Ghost Stories and Mysteries (18 page)

“Rely on me. I have half-a-dozen in my mind’s eye already;” and he backed rather rapidly out into the street.

“A nice young man,” said the ghost. “Now, I wonder if that other fellow is coming back. If he wants to clear out before daylight he’ll face anything to get that money.”

Sure enough, in about an hour’s time, the agent came back. He had been somewhere in quest of Dutch courage, and was pot-valiant. The candle had gone out, but he lit another, and glared about the room.

“Now, where are you?” he cried. “Come out and frighten me again if you can. I’ve got something here for you.” Looking through the wall the ghost saw he was flourishing a revolver.

Cursing himself for a fool for running away before, he put the weapon down and went to the hearth. The cry he gave when he discovered his loss was tremendous. He sprang to his feet, and there, glaring at him across the table, was the old man with the gashed throat. Then three shots were fired in quick succession. Two of them went through the spectre. The third went through the agent.

There are two ghosts in that old house now. One occupies the upper, the one the lower portion—but they are not on speaking terms.

MALCHOOK’S DOOM

A STORY OF THE NICHOLSON RIVER (1892)

It was Malchook who told the beginning of this story, and Malchook was supposed to be the biggest liar in the Gulf of Carpentaria, which is equivalent to saying that he was the biggest liar in the world. However, it was on record that he told the truth sometimes—when he was in a blue funk, for instance—and on this occasion his state of funk was a dazzling purple—blue was no name for it.

We were camped on the Nicholson for the wet season. The cattle had been turned out and we had pretty hard work to keep them together, for, after the rain set in and the country got boggy, the niggers commenced playing up and we had to keep going. It was raining cats and dogs that night and we were all huddled together round the fire under a bit of a bark lean-to which we had put up. Malchook was away—his horses were absent that morning and he had been away all day after them. It was about eight o’clock when we heard him coming; he had found his horses and was driving them right up to the camp. Then, instead of hobbling them, he got a bridle and a halter, caught them and tied them up to a tree.

Some of the fellows sang out to him to know what he was doing, but he took no notice, and, after turning out the horse he had been riding, came up to the fire and told Reeve (the boss) that he wanted a word with him. Reeve got up, and the two went over to his tent. Presently Malchook emerged, went over to where his duds were under the tarpaulin that had been rigged up over the rations, and commenced to roll them up. Reeve came back to the fire.

“What’s up?” asked Thomas, Reeve’s cousin.

“Only that fellow wants to leave to-night straight away, so I gave him his cheque and told him to slide as soon as he liked; he’s no great loss anyway.”

“What does he want to leave for?”

“Says the camp is ‘doomed,’ and he is going to put as many miles as possible between himself and us before our fate overtakes us.”

There was a general laugh, and just then Malchook came out with his swag and commenced to saddle up in the pouring rain. There was a good moon, nearly full, although of course it was not visible.

The fellows commenced chaffing him, for he was not a favourite; too all-round a liar. He stood it without a word until he was ready to mount then he got on his horse and, turning round, said “Laugh away; this time to-morrow I’ll have the laugh of you; this camp is doomed!” He stuck the spurs in his horse and disappeared—swish, swish, swish, through the bog down the bank of the river, and we heard him swearing at his pack-horse as he crossed the sand.

There was much laughter and wonderment at what had sent Malchook “off his chump,” but eccentricity was common in those days, from various causes, and presently we all turned in.

I was sleeping under the tarpaulin where the rations were stored, and about two o’clock in the morning I suddenly awoke. It was brilliant moonlight, the wind had changed and the rain ceased, only a little scud was flitting across the sky, giving the moon that strange appearance that everybody must occasionally have noticed—as though she was travelling at express rate through an archipelago of cloudlets. Some impulse made me get out from under the mosquito-net and go to the opening at the end of the tarpaulin and look out.

