At Dead Dingo
by
It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside the weather-board and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road, where there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes called ‘Roasted’, and other times ‘Potted Dingo’–nicknames suggested by the everlasting drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township of Tinned Dog.
From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road, running right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep in the red sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest blue-grey bush, dust, and the heat-wave blazing across every object.
There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year’s Day. There weren’t many more in the county. The girl sat behind the bar–the coolest place in the shanty–reading ‘Deadwood Dick’. On a worn and torn and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen cooler places and better days, lay an awful and healthy example, a bearded swagman, with his arms twisted over his head and his face to the wall, sleeping off the death of the dead drunk. Bill and Jim–shearer and rouseabout–sat at a table playing cards. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and they had been gambling since nine–and the greater part of the night before–so they were, probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps physically) than the drunken swagman on the sofa.
Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail, lay a sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.
Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an oath that would have been savage if it hadn’t been drawled.
‘Stumped?’ inquired Jim.
‘Not a blanky, lurid deener!’ drawled Bill.
Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went slowly and hopelessly round the room and out the door. There was something in the eyes of both, except when on the card-table, of the look of a man waking in a strange place.
‘Got anything?’ asked Jim, fingering the cards again.
Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty, and spat out on to the verandah floor.
‘That’s all I got,’ he drawled. ‘It’s gone now.’
Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the dog.
‘That there dog yours?’ he asked, brightening.
They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each other as Bushmen can be.
Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog. The dog woke suddenly to a flea fact.
‘Yes,’ drawled Bill, ‘he’s mine.’
‘Well, I’m going Out-Back, and I want a dog,’ said Jim, gathering the cards briskly. ‘Half a quid agin the dog?’
‘Half a quid be—-!’ drawled Bill. ‘Call it a quid?’
‘Half a blanky quid!’
‘A gory, lurid quid!’ drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his swag.
But Jim’s hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.
‘Alright. Call it a—- quid.’
The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died again. Remember this, it might come in useful.
Bill sat down to the table once more.
Jim rose first, winner of the dog. He stretched, yawned ‘Ah, well!’ and shouted drinks. Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up with his foot, unwound the chain, said ‘Ah, well–so long!’ and drifted out and along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following with head and tail down.
Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck, shouldered his swag, said, ‘So long, Mary!’ and drifted out and along the road towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.
*****
A long, drowsy, half hour passed–the sort of half hour that is as long as an hour in the places where days are as long as years, and years hold about as much as days do in other places.
The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild for a moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor, rested his elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands, and came back to life gradually.