Then Andy wired to the Boss’s brother Ned, who was fighting the drought, the rabbit-pest, and the banks, on a small station back on the border. Andy reckoned it was about time to do something.
Perhaps the Boss hadn’t been quite right in his head before he started drinking—he had acted queer some time, now we came to think of it; maybe he’d got a touch of sunstroke or got brooding over his troubles—anyway he died in the horrors within the week.
His brother Ned turned up on the last day, and Bob thought he was the devil, and grappled with him. It took the three of us to hold the Boss down sometimes.
Sometimes, towards the end, he’d be sensible for a few minutes and talk about his ‘poor wife and children’; and immediately afterwards he’d fall a-cursing me, and Andy, and Ned, and calling us devils. He cursed everything; he cursed his wife and children, and yelled that they were dragging him down to hell. He died raving mad. It was the worst case of death in the horrors of drink that I ever saw or heard of in the Bush.
Ned saw to the funeral: it was very hot weather, and men have to be buried quick who die out there in the hot weather—especially men who die in the state the Boss was in. Then Ned went to the public-house where the barmaid was and called the landlord out. It was a desperate fight: the publican was a big man, and a bit of a fighting man; but Ned was one of those quiet, simple-minded chaps who will carry a thing through to death when they make up their minds. He gave that publican nearly as good a thrashing as he deserved. The constable in charge of the station backed Ned, while another policeman picked up the publican. Sounds queer to you city people, doesn’t it?
Next morning we three started south. We stayed a couple of days at Ned Baker’s station on the border, and then started on our three-hundred-mile ride down-country. The weather was still very hot, so we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned’s place at dusk. He parted from us at the homestead gate. He gave Andy a small packet, done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained Bob’s pocket-book, letters, and papers. We looked back, after we’d gone a piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing by the gate; and a very lonely figure he looked. Ned was a bachelor. ‘Poor old Ned,’ said Andy to me. ‘He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker before she got married, but she picked the wrong man—girls mostly do. Ned and Bob were together on the Macquarie, but Ned left when his brother married, and he’s been up in these God-forsaken scrubs ever since. Look, I want to tell you something, Jack: Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of fever, and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he died easy—and all that sort of thing. Ned sent her some money, and she is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died. Now I’ll have to go and see her when we get to Solong; there’s no getting out of it, I’ll have to face her—and you’ll have to come with me.’
‘Damned if I will!’ I said.
‘But you’ll have to,’ said Andy. ‘You’ll have to stick to me; you’re surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this? I’ll have to lie like hell—I’ll have to lie as I never lied to a woman before; and you’ll have to back me and corroborate every lie.’
I’d never seen Andy show so much emotion.
‘There’s plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,’ said Andy. He said no more about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss’s name casually, until we were within about a day’s ride of Solong; then Andy told me the yarn he’d made up about the Boss’s death.