Aunt Jo - A Love Story of the Cedar Scrubs

By Edward S. Sorenson

This novel tells the story of Long Bill and Amelia Jane. Amelia Jane is a spinster who is yet to be married. She is one of the neglected females and she didn't know why. Dances were seldom held in Dumboon township, but when they do, it was an opportunity for matchmaking. Amelia is drawing perilously near the border of old maidenhood and anxious to change her condition. Will Long Bill ask her to marry him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547422228

Book preview

Edward S. Sorenson

Aunt Jo - A Love Story of the Cedar Scrubs

EAN 8596547422228

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE END

CHAPTER I.

Table of Contents

It was the ninth of November, a day that was kept up at this time by a section of the people who had plenty of money and no work to do. Riding and picnic parties had been organised days before, and a dance arranged in Dumboon township for the evening. The feminine division, especially the love-lorn, looked forward to it hopefully, even anxiously. Dances were seldom held in that neighbourhood, and opportunities for match-making in a scattered, hard-working community were chance ones, with heart-breaking intervals between. Occasionally Long Bill would meet Amelia Jane in the bush while bullock-hunting, and they would say Good day to one another. Bill would ask Amelia Jane if she had seen anything of Battler in her travels; and Amelia Jane would make a similar inquiry concerning Strawberry. Then they would say So long, and go their ways. There wasn't much satisfaction in that. Besides, Amelia Jane was barefooted, and her old print frock gaped at the back. It always did have a gape somehow when she met Bill. The consciousness of her shortcomings was discomfiting, and her manner towards him restrained in consequence. It was different when they met in the fine feathers, and it was night, and they could discourse with strangers, And hug them, too, by special license.

The ballroom, with its varied associations, communions, whirls and excitement, is responsible for much of the match-making in such country places. Masculine Dumboon was not wildly interested in the marriage question. It had gone its sober way so long that it seemed to have forgotten there was such a thing as a connecting link. Some of the girls were drawing perilously near the border of old-maidenhood, and were desperately anxious to change their condition. One or two had already ceased to have birthdays, with a determination to remain young. They had been young a long while.

A spinster appeared to them like the black sheep in a flock. She was liable to be regarded as one about whom there is something amiss, and, in small places like Dumboon is usually a conspicuous person. She particularly desired the thrill and the intoxicating glamour of the ballroom to stir the devil in the other party and bring him to the scratch.

Amelia Jane was one of the neglected ones. Why, she did not know; she was as much a woman as any other. She was plain, sun-browned and toil-scarred; but who wanted good looks in a cedar scrub? She had the strength of a man, and was not afraid to use it. As her father, Peter Johnson often remarked, She's es good a bit o' stuff in th' yoke es e'er a puncher put a brand on. But Amelia Jane didn't go off.

She had been running wild in the jungles from infancy, and had never taken any care of herself in the way that girls do. Being an only child, she acted as general rouseabout for her father, and often went with him to the mountain camps to cook and hunt the bullocks. She could climb like an aborigine, and her knowledge was principally of timbers, birds and animals. Only lately, when the sex instinct began to waken and incline her irresistibly towards the lengthy William, did she consult the looking-glass, and set to work to cultivate her rebellious hair, and to decorate herself with bits of ribbon and white myrtle flowers. Nor was this the only change in the jungle girl occasioned by the propinquity of Bill. From a bold romp, whose innocent eyes would flinch from no man, she became shy and reserved, and pensive glances took the place of the fearless stare of old time. Above all, there came a distaste for the masculine pursuits that had been the leaven of her jungle life, and a love for home that was decidedly feminine.

She chanced to meet Long Bill, otherwise Crackshot Sooley, this day near the township. For once she was walking. The pony had got out.

Huloa, Bill! she called from twenty yards off, making towards him.

Whey! roared Bill and his team came to a stand! He was a thin, sinewy giant, and his face was set in a perpetual grin.

See yer got a new bullock in t'day, she remarked. Where'd yer get him.

Swopped Yallerman ter Abe Watts for him.

