THE ‘LADY GODIVA.’
AN AUSTRALIAN STORY.
It happened that one summer, a few years ago, I found myself travelling up the Barwon River, just where it commences to form the boundary between Queensland and New South Wales. The weather was terribly hot, and feed for horses scarce, so that I was only too glad to accept the invitation of a hospitable settler, an old acquaintance in digging days gone by, to stay and ‘spell’ for a week or two, whilst my horses put on a little condition in his well-grassed paddocks. The country round about at that time, even on the river frontages, was very sparsely settled, and comparatively young people could remember when the blacks were ‘bad.’ Dingoes, kangaroos, wild-cattle, and ‘brombees’ or wild-horses, roamed the great scrubs in thousands; and with respect to broken-in and branded individuals of the two latter species, the laws of meum and tuum seemed to be very lightly regarded amongst the pioneers of the border; and for a settler to put in an appearance at his neighbour’s killing-yard whilst the operation of converting bullock into beef was going on, was deemed the very height of bad manners, inexcusable, indeed, unless perhaps in the newest of new-chums, at least till the hide was off and the brand cut out.
My friend had only recently taken up ground on the river; but his next and nearest neighbour, old Tom Dwyer, who resided about five-and-twenty miles away, was a settler of many years’ standing; and it was from him that, towards the end of my stay with the Brays, came an invitation to the wedding festivities of his only daughter, who was to be married to a young cousin, also a Dwyer, who followed the occupation of a drover.
As Bray and myself rode along in the cool of the early morning—the womenkind and children having set out by moonlight the night before in a spring-cart—he gave me a slight sketch of the people whose hearty invitation we were accepting.
‘A rum lot,’ said my old friend—a fine specimen of the bushman-digger type of Australian-born colonist, hardy, brave, and intelligent, who had, after many years of a roving, eventful life, at last settled down to make himself a home in the wilderness—‘a rum lot, these Dwyers. Not bad neighbours by no means, at least not to me. I speak as I find; but people do say that they come it rather too strong sometimes with the squatters’ stock, and that young Jim—him as is goin’ to get switched—and old Tom his uncle do work the oracle atween ’em. I mind, not so long ago, young Jim he starts up north somewhere with about a score head o’ milkers and their calves; and when he comes back again in about six months, he fetched along with him over three hundred head o’ cattle! “Increase,” he called ’em—ha, ha! A very smart lad is Jim Dwyer; but the squatters are getting carefuller now; and I’m afraid, if he don’t mind, that he’ll find himself in the logs some o’ these fine days. He’s got a nice bit o’ a place over the river, on the New South Wales side, has Jim, just in front o’ Fort Dwyer, as they call the old man’s camp. You could a’most chuck a stone from one house to the other.’
So conversing, after about three hours’ steady-riding through open box forest country, flat and monotonous, we arrived at ‘Fort Dwyer’—or Dee-wyer, as invariably pronounced thereabouts—a long, low building, constructed of huge, roughly squared logs of nearly fireproof red coolabah, or swamp-gum, and situated right on the verge of the steep clay bank, twenty feet below which glided sullenly along the sluggish Barwon, then nearly half a ‘banker.’
A hearty welcome greeted us; and the inevitable ‘square-face’ of spirits was at once produced, to which my companion did justice whilst pledging the health of the company with a brief, ‘Well, here’s luck, lads!’ For my own part, not daring to tackle the half-pannikinful of fiery Mackay rum so pressingly offered, with the assurance that it was ‘the finest thing out after a warm ride,’ I paid my respects to an immense cask of honey-beer which stood under a canopy of green boughs, thus running some risk of losing caste as a bushman by appropriating ‘the women’s swankey,’ as old Dwyer contemptuously termed it, whilst insisting on ‘tempering’ my drink with ‘just the least taste in life, sir,’ of Port Mackay, of about 45 o. p. strength.