Everything was very still and quiet; all the horses were camped, for not a bell could be heard, and I stood for some time aimlessly listening and looking at the glistening pools of water lying on the flat between our camp and the bank when suddenly I distinctly heard a human voice in the bed of the river. I waited for a moment to make sure, then I got my Martini and a couple of cartridges and sneaked towards the river. Last full-moon the niggers had nearly clubbed the cook in his mosquito-nets when he was sleeping outside the tent one night; this time, I thought, it would be a case of the bitten bit.

About a hundred yards from the camp I stopped and listened; the voice was much nearer, it was a white man’s, it was Malchook’s, and he was kicking his knocked-up horse along and dragging the pack-horse after him. I waited behind a tree until he was close up, and then I stepped out. I was only in my shirt, with the carbine in my hand.

“Great God!” he cried, with a kind of choke, “he’s here again!”

“What the devil is up with you?” I said; “why didn’t you stop away when you went? Got bushed, I suppose, and the horses brought you back?”

He sat on his horse and panted for a few minutes without speaking; then he said: “That infernal old nigger wouldn’t let me go. He hunted me back. I’ve got to share your fate, so let’s get it over.”

He jabbed his heels in his horse’s ribs, but I stopped him. “Don’t wake the camp up,” I said. “What nigger do you mean?”

“The nigger that Jacky the Span and I roasted in the spinifex. He’s headed me back every road I’ve tried, and I give it up. Let me turn the horses out, and try and get a wink of sleep.”

Jacky the Span was an old blackguard of a Mexican who had been knocked on the head about six months before. Everybody said he richly deserved it, and everybody was right.

“When were you up here with Jacky Span?” I asked.

“About two years ago; the time Bratten was killed; but let me turn out the horses and I’ll tell you all about it.”

We went quietly back to camp, let the tired horses go, and then Malchook laid down on his blankets alongside of me. The tarpaulin was rigged some distance from the other tents, and the boys were done-up and sleeping sound, so nobody awoke. This is what Malchook told me:

Two years before, he and the old Mexican had come up to join Bratten in mustering some horses that had got away from the lower part of the river and were supposed to be knocking about below the first gorge. Like most half-breeds, Jacky the Span (short for Spaniard) was a most inhuman brute towards the natives whenever he got a chance, and Malchook, being a blowhard and a bully, was naturally of the same cowardly disposition—most liars are. One day they spotted an old man and a young gin at the foot of a spinifex ridge that runs in on the Upper Nicholson. I knew the place—real old man spinifex that would go through a leather legging. They rounded the old black up on the top of the ridge, but missed the gin, and Jacky Span said he would make the man find her or he should suffer, and Malchook, in order to keep up his reputation as a flash man and a real old Gulf hand, aided and abetted him.

I suppose the poor devil was too frightened to understand what they really wanted, but, anyhow, all the half-caste devilry, which is the worst devilry in the world, was roused in the Mexican, and Malchook followed suit.

They selected a bank of old man spinifex, and rolled the naked nigger in it for sport. Now, spinifex is beastly poisonous stuff; get your shins well pricked, and it is worse than any amount of mosquito-bites for irritating you and making you itch. Horses will not face it after a day or two in really bad country, and if you run your hand down their shins you will soon see the reason why. Every little prick festers, and their legs are covered with tiny boils and ulcers after a few days in bad spinifex. The niggers always burn it ahead of them before they travel through it. Out in the real Never-Never they have regular tracks that they keep burnt down.

By the time they had rolled this nigger in the spinifex for some minutes, he must have been in a raging hell of torment; and he knew no more what they wanted with him than he did at the start. Then, according to Malchook, Jacky rolled him into a big bank of dry stuff—they had tied his feet together—and set fire to it. Spinifex is rare stuff to burn, it is full of turpentine, and burns with a fierce heat and a black smoke, so the old nigger was well roasted and when it burnt out they rolled him into another and set that alight. A gust of wind sprung up and started the whole ridge ablaze, and the gin, who had been hidden close by, watching them, sprang out and ran for it, and Jacky Span picked up the old man’s club and took after her. He was away about half-an-hour; meantime the old fellow died, groaning awfully, and Malchook began to feel as if he had better have let things alone.

