Arthur Upfield - The Barrakee Mystery

“I love teasing Uncle and Dug. When roused, Unclelooks just like Mr Pickwick scolding Mr Snodgrass, and Dug grits his teeth as though he would like to bite me.”

But, once having roused them, she did all she could to reduce them speedily again to normal.

“Well, if you don’t like my mentioning Sir Walter, I won’t,” she said placidly. “Let’s talk about the Land Lottery.”

So, until the end of lunch, they discussed the advantages of the various blocks, and the chances their personal friends had of obtaining one of them.

After leaving the Washaways, the road ran over undulating grass country, bearing here and there clumps ofbelar. Six miles west of the maze of creeks they came to yet another hut, called One Tree Hut, with its well. Here lived two boundary-riders, and to one of these Kate gave a hamper packed by the Little Lady.

These men, being under the administration of the overseer, Thornton did not engage long in conversation. The last lap of the journey, twenty miles, was covered in leisurely fashion.

Approaching Thurlow Lake the road takes one up a slight rise to a belt of oak-trees, and, when through these, the lake of brilliant blue and the white-walled, red-roofed buildings of the out-station burst suddenly into view.

At midday Thurlow Lake is a glittering blue diamond, lying on an immense expanse of dark green velvet. Roughly circular in shape, with a diameter of two miles, the blue water is edged by a ring of brilliant green box-trees with an outer border of radiant red sand-hills, the whole surrounded by the omnipresent dark green bush.

To emerge from the high belt of oaks is like meeting the sea after a weary, dusty, interminable country tramp.

“Oh, why don’t we live here instead of by the old river?” exclaimed the girl when they dropped down towards the cluster of neat buildings.

“It is beautiful, Kate, isn’t it?” replied the squatter. “It is unfortunate, though, that the lake is filled so rarely. Remember Thurlow Lake when it is dry and wind-blown, Kate?”

“Yes, it is horrid then. Here is Mrs Watts waiting for us. I’ve never seen her yet without a small child hanging to her skirts.”

A large, pleasant-faced woman, a little more than thirty, opened the gate leading into the miniature garden, when they pulled up before it. Mrs Watts was abushwoman, one of the smallband of heroic women who live cheerfully and happily in the semi-wilds of Australia. The Women of Barrakee were her nearest female neighbours, and Barrakee was seventy-nine miles east. She loved her husband and adored her six children. She cooked for him and them, she gave her children their primary education, and she incessantly struggled with the elements to make the garden a tiny paradise.

“Come in, come in,” she exclaimed in a low, sweet voice. “The tea is made and the scones are just out of the oven. Kate-Oh Kate, my dear, what are the young men doing to leave you stillheartwhole? But there,” with a sharp glance at Dugdale, “as George says, the young men today haven’t got much backbone.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” Kate rejoined. “Ralph hasn’t said anything yet, but he’ll be a whirlwind when he starts.”

Mrs Watts’ blue eyes, set wide in her big face, beamed upon the young man. Ralph smiled in his quiet way and said:

“It will be Desdemona and Othello, or the Sheik and the lovely white girl, darkness matched to fairness, black opal against a white diamond.”

“Now, now, we’ll have no Romeo and Juliet just at present,” interrupted the squatter genially. “Wait till we get our wool to Sydney and the advance cheque in the bank. I’ll be richer then than I am now-till the tax-gatherers hunt me up. Where’s George, Mrs Watts?”

“He went out to the Five Mile, Mr Thornton. I’m expecting him back any minute,” she said. “But what are we doing standing here? Come in-come in.”

The child clinging to her voluminous skirt was swept off its feet by the turn she made to lead them into the house liked loved relatives she had not seen for years. Her happiness was infectious. Even Dugdale’s heartache was banished for the time being.

Sonny’s Hundredth Case

GEORGE WATTS, returning in time to join them in an early afternoon cup of tea, went off on a tour of the back paddocks with the squatter and Dugdale, leaving Ralph the pleasant task of talking to the two women. He did this till the conversation veered to babies and dress fashions, when, these subjects not being in his line, he drifted across the stockyards, in which he had seen a bunch of horses.

At that time there was engaged at Thurlow Lake a horse-breaker. The popular conception of breaking-in horses appears to be to rope the animal in cowboy style, fling a saddle across its back, mount and ride till either bucked off or crowned with the laurels of victory. As a matter of cold fact, suchprocedure would not merely break-in a horse, but break it up, too, into a dispirited, abject, miserable animal.

Some of the best horse-breakers in Australia are the worst horse-riders. Such a one was Sonny. No one knew his surname; it is doubtful if he knew it himself. He was no rider, but he had no equal in handling a colt or a spirited filly, mouthing it, training it to lead, to stay rooted to the ground when the reins were dropped, and to step up immediately to a man, if that man wanted to ride it, when commanded by the lifting of an arm. Vicious horses, bucking horses, bolting horses, are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the result of bad breaking-in. But that afternoon Sonny was in despair with the hundredth case-the born vicious, unbreakable beast.

“I can’t handle him and I can’t ride him,” Sonny wailed when Ralph had perched himself on the top-most rail of the round yard.

The horse was a beautiful, jet-black, three-year-old gelding. Sonny had got the bridle on him with great difficulty, and had been fruitlessly trying to give him his first lesson. With forefeet planted like sticks in the ground, the gelding refused obstinately to move one inch. The short length of rope attached to the bit-rings was taut. The animal’s head was thrust out and down under the breaker’spull, ears flattened, eyes sloe-coloured in a sea of chalk.

Sonny relaxed the strain on the rope by edging towards the horse, which remained immobile. He gained its side and gave its rump a cut with the light switch. The gelding swung its hind-quarters round away from the breaker, its forefeet pivoting slightly, but still as straight as sticks. The relative positions of horse and man were precisely the same.

“I wish I could ride, you black devil,” Sonny cried. “I’d break you or bust your big, damned heart.”

“I can ride a bit, Sonny,” came Ralph’s musical drawl. “Let me have a go, will you?”

“Well, Mr Ralph, I’ve never let anyone ride myhosses till I say they’re broke-in,” replied the short, powerful-armed Sonny. “But this ’ere beast will never, never be any mortal use. Don’t you ride him, now. He’ll kill you.”

“Not he. Take the bridle off him and hand it to me.”

Ralph Thornton was not exactly a fool. He had learned to ride at a very early age, and had since never ridden an easy horse if a spirited animal was to be had. He was an excellent rider in that he possessed instinctive balance. There are many, many good riders, but few, very few, riders of good balance.

Sonny knew this. And, though he thought he knew that the young man was an inexperienced buck-jump rider, he was aware that a super buck-jumping horse is so after successfully unseating many riders. Sonny reckoned that once Ralph was on its back the gelding would hardly know what to do. Even so he took no chances.

His slim hands quickly undid the neck-strap, the stodgy yet infinitely gentle fingers deftly removed the bridle. Instantly, when free, the horse whipped round and lashed out with both hind hoofs; but Sonny was on the top rail alongside Ralph.