Thought Yallerman was a clinker?

He could heave a trifle when he liked, but 'twas seldom he liked. Reckon I scored a p'int on Abe in that deal.

Where's Abe now?

Comin' along behind. Ruther a close call he had th' other day. 'Tween me an' you an' that waggon, he was about the scaredest man as ever dived into water. We wur raftin' logs at Big Hole, an' had got one poised ready to let go down the slope, when Abe noticed a junk o' wood in the way, 'bout half-way down, that 'ad been dislodged by th' last log. We holds on while he jogs down the shoot, but just as he'd removed th' obstruction th' log slipped away from us, an' boomed an bounded down 's if it was a live thing with a special commission to flatten out Abe Watts. Seemed to whiz round an' jump more'n any log ever did. We let out a yell to warn him, an' he just shot one look at that revolving horror—only a roll or two from him then, an' cut like Charlie Samuels for the river. Couldn't have escaped any other way very well, as his time was purty limited, an' the rollin' ground bein' hollow, with, a dense brush on both sides. There warn't a man there but watched th' stampede with blanched face, an' scarce a one breathed as Abe dived wildly into deep water, an' the big cedar plunged with a mighty splash fair over him. I tell yer, we never expected to see him come up alive; but up he bobbed, sure enough, ten yards out, an' turned a scared face towards the dancin' log. 'Are yer hurt?' yells everybody at once. 'Not much! says Abe; an' when he'd scrambled out he said th' log 'ad struck him hard on the soles of his boots, an' druv him to th' bottom. 'I'll take my solemn oath,' he ses, 'no logs go pile-drivin' me agin!' "

Bill spat into the grass. See there's to be a bit of a flare-up in town tor-night, he remarked.

Yer goin'?

Dunno.

Y' orter.

Why?

Be orlright fun.

Bill drew snake tracks in the dust with his whip handle.

Where'll yer be after tea? he asked.

'T home.

Might be round, Bill went on. Think Ginger's runnin' near your paddick somewhere.

Amelia Jane made snake tracks in the dust with her big toe.

I've got no mount, she said.

I'll mount yer, Bill answered with sudden decisiveness. This ole moke o' mine's jest in his nateral element under petticoats. Come third once in th' ladies' hacks at Grafton show.

How many 'orses was there in it?" Amelia Jane inquired.

Three, said Bill, his eye dwelling admiringly on the veteran. 'Ain't much to look at now, but he was a daisy them times. My oath, yes.

What ar' you goin' to ride? she asked.

I'll rake up something 'tween now an' sundown, said Bill. If I don't afore I'll be beat, I'll ride ole Brindle in th' pole there. I stuck a saddle on him up at the scrub one day, when I was pushed for a 'orse, an' he didn't shape too bad. Bit rough, an' stiffnecked when yer wanted to haul him round anyways sharp but he'd gee off an' come hither good enough where he'd plenty o' ground. An' quiet 's a lamb. Was comin' clitter-clatter down th' road to see M'Gurren about some logs I wanted to sell in a hurry. He was buyin' then. Just near Tillalee slip-rails a bald head shot up from behind a log, an' the next thing I knows, I'm rollin' under a cockspur bush, an' Brindle's peltin' back to th' mountains, with th' flaps o' the saddle floggin' him like two big wings; an' ther's Aleck M'Gurren divin' under th' fence 's if he was after something an' 'adn't much time to ketch it in. The old scamp 'ad been on his hands and knees squintin' up a holler log, lookin' for native cats. 'Losh!' he ses, leanin' across th' fence. 'Tis yesel', Bill Sooley!' 'Some of it is, I ses, unwindin' a yard o' yaller spider web from me neck, an' subtractin' th' prickles. 'Ye're a lucky mon, Sooley,' he ses. 'Ye're a varra lucky mon.' 'Where's th' dash luck come in?' I ses, wipin' the blood off me nose. 'Ye didna break ye' neck,' ses M'Gurren! 'If ye ken when ye're wul off, mon, yell step it hame.' Seein' as Brindle was only a speck on th' horizon, an' still makin' tracks, there warn't much choice about it. Never straddled him since; but I reckon I'm good for him ter-night if there's no prad to be got.

