精彩书摘
A winter storm raged across the ridges and tore in violent gusts downthe gullies, carrying great squalls of fleecy snow.The wind swept theflakes horizontally through the gap where the station track ran anirregular course through the bush; and, though but a short hour hadpassed since the ominous mass of black cloud had swept over the earlymorning sky, the ground was already thickly powdered.
A ramshackle hut stood beside the track where it entered the bush, andin a rough lean-to, where firewood, tools and saddlery were piled moreor less indiscriminately, two unkempt station ponies, saddled andbridled, stood in somnolent attitudes.Huddled hens sheltered from thesearching blasts, which swept in eddies of snow, ruffling the feathersof the hens and driving the tails of the horses between their legs.
Charley and Mac had come thus far on their way out to have a look atthe stock in the big paddocks higher in the hills, before thethickening snow had made purposeless their going further.So they haddropped in to see old George, the rouseabout, and have a yarn with him,or, if there were no signs of the weather clearing, to consider thequestion of work in the wool-shed.
"Hullo, boys!" mumbled George."I reckon as thar' ain't no use usgittin' art jist now.I thinks the fire's the best place ter day.
Squat yerself in that thar cheer, Mac, me boy.Jinny!get some tea,"he roared hospitably through the wall towards the wee kitchen where hishard-working little wife was making bread for her large family ofchildren who were away at school."And I'll give yer a toon on thegrammephone."
Nothing averse, the two stockmen settled down before the big log firein George's den, aromatically smoky from firewood and tobacco, with itswalls papered from odd paperhangers' samples and prints from Victorianjournals, and with domestic odds and ends lying here and there.Thegood lady speedily produced the tea and added cakes and scones, whileGeorge brought into action his cheap American machine and its hoary oldrecords; vague, scratching echoes here in the depths of the bush of thegay sparkling life of Piccadilly and Leicester Square by night,laughing theatre crowds and wonderful women—a life worlds away fromGeorge and his rough, but hospitable hearth.He laughed wheresometimes there were jokes, more frequently where there were not, andthe other two laughed good-naturedly in concert, for the machinescratched so badly that they could not distinguish a word, thoughGeorge, remembering them in the freshness of their youth, was blind totheir growing infirmities.If the two laughed heartily, or expressedin words the good qualities of a record, those, in addition to George'sparticular cronies, were given a second or a third run.
They grew rather tired of this entertainment, and turned theirattention to the domestic bookshelf and the family treasures whichadorned the walls and the mantelpiece.In a glass frame was an armybiscuit of army hardness on which Mrs.George's brother had written aletter on a distant Christmas Day in South Africa and had posted toher.They deserted other relics for a large book of Boer War pictures,whose leaves they turned together, while the old gramophone ranunfalteringly onwards through its extensive repertoire.
"Those times must have been great," said Charley.
"Don't those chaps look as if they're enjoying themselves?"
"Not half.Cripes!I wish I had been there."
"Why in the devil didn't that bloomin' war come in our time?"
* * * * *
"Not our luck.You know, Mac, if we'd been the same age we're now,we'd have been there."
Another month passed on that station, and the two stockmen, alone ontheir beats, rode day after day across the wild ranges and down in theravines.Along the whole of the east ran a range of mountains, morethan a hundred miles of them, their lower slopes clothed in heavy bush,and their serrated summits deep in winter snow.Standing in the north,grand and solitary, was the massive blue-white shape of old Ruapehu,his fires quenched these many years, and, near him, the active cone ofNgaruahoe, whose angry, ominous smoke-clouds rained ashes sometimes onthe surrounding country, but more often his wisp of yellowy-white smoketrailed lazily to leeward, or mounted heavenwards in cumulous shape.
Occasionally, on his rounds, Mac dismounted on the summit of a ridge,threw the rein over a stump and settled down for a smoke, his backagainst a log, his dogs at his feet, a wild ravine below him, thenridge after ridge, bush-topped or strewn with charred trunks androtting stumps, and, away beyond, the two great snow volcanoes.Theywere his friends, and, of all times, he loved most these moments spentin contemplation of those grim reminders of the strength of Nature, ofthe untamed fires which burnt beneath and of the smallness of man.Herevelled in the changing colour tones of the rugged ice cliffs, of themountain mists and of the rolling deliberate smoke-cloud.Grand, too,was the space of it all, wonderful the air, and here, high on thisridge, human selfishness scarce seemed to be of this world.Sometimes,when he had been out here ready to start mustering at dawn, he hadwatched the first glow of coming daylight on the summit of Ruapehu, andagain, at the end of a long summer day when the smoke of manybush-fires was in the air, he had watched for an hour or more thedelicate lilacs, the greens and blues, reds and golds, the shadowsdeepening beneath the buttresses, and the slow melting of the last warmglow into the cold steely colour of night.
He knew of no happier life than this of his—dodging along most days onhis station pony with his dogs following; always on the alert todiscover anything amiss with an odd sheep or a cattle-beast; sometimesworking with the sheep in the yards, dipping, crutching and such like,or going off on jaunts to neighbouring stations or distant townships.
It was a life where there was opportunity for the whole of a man'sskill and wit, and where monotony and loneliness were not.After theday's work he and Charley took turns in cooking the dinner, while theother went for the mail.The several-day-old paper lost nothing by itsage.The meal finished, they smoked and read the news, had a game ofcards, perhaps, with some one who had ridden over, and turned into bunkfor sleep that was never sounder.
Thus dawned the early days of August with Mac and Charley.There hadbeen Balkan rumblings, which, it hardly seemed possible, could echo inthese distant hills, but speedily the shadow on Europe darkened, andthey rode out to the cross-road to get the mail as soon as the coacharrived.And then, through the long spun-out wire which connected manyscattered homesteads with the outer world, came the great news—Warwith Germany.
Mac and Charley piled up the great logs that night and sat before theglowing timber until five in the morning, talking over theprobabilities and the possibilities of the moment.Already the oldstation life seemed behind them.What mattered it if the sheep got ontheir backs or the cattle broke their silly necks? And of the futurethey had a vague apprehension—a terrible sinking that there might notbe a military force required from New Zealand, and, if there was oneformed, it was scarcely likely to reach Europe before the war was over.