"Time he was thinkin' about repentin', anyhow," observed Dixon.
"Now, really Thompson—do you believe in these special malisons?" asked Willoughby, as Price rejoined the company. "Are you so superstitious? I should n't have thought it."
"I've good reason to believe in them," replied Thompson. "You asked me this morning why I did n't have two teams. Now I'll tell you the reason. It's because I'm not allowed to keep two teams. I've got a curse on me. Many a long year ago, when I finished my second season, I found myself at Moama, with a hundred and ten notes to the good, and the prospect of going straight ahead, like the cube root—or the square of the hypotenuse, is it? I forget the exact term, but no matter. Well, the curse came on me in this way: Charley Webber, the young fellow I was travelling with, got a letter from some relations in New Zealand, advising him to settle there; so he offered me his plant for two-thirds of its value—fifty notes down and fifty more when he would send for it. Sheer good-nature of him, for he knew he could have the lot if he liked. But there's not many fellows of Charley's stamp. So I paid him the fifty notes and we parted. He was to send me his address as soon as he reached New Zealand; but he never got there. The vessel was wrecked on some place they call the North Spit; and Charley was one of the missing. Never heard of him from that day to this."
"Good (ensanguined) shot!" remarked Mosey. "I wish that same specie of a curse would come on me."
"My (ensanguined) colonial!" assented Dixon and Bum, with one accord.
"Well, nobody knows anything about the geography of New Zealand," continued Thompson, "and I purposely forgot the address of Charley's people. Any honest man would have hunted them up, but that was n't my style; I was n't a wheat-sample; I was a tare. Compromised with my conscience. Thought there was no time to lose in making an independence—making haste to be rich, and considering not that's there's many a slip between the cup and the lip, as Solomon puts it. I said to myself, 'That's all right; I'll pay it some time.' Now see the consequence——"
"Just two years after I bid the poor fellow good-bye-two years to the very day, and not very lucky years neither—I found myself in the middle of the Death Track, with flour for Wilcannia; one wagon left behind, and the bullocks dropping off like fish out of water; bullocks worth ten notes going as if they were n't worth half-a-crown. It was like the retreat from Moscow. Finally, I lost fourteen on the trip—exactly the number I had got dishonestly. As for the second wagon, I gave it to Baxter for fetching the load the last fifty mile. I thought this might clear away the curse, so I didn't fret over it. I felt as if Charley had got satisfaction. But I wasn't going to get off so cheap. Two years afterward—you remember, Dixon?—I bought that thin team and the Melbourne wagon from Pribble, the contractor. Dixon, here, was driving for Pribble at that very time, and he can tell you how Dick the Devil cleaned me out of my fine old picked team and the new wagon, leaving me to begin afresh with the remains of Pribble's skeletons and my own old wagon. Then a year or two afterward, I went in debt to buy that plant of Mulligan's—him that was killed off the colt at Mossgiel— and that same winter the pleuro broke out in my lot, and they went like rotten sheep till fourteen were gone; and then, of course, the plague was stopped. Not having any use for Mulligan's wagon, I swapped her for a new thirty-by-twenty-four wool-rag, and a Wagga pot, good for eight or ten mile on a still night; and, within a month, Ramsay's punt went down with my wagon; she's in the bottom of the Murrumbidgee now, with eight ton of bricks to steady her, and the tarpaulin and bell to keep her company. She'll be fetching the most critical planks out of a steamer some of these times, and I'll get seven years for leaving her there. Afterward, when I was hauling logs for pontooning, on the Goulburn, I kept buying up steers and breaking them in, till I had two twelves; and one day I left sixteen of them standing in yoke while I went looking round for a good log; and suddenly I heard a crash that rattled back and forward across the river for a quarter of an hour. I had a presentiment that Providence was on the job again, and I wasn't disappointed. One of the fallers had left a tree nearly through when he went to dinner; and a gust of wind sent it over, and it carried a couple of other trees before it, right on the spot where my team was folded up in the shade. Eight of them went that trip, between killed and crippled, leaving me with sixteen. My next piece of luck was to lose that new Yankee wagon in the Eight-mile Mallee, on Birrawong. Then I could see plain enough that Providence had taken up Charley's case, and was prepared to block me of keeping two teams; so I determined to have one good one. Now, I've always stood pretty well with the agents and squatters, and I know my way round Riverina, so I can turn over as much money as any single-team man on the track, bar Warrigal Alf (I beg your pardon, Cooper; I forgot)—but what's the use of money to me? Only vanity and vexation of spirit, as Shakespear says. I get up to a certain point, and then I'm knocked stiff. Mind, I've only given you a small, insignificant sample of the misfortunes I've had since I cheated that dead man; but if they don't prove there's a curse on me, then there's no such thing as proof in this world."
Price cleared his throat. "Them misforcunes was invidiously owin' to yer own (adj.) misjudgment," he said dogmatically.
"Serve you right for not havin' better luck," added Dixon.
"Learn you sense, anyhow," remarked Mosey.