There must have been fully one hundred people assembled; and the open space just in front of the house was crowded with buggies, spring-carts, wagonettes, and even drays; but the great centre of attraction was the stockyard, where Jim Dwyer was breaking-in to the side-saddle a mare, bought in one of his recent trips ‘up north,’ and intended as a present for his bride, of whom I caught a glimpse as she sat on an empty kerosene tin, with her sleeves rolled up, busily engaged in plucking poultry; a fair type of the bush-maiden, tall and slender, with good, though sharply cut features, deeply browned by the sun, laughing dark eyes, perfect teeth—a rare gift amongst young Australians—and as much at home—so old Bray assured me—on horseback cutting out ‘scrubbers’ or ‘brombees,’ as was her husband-elect himself.
The rails of the great stockyard were crowded with tall, cabbage-tree-hatted, booted and spurred ‘Cornstalks’ and ‘Banana-men’ (natives of New South Wales and Queensland respectively); and loud were their cries of admiration, as young Dwyer, on the beautiful and, to my eyes, nearly thoroughbred black mare, cantered round and round, whilst flourishing an old riding-skirt about her flanks.
‘She’ll do, Jim—quiet as a sheep’—‘My word! she’ll carry Annie flying’—‘What did yer give for her, Jim?’—‘A reg’lar star, an’ no mistake!’ greeted the young man, as, lightly jumping off, he unbuckled the girths and put the saddle on the slip-rails.
Jim Dwyer differed little from the ordinary style of young bush ‘native’—tall, thin, brown, quick-eyed, narrow in the flanks; but with good breadth of chest, and feet which, from their size and shape, might have satisfied even that captious critic the Lady Hester Stanhope, under whose instep ‘a kitten could walk,’ that the Australians of a future nation would not be as the British, ‘a flat-soled generation, of whom no great or noble achievement could ever be expected.’
I fancied that, as the young fellow came forward to shake hands with Bray, he looked uneasily and rather suspiciously at me out of the corner of one of his black eyes. My companion evidently observed it also, for he said laughingly: ‘What’s the matter, Jim? Only a friend of mine. Is the mare “on the cross?” And did you think he was a “trap?”’
‘None o’ your business, Jack Bray,’ was the surly reply. ‘“Cross” or “square,” she’s mine till some one comes along who can show a better right to her, an’ that won’t happen in a hurry.’
‘Well, well,’ replied Bray, ‘you needn’t get crusty so confounded quick. But she’s a pretty thing, sure enough. Let’s go and have a look at her.’
Everybody now crowded round the mare, praising and admiring her. ‘Two year old, just,’ exclaimed one, looking in her mouth.—‘Rising three, I say,’ replied another.—‘And a cleanskin, and unbranded!’ ejaculated Bray, at the same time passing his hand along the mare’s wither.
‘That’s a disease can soon be cured,’ said Dwyer with a laugh. ‘I’m agoin’ to clap the J. D. on her now.—Shove her in the botte, boys, while I go an’ fetch the irons up.’
‘That mare’s a thoroughbred, and a race-mare to boot, and she’s “on the cross” right enough,’ whispered Bray, as we walked back towards the house. ‘She’s been shook; and though she ain’t fire-branded, there’s a half-sovereign let in under the skin just below the wither; I felt it quite plain; and I wouldn’t wonder but there’s a lot more private marks on her as we can’t see.’
‘Do you think, then,’ I asked, ‘that young Dwyer stole her?’
‘Likely enough, likely enough,’ was the reply. ‘But if he did, strikes me as we’ll hear more about the matter yet.’
Just at this moment, shouts of, ‘Here’s the parson!’—‘Here’s old Ben!’ drew our attention to a horseman who was coming along the narrow track at a slow canter.
