We of the Never-Never

by Jeannie Gunn

But Jack no longer objected to questions. He turned towards us with soft, shining eyes. “There’s not many like him,” he said, pulling at one of the flexible ears. “You could learn him anything.” It seemed so, for after trying to solve the problem of the roller and bit with his tongue when it was put into his mouth, he accepted the mystery with quiet, intelligent trust; and as soon as he was freed from it, almost courted further fondling. He would let no one but Jack near him, though. When we entered the yard the ears went back and the whites of the eyes showed. “No one but me for a while,” Jack said, with a strange ring of ownership in his voice, telling that it is a good thing to have a horse that is yours, and yours only.

Within a week “Brownie” was mounted, and ridden down to the House for final inspection, before “going bush” to learn the art of rounding up cattle. “He’ll let you touch him now,” Jack said; and after a snuffing inquiry at my hands the beautiful creature submitted to their caresses.

Dan looked at him with approving eyes. “To think she had the luck to choose him too, out of all that crowd,” he said.

“We always call it instinct, I think,” the Măluka said teasingly, twitting me on one of my pet theories, and the Dandy politely suggested “It might be knowledge.’”

Then the Quiet Stockman gave his opinion, making it very clear that he no longer felt that women had nothing in common with men. “It never is anything but instinct,” he said, with quiet decision in his voice. “No one ever learns horses.”

While the Quiet Stockman had been busy rearranging his ideas of womankind, a good many things had been going wrong at the homestead. Sam began by breaking both china cups, and letting the backbone slip out of everything in his charge.

Fowls laid-out and eggs became luxuries. Cream refused to rise on the milk. It seemed impossible to keep meat sweet. Jimmy lost interest in the gathering of firewood and the carrying of water; and as a result, the waterbutts first shrank, then leaked, and finally lay down, a medley of planks and iron hoops. A swarm of grasshoppers passed through the homestead, and to use Sam’s explicit English: “Vegetable bin finissem all about”; and by the time fresh seeds were springing the Wet returned with renewed vigour, and flooded out the garden. Then stores began to fail, including soap and kerosene, and writing-paper and ink threatened to “peter out.” After that the lubras, in a private quarrel during the washing of clothes, tore one of the “couple of changes” of blouses sadly; and the mistress of a cattle-station was obliged to entertain guests at times in a pink cambric blouse patched with a washed calico flour-bag; no provision having been made for patching. Then just as we were wondering what else could happen, one night, without the slightest warning, the very birds migrated from the lagoon, carrying away with them the promise of future pillows, to say nothing of a mattress, and the Măluka was obliged to go far afield in search of non-migrating birds.

Dan wagged his head and talked wise philosophy, with these disasters for the thread of his discourse; but even he was obliged to own that there was a limit to education when Sam announced that “Tea bin finissem all about.”

He had found that the last eighty-pound tea-chest contained tinware when he opened it to replenish his teacaddy. Tea had been ordered, and the chest was labelled tea clearly enough, to show that the fault lay in Darwin; but that was poor consolation to us, the sufferers.

The necessities of the bush are few; but they are necessities; and Billy Muck was sent in to the Katherine post-haste, to beg, borrow, or buy tea from Mine Host. At the least a horseman would take six days for the trip, irrespective of time lost in packing up; but knowing Billy’s untiring, swinging stride, we hoped to see him within four days.