Presently, Jacky Span came back with the club in his hand—big two-handed clubs they use out on the Nicholson—and showed Malchook some blood and hair on it, and laughed like a devil. No need to repeat here all he said.

Now, if Malchook had there and then blown a government road through the brute, there might have been some chance of repentance left for him, but he didn’t. He sniggered and let Jacky Span tell him all about it, and camped with him for weeks afterwards. Jacky Span was killed, as I said before, and Malchook assured me, in a sweating blue funk when he spoke, that just at dark he had met his horses coming back, with the old roasted nigger behind driving them. He went on to say that this thing had followed him right up to the river and shrieked at him that he would die in the camp. Then he went on to tell that when he tried to get away from the camp that night the old nigger had met him at every point of the compass, so at last he gave it up and came back.

Now, I knew that there had been an importation of brandy lately into the Gulf country, generally known as the “possum brand,” each bottle of which was calculated to make a man see more devils than any six bottles of any other brand. It was very popular, for it would eat holes in a saddle-cloth, so I concluded that Malchook had got hold of some of it, for one of the fellows had returned from Burketown that day. This would account for the ghost of the blackfellow, but the rest of the yarn about Jacky Span I knew to be true, so I told Malchook to clear out and sleep somewhere else—I wouldn’t have him under the same tarpaulin with me. He begged and prayed to be allowed to remain, but I told him I would wake the camp and tell everything if he didn’t go, so he went, sobbing bitterly. I explained to him that the best thing he could do was to shoot himself; that a man who could follow the lead of a miserable half-caste out of pure flashness was too contemptible to live, but he didn’t appreciate my kindness, and slouched away to a bit of a sand-hump about 150 yards from the camp, and I saw him throw his blankets down and then lie down on them. I got into my bunk again and went fast asleep in two minutes.

Reeve woke me up. It was broad daylight. “The niggers were here last night,” he said. “Did you hear anything?”

“No,” I replied; “but Malchook came back; I saw him.”

“Yes. They knocked him on the head—bashed his skull in. He was sleeping out under that tree. I suppose he was ashamed to wake us up.”

“Nobody hear anything?” I asked.

“Not a sound. There are the traces of about six niggers coming out of the river towards the camp, and they must have stumbled right on top of Malchook. Poor devil! Polished him off and cleared out. The camp was doomed for him, after all.”

I concluded to say nothing, beyond having seen Malchook come back and speaking to him. Sometimes I wonder whether I was not responsible for his death by hunting him away from the camp, but I always console myself with the reflection that he only got what he deserved.

THE RED LAGOON

(1892)

‘Where are you going to camp to-night?’ asked Mac., the bullocky, as I stopped to have a yarn for a few minutes, on my road down from the tableland.

‘I was going to push on to the Red Lagoon; there’s good feed there, I hear.’

‘Hanged if I’d camp there by myself for any money.’

‘Why? Are the blacks bad?’

‘No fear, it’s the safest place in the North. No nigger will come within ten miles of it.’

‘What’s up then; devil-devil?’

‘So they say, perhaps you’ll see if you camp there tonight. I had a mate nearly frightened into the horrors there once. It took nearly a case of whisky to get him straight again. Well, I must be moving. So long!’

Mac. straightened his bullocks up, and I resumed my journey.

It was sundown when I got to the Red Lagoon—so called from a small reddish weed that covered its surface. There was beautiful feed there, and I felt that all the spooks in the world should not prevent me turning out for the night and giving my horses a good show. It was dark before I finished tea, for the twilights are short in tropical Queensland; I had made up a comfortable bed of grass and having fixed up everything snug, lay down for a good smoke. It was a moonless night, and quite calm. Only for the clink of the hobble chains, the tinkle of the bell, and an occasional snort from my horses, there was not a sound to be heard. One has to camp out alone night after night in the bush to thoroughly appreciate the companionship of a horse. As it grew a little chilly I poked up the fire, made myself comfortable under the blankets, and went off into the sleep of the just.