A well-known character throughout the whole of that immense district was the Rev. Benjamin Back, ‘bush missionary;’ and not less well known was his old bald-faced horse Jerry. The pair bore a grotesque resemblance to each other, both being long and ungainly, both thin and gray, both always ready to eat and drink, and yet always looking desolate and forlorn. As the Rev. Ben disengaged his long legs from the stirrups, the irrepressible old Dwyer appeared with the greeting-cup—a tin pint-pot half full of rum—which swallowing with scarcely a wink, to the great admiration of the lookers-on, the parson, commending Jerry to the care of his host, stalked inside, and was soon busy at the long table, working away at a couple of roast-ducks, a ham, and other trifles, washed down with copious draughts of hot tea, simply remarking to ‘Annie,’ that she ‘had better make haste and clean herself, so that he could put her and Jim through, as he had to go on to Bullarora that evening to bury a child for the Lacies.’
Having at length finished his repast, all hands crowded into the long room, where before ‘old Ben’ stood bride and bridegroom, the former neatly dressed in dark merino—her own especial choice, as I was told, in preference to anything gayer—with here and there a bright-coloured ribbon, whilst in her luxuriant black hair and in the breast of her dress were bunches of freshly plucked orange blossoms, that many a belle of proud Mayfair might have envied. The bridegroom in spotless white shirt, with handkerchief of crimson silk, confined loosely around his neck by a massive gold ring, riding-trousers of Bedford cord, kept up by a broad belt, worked in wools of many colours by his bride, and shining top-boots and spurs, looked the very beau-idéal of a dashing stockman, as he bore himself elate and proudly, without a trace of that bucolic sheepishness so often witnessed in the principal party to similar contracts.
The old parson, with the perspiration induced by recent gastronomic efforts rolling in beads off his bald head, and dropping from the tip of his nose on to the church-service in his hand, had taken off his long coat of threadbare rusty black, and stood confessed in shirt of hue almost akin to that of the long leggings that reached above his knees. It was meltingly hot; and the thermometer—had there been such an article—would have registered one hundred and ten or one hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade at the least. But it was all over at last. Solemnly ‘old Ben’ had kissed the darkly flushing bride, and told her to be a good girl to Jim—solemnly the old man had disposed of another ‘parting cup;’ and then, whilst the womenkind filled his saddle-bags with cake, chicken, and ham, together with the generous half of a ‘square-face’—or large square-sided bottle—containing his favourite summer beverage, old Dwyer, emerging from one of the inner rooms, produced a piece of well-worn bluish-tinted paper, known and appreciated in those regions as a ‘bluey,’ at sight of which the parson’s eye glistened, for seldom was it that he had the fortune to come across such a liberal douceur as a five-pound note; but as old Dwyer said: ‘We don’t often have a job like this one for you Ben, old man. We’re pretty well in just now, an’ I mean you shall remember it. An’ look here; Jerry’s getting pretty poor now, an’ I know myself he’s no chicken; so you’d best leave him on the grass with us for the rest o’ his days, an’ I’ll give you as game a bit o’ horse-flesh as ever stepped; quiet, too, an’ a good pacer. See! the boys is a-saddlin’ him up now.’
The old preacher’s life was hard, for the most part barren, and little moistened by kind offers like the present; and his grim and wrinkled face puckered up and worked curiously as he gratefully accepted the gift for Jerry’s sake, his constant companion through twelve long years of travel incessant through the wildest parts of Queensland; and with a parting injunction to ‘the boys’ to look after the old horse, he, mounting his new steed, started off on his thirty-mile ride to bury Lacy’s little child.
The long tables, at which all hands had intermittently appeased their hunger throughout the day, on fowls, geese, turkeys, sucking-pig, fish, &c., were now cleared and removed; a couple of concertinas struck up, and fifteen or twenty couples were soon dancing with might and main on the pine-boarded floor. Old men and young, old women and maidens, boys and girls, all went at it with a will, whirling, stamping, changing and ‘chaining’ till the substantial old house shook again, and fears were audibly expressed that the whole building would topple over into the river.