I ken expect yer to call then, for sure?

You ken.

Amelia Jane smiled approval, and passed him slowly, looking down at her feet. Bill lifted his whip. Whey, come 'ere, Roan! Gee Brandy! The loaded jinker strained and creaked, the bullocks switched their tails as they bent to the yokes, and a dust-cloud floated between them.

Crackshot Sooley was one of the semi-civilised, way-back settlers of Yeerong Creek—the pioneers of a wild, wallaby-haunted region, reeking with the oaths of giant bullock-drivers, and a-tingle with the far-sounding notes of the bullfrog bells. These settlers had kept sturdily to their usual avocations and the ring of the axes and the roar of the whips were heard in the scrubs as on other days. Why should they go holidaying in honour of a princeling who was no relation of theirs? That was their philosophic view of the case, expressed in the rough jargon of their kind.

They were a rugged people. Of various nationalities, of many shapes and sizes; they displayed as great a diversity in their dispositions as in their opinions and appearances. Yet the majority were related, and bound together into one whole like the correlative inhabitants of Pitcairn Island. It was not safe for a stranger to speak ill of any one of them, though among themselves they would pull each other to pieces with the liberality of a married couple in a domestic squabble. Where there was no other relationship there was still the always ticklish point of an anticipatory connection. Kilfloggin, otherwise George Wrightson, a teamster who had made a name in Dumboon by frequently getting drunk, was wont to go beyond this limit by saying, His old man an' my bundle o' charms swopped dorgs, an' 'twas a fair an' square deal if they did palm off wasters on one 'nother, an' I'm not agoin' ter hear nothin' sed agin him. So look out.

Their main income was derived from the cedar trees that fringed the banks of the Yeerong, and contributed to the gloom of the adjacent scrubs. Team after team crawled regularly along the roads to Dumboon, where the logs were rafted, over bog holes, rocky gullies and corduroyed swamps. Everyone on the Yeerong could drive bullocks, even the settlers' wives and daughters; and everyone could exhort in the picturesque language of the ox-conductor without misplacing an expletive once in a week. They had been inured to it from the cradle; and, when some of the men succumbed to the attractions of Cadby's hostelry, Amelia Jane and Sarah, from the Dairy thought nothing of taking the teams out of town, while the postmaster and the storekeeper, and the publican and the policeman, stood looking at them in an idle, used-to-it sort of way.

Their homes were little slab humpies, with uneven earthern floors, and roofs of stringy bark, fastened to the rafters with strips of greenrhide. The doors hung on leather hinges often made out of the tops of old boots and were fastened with wooden pegs. Corn sacks hung over the square openings left in the walls for windows. Fowls and ducks ran in and out all day, and at night roosted in the surrounding trees. Long grass grew up to the doorsteps, whence narrow tracks zigzagged to the water-hole and the cockatoo yards. It wasn't very lonely, though it looked so in the daytime, when the men and boys, and sometimes the able girls, were away at work in the scrubs. There was scrub everywhere, thick, dark jungles, where brush turkeys and wonga pigeons abounded, running away back to bluecapped ranges. The only fences to be seen were little dog-leg squares, in which an old horse was kept for rounding up the bullocks. Among the hills, a short distance off the Yeerong, were a few settlers who formed quite a different class. They were farmers and small cattle-raisers. The elite, of course, were gathered together in Dumboon and none but the most respectable were received within their circle. Ladies who took in washing, and gentlemen who had been in gaol, were treated with scorn. Of those among the hills—or The Hielans, as Aleck M'Curren, the rich bachelor laird of Tillalee, pleased to style them—three families had the privilege of entree. These were the Lyntons of Druton, the Battyes of Murrawang, and the Lethcotes of Fairymede. The Keatons of Gimbo, the only other homestead on the hills, were now almost forgotten personages. The triumvirate were copioneers of the district,