A Little Bush Maid

  Produced by Anonymous

  A LITTLE BUSH MAID

  By Mary Grant Bruce

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I BILLABONG II PETS AND PLAYTHINGS III A MENAGERIE RACE IV JIM'S IDEA V ANGLER'S BEND VI A BUSH FIRE VII WHAT NORAH FOUND VIII ON A LOG IX FISHING X THE LAST DAY XI GOOD-BYE XII THE WINFIELD MURDER XIII THE CIRCUS XIV CAMPING OUT XV FOR FRIENDSHIP XVI FIGHTING DEATH XVII THE END OF THE STRUGGLE XVIII EVENING

  CHAPTER I. BILLABONG

  Norah's home was on a big station in the north of Victoria--so largethat you could almost, in her own phrase, "ride all day and never seeany one you didn't want to see"; which was a great advantage in Norah'seyes. Not that Billabong Station ever seemed to the little girl a placethat you needed to praise in any way. It occupied so very modest aposition as the loveliest part of the world!

  The homestead was built on a gentle rise that sloped gradually away onevery side; in front to the wide plain, dotted with huge gum trees andgreat grey box groves, and at the back, after you had passed through thewell-kept vegetable garden and orchard, to a long lagoon, bordered withtrees and fringed with tall bulrushes and waving reeds.

  The house itself was old and quaint and rambling, part of the old wattleand dab walls yet remaining in some of the outhouses, as well as thegrey shingle roof. There was a more modern part, for the house had beenadded to from time to time by different owners, though no additions hadbeen made since Norah's father brought home his young wife, fifteenyears before this story opens. Then he had built a large new wing withwide and lofty rooms, and round all had put a very broad, tiledverandah. The creepers had had time to twine round the massive posts inthose fifteen years, and some even lay in great masses on the verandahroof; tecoma, pink and salmon-coloured; purple bougainvillea, and thesnowy mandevillea clusters. Hard-headed people said this was not goodfor the building--but Norah's mother had planted them, and because shehad loved them they were never touched.

  There was a huge front garden, not at all a proper kind of garden, but agreat stretch of smooth buffalo grass, dotted with all kinds of trees,amongst which flower beds cropped up in most unexpected and unlikelyplaces, just as if some giant had flung them out on the grass like ahandful of pebbles that scattered as they flew. They were always trimand tidy, and the gardener, Hogg, was terribly strict, and woe betidethe author of any small footmarks that he found on one of the freshlyraked surfaces. Nothing annoyed him more than the odd bulbs that used tocome up in the midst of his precious buffalo grass; impertinent crocusesand daffodils and hyacinths, that certainly had no right there. "Blestif I know how they ever gets there!" Hogg would say, scratching hishead. Whereat Norah was wont to retire behind a pyramid tree forpurposes of mirth.

  Hogg's sworn foe was Lee Wing, the Chinese gardener, who reigned supremein the orchard and the kingdom of vegetables--not quite the same thingas the vegetable kingdom, by the way! Lee Wing was very fat, his broad,yellow face generally wearing a cheerful grin--unless he happened tocatch sight of Hogg. His long pigtail was always concealed under hisflapping straw hat. Once Jim, who was Norah's big brother, had found himasleep in his hut with the pigtail drooping over the edge of the bunk.Jim thought the opportunity too good to lose and, with such deftnessthat the Celestial never stirred, he tied the end of the pigtail to theback of a chair--with rather startling results when Lee Wing awoke witha sudden sense of being late, and made a spring from the bunk. The chairof course followed him, and the loud yell of fear and pain raised by thevictim brought half the homestead to the scene of the catastrophe. Jimwas the only one who did not wait for developments. He found business atthe lagoon.

  The queerest part of it was that Lee Wing firmly believed Hogg to be theauthor of his woe. Nothing moved him from this view, not even when Jim,finding how matters stood, owned up like a man. "You allee same goo'boy," said the pigtailed one, proffering him a succulent raw turnip. "Meknow. You tellee fine large crammee. Hogg, he tellee crammee, too. Sodly up!" And Jim, finding expostulation useless, "dried up" accordinglyand ate the turnip, which was better than the leek.

  To the right of the homestead at Billabong a clump of box treessheltered the stables that were the unspoken pride of Mr. Linton'sheart.

