While The Billy BoilsSearch“You've heard of Warradgery Run,” he said, “where old MorrisDied a while back; I was stockman there, years ago now.Morris had an old shepherd up there, God knows his name, I don't.There's many a man in these parts whose right name nobody knows.We called him old Jack; he wasn't so old, but quiet and queer in his ways,And for a station hand uncommonly steady. You knowIf we work hard in the bush, when we get a chance of enjoyment,We take our pleasure like work, as much as we can at a spell;Perhaps we'd do better to take our sport as I've heard some do with their wine,Drinking to taste and not to be drunk. Well, it's our way.
Jack had little to say, the same as most of the shepherds.Often I've thought when a man has no one to talk to,Nothing but sheep and his dogs around him day after day and for ever;Silence becomes so familiar at last, that his voice is strange to himself.You may think he is shy, but his silence is ignorance and habit,All he learns is the news of the run in a yarn with a stockman or rider,And nought of the world ‘inside’ he knows, save when he gets from a shearerOr some of the station hands a newspaper, months after date.He doesn't dislike a yarn, but he must do most of the listening,That is the way with the most, but Jack liked to keep to himself.If he noticed you coming his way, he would drive off the sheep if he could;But if he must stay, he would merely answer your questions.‘Going wild,’ they said on the run, and he was left to himself.
His hut was out on Dingo Flat, three miles or more from the station—A lonely place; between the hut and the station lived no one.A gunyah of slab the hut, bark-roofed; the walls within lined with sacking,Only one room it had, and the fireplace took up a side.Opposite, raised on short posts and built in the slabs of the wall,Was a bunk for his bed, planked up at the head and the foot.From the top of the bunk to the wall a part of the hut had been ceiled,And in the loft thus made he kept his bridle and saddle.The floor was the earth flattened well by tramping and beating.Under the window, unglazed and closed with a strong wooden shutter,Stood his table, uneven and rudely made of deal casingSupported on saplings short that sunk in the earth of the floor;He had made it himself; between table and fireplace a campstool.Beside the window his cupboard was placed, a gin case nailed to the wall;On it rested some pipes, and a bushman's various trifles,Scattered about the hut were his simple household utensils,And save himself and his dogs, in the place was never a living creature.
This hut stood down at the end of the Flat; behind it a pen for the sheep.A hundred yards from the door ran a little creek, and about it,Here and there, grew a she-oak, tall and sombre of foliage.Black and green wattles and pines and gum trees covered a hillockWith a thick scrub to the summit. This in the front to the east.Behind the gunyah were flats with low bare hills alternated,Bare were both flats and hills save for here and there a huge gum.Riding one day by Warraman Creek, amongst the scrub on the hillsideAnd over the flats by the water, I saw Jack's sheep were astray.Neither Jack nor his dog responded when loudly I cooeyed,So I rode on to his hut. The door was closed; not dismounting,I struck on the door with my stockwhip handle and listened—no answer.Again I struck, and a faint voice said, ‘For God's sake, come in.’The door was locked, and I broke the hasp with repeated blows of a log,Entered, and saw in the twilight Jack lying still in his bunkSo like a dead man that at first I scarcely believed he was living.
Shrunken and ghastly pale was his face, unmoving among the blue blankets.He had not the strength to rise, but when he saw who it was enteredA change came on his face as he found relief from some terror;And when I stood at his side he stretched forth weakly yet eagerHis wasted hands to grasp mine, and strove, though they could not, to hold me.And sitting beside him he told me the tale I will tell you.It was long hearing for me; though he seemed impatient to tell it;His strength would fail, and long he would lie unwillingly silent;When he spoke 'twas with many a groan and pause between the words that he gasped.
