rolling mile after mile in a wandering maze of fences, with here and there an erupted red-roofed farm, its windmill like a steel rosette pinned to the patchwork country that was squared into dun-coloured paddocks newly ploughed, the grey-yellow of stubble, or the vivid green of young oats. In stretches of half-cleared pasture ring-barked trees reared their twisted grey skeletons, and the black stumps showed as dark toadstool tops in the tufted, grey-brown grass. Hollow burnt logs, patched white and black like a magpie's wing, lay as runways for rabbits whose warrens, with their sandy beaten patch about the holes, gave promise, to Snow's eye, of good trapping. A line of green willows at the foot of a slope marked the bed of a creek, willows bitten neatly off at the height an old ram could stretch his sharp teeth. The dripping of the thin trees was music to a man who had grown up from harvest to harvest, and Snow took in the fields with the eye of a farmer. The rain was coming just when it was most needed. It would be a good year here—perhaps.

They had come round yet another bend in a road that could not have gone straight if the whole Salvation Army reformed it. Its six-inch-deep ruts had become rivers of red mud that churned under the wheels like butter.

'Mi-Gord!' Snow exclaimed. He had lifted his eyes casually from Don's rump to the road along which they travelled.

'What's up?' the Stray asked.

Snow pointed dramatically to a figure in the distance. 'Damned if the road ain't lousy with wimmen,' he exclaimed. 'I didn't see her go past the reserve.'

The Stray screwed up her eyes and peered forward. 'How d'you know it's a woman?' she demanded.

'Look at the way she walks,' Snow said, disgusted. 'Dunno what things is comin' to when the road's all littered up with wimmen.'

Sure enough, as they began to overtake the moving figure, it resolved itself into the shape of a fat, lumpy female, waddling along. In one hand she carried a small, blackened billy-can, in the other a sugar-bag. She was clad in a black coat edged with draggled brown fur, and her brown stockings sagged into deplorable sandshoes. A yellow straw hat drooped over her face and shoulders.

Having picked up one woman, Snow decided he might as well go on as he had begun.

'Give y' a lift, missus?' he hailed reluctantly, as the van overtook the slow-moving figure.

The woman regarded him with small, beady, black eyes from a pasty, fat face. 'Don't presume to address your betters, my man,' she responded. 'Get along with you.'

Snow nearly fell out of the van with astonishment. He hastily clicked to Don, and the van lumbered away. 'Mi-Gord!' Snow turned to the no less astonished Stray. 'There's a way to refuse a lift!'

The Stray was peering out of the back of the van at the strange creature, who had stopped in the middle of the road and was solemnly dancing, capering this way and that, waving and jerking her arms.

'She's bats.' The Stray tapped her forehead. 'Looney, like farver was.' She added hopefully: 'Maybe she's escaped from a 'sylum and 'ull cut her froat.'

Snow urged Don on. A man, he reflected, could go for weeks on the track and have nothing more occur than his horse getting a flint in its shoe, and then a run of extraordinary happenings would whirl him along as a piece of paper is whirled down a street. He began to feel that he should have parted with the Stray at the camp. She seemed to bring strange luck. It was like seeing one white horse. You'd be sure to see another before the day was out. He'd met one woman carrying her swag, then sure enough he'd met another.

'It repeats,' he said thoughtfully. 'Like an onion.'

He was relieved when the dreary, weatherboard shape of the church showed across the sodden fields and dripping, ragged trees. He was even better pleased to discover that there was only one other occupant of the church, and that a man.

The stranger greeted them in a friendly enough way. He was a weedy youth with a mop of brown hair flopped over his forehead and an air of impudent self-assurance. He seemed to have shaved with a hoe, and between the gashes and raw, scraped patches a crop of black bristles fought for ascendancy over some flourishing pimples.

'How's it, sport?' he called to Snow, and addressing the Stray by the honorific of the track, 'Take a seat, missus.'

He indicated a kerosene tin beside the fire he had lit on a sheet of corrugated iron. Having thus discharged the duties of host, he fell to re-stringing a battered guitar.

'We saw a mad woman down the road,' Dancy volunteered. 'She was dancing and screaming and throwing stones after us and rolling in the mud; wasn't she, Snow?'