‘Not to-night, of all nights in the year,’ said old Dwyer; ‘although I do believe I’ll have to shift afore long. Ye’ll hardly think it—would ye?—that when I first put up the old shanty, it stood four chain, good, away from the bank; it was, though, all that; an’ many a sneaking, greasy black-fellow I’ve seen go slap into the water with a rifle bullet through his ugly carcass out of that back-winder, though it is plumb a’most with the river now.’
So, louder and louder screamed the concertinas, faster and faster whirled the panting couples, till nearly midnight, when ‘supper’ was announced by the sound of a great bullock bell, and out into the calm night-air trooped the crowd. The tables this time had been set out on the sward in front of the house, just without the long dark line of forest which bordered the river, through the tops of whose giant ‘belars’ the full moon shone down on the merry feasters with a subdued glory; whilst, in a quiet pause, you could hear the rush of the strong Barwon current, broken, every now and again, by a deep-sounding ‘plop,’ as some fragment of the ever-receding clayey bank would fall into the water. Four or five native bears, disturbed by the noise, crawled out on the limbs of a great coolabar, and with unwinking, beady-black eyes, gazed on the scene below, expressing their astonishment every now and again in hoarse mutterings, now low and almost inarticulate, then ‘thrum, thrumming’ through the bush till it rang again. From a neighbouring swamp came the shrill scream of the curlew; whilst far away in the low ranges of Cooyella, could be heard the dismal howl of a solitary dingo coo-ee-ing to his mates.
Scarcely had the guests taken their seats and commenced, amidst jokes and laughter, to attack a fresh and substantial meal, when a furious barking, from a pack of about fifty dogs, announced the advent of strangers; and in a minute more, three horsemen, in the uniform of the Queensland mounted police, rode up to the tables. One, a sergeant apparently, dismounted, and with his bridle over his arm, strode forward, commanding every one to keep their seats; for several at first sight of the ‘traps’ had risen, and apparently thought of quietly slipping away. This order, however, enforced as it was by the production of a revolver, together with an evident intention of using it on any absconder, brought them to their seats again.
‘What’s all this about?’ exclaimed old Dwyer. ‘We’re all honest people here, mister, so you can put up your pistol. Tell us civilly what it is you’re wantin’, an’ we’ll try an’ help you; but don’t come it too rough. You ought to be ’shamed o’ yourself. Don’t ye see the faymales?’
‘Can’t help the females,’ retorted the sergeant sharply. ‘I haven’t ridden four hundred miles to play polite to a lot of women. I want a man named James Dwyer; and by the description, yonder’s the man himself’—pointing at the same time across the table to where sat the newly-made husband, who had been one of the first to make a move at sight of the police.
‘What’s the charge, sargent?’ asked old Dwyer coolly.
‘Horse-stealing,’ was the reply; ‘and here’s the warrant, signed by the magistrate in Tambo, for his apprehension.’
I was sitting quite close to the object of these inquiries, and at this moment I heard young Mrs Dwyer, whilst leaning across towards her husband, whisper something about ‘the river’ and ‘New South Wales;’ and in another moment, head over heels down the steep bank rolled the recently created benedict, into the curious and cool nuptial couch of swiftly flowing, reddish water, which he breasted with ease, making nearly a straight line for the other bank, distant perhaps a couple of hundred yards.
The troopers, drawing their revolvers, dismounted, and running forward, were about to follow the example set by their superior, who was taking steady aim at the swimmer, perfectly discernible in the clear moonlight, when suddenly half-a-dozen pair of soft but muscular arms encircled the three representatives of law and order, as the women, screaming like a lot of curlews after a thunderstorm, clasped them in a tight embrace.
Young Mrs Dwyer herself tackled the sergeant, crying: ‘What! would you shoot a man just for a bit of horse-sweating! Leave him go, can’t you. He’s over the border now in New South Wales, mare and all; and you can’t touch him, even if you was there.’
