Smoke Signals
Travelling across country in Central Australia is usually very monotonous. The same routine is gone through day after day, and there is not even the relief of meeting new faces, for one's companions are often the only human beings met with during the whole of a trip of many weeks.
For the first few days of journeying towards the Musgraves, young Stobart and Vaughan found everything new and intensely interesting. At piccaninny daylight—which is the bush term for the rising of the morning star—Mick Darby turned over on his swag and sat up, and called out "Daylight! Daylight!"
The drover was so punctual with this call that it seemed to the boys as if he must have been awake for hours, watching for the star to rise blood-red above the eastern horizon. But years of bush travel, of watching restless cattle, and of sleeping under the threat of danger from prowling blacks had made the man respond immediately to any noise or unusual sight. There was no period of stretching or yawning. Mick was asleep one instant, and fully awake the next and shouting "Daylight". The black boys were also light sleepers, trained out of their native laziness by association with alert whites. There was Yarloo, who had come in from the west with Boss Stobart's message and had joined the white man's plant at once; and Ranui, a tall fine man from North Queensland, who showed both in his build and name a trace of Malay blood; and Ted and Teedee, two boys who had been with Mick since they were "little fellas".
As soon as the morning call sounded, the black stockmen rolled out of their camp-sheets, picked up their bridles, and went off in the grey light on the tracks of the hobbled horses. Their skill in tracking was a constant source of wonder to the boys. The type of country didn't seem to matter at all; soft sand or hard stony tableland was all the same to them; they tracked the wandering horses with as much careless certainty as if they could actually see them, though on some nights they had strayed, in search of feed, several miles away from camp.
When the black boys had gone, Sax and Vaughan collected wood for the morning fire, raked last night's ashes together, and made a blaze. Then they filled the seven quart-pots with water and set them near the flame to boil for breakfast.
The drover was always busy in the early hours. There was probably a piece of horse-gear to mend, a broken or faulty girth, the stuffing of a saddle which had become lumpy, or a buckle which had torn away. When these were all in order, there was the everlasting "damper" to make. Vaughan volunteered to become assistant cook if Mick would give him lessons in the great bush art of damper-making.
"You'd better start on Johnny-cakes," said the drover. "The mixture's just the same, but if you make a mess you won't spoil a whole damper. You watch me to-day. You can try your hand to-morrow, if you like."
It was still an hour or so before sunrise when the white boys had their first lesson in bush cookery. Mick went over to one of the packs and pulled out a seventy-pound bag of flour about half full. He untied the mouth of the bag and took out a tin of baking-powder. Then he spread a folded sack on the sand, and piled on it about five double handfuls of flour, mixing a lidful of baking-powder with it. He gave this a good stir round, dry as it was, and then made a hollow in the middle and poured in water in which a little salt had been dissolved. The proper mixing of the dough only came by experience, Mick told them; as dry as possible and yet damp enough to stick together. The work was done quickly but thoroughly.
"If you wanted it for a damper," explained Mick, giving the dough a final roll, "you'd put the whole lot in together. But I'll show you Johnny-cakes first; they're easier and don't take so long."
He divided the dough into little pieces and rolled each out in his hands till it was the size and shape of an ordinary bun. He arranged these on the bag and pulled it near the fire. "I always let the things rise for a couple of minutes," he said. "Some chaps don't, but I always do."
Then he prepared the fire for cooking. Every fragment of blazing wood was put on one side, and a heap of soft glowing ashes left. With a curved stick, this pile was scooped about till it was like a very big saucer, all glowing hot and yet not actually burning. On this warm bed the Johnny-cakes were dropped, leaving a space between each so that they wouldn't run together. When all the white balls of dough were in place, Mick flicked some of the ashes from the edge of the hollow on to them, gradually increasing the amount till the cakes were covered right over and the whole affair was a mound of grey with no sign of the cooking cakes.
"How long before they're done?" asked Vaughan.
"Depends," answered Mick. "Depends on the size of them and the heat of the fire. I don't like the fire too hot. We'll have a look at these in about a quarter of an hour."
At the end of that time the top of the pile of ashes had begun to crack here and there with the upward pressure of the rising Johnny-cakes. Mick scooped one of them out from the edge. It was brown and hard on the outside, with a most appetizing smell, and a soft ring round it where the top had pulled away, just like the top on a loaf of bread. To the boy's surprise, the cakes were quite clean, and a few flicks with a wisp of leaves left them as free from sand or ashes as if they had been baked in an oven. Mick tapped the cake with his knuckles. "Another couple of minutes won't hurt," he said.
