Vonda Stanley's collection of early Australian bush poems
THE LOADED DOG
DAVE
REGAN, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek in search
of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist in the vicinity.
There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the vicinity; the only
questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds beneath the surface, and in
which direction.
They had struck some pretty solid rock, also water which kept them
bailing.
They used the old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse.
They'd make a sausage or cartridge of blasting-powder in a skin of strong
calico or canvas, the mouth sewn and bound round the end of the fuse; they'd dip
the cartridge in melted tallow to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry
as possible, drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with
stiff clay and broken brick.
Then they'd light the fuse and get out of the hole and wait.
The result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom of the shaft and
half a barrow-load of broken rock.
There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish, and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing. Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a "nibble" or a "bite" now and then - say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn't bite. However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizeable pool with an average depth of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by bailing out the smaller holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to the surface. There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides of its head, and if you got pricked you'd know it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and went into a hole one day to stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew it. Dave scooped one out with his hand and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and down into his stomach too, he said, like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights-only the toothache pain had a "burred edge", Dave said.
Dave
got an idea.
He
thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out.
Andy usually put Dave's theories into practice if they were practicable,
or bore the blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren't.
He
made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the rock.
Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river.
The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a six-foot
piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the bag firmly to
it with whipcord.
The idea was to sink the cartridge in the water with the open end of the
fuse attached to a float on the surface, ready for lighting.
Andy dipped the cartridge in melted bees'-wax to make it water-tight.
"We'll have to leave it some time before we light it," said
Dave, "to give the fish time to get over their scare when we put it in, and
come nosing round again; so we'll want it well water-tight."
Round
the cartridge Andy, at Dave's suggestion, bound a strip of sail canvas that they
used for making water-bags to increase the force of the explosion, and round
that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper - on the plan of the sort of
fireworks we called "gun-crackers".
He let the paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two
thicknesses of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout
fishing-line.
Dave's schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his inventions out to
nothing.
The cartridge was rigid and solid enough now ¾
a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure.
Andy sewed on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted
tallow, twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it
in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he'd know
where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it.
Then he went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in
their jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner.
Dave and Jim were at work in the claim that morning.
They
had a big black young retriever dog ¾
or rather an overgrown pup, a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always
slobbering round them and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung
round like a stock-whip.
Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin of
appreciation of his own silliness.
He seemed to take life, the world, his two-legged mates, and his own
instinct as a huge joke.
He'd retrieve anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy
threw away.
They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good
distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat, after
it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp, and laid it just
inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make its presence known when the
mates should rise and begin to sniff suspiciously in the sickly smothering
atmosphere of the summer sunrise.
He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming; he'd jump in after
them, and take their hands in his mouth, and try to swim out with them, and
scratch their naked bodies with his paws.
They loved him for his goodheartedness and his foolishness, but when they
wished to enjoy a swim they had to tie him up in camp.
He
watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the cartridge, and
hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon he went off to the
claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to come home to dinner with
them.
Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of mutton-chops on the fire.
Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with their backs to the fire, as
Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till dinner should be ready.
The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have missed.
Andy's
brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the glare of an empty
kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him that it wouldn't be a bad
idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay, sand, or stones in the tin, to
increase the force of the explosion.
He may have been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion
looked all right to him.
Jim Bently, by the way, wasn't interested in their "damned
silliness".
Andy noticed an empty treacle tin ¾
the sort with the little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the
convenience of pouring out the treacle ¾
and it struck him that this would have made the best kind of cartridge-case; he
would only have had to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck,
and cork and seal it with bees'-wax.
He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when Dave glanced over his
shoulder to see how the chops were doing ¾
and bolted.
He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan spluttering
extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning. Jim Bently looked behind and
bolted after Dave.
Andy stood stock-still, staring after them.
"Run,
Andy! Run!" they shouted back at him.
"Run!!!
Look behind you, you fool!" Andy turned slowly and looked, and
there, close behind him, was the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth ¾
wedged into his broadest and silliest grin.
And that wasn't all.
The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse
had trailed and waggled over the burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit
and nicked the firing end of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting
properly.
Andy's
legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did, and he made
after Dave and Jim.
And the dog followed Andy.
Dave
and Jim were good runners - Jim the best-for a short distance; Andy was slow and
heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last.