Just then a yell of triumph from the scrub on the other shore seemed to vouch for the fact, and was answered by a dozen sympathetic whoops and shouts from the afore-mentioned ‘Cornstalks’ and ‘Banana-men,’ who crowded along our side of the river.
The sergeant struggled to free himself; and his fair antagonist unwound her arms, saying: ‘Come now, sargent, sit down peaceably and eat your supper, can’t you! What’s the good of making such a bother over an old scrubber of a mare!’
‘An old scrubber of a mare!’ repeated the sergeant aghast ‘D’ye think we’d ride this far over a scrubber of a mare? Why, it’s the Lady Godiva he took; old Stanford’s race-mare, worth five hundred guineas, if she’s worth a penny. Bother me! if he didn’t take her clean out of the stable in Tambo, settling-night, after she’d won the big money! But there, you all know as much about it as I can tell you, that’s plain to be seen, for I never mentioned a mare; it was your own self, I do believe; and I’ll have him, if I have to follow him to Melbourne.—Just got married, has he? Well, I can’t help that; he shouldn’t go stealing race-mares.—Well, perhaps you didn’t know all about it,’ went on the sergeant, in reply to the asseverations of the Dwyer family as regarded their knowledge of the way the young man had become possessed of the mare. ‘But,’ shaking his head sententiously, ‘I’m much mistaken if most of this crowd hadn’t a pretty good idea that there was something cross about her. However,’ he concluded philosophically, ‘it’s no use crying over spilt milk. I’ll have to ride over to G—— at daylight—that’s another forty miles—and get an extradition warrant out for him. He might just as well have come quietly at first, for we’re bound to have the two of them some time or other.’
It was now nearly daylight; and our party set out on their return home, leaving the troopers comfortably seated at the supper, or rather by this time, breakfast table; while just below the house, in a bend of the river, we could see, as we passed along, a group of men busily engaged in swimming a mob of horses—amongst which was doubtless the Lady Godiva herself—over to the New South Wales shore, where, on the bank, plainly to be discerned in the early dawn, stood the tall form of her lawless owner.
‘How do you think it will all end?’ I asked Bray.
‘Oh,’ was the reply, ‘they’ll square it, most likely. I know something of that Stanford; he’s a bookmaker; and if he gets back the mare and a cheque for fifty or a hundred pounds, to cover expenses, he’ll not trouble much after Jim.’
‘Yes. But the police?’ I asked.
‘Easier squared than Stanford,’ answered Bray dogmatically.
That this ‘squaring’ process was successfully put in force seemed tolerably certain; for very shortly afterwards I read that at the autumn meeting of the N. Q. J. C., the Lady Godiva had carried off the lion’s share of the money; and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mr and Mrs Dwyer in one of Cobb & Co.’s coaches, bound for the nearest railway terminus, about three hundred miles distant, thence to spend a month or so in Sydney; Jim, as his wife informed me, having done uncommonly well out of a mob of cattle and horses which he had been travelling for sale through the colonies; so had determined to treat himself and the ‘missis,’ for the first time in their lives, to a look at the ‘big smoke.’
‘That was a great shine at our wedding, wasn’t it?’ she asked, as the coachman gathered up the reins preparatory to a fresh start. ‘But’—and here she tapped her husband on the head with her parasol—‘I look out now that he don’t go sticking-up to any more Lady Godivas.’
‘That’s so,’ laughed Jim. ‘I find, that I have my hands pretty full with the one I collared the night you were there. I doubt sometimes I’d done better to have stuck to the other one; and as for temp’—— Here Jim’s head disappeared suddenly into the interior of the coach; crack went the long whip; the horses plunged, reared, and went through the usual performance of attempting to tie themselves up into overhand knots, then darted off at top-speed on their sixteen-mile stage, soon disappearing in a cloud of dust along the ‘cleared line.’