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His Brother’s Keeper
by
We got along comfortably and reached Beenaway Station in about a week, the day before the shearers’ roll-call. Jack never showed the slightest inclination to go into a shanty; and several times we talked about old times and what damned fools we’d been throwing away our money over shanty bars shouting for loafers and cadgers. “Isn’t this ever so-much better, Joe!” said Jack, as we lay on our blankets smoking one moonlight night. “There’s nothing in boozing, Joe, you can take it from me. Just you sling it for a year and then look back; you won’t want to touch it again. You’ve been straight for a couple of months. Sling it for good, Joe, before it gets a hold on you, like it did on me.”
It was the morning after cut-out at Beenaway Shed, and we were glad. We were tired of the rush and roar and rattle and heat and grease and blasphemy of the big, hot, iron machine shed in that dusty patch in the barren scrubs. Swags were rolled up, saddle-bags packed, horses had been rounded up and driven in, the shearers’ cook and his mate had had their fight, and about a hundred men–shearers, rouseabouts, and wool-washers–were waiting round the little iron office to get their cheques.
We were about half through when one bushman said to another: “Stop your damned swearin’, Jim. Here’s Peter M’Laughlan!” Peter walked up and the men made way for him and he went into the office. There was always considerably less swearing for a few feet round about where Peter M’Laughlan happened to be working in a shearing-shed. It seemed to be an understood thing with the men. He took no advantages, never volunteered to preach at a shed where he was working, and only spoke on union subjects when the men asked him to. He was “rep.” (Shearers’ Union representative) at this shed, but squatters and station managers respected him as much as the men did.
He seemed much greyer now, but still stood square and straight. And his eyes still looked one through.
When Peter came out and the crowd had cleared away he took Jack aside and spoke to him in a low voice for a few minutes. I heard Jack say, “Oh, that’s all right, Peter! You have my word for it,” and he got on his horse. I heard Peter say the one word, “Remember!” “Oh, that’s all right,” said Jack, and he shook hands with Peter, shouted, “Come on, Joe!” and started off with the packhorse after him.
“I wish I were going down with you, Joe,” said Peter to me, “but I can’t get away till to-morrow. I’ve got that sick rouseabout on my hands, and I’ll have to see him fixed up somehow and started off to the hospital” (the nearest was a hundred miles away). “And, by the way, I’ve taken up a collection for him; I want a few shillings from you, Joe. I nearly forgot you. The poor fellow only got in about a fortnight’s work, and there’s a wife and youngsters in Sydney. I’ll be down after you to-morrow. I promised to go to Comesomehow* and get the people together and start an agitation for a half-time school there. Anyway, I’ll be there by the end of the week. Good-bye, Joe. I must get some more money for the rouser from some of those chaps before they start.”
[ * There is a postal district in new South Wales called “Come-by-Chance”]
Comesomehow was a wretched cockatoo settlement, a bit off the track, about one hundred and fifty miles on our road home, where the settlers lived like savages and the children ran wild. I reckoned that Peter would have his work cut out to start a craving for education in that place.