Presently the distant sound of a jangling stock-bell was heard, and a few minutes later the horses came into camp, lead by an old black mare who carried a bell, and driven by the four black boys riding bareback. Everything was bustle for a few minutes. The horses were again hobbled to prevent them from straying, and then the men all settled down to breakfast. Vaughan usually took charge of the tea. Directly a quart-pot came to the boil, he tipped in some sugar and a pinch of tea, and moved the pot away from the fire. Sax superintended the tucker—a slab of damper, or a Johnny-cake, and a chunk of salt meat for each man. These are the bush rations year in and year out: meat, damper, and tea. Breakfast was eaten quickly, and then the pack-bags were weighted evenly and fastened up, horses caught and saddled, a final look given round the camp to see that nothing was left behind, and the three white men set out in a certain direction with no track and with no guidance of any kind except that of the sun, followed at once by the plant of horses driven by the blacks.
All day they rode, silent for the most part, but occasionally Mick would answer a question as to a tree, a strange track, or a feature on the horizon. No other living thing was seen hour after hour, save a solitary eagle high in the air, a few lizards darting about the clumps of porcupine grass, and ants and flies. These latter pests are the curse of the back country. The weather was hot. That day and on several others one hundred and thirty degrees was reached, and even that temperature was exceeded now and then over sandhills and plains which quivered in the heat. But the boys would not have minded the heat if the flies had only left them alone. Long before dawn, before even the morning star had risen, flies buzzed around them, making life well-nigh unbearable.
A halt was made about noon for dinner, the packs and saddles taken off the horses for an hour, and then the journey was resumed, each man riding a fresh horse, for no one rides the same horse all day in Central Australia, if he can possibly help it.
Evening camp was usually made near a water-hole or native well, but sometimes the horses had to go as long as two days without a drink. They were unsaddled and hobbled out, and allowed to roam about all night and pick up scanty bits of food. It amazed the white boys to see what very little herbage of any kind there was for an animal to live on. No grass; just a dry uninviting bush here and there, growing up out of loose barren sand, with, at long intervals, a clump of twisted mulga trees. Yet the horses "did" well, and certainly the thousand T.D.3 bullocks which had come down from the territory looked none the worse for their trip over country just as barren as the boys were now camped on.
After tea was the time the two white boys enjoyed most, for Mick would light his pipe then, prop himself up against his swag, and, with a quart-pot of tea by his side, tell them yarns about the back country. Many of these narratives included Boss Stobart, for he and Mick had gone about together a great deal, and had established overland droving records which are still unbeaten. He told of drought and flood, of thirst and hunger, of cattle rushes and disease, of mining camps, of Afghans and their camels, of Chinamen and opium, of grog shanties, of troopers, of wild blacks and still wilder whites, until his listeners' minds flamed at the thought that they, even they, were in the country where such adventures had taken place—and perhaps some day would be met with by themselves. And at night, when they lay out on their swags under the cool sky, which looked so much farther away than it did in cities, and heard the high quavering hunting-call of the dingo, their thoughts would go, not towards the scenes where they had spent their boyhood, but onwards into the unknown.
One day, when the routine of "the road" had gone on for more than a fortnight, they were crossing a broad expanse of hard stony country, shut in on the north by dense mulga scrub, when Sax noticed a thin column of smoke rising from the trees a few miles away. He could hardly believe his eyes, and when he looked again it was no longer coming up from the trees, but was rising up and up and fading away against the flawless blue of the sky. He was about to call Vaughan's attention to it when his horse stumbled and nearly fell. Next time he looked to the north the smoke was again rising from the trees, and then again it was cut off, and floated away and was lost.
His curiosity was thoroughly roused. "Mick!" he shouted, for by this time the boys had dropped the "Mr." when speaking to their drover friend. "Mick! Is that smoke over there in the trees?"
"Sure it's smoke," he answered. "And so's that ahead there." He pointed across the plain, where the heat was dancing, to a little hill. It must have been eight miles away, and from it rose a thin coil of smoke. At first Sax thought it was merely the effect of the sun causing everything in the distance to quiver and take on fantastic shapes, but he trusted the bushman's eyes, and at last convinced himself that it was indeed smoke.
"Then somebody must be camped there," said Vaughan.
"Is it a station, Mick, or just chaps travelling like ourselves?" asked Sax.
"It's niggers, lad. They're signalling to one another."
The columns of smoke were at once invested with a new interest to the two boys. Natives were near them, unseen, sending messages to other natives at a distance. The simplicity of this bush telegraphy was fascinating.
"What are they saying, Mick, d'you know?" asked Vaughan eagerly.
"This lot," said the drover, "is telling that other lot over there that we're coming. So many white men, so many blacks, and so many horses. We're getting into nigger country now."
"Will we see them?" asked the boys.
"No chance in life," replied the drover. "These niggers are wild and scared to death of white men. They're different from the camp blacks who hang round stations. They'll likely be station blacks themselves some day, for the wild nigger's dying out. But just now, they keep away and live their own lives. We call them warraguls."