  Before his time the stables had been a conglomerate mass, bark-roofed,slab-sided, falling to decay; added to as each successive owner hadthought fit, with a final mixture of old and new that was neitherconvenient nor beautiful. Mr. Linton had apologised to his horses duringhis first week of occupancy and, in the second, turning them out tograss with less apology, had pulled down the rickety old sheds,replacing them with a compact and handsome building of red brick, withroom for half a dozen buggies, men's quarters, harness and feed rooms,many loose boxes and a loft where a ball could have been held--andwhere, indeed, many a one was held, when all the young farmers andstockmen and shearers from far and near brought each his lass andtripped it from early night to early dawn, to the strains of old AndyFerguson's fiddle and young Dave Boone's concertina. Norah had beenallowed to look on at one or two of these gatherings. She thought themthe height of human bliss, and was only sorry that sheer inability todance prevented her from "taking the floor" with Mick Shanahan, thehorse breaker, who had paid her the compliment of asking her first. Itwas a great compliment, too, Norah felt, seeing what a man of agilityand splendid accomplishments was Mick--and that she was only nine at thetime.

  There was one loose box which was Norah's very own property, and withouther permission no horse was ever put in it except its rightfuloccupant--Bobs, whose name was proudly displayed over the door in Jim'sbest carving.

  Bobs had always belonged to Norah, He had been given to her as a foal,when Norah used to ride a round little black sheltie, as easy to falloff as to mount. He was a beauty even then, Norah thought; and herfather had looked approvingly at the long-legged baby, with his fine,well-bred head. "You will have something worth riding when that fellowis fit to break in, my girlie," he had said, and his prophecy had beenamply fulfilled. Mick Shanahan said he'd never put a leg over a finerpony. Norah knew there never had been a finer anywhere. He was a bigpony, very dark bay in colour, and "as handsome as paint," and with thekindest disposition; full of life and "go," but without the smallestparticle of vice. It was an even question which loved the other best,Bobs or Norah. No one ever rode him except his little mistress. The pairwere hard to beat--so the men said.

  To Norah the stables were the heart of Billabong. The house was all verywell--of course she loved it; and she loved her own little room, withits red carpet and dainty white furniture, and the two long windows thatlooked out over the green plain. That was all right; so were the gardenand the big orchard, especially in summer time! The only part that wasnot "all right" was the drawing-room--an apartment of gloomy,seldom-used splendour that Norah hated with her whole heart.

  But the stables were an abiding refuge. She was never dull there. Apartfrom the never-failing welcome in Bobs' loose box, there was the dim,fragrant loft, where the sunbeams only managed to send dusty rays oflight across the gloom. Here Norah used to lie on the sweet hay andthink tremendous thoughts; here also she laid deep plans for catchingrats--and caught scores in traps of her own devising. Norah hated rats,but nothing could induce her to wage war against the mice. "Poor littlechaps!" she said; "they're so little--and--and soft!" And she was quitesaddened if by chance she found a stray mouse in any of hershrewdly-designed traps for the benefit of the larger game whichinfested the stables and had even the hardihood to annoy Bobs!

  Norah had never known her mother. She was only a tiny baby when that gaylittle mother died--a sudden, terrible blow, that changed her father ina night from a
young man to an old one. It was nearly twelve years ago,now, but no one ever dared to speak to David Linton of his wife.Sometimes Norah used to ask Jim about mother--for Jim was fifteen, andcould remember just a little; but his memories were so vague and mistythat his information was unsatisfactory. And, after all, Norah did nottrouble much. She had always been so happy that she could not imaginethat to have had a mother would have made any particular difference toher happiness. You see, she did not know.

  She had grown just as the bush wild flowers grow--hardy, unchecked,almost untended; for, though old nurse had always been there, hernurseling had gone her own way from the time she could toddle. She waseverybody's pet and plaything; the only being who had power to make herstern, silent father smile--almost the only one who ever saw the softerside of his character. He was fond and proud of Jim--glad that the boywas growing up straight and strong and manly, able to make his way inthe world. But Norah was his heart's desire.

  Of course she was spoilt--if spoiling consists in rarely checking animpulse. All her life Norah had done pretty well whatever shewanted--which meant that she had lived out of doors, followed in Jim'sfootsteps wherever practicable (and in a good many ways most peoplewould have thought distinctly impracticable), and spent about two-thirdsof her waking time on horseback. But the spoiling was not of a veryharmful kind. Her chosen pursuits brought her under the unspokendiscipline of the work of the station, wherein ordinary instinct taughther to do as others did, and conform to their ways. She had all thedread of being thought "silly" that marks the girl who imitates boyishways. Jim's rare growl, "Have a little sense!" went farther home than awhole volume of admonitions of a more ordinarily genuine feminine type.

  She had no little girl friends, for none was nearer than the nearesttownship--Cunjee, seventeen miles away. Moreover, little girls boredNorah frightfully. They seemed a species quite distinct from herself.They prattled of dolls; they loved to skip, to dress up and "playladies"; and when Norah spoke of the superior joys of cutting out cattleor coursing hares over the Long Plain, they stared at her with blanklack of understanding. With boys she got on much better. Jim and shewere tremendous chums, and she had moped sadly when he went to Melbourneto school. Holidays then became the shining events of the year, and theboys whom Jim brought home with him, at first prone to look down on thesmall girl with lofty condescension, generally ended by voting her "noend of a jolly kid," and according her the respect due to a person whocould teach them more of bush life than they had dreamed of.

