The Rising of the Court | Page 6

Queensland and the
Great North-West, with a makeshift mate who had also lost his mate
through marriage. Ever and again, after one, and two, and three
years--the periods of absence lengthening as the years went on--Big
Ben Duggan would come back home, and stay a while (till the Great
North-West began to call insistently) at Denver's, where he would be
welcomed jubilantly by all--even the baby who had never seen him--for
there was "something about the man." And, until late on the night of his
return, he and Jack would sit by the fire in winter, or outside on the
woodheap in summer, and yarn long and fondly about the Wide Places,
and strange things they knew and understood.
How sudden things are! Ben was back (just in time for the holidays and
the Mudgee races) out of the level lands, where distance dwells in her
halls of shimmering haze, after following her for five years.
They were riding home from the races, the women and children in carts
and buggies, the men and boys on horseback--of course. They raced
each other along the road, across short cuts, through scrub and timber,
and back to the slow-coming overloaded vehicles again, some riding
wildly and recklessly. Jack Denver was amongst them, his heart
warmed with good luck at the races, good whisky to wet it, and the
return of his old mate. "We're as good as the best of the young 'uns yet,
Ben!" he cried, as they swung through the trees. "Ain't we, you old

---?"
And then and there it happened.
A new chum suggested that Jack had more than he thought aboard and
was thrown from his horse; but the new chum was repudiated with
scorn and bad words and indignation by bushmen and bushwomen
alike--as indeed he would be by any bushman who had seen a drunken
rider ride.
"I learnt him to ride when he was a kiddy about so high," said old
Break-the-News Fosbery, resentfully gasping and gulping, "and Jack
wasn't thrown." It was thought at first that his horse had shied and run
him against a tree, or under an overhanging branch; but Ben Duggan
had seen it, and explained the thing to the doctor with that strange
calmness or quietness that comes to men in the midst of a life's grief.
Jack was riding loosely, and swung forward just as the filly, a fresh
young thing, threw back her head; and it struck him with
sledge-hammer force, full in the face.
He was dead, even before they got him to Anderson's Halfway Inn.
There was wild racing back to town for doctors, and some accidents;
one horse was killed and another ridden to death. Others went as a
forlorn hope in search of Doc. Wild, eccentric Yankee bush "quack,"
who had once saved one of Denver's little girls from diphtheria; others,
again, for Peter M'Laughlan, bush missionary, to face the women--for
they couldn't.
Big Ben Duggan, blubbering unashamed by the bedside, put his hand
on Mrs Denver's shoulder, as she crouched there, wild-eyed, like a
hunted thing. "Nev--never mind, Mrs Denver!" he blurted out, with a
note as of indignation and defiance--just for all the world as if Jack
Denver had done a wrong thing and the district was down on
him--"he'll have the longest funeral ever seen in these parts! Leave that
to me." Then some of the women took her out to her daughter's. Big
Ben Duggan gave terse instructions to some of the young riders about,
and then, taking the best and freshest horse, the cross-country scrub
swallowed him--west. The young men jumped on their horses and rode,
fan-like, east.
They took Jack Denver home. They always took their dead home first,
whenever possible, and no matter the distance, before taking them to
their last long home; and they do it yet, I suppose. They are not always

so particular about it in cities, from what I've seen.
But this was a strange funeral. They had arranged mattress and sheet in
the bottom of a four-wheeler, and covered him with sheet, blanket, and
quilt, though the weather was warm; and over the body, from side to
side of the trap, they had stretched the big dark-green table-cloth from
Anderson's dining-room. The long, ghostly, white, cleared government
road between the dark walls of timber in the moonlight. The buggies
and carts behind, and the dead-white faces and glistening or
despairingly staring eyes of the women--wife, daughters, and nieces,
and those who had come to help and comfort. The men--sons and
brothers, and few mates and chums and sweethearts--riding to right and
left like a bodyguard, to comfort and be comforted who needed
comfort.
Now and again a brother or son--mostly a brother--riding close to the
wheel, would suddenly throw out his arm on