Job held his gun carelessly ready (it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader,one barrel choke-bore for shot,and the other rifled),and he kept an eye out for dingoes.He was saving his horse for a long ride,jogging along in the careless Bush fashion,hitched a little to one side --and I'm not sure that he didn't have a leg thrown up and across in front of the pommel of the saddle --he was riding along in the careless Bush fashion,and thinking fatherly thoughts in advance,perhaps,when suddenly a great black,greasy-looking iguana scuttled off from the side of the track amongst the dry tufts of grass and shreds of dead bark,and started up a sapling.`It was a whopper,'
Job said afterwards;`must have been over six feet,and a foot across the body.It scared me nearly as much as the filly.'
The filly shied off like a rocket.Job kept his seat instinctively,as was natural to him;but before he could more than grab at the rein --lying loosely on the pommel --the filly `fetched up'against a dead box-tree,hard as cast-iron,and Job's left leg was jammed from stirrup to pocket.
`I felt the blood flare up,'he said,`and I knowed that that'
--(Job swore now and then in an easy-going way)--`I knowed that that blanky leg was broken alright.I threw the gun from me and freed my left foot from the stirrup with my hand,and managed to fall to the right,as the filly started off again.'
What follows comes from the statements of Doc.Wild and Mac.Falconer,and Job's own `wanderings in his mind',as he called them.
`They took a blanky mean advantage of me,'he said,`when they had me down and I couldn't talk sense.'
The filly circled off a bit,and then stood staring --as a mob of brumbies,when fired at,will sometimes stand watching the smoke.
Job's leg was smashed badly,and the pain must have been terrible.
But he thought then with a flash,as men do in a fix.
No doubt the scene at the lonely Bush home of his boyhood started up before him:his father's horse appeared riderless,and he saw the look in his mother's eyes.
Now a Bushman's first,best,and quickest chance in a fix like this is that his horse go home riderless,the home be alarmed,and the horse's tracks followed back to him;otherwise he might lie there for days,for weeks --till the growing grass buries his mouldering bones.
Job was on an old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion to come for months,but he did not consider this.He crawled to his gun,then to a log,dragging gun and smashed leg after him.How he did it he doesn't know.Half-lying on one side,he rested the barrel on the log,took aim at the filly,pulled both triggers,and then fell over and lay with his head against the log;and the gun-barrel,sliding down,rested on his neck.He had fainted.The crows were interested,and the ants would come by-and-by.
Now Doc.Wild had inspirations;anyway,he did things which seemed,after they were done,to have been suggested by inspiration and in no other possible way.He often turned up where and when he was wanted above all men,and at no other time.He had gipsy blood,they said;but,anyway,being the mystery he was,and having the face he had,and living the life he lived --and doing the things he did --it was quite probable that he was more nearly in touch than we with that awful invisible world all round and between us,of which we only see distorted faces and hear disjointed utterances when we are `suffering a recovery'--or going mad.
On the morning of Job's accident,and after a long brooding silence,Doc.Wild suddenly said to Mac.Falconer --`Git the hosses,Mac.We'll go to the station.'
Mac.used to the doctor's eccentricities,went to see about the horses.
And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer --Job's mother-in-law --on her way from the town to the station.She stayed to have a cup of tea and give her horses a feed.She was square-faced,and considered a rather hard and practical woman,but she had plenty of solid flesh,good sympathetic common-sense,and deep-set humorous blue eyes.
She lived in the town comfortably on the interest of some money which her husband left in the bank.She drove an American waggonette with a good width and length of `tray'behind,and on this occasion she had a pole and two horses.In the trap were a new flock mattress and pillows,a generous pair of new white blankets,and boxes containing necessaries,delicacies,and luxuries.All round she was an excellent mother-in-law for a man to have on hand at a critical time.
And,speaking of mother-in-law,I would like to put in a word for her right here.She is universally considered a nuisance in times of peace and comfort;but when illness or serious trouble comes home!
Then it's `Write to Mother!Wire for Mother!Send some one to fetch Mother!
I'll go and bring Mother!'and if she is not near:`Oh,I wish Mother were here!If Mother were only near!'And when she is on the spot,the anxious son-in-law:`Don't YOU go,Mother!You'll stay,won't you,Mother?--till we're all right?I'll get some one to look after your house,Mother,while you're here.'But Job Falconer was fond of his mother-in-law,all times.
Mac.had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses.
Mrs Spencer drove on,and Mac.and the doctor caught up to her about a mile before she reached the homestead track,which turned in through the scrubs at the corner of the big ring-barked flat.
Doc.Wild and Mac.followed the cart-road,and as they jogged along in the edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat through the dead,naked branches.Mac.looked that way.
The crows were hopping about the branches of a tree way out in the middle of the flat,flopping down from branch to branch to the grass,then rising hurriedly and circling.
`Dead beast there!'said Mac.out of his Bushcraft.
`No --dying,'said Doc.Wild,with less Bush experience but more intellect.
`There's some steers of Job's out there somewhere,'muttered Mac.
Then suddenly,`It ain't drought --it's the ploorer at last!or I'm blanked!'