‘Stay by me, Jim, for the time is not long to my death.A week have I lain, and the sickness threatened before that.As I grew feeble and worse, fearing my strength would utterly fail me,I turned the sheep loose; better lost than starved in the yard.And never the face of one living I saw, but only a face that I wished not;For whether I slept or whether I waked, or opened mine eyes were or closed,Ever a dreadful vision burned through my sense to my soul—Eyes with a terrible threat and reproach in their passionless sameness—Living eyes in a dead wan face that was gapped with a ruinous blow.And I thought it the judgment of God, the face of my victim should haunt me,And the eyes of him whom I slew should witness my doom without pity.Three years ago it is now, one wild night a man, weak and ailing,Wandered up to the hut and asked shelter! O, God! that he had not!But this is hell—to do crime and gain not, yet never undo it.He entered and lay that night in a bed I made on the hearthplace,He was worse in the morning, and wandered much in his mind,And in his madness he talked of his money, and bade meOpen his swag to be sure it was there; from that day I wished for his death,But I thought not yet of a crime, expecting he would not recover.When the delirium passed he lay so feeble and helpless,I thought some day to return and find he had died in his sleep;Then I might hide his swag, and give them word at the stationA sick man came to the hut and after a day or two died.But one day he rose by himself and thenceforth grew stronger.He knew it as well, and said that I would find he was grateful,“You will not lose by me,” he declared, “I am not so poor as I look.”Forgetting—how should he remember?—when mad alike we gazed on his wealth.And daily I brooded about the chance of his money escaping.Though I tried not to show my desire he might have perceived it,For I was afraid he might leave some time and find his way to the station.Nightly I brought back the sheep, and while I penned them, our rationHe cooked and laid out our meal; in silence we ate it.Then he would sit at one side of the fire, I at the other, nor speak,For I was never a talker, and he got tired of everything soon.If he began to talk I'd say, “aye” or “no,” and all the while I was thinkingOf the notes in his swag I had seen when first he came to the hut.When the fire burnt down he went to the bunk, while my bed I made on the hearth.One night, coming back, I got tired of it all; shall I wait, I said to myself,Till he gets strong and goes off, and all his money goes with him?You have a right to it, too; but for you he had died on the flat.So the mischief had worked, while I knew not whither my thoughts were leading,And the deed I must do to possess his wealth then first arose in my mind;For a moment I shrank, then my purpose was deadlier strengthened.When he turned in, I listened till I heard his steady, low breathing,Then rose, took the axe, gently felt in the dark for his face,Struck once, and he loudly groaned, shuddered, and then he lay still.Mad to conceal him, then with the axe I hewed a grave under the bunk,And wrapping his body, yet warm, in the bedclothes he lay in,Hurried it into the hole, threw the earth back, and placed the box over.I burnt the swag, and his money you'll find it all in the box.’
When he began, I thought him by sickness and loneliness maddened,And the story some dream of his fever; but as he proceededWithout a pause, save that which his illness commanded,In spite of myself I believed. When he ceased, he lay silent;Almost I feared to stay there; the murdered man lying beneath us,Above him his murderer dying at night in that hut on the flat.
He asked me for water at length, and I went for it down to the creek;Never did night seem more lovely to me, every star stood out from the blue,There was no wind, and the air was cool and fresh, and the scene most silent—Perfectly silent, but for the distant wailing of curlews.The very trees seemed asleep, and my steps broke harsh on the quiet.The water was calm as the air, and when I disturbed it,Danced in the ripples the shimmering stars as if delighted with motion.There was no moon, and the starlight showed no horizon;And the world stretched out to the stars in that shadowless landscape of twilight.Back I turned to the hut. I gave the man drink and sat by his bedside,And waited there through the dreary hours knowing him past any help.Uneasily slept he a while with many a shudder and groan,Sometimes sobbing, then delirious waked, and towards the morning he died,All his face working and shrieking: ‘I didn't do anything with it.’Suddenly broke his shriek to a groan, and passed through his limbs a strong shudder,Then like a blow from a hand unseen the death change smote all his face.So he died, and at once I rode back to the station.
Morris was down in Melbourne, and I told the manager Benson.At daylight he sent off a man to round up the sheep, and laterHe and I rode down and fastened the hut till a magistrate came.Then I went over to Wirra, and Jackson and his overseerCame the same day to Warradgery. The hut never saw such a muster,For the story had spread and every one wished to attend.Below the bunk the floor was dug up; not four feet under the surfaceWe found what had been a man, with rotting blue blankets about it.And when all proceedings were over, no shepherd could be persuadedTo live near the spot. A stranger soon heard of the story.A new hut was built farther on, and the old one abandoned left standing.
So little by little the place went all to destruction,The shutter was torn away, and the door fell, hung by one hinge,The sacking got torn away down within, and the rain beat in through the cracks,Fallen wholly, one slab left a ruinous gap in the front.The roof was loosed by the wind, and the bark frayed out into ribbons.So looked the hut on that desolate flat the last time I saw it,Late in a stormy day in August; the sun was not sunken,Yet was the landscape darkened by cloud; the creek was swollen by rains;Over the flat a heavy wind blew and whistled among the she-oaks,Bringing now and again a shower of thick stinging sleet.While my mare stopped for a drink, I turned in my saddle and gazedUp to Jack's gunyah standing desolate there as I tell you.I have seen some places unholy in different parts of the country,But the God-forsakenest spot that ever mine eyes were set onWas the scene of Jack's crime, that stormy evening in August—Blasted as if the place shared in the curse on a pitiless murder.”
Soon after the coach came up, and we set off again on our journey;Neither spoke to the other, each in a corner sat down silent;We two the passengers only; what my comrade was thinking I know not;But the damp wind, blowing hard through the trees by the roadside,Was ever in my sad thoughts as the moaning wind in the she-oaks,And the driver's song, and the rhythmic fall of horse's feet on the highway,The ring of the wheels, and the clash of harness, and sound of the threatening whip,Made an accompaniment to “I didn't do anything with it,”To the shriek of a deathful voice, “I didn't do anything with it.”