Some people speak of the Fizzer’s luck, and say he’ll pull through, if any one can. It is luck, perhaps—but not in the sense they mean—to have the keen judgment to know to an ounce what a horse has left in him, judgment to know when to stop and when to go on—for that is left to the Fizzer’s discretion; and with that judgment the dauntless courage to go on with, and win through, every task attempted.
The Fizzer changes horses at Renner’s Springs for the “Downs’ trip”; and as his keen eyes run over the mob, his voice raps out their verdict like an auctioneer’s hammer. “He’s fit. So is he. Cut that one out. That colt’s A1. The chestnut’s done. So is the brown. I’ll risk that mare. That black’s too fat.” No hesitation: horse after horse rejected or approved, until the team is complete; and then driving them before him he faces the Open Downs—the Open Downs, where the last mail-man perished; and only the men who know the Downs in the Dry know what he faces.
For five trips out of the eight, one hundred and thirty miles of sun-baked, crab-holed, practically trackless plains, no sign of human habitation anywhere, cracks that would swallow a man—“hardly enough wood to boil a quart pot,” the Fizzer says, and a sun-temperature hovering about 160 degrees (there is no shade-temperature on the Downs); shadeless, trackless, sun-baked, crab-holed plains, and the Fizzer’s team a moving speck in the centre of an immensity that, never diminishing and never changing, moves onward with the team; an immensity of quivering heat and glare, with that one tiny living speck in its centre, and in all that hundred and thirty miles one drink for the horses at the end of the first eighty. That is the Open Downs.
“Fizz!” shouts the Fizzer. “That’s where the real fizzing gets done, and nobody that hasn’t tried it knows what it’s like.”
He travels its first twenty miles late in the afternoon, then, unpacking his team, “lets ’em go for a roll and a pick, while he boils a quart pot” (the Fizzer carries a canteen for himself); “spells” a bare two hours, packs up again and travels all night, keeping to the vague track with a bushman’s instinct, “doing” another twenty miles before daylight; unpacks for another spell, pities the poor brutes “nosing round too parched to feed,” may “doze a bit with one ear cocked,” and then packing up again, “punches ’em along all day,” with or without a spell. Time is precious now. There is a limit to the number of hours a horse can go without water, and the thirst of the team fixes the time limit on the Downs. “Punches ’em along all day, and into water close up sundown,” at the deserted Eva Downs station.
“Give ’em a drink at the well there,” the Fizzer says as unconcernedly as though he turned on a tap. But the well is old and out of repair, ninety feet deep, with a rickety old wooden windlass; fencing wire for a rope; a bucket that the Fizzer has “seen fit to plug with rag on account of it leaking a bit,” and a trough, stuffed with mud at one end by the resourceful Fizzer. Truly the Government is careful for the safety of its servants. Added to all this, there are eight or ten horses so eager for a drink that the poor brutes have to be tied up, and watered one at a time; and so parched with thirst that it takes three hours’ drawing before they are satisfied—three hours’ steady drawing, on top of twenty-three hours out of twenty-seven spent in the saddle, and half that time “punching” jaded beasts along; and yet they speak of the “Fizzer’s luck.”
“Real fine old water too,” the Fizzer shouts in delight, as he tells his tale. “Kept in the cellar for our special use. Don’t indulge in it much myself. Might spoil my palate for newer stuff, so I carry enough for the whole trip from Renner’s.”
If the Downs have left deep lines on the Fizzer’s face, they have left none in his heart. Yet at that well the dice-throwing goes on just the same.
Maybe the Fizzer feels “a bit knocked out with the sun,” and the water for his perishing horses ninety feet below the surface; or “things go wrong” with the old windlass, and everything depends on the Fizzer’s ingenuity. The odds are very uneven when this happens—a man’s ingenuity against a man’s life, and death playing with loaded dice. And every letter the Fizzer carries past that well costs the public just twopence.
A drink at the well, an all-night’s spell, another drink, and then away at midday, to face the tightest pinch of all—the pinch where death won with the other mail-man. Fifty miles of rough, hard, blistering, scorching “going,” with worn and jaded horses.