The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be to find
his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic.
Dave and Jim kept shouting back, "Don't foller us! don't foller us,
you coloured fool!" but Andy kept on, no matter how they dodged.
They could never explain, any more than the dog, why they followed each
other, but so they ran, Dave keeping in Jim's track in all its turnings, Andy
after Dave, and the dog circling round Andy ¾
the live fuse swishing in all directions and hissing and spluttering and
stinking; Jim yelling to Dave not to follow him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in
another direction ¾
to "spread out" ¾
and Andy roaring at the dog to go home.
Then Andy's brain began to work, stimulated by the crisis: he tried to
get a running kick at the dog, but the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and
stones and threw them at the dog and ran on again.
The retriever saw that he'd made a mistake about Andy, and left him and
bounded after Dave.
Dave, who had the presence of mind to think that the fuse's time wasn't
up yet, made a dive and a grab for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he
swung round snatched the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he
could: the dog immediately bounded after it and retrieved it.
Dave roared and cursed at the dog, who, seeing that Dave was offended,
left him and went after Jim, who was well ahead.
Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native bear; it was a young
sapling, and Jim couldn't safely get more than ten or twelve feet from the
ground.
The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully as if it was a kitten, at the
foot of the sapling, and capered and leaped and whooped joyously round under
Jim.
The big pup reckoned that this was part of the lark ¾
he was all right now ¾
it was Jim who was out for a spree.
The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute.
Jim tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on
his feet and ran.
The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed.
It all took but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger's hole, about ten
feet deep, and dropped down into it ¾
landing on soft mud ¾
and was safe.
The dog grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as
if he thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
"Go
away, Tommy," said Jim feebly, "go away."
The
dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy had dropped
behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly remembered a
picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of Turks lying flat on their
faces (as if they were ashamed) round a newly-arrived shell.
There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not far
from the claim.
Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in his stimulated
imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the shanty.
There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the bar; Dave
rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him.
"My dog!" he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the
publican, "the blanky retriever ¾
he's got a live cartridge in his mouth ¾"
The
retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded round and in by
the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway leading from the passage, the
cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse spluttering.
They burst out of that bar.
Tommy bounded first after one and then after another, for, being a young
dog, he tried to make friends with everybody.
The
Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable.
There was a new weatherboard and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house
on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside.
Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door ¾
the publican cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and
wanting to know what the hell he came here for.
The
retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily for those
inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking and nursing his
nastiness under there-a sneaking, fighting, thieving canine, whom neighbours had
tried for years to shoot or poison.
Tommy saw his danger ¾
he'd had experience from this dog ¾
and started out and across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge.
Half-way across the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him.
Tommy dropped the cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the
Bush.
The yellow dog followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he
had dropped.
Nearly
a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the buildings ¾
spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs,
vicious black and yellow dogs ¾
that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining ¾
and yapping, yelping small fry.
They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog, for it
was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something which might
be good for a dog to eat.
He sniffed at the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious
sniff when ¾
Bushmen
say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again.
When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog
were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been kicked
into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and
finally thrown against the fence from a distance.
Several saddle-horses, which had been "hanging up" round the
verandah, were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken
bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every point of
the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs.
Two of them went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles
away, and reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards
evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries.
One was trying to walk on two legs, and most of 'em looked more or less
singed; and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of
hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad that he'd
saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it now.
There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years
afterwards, who couldn't stand the smell of a gun being cleaned.
He it was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow
dog, in the cartridge.
Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind side and stick a
dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn't wait to bring his solitary eye to bear ¾
he'd take to the Bush and stay out all night.
For
half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen round behind
the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or rolled gently on the
dust, trying to laugh without shrieking.
There were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste
rushing aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water.
The publican was holding his wife tight and begging her between her
squawks, to "hold up for my sake, Mary, or I'll lam the life out of
ye".
Dave
decided to apologise later on, "when things had settled a bit", and
went back to camp.
And the dog that had done it all, "Tommy", the great, idiotic
mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his legs with his
tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest
smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for one afternoon with the fun
he'd had.
Andy
chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave went to help
Jim out of the hole.
And
most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen, riding
lazily past Dave's camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and with just a hint of the
nasal twang:
"El-1o,
Da-a-ve!
How's the fishin' getting on, Da-a-ve?"
Henry Lawson 1899