Norah of Billabong

by Mary Grant Bruce

But when the bottle ran dry his contented mood rapidly fell away from him. He had been dreaming gentle, whisky-assisted day-dreams of suddenly rising to fame and fortune—the means he most favoured consisted in buying a horse out of a costermonger’s barrow, for, say, 2s. 11d. and training it in secret until he won the Melbourne Cup with it. It made him very happy, but he could not dream it unassisted; and the bottle was empty, leaving him not quite sober, yet a very long way from drunk—an unpleasant position. Instead of such joyous visions, cheerless spectres came to him—work, and policemen, and bosses; all three equally distasteful. He went over and over the recital of his woes—of Mr. Linton, bloated capitalist and slave-driver, rolling in wealth and grinding the poor beneath his large boot; of himself, Harvey, toiling heavily for a pittance, his lot unredeemed by kindness or fair treatment. Put in that way, it made quite a pathetic case. Harvey grew sorrier for himself with every minute and more and more convinced of the injustice of his lot. That Mr. Linton worked harder than any man he employed, and that he himself had not made the smallest effort to earn his wages, mattered to him not at all. The squatter represented the hated class that owned money, while he had none; and the fact was sufficient condemnation in Harvey’s eyes. He passed from the stage of whining to that of showing his teeth—somewhat hampered by the fact that no one was near to be impressed by the exhibition.

He had worked himself into a sullen fury by the time the sun suddenly dipped behind the western pines, and he realized that it was late—that he should have been on the track long ago. It made another item in his list of grievances. Harvey hated walking—the fourteen miles to Cunjee seemed a hundred as he sat on the grass and thought about it. Still, he did not dare to remain until the others should come home—willing enough to hurt them, could he find a secret chance, he was as little anxious to face Mr. Linton and Jim as he was to meet Murty and the stockmen, whose criticisms, he felt, would be pointed.

He lit a cigarette, letting the match drop carelessly, and a little trail of fire sprang up in the grass in quick answer. Harvey put it out with a casual blow from his hat; even he knew a man must not play tricks with matches in summer. And then the whisky, working on his own evil mind, put a thought into him, and he bit off the end of his cigarette in sudden excitement.

It was a mad thought, but he toyed with it as he sat there, smoking fiercely, until it did not seem so mad after all. Other men had been punished for oppressing the poor. Other squatters had known what it meant to offend the working man—had seen their sheep go unshorn, their lambs undocked, their bullocks left untended. Other swagmen had done what was in his brain to do—had left a fire carefully smouldering near a station boundary so that it should get away into the long grass. It had always seemed to him a particularly smart thing to do—the sort of thing to serve a squatter jolly well right, and prove to him that he was not going to ride rough-shod over every one. There would be exquisite enjoyment in administering just such a lesson to Billabong’s owner. Yet, how to do it?

He was not devoid of cunning. Risk to his own skin was the only thing that really mattered to him. He turned over in his mind various plans, and rejected all of them because he could not quite see his way out. Once started in the long, dry grass, a fire would travel like a flash. There would be no time for the man who lit it to make his escape, for the alarm would have been given before he had gone half a mile. He could not even plead an escaped spark from a camp fire. He had no billy, and with the thermometer at 110 degrees in the shade, there was no possible excuse for a man to light a fire, unless he wanted to brew tea. And short shrift would be given to the “swaggie” careless with pipe and matches in such weather, with the grass like a yellow crop over the sun-baked district. It was really very difficult to be an incendiary, with a due regard for your skin.

Then the old kerosene tin he had kicked away earlier in the afternoon caught his eye, and he gave a low, triumphant whistle. There was an old trick; he had heard of it in Gippsland, if a man wanted to light his cut scrub before the law allowed him to burn it. You put a candle, alight, under a tin, and then rode away, leaving the little sheltered flame to burn slowly down until it came to the tinder-like grass. By that time you were probably inspecting cattle at a farm ten miles off, so that no one could say you had been near your own property to start the fire. It was a very happy way of proving an alibi, and, whatever the neighbours might think, particularly if your burn had spread to their paddocks and involved them in loss, the police could say nothing to you.

“Why not?”

Harvey asked himself the question quite cheerfully. He had a candle. It had occurred to him that the one in his room might be useful, so he had packed it in his swag. The tin appeared to have been put there by a thoughtful Fate. Everything was playing into his hands. Already it was almost sunset. The candle was nearly new, and it would burn long enough to let him get a long distance away. Even if the cracks of the old tin should show a faint glow, no one would notice it behind the clump of gum trees. And once burned to the grass—well, the grass would do the rest.

He took out the candle, and made a little hole in the ground to act as a socket, pressing it tightly into position. Round it he cut the tall tops of the grass, so that the blaze should not come too soon, laying them round the base—a carefully-prepared little mat of tinder. Then he rolled up his swag and made quite ready to start.

He lit the candle. The flame burned steadily in the still, hot air. Then, gently, he inverted the kerosene tin over it, peeping through a hole in the side to make sure that the little yellow flame was still alight. It seemed a little weak—perhaps there was not enough air. So he slipped a stick under one edge, tilting it very slightly, yet enough to admit a breath. He nodded, pleased with his improvement.