This was Snow's first introduction to the Stray's talent for ekeing out the bare bones of truth into a tasty stew.

'It must be Phippsy,' the youth said, unimpressed. 'Some of the chaps were talking about her at Belburra. Dora Phipps, that's her name. She's eccentric, that's all.'

Snow and Stray glanced at each other uneasily. But their companion, dismissing the subject from his mind, launched out on a recital of his troubles. His track name was Duke, and he had been 'busking'—singing his way from town to town. He had had a mate, a jockey, who had left Melbourne under a cloud and in the guard's van of a goods train where the busker was also travelling north. They had sworn eternal friendship until a disagreement resulted in the hurried departure of the jockey and left the busker only a large, discoloured bruise upon his cheekbone, sole token of deathless friendship.

'Jealousy,' the busker said darkly. 'That was his trouble. What with my guitar and my songs and, as you might put it, my personality, he gets fed up with having nothing to do but look after the camp and take round the hat. Anyway, he's done himself a bad turn, and he knows it. A mate like me isn't to be picked up under every bridge.'

They gathered that Duke was 'making down' to Logan, where he intended to honour a travelling tent show with his presence.

'As soon as I get to Currawong,' he explained, 'I'll do a quickie round the pubs and then board the 10.25 goods to-night for Logan.'

'How about your rations?' Snow asked. For to-morrow was Thursday; and Thursday all over the West is dole day, when the track men come in to have their cards stamped at the police-station and get their rations to carry them to the next 'dole town.'

The busker laughed. 'Me? Why, a chap that can make fifteen bob in an hour on Saturday afternoon would be a mug to hang round waiting for a copper to stamp his card and order him a few bobs' worth of groceries. One Saturday I made thirty bob before the Johns warned me off. Rations?' He waved the suggestion away. 'Not while I have my guitar.'

They regarded him respectfully. A man who could make fifteen shillings in an hour deserved respect. The Stray was roused to emulation.

'Me.' She adopted the busker's vainglorious tone. 'I'm the best bum on the track. In Tewsbury I come back wiv ten bob, two soots of cloves, a jar of jam, a dozen eggs, and two loaves of bread. An' I didn't get warned off by no John, neiver.'

The busker gave her a patronising nod. 'Good for you, missus,' he encouraged. 'You sound as though you could make an iron pump give milk. I bet the boss here'—he gave Snow a playful dig in the ribs—'thinks he's a lucky man, eh, sport?'

Snow grunted. He was not a man to indulge in laborious explanations. He was tempted to boast that he was the best sheep-stealer on the track, but caution restrained him. Thinking of mutton made him hungry. He began to unwrap the white cerements from the limbs of the sheep.

'Not mutton?' Duke cried, taking an eager interest in the proceedings. Snow had not realised that, for all the busker's talk of easy money, his face was pinched and hungry-looking. 'Not my favourite food, mutton?'

Had the busker observed the etiquette of the track he would have pretended not to notice that there was food about, and when offered the meat, he would have been surprised, refused, hesitated, and partaken reluctantly.

Snow dubiously regarded the fire on the bit of corrugated iron, decided it would not be suitable for roasting mutton, and went out to build his own fire in the stone porch.

'Mustn't muck the church up too much,' he declared.

He was back again almost immediately. 'She's comin!' he announced in solemn tones.

'Oo-er!' The Stray rose in alarm. 'Lemme out of here.'

'Sit down,' the busker said carelessly. 'Phippsy's harmless.'

But Snow had gone round the back of the church ostensibly to look at the horse. He thoughtfully took Bluey with him. Not that he need have worried. The approaching menace in woman's form was fond of animals, as she later demonstrated by patting the snarling Bluey on the head and calling him: 'Good doggie, there.'

She came mincing up to the porch, peering from her little, short-sighted eyes under the flapping lobes of hat. Then, focusing the two occupants, she stood with her head forward very much like a pointer dog.

'Dear me, dear me!' Her voice was so affected that it made the 'dear' sound like 'dah'. 'I trust I don't intrude? Miss Phipps is the name. I am seeking shelter—yes, shelter.' She had a habit of repeating words, as though the minds of her hearers might be too dense to grasp them without repetition. 'So unfortunate this rain when one is on a walking tour.'

