An Outback Marriage

"So I goes after 'em down the river to the lagoons, and there was

hundreds of blacks; but these two beauties had heard me coming,

and was planted in the reeds, and the other blacks, of course, they

says, "No more" when I arst them. So there I was, lonely. Only me

and the Chinaman here for two months, 'cause his gin had gone too.

So one day I ketches the horses, and off I goes, and travels for

days, till I makes Pike's pub, and there was this woman.

"It seems from what I heard afterwards that she'd just cleared out

from some fellow she'd been livin' with for years--had a quarrel

with him. Anyhow, I hadn't seen a white woman for years, and she

was a fine lump of a woman, and I got on a bit of a spree for a

week or so, you know--half-tight all the time; and it seems some

sort of a parson--a mish'nary to the blacks--chanced along and

married us. She had her lines and everything all right, but I don't

remember much about it. So then I'm living with her for a bit; but

I don't like her goin's on, and I takes the whip to her once, and

she gets snake-headed to me, and takes up an axe; and then one

day comes a black from this place and he says to me, he says, "Old

man," he says, "Maggie and Lucy come back." So then I says to my

wife, "I'm off back to the run," I says, "and it's sorry I am that

ever I married you." And she says, "Well, I'm not goin' out to yer

old run, to get eat up with musketeers." So says I, "Please yourself

about that, you faggot," I says, "but I'm off." So off I cleared,

and I never seen her from that day till this. I married her under

the name of Keogh, though. Will that make any difference?"

This legal problem kept them occupied for some time; and, after

much discussion, it was decided that a marriage under a false name

could hardly be valid.

Then weariness, the weariness of open-air, travelling, and hard

work, settled down on them, and they made for the house. On the

verandah the two gins lay sleeping, their figures dimly outlined under

mosquito nets; the dogs crouched about in all sorts of attitudes.

Considine turned in all standing in the big rough bunk, while Carew

and Gordon stretched their blankets on the hard earth floor, made

a pillow of their clothes, and lay down to sleep, after fixing

mosquito nets. Gordon slept as soon as he touched the blankets,

but Carew tumbled and tossed. The ground was deadly hard. During

the journey Frying Pan had got grass for their beds; here he had

not been told to get it, and it would have looked effeminate to ask

for grass when no one else seemed to want it. The old man heard him

stirring and rolling, and sat up in his bunk. "What's up, Mister?"

he said kindly. "D'you find it a hard camp?"