Bill, the butcher, said next day: "Nosey has gone for good this time. He will ride that horse to death and then steal another."
At this time I rode through the Rises and called at the two huts; I found them occupied by two shepherds not unlike the former tenants, who knew little and cared less what had become of their predecessors. Time empties thrones and huts impartially, and the king feels no pride in his monument of marble, nor the shepherd any shame beneath the shapeless cairn which hides his bones.
At this time the old races both of men and animals were dying out around Lake Nyalong, and others were taking their places. The last black child ever seen in the township was brought by its mother to the hut of a white woman. It was naked and very dirty, and she laid it down on the clay floor. The white woman's heart was moved with pity at the sight of the miserable little bairn. She took it up, washed it with warm water and soap, wrapped it in flannel, and gave it back to the mother. But the lubra was loath to receive it. She said, "Black picaninny all die. No good; white picaninny live."
The kangaroo, wombat, and dingo were fast dying out, as well a the blackfellow. We could all see well enough how the change was brought about. Millions of years ago, new species may have been evolved out of the old species, but nothing of the kind happens now. The white men of Australia were not evolved out of the black men. There are no family ties, and never will be, between the kangaroo, the wombat and wallaby, and their successors, the cattle, the sheep, and the goats. We can kill species, but we can't create any.
The rabbit, destined to bring Nosey to the gallows, was a favoured animal on Austin's station at the Barwon. It was a privilege to shoot him--in small quantities--he was so precious. But he soon became, as the grammar says, a noun of multitude. He swarmed on the plains, hopped over the hills, burrowed among the rocks in the Rises, and nursed his multitudinous progeny in every hollow log of the forest. Neither mountain, lake, or river ever barred his passage. He ate up all the grass and starved the pedigree cattle, the well-born dukes and duchesses, and on tens of thousands of fertile acres left no food to keep the nibbling sheep alive. Every hole and crevice of the rocks was full of him. An uninvited guest, he dropped down the funnel-shaped entrance to the den of the wombat, and made himself at home with the wild cat and snake. He clothed the hills with a creeping robe of fur, and turned the Garden of the West into a wilderness. Science may find a theory to account for the beginning of all things, but among all her triumphs she has been unable to put an end to the rabbit. War has been made upon them by fire, dynamite, phosphorus, and all deadly poisons; by dogs, cats, weasels, foxes, and ferrets, but he still marches over the land triumphantly.
For fifteen years Nosey roamed from station to station under various names, between Queensland and the Murray, but wherever he went, the memory of his crime never left him. He had been taught in his boyhood that murder was one of the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance, and he knew that sooner or later the cry would be heard. Sometimes he longed to unburden his mind to a priest, but he seldom saw or heard of one. The men with whom he worked and wandered were all like himself--lost souls who had taken the wrong turn in the beginning of their days, the failures of all trades and professions; thieves, drunkards, and gamblers; criminals who had fled from justice; men of pleasure and, therefore, of misery; youths of good family exported from England, Ireland, and Scotland to mend their morals, to study wool, and become rich squatters. All these men get colonial experience, but it does not make them saintly or rich. Here and there, all over the endless plains, they at last lie down and die, the dingoes hold inquests over them, and, literally, they go to the dogs, because they took the wrong turn in life and would not come back.
In 1868 Nosey and his two mates were approaching a station on the Lachlan. Since sunrise they had travelled ten miles without breakfast, and were both hungry and weary. They put down their swags in the shade of a small grove of timber within sight of the station buildings. Bob Castles said:
"I was shearing in them sheds in '52 when old Shenty owned the run. He was a rum old miser, he was, would skin two devils for one hide; believe he has gone to hell; hope so, at any rate. He couldn't read nor write much, but he could make money better'n any man I ever heard of. Bought two runs on the Murray, and paid 180,000 pounds for 'em in one cheque. He kept a lame schoolmaster to write his cheques and teach his children, gave him 40 pounds a year, the same as a shepherd. Lived mostly on mutton all the year round; never killed no beef for the station, but now and then an old bullock past work, salted him down in the round swamp for a change o' grub. Never grew no cabbage or wegetables, only a paddock of potatoes. Didn't want no visitors, 'cos he was afraid they'd want to select some of his run. Wanted everything to look as poor and miserable as possible. He put on a clean shirt once a week, on Sabbath to keep it holy, and by way of being religious. Kept no fine furniture in the house, only a big hardwood table, some stools, and candle boxes. After supper old Mother Shenty scraped the potato skins off the table into her apron --she always boiled the potatoes in their jackets--and then Shenty lay down on it and smoked his pipe till bedtime, thinking of the best way to keep down expenses. A parson came along one day lifting a subscription for a church, or school, or something. He didn't get anything out of old Shenty, only a pannikin of tea and some damper and mutton. The old cove said: 'Church nor school never gave me nothing, nor do me no good, and I could buy up a heap o' parsons and schoolmasters if I wanted to, and they were worth buying. Us squatters is the harrystockrisy out here. The lords at home sends out their good-for-nothing sons to us, to get rich and be out of the way, and much good they does. Why don't you parsons make money by your eddication if it's any good, instead of goin' round beggin'? You are all after the filthy lucre, wantin' to live on other folks.' I was holdin' the parson's horse, and when he got into the saddle, he turns to old Shenty, and says: 'From rottenness you sprung, and to rottenness you'll go. Your money will drag you down to hell; you'll want to throw it away, but it will burn into your soul for all eternity.'
"I am mortal hungry," continued Bob, "and they don't give no rations until about sundown, and we'll have to wait six hours. It's hard lines. I see there's an orchard there now, and most likely a wegtable garden--and cabbages. I'd like some boiled beef and cabbage. It wouldn't be no harm to try and get somethin' to eat, anyhow. What do you say, Ned? You was a swell cove once, and knows how to talk to the quality. Go and try 'em."
Ned went and talked to the "quality" so well that he brought back rations for three.