‘That’s a disease can soon be cured,’ said Dwyer with a laugh. ‘I’m agoin’ to clap the J. D. on her now.—Shove her in the botte, boys, while I go an’ fetch the irons up.’
‘That mare’s a thoroughbred, and a race-mare to boot, and she’s “on the cross” right enough,’ whispered Bray, as we walked back towards the house. ‘She’s been shook; and though she ain’t fire-branded, there’s a half-sovereign let in under the skin just below the wither; I felt it quite plain; and I wouldn’t wonder but there’s a lot more private marks on her as we can’t see.’
‘Do you think, then,’ I asked, ‘that young Dwyer stole her?’
‘Likely enough, likely enough,’ was the reply. ‘But if he did, strikes me as we’ll hear more about the matter yet.’
Just at this moment, shouts of, ‘Here’s the parson!’—‘Here’s old Ben!’ drew our attention to a horseman who was coming along the narrow track at a slow canter.
A well-known character throughout the whole of that immense district was the Rev. Benjamin Back, ‘bush missionary;’ and not less well known was his old bald-faced horse Jerry. The pair bore a grotesque resemblance to each other, both being long and ungainly, both thin and gray, both always ready to eat and drink, and yet always looking desolate and forlorn. As the Rev. Ben disengaged his long legs from the stirrups, the irrepressible old Dwyer appeared with the greeting-cup—a tin pint-pot half full of rum—which swallowing with scarcely a wink, to the great admiration of the lookers-on, the parson, commending Jerry to the care of his host, stalked inside, and was soon busy at the long table, working away at a couple of roast-ducks, a ham, and other trifles, washed down with copious draughts of hot tea, simply remarking to ‘Annie,’ that she ‘had better make haste and clean herself, so that he could put her and Jim through, as he had to go on to Bullarora that evening to bury a child for the Lacies.’
Having at length finished his repast, all hands crowded into the long room, where before ‘old Ben’ stood bride and bridegroom, the former neatly dressed in dark merino—her own especial choice, as I was told, in preference to anything gayer—with here and there a bright-coloured ribbon, whilst in her luxuriant black hair and in the breast of her dress were bunches of freshly plucked orange blossoms, that many a belle of proud Mayfair might have envied. The bridegroom in spotless white shirt, with handkerchief of crimson silk, confined loosely around his neck by a massive gold ring, riding-trousers of Bedford cord, kept up by a broad belt, worked in wools of many colours by his bride, and shining top-boots and spurs, looked the very beau-idéal of a dashing stockman, as he bore himself elate and proudly, without a trace of that bucolic sheepishness so often witnessed in the principal party to similar contracts.
The old parson, with the perspiration induced by recent gastronomic efforts rolling in beads off his bald head, and dropping from the tip of his nose on to the church-service in his hand, had taken off his long coat of threadbare rusty black, and stood confessed in shirt of hue almost akin to that of the long leggings that reached above his knees. It was meltingly hot; and the thermometer—had there been such an article—would have registered one hundred and ten or one hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade at the least. But it was all over at last. Solemnly ‘old Ben’ had kissed the darkly flushing bride, and told her to be a good girl to Jim—solemnly the old man had disposed of another ‘parting cup;’ and then, whilst the womenkind filled his saddle-bags with cake, chicken, and ham, together with the generous half of a ‘square-face’—or large square-sided bottle—containing his favourite summer beverage, old Dwyer, emerging from one of the inner rooms, produced a piece of well-worn bluish-tinted paper, known and appreciated in those regions as a ‘bluey,’ at sight of which the parson’s eye glistened, for seldom was it that he had the fortune to come across such a liberal douceur as a five-pound note; but as old Dwyer said: ‘We don’t often have a job like this one for you Ben, old man. We’re pretty well in just now, an’ I mean you shall remember it. An’ look here; Jerry’s getting pretty poor now, an’ I know myself he’s no chicken; so you’d best leave him on the grass with us for the rest o’ his days, an’ I’ll give you as game a bit o’ horse-flesh as ever stepped; quiet, too, an’ a good pacer. See! the boys is a-saddlin’ him up now.’
The old preacher’s life was hard, for the most part barren, and little moistened by kind offers like the present; and his grim and wrinkled face puckered up and worked curiously as he gratefully accepted the gift for Jerry’s sake, his constant companion through twelve long years of travel incessant through the wildest parts of Queensland; and with a parting injunction to ‘the boys’ to look after the old horse, he, mounting his new steed, started off on his thirty-mile ride to bury Lacy’s little child.
The long tables, at which all hands had intermittently appeased their hunger throughout the day, on fowls, geese, turkeys, sucking-pig, fish, &c., were now cleared and removed; a couple of concertinas struck up, and fifteen or twenty couples were soon dancing with might and main on the pine-boarded floor. Old men and young, old women and maidens, boys and girls, all went at it with a will, whirling, stamping, changing and ‘chaining’ till the substantial old house shook again, and fears were audibly expressed that the whole building would topple over into the river.