The busker silently indicated another upturned kerosene tin, the one Snow had brought in for himself.

'I thank you.' She sat down as though it had been a throne, and held out her dreadful shoes to the blaze. 'This terrible weather, my deah.' She ignored Duke and concentrated her attention on Dancy. 'I suppose the poah farmers must have rain, but so inconvenient. I always say they should have it at a time when it will least disturb other people's plans.'

'Eh, missus.' Flattered by the attention, the Stray spoke eagerly, 'When we gets into Currawong I can bum you a better pair of boots than them.'

'My deah child,' Miss Phipps gave a little affected laugh, 'what on earth do you mean by that dreadful word?'

The busker raised his head from his task. Rather he tossed his head so that the lank strands of hair flopped backward. 'Come off it, Dora,' he said bluntly. 'Don't try to put that guff over us.'

'You impertinent creature!' The little black eyes glittered.

'Come off it,' the busker said again calmly. 'You can put it over a lot of ignorant mugs of bagmen that you're some sort of society woman, but you can't put it over me.' He eyed her ominously. 'I've got the lowdown on you, Dora.'

Miss Phipps turned her back on him. 'I don't suppose you have a little cold cream, deah?' she asked. 'The skin should always be one's first care, and I find my hands suffah so.'

The Stray dumbly shook her head, and Miss Phipps was about to launch forth on another conversational effort when the figure of Snow loomed up in the porch.

'Hey, Stray,' he called. 'C'mere.' He was anxious not to attract the fat madwoman's attention.

'There's that dreadful man,' Miss Phipps exclaimed, clutching ferociously at a log of wood. 'A ghastly creature who leered at me on the road! Yes! He deliberately leered.'

Dancy Smith screamed with laughter. 'Why, that's Snow, missus. A decent cove 'e is. Hey, Snow, come in and meet the girl friend.'

Miss Phipps could not draw herself up any straighter because of her fat, but, seizing the kerosene tin on which she was seated, she waddled over to the far corner of the hall in a very haughty way and muttered something about 'depraved wretches.'

'Don't take any notice,' the busker advised. He tapped his forehead, and Snow nodded understandingly, if cautiously. He returned to the porch and began building his fire for the mutton.

'Hey, play us something,' the Stray urged the owner of the guitar, and that youth, nothing loth, elevated his face and gave vent to a long, keening howl which, he informed them in the subsequent song, was part of his habit of 'yoo-delling as I go.'

'The Yodelling Rouseabout, that's me,' he explained in answer to the Stray's praise. 'That's the name I'm going to go under when I'm singing at the Tivoli. No, I'm not the sort of chap to spend me life on the roads. Experience, that's all it is. So I can say I been out and collected all the real Australian songs the bushmen sing. That's the ticket! Make up my own songs. Sing 'em round picture-shows, got up in a cowboy suit. Grab half the takings.' He raised his voice as though to overrule objection. 'Look at Tex Morton. Thousands he's making out of records alone.'

'Not fousands?' The Stray was awestruck.

'Well, money, anyway,' the busker conceded. He thought, his forehead wrinkled. 'I'm not too keen on the Yodelling Rouseabout. I need a good selling title.'

'How about the Busking Bum?' the Stray suggested.

The busker looked at her scornfully and plunged into another long-drawn yodel.

'I'm a poor lonely stockman . . . (he sang) away from my ho-ome,

And I promised my mother no more I would roo-oam.'

He paused modestly. 'I made that up myself. Poetry, see?'

Snow, now that his fire was well alight, had drifted inside to contribute his applause. 'There's a bloody song I always wanted to hear, and I never knew its bloody name,' he said pleasantly.

'Please!' Miss Phipps rose from her seat in the corner. 'Stop that foul language.'

Snow looked injured. 'What bloody foul language?' he asked.

'She's not responsible,' the busker said consolingly.

'Oh!' Snow was mollified. 'Well, this (adjective) song was about an (adjectival) bagman who was getting himself a bit of meat. . . . '

The busker nodded somewhat contemptuously. 'Waltzing Matilda, the Australian National Anthem. The dogs bark it.'