  But Norah's principal mate was her father. Day after day they weretogether, riding over the run, working the cattle, walking through thethick scrub of the backwater, driving young, half-broken horses in thehigh dog-cart to Cunjee--they were rarely apart. David Linton seldommade a plan that did not naturally include Norah. She was a wise littlecompanion, too; ready enough to chatter like a magpie if her father werein the mood, but quick to note if he were not, and then quite content tobe silently beside him, perhaps for hours. They understood each otherperfectly. Norah never could make out the people who pitied her forhaving no friends of her own age. How could she possibly be botheredwith children, she reflected, when she had Daddy?

  As for Norah's education, that was of the kind best defined as a minusquantity.

  "I won't have her bothered with books too early," Mr. Linton had saidwhen nurse hinted, on Norah's eight birthday, that it was time she beganthe rudiments of learning. "Time enough yet--we don't want to make abookworm of her!"

  Whereat nurse smiled demurely, knowing that that was the last thing tobe afraid of in connexion with her child. But she worried in herresponsible old soul all the same; and when a wet day or the occasionalabsence of Mr. Linton left Norah without occupation, she induced her tobegin a few elementary lessons. The child was quick enough, and soonlearned to read fairly well and to write laboriously; but there nurse'steaching from books ended.

  Of other and practical teaching, however, she had a greater store. Mr.Linton had a strong leaning towards the old-fashioned virtues, and itwas at a word from him that Norah had gone to the kitchen and asked Mrs.Brown to teach her to cook. Mrs. Brown--fat, good-natured andadoring--was all acquiescence, and by the time Norah was eleven she knewmore of cooking and general housekeeping than many girls grown up andfancying themselves ready to undertake houses of their own. Moreover,she could sew rather well, though she frankly detested theaccomplishment. The one form of work she cared for was knitting, and itwas her boast that her father wore only the socks she manufactured forhim.

  Norah's one gentle passion was music. Never taught, she inherited fromher mother a natural instinct and an absolutely true ear, and before shewas seven she could strum on the old piano in a way very satisfying toherself and awe-inspiring to the admiring nurse. Her talent increasedyearly, and at ten she could play anything she heard--from ear, for shehad never been taught a note of music. It was, indeed, her growingcapabilities in this respect that forced upon her father the need forproper tuition for the child. However, a stopgap was found in the personof the book-keeper, a young Englishman, who knew more of music thanaccounts. He readily undertook Norah's instruction, and the lessons boremoderately good effect--the moderation being due to a not unnaturaldisinclination on the pupil's part to walk where she had been accustomedto run, and to a fixed loathing to practice. As the latter necessary, ifuninteresting, pursuit was left entirely to her own discretion--for noone ever dreamed of ordering Norah to the piano--it is small wonder ifit suffered beside the superior attractions of riding Bobs, rattrapping, "shinning up" trees, fishing in the lagoon and generallydisporting herself as a maiden may whom conventional restrictions havenever trammelled.

  It follows that the music lessons, twice a week, were times of woe forMr. Groom, the teacher. He was an earnest young man, with a sinceredesire for his pupil's improvement, and it was certainly dishearteningto find on Friday that the words of Tuesday had apparently gone in atone ear and out at the other simultaneously. Sometimes he wouldremonstrate.

  "You haven't got on with that piece a bit!"

  "What's the good?" the pupil would remark, twisting round on the musicstool; "I can play nearly all of it from ear!"

  "That's not the same"--severely--"that's only frivolling. I'm not hereto teach you to strum."

  "No" Norah would agree abstractedly. "Mr. Groom, you know that poleybullock down in the far end paddock--"

  "No, I don't," severely. "This is a music lesson, Norah; you're notafter cattle now!"

  "Wish I were!" sighed the pupil. "Well, will you come out with the dogsthis afternoon?"

  "Can't; I'm wanted in the office. Now, Norah--"

  "But if I asked father to spare you?"

  "Oh, I'd like to right enough." Mr. Groom was young, and the temptress,if younger, was skilled in wiles.

  "But your father--"

  "Oh, I can manage Dad. I'll go and see him now." She would be at thedoor before her teacher perceived that his opportunity was vanishing.

  "Norah, come back! If I'm to go out, you must play this first--and getit right."

  Mr. Groom could be firm on occasions. "Come along, you little shirker!"and Norah would unwillingly return to the music stool, and worrylaboriously though a page of the hated Czerny.