'You know it?'

'Of course, I know it.' He burst into song:

'Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong,

Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee.

And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker-bag . . .

You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.'

'That's it. That's it all right,' Snow exclaimed excitedly. 'I ain't but heard it the once.'

'Down came the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred,

Down came the troopers, one, two, three,

"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker-bag?

You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me."'

Miss Phipps, at the sound of Duke's strong, not unmelodious baritone raised in this worn ballad, had approached out of her corner, forgetful of her ruffled feelings. Now, as he broke into the chorus, she joined in, singing a deep contralto second that blended with the busker's voice like organ music. The look of astonishment that spread over his face was comical, but he strummed to the last line.

'Hey,' he said, laying the guitar aside. 'Can you do that to any tune? Sing harmony, I mean?'

'Of course,' Miss Phipps said haughtily. 'If I hear it once.'

'It's a gift.' The busker looked at her admiringly. 'You'd be a knockout outside the pubs on a Saturday afternoon. Why!' Illumination burst over him. 'It's new. The Singing Girl Tramp. We'd coin money.' He rubbed his dark chin enthusiastically. 'We'd block the traffic.'

'How dare you suggest,' Miss Phipps said haughtily, 'that I should sing in the street!'

'Now, Dora,' the busker urged, 'you know me. Would I suggest anything to a woman with a voice like yours that didn't do me credit? Would I . . . '

'You're an impertinent young man.'

The busker dropped his cajoling manner. 'Now, look here,' he said. 'I can use you in my act, see? Why, when we get to Logan, and Paul Seeby hears the two of us, he'll snatch at us with both hands.'

Miss Phipps' languor was that of a film star being offered a contract for garbage removal.

'Arr,' the busker said disgustedly, 'you've got tickets all over yourself.'

Miss Phipps, never slow to resent any personal slight, gave him in return her opinion of his chances of joining even a tent-show, while its owner was in his right mind. She spoke scathingly of 'young boys' who slept under bridges and talked as though they amounted to something. She traced the busker's lack of taste and social decorum to an inborn baseness. Just as she was warming to her subject, Snow tactfully attempted to change the conversation.

'Play that there bloody song again,' he suggested.

Miss Phipps turned her discourse to Snow, his language and habits, but it was a very different matter abusing Snow. Knowing himself innocent of offence, he merely let out a roar of rage.

'Shuddup!' he bellowed. 'I ain't hit a lady yet, but you ain't a lady.'

Whereupon Miss Phipps retreated to the church porch, looked out at the rain, which was drumming on the tin roof with a thunderous deliberation, decided it was too wet to shake the mud of the church off her feet, and so stood, ignoring her fellow-refugees and by the tilt of her snub nose indicating that the air of the church was tainted.

Snow, for his part, was half afraid to go and tend the mutton which he had left in his camp-oven on the porch. He noticed with some bitterness that, while Miss Phipps had withdrawn herself from the low circle he disgraced, she was warming her toes at his fire and was sniffing, not without ardour, the smell of his mutton. When he did come out to see how the roast was cooking, Miss Phipps did not remove herself, but overlooked his work with a proprietorial air.

'I see you are a good cook,' she observed in much the same tone she had said 'Good doggie' to Bluey.

'Yeah,' Snow grunted. He did not venture any more words. There was, it seemed, something about his voice she didn't like. Well, there was no accounting for tastes, but she needn't treat a man as though he was dirt.

'Is that your meat?' Miss Phipps asked even more affably.

'Yeah.'

'Why, you dear man!'

Snow was a little surprised at this change of front. He turned inside, afraid that it might be the forerunner of a new attack.

But Miss Phipps only began to practise dance-steps on the porch. 'It keeps the figure in good trim,' she observed to the Stray, who had trotted out open-mouthed to watch. 'One should never neglect one's figure. Nor the eyebrows. I don't suppose you have an eyebrow-plucker, dear? No, I thought not. So unfortunate that I left mine at that disgusting farm where they said I wouldn't suit after just two days. And such coarse people. If I hadn't spent my money staying at the hotel I would have