Henry Lawson

“ There was a good water-hole, under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take her stools and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot weather, and wash the clothes under the shade of the trees—it was cooler, and saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she’d done the washing she said to me—
‘Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they don’t seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is going to be like—they just go on farming the same old way and putting in the same old crops year after year. ”

“ A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after I’d kissed Mary good-bye, she said—
‘Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes, James and I will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little. We could put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.’
I thought she’d forgotten all about it. ”

“ James was all right at most Bushwork: he’d bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or fencing, or any graft he could make a show at. He didn’t care for grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the potatoes of an evening—and there was trouble between Mary and James over cutting through the ‘eyes’. There was no time for the hoe—and besides it wasn’t a novelty to James— so I just ran furrows and they dropped the spuds in behind me, and I turned another furrow over them, and ran the harrow over the ground. ”

“ At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.
‘What’s the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?’ I asked. ‘There’s only room for two, and what are you going to do with the children when we go out together?’
‘We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do. I can always fold up a blanket or ‘possum rug for them to sit on.’
But she didn’t take half so much interest in buggy talk as she would have taken at any other time, when I didn’t want her to. Women are aggravating that way. ”

“ I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get one then; but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a second-hand one that I’d had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at last she said, ‘Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I’ll be satisfied. I’ll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while. Wait till we’re better off.’ After that, whenever I took a contract—to put up a fence or wool-shed, or sink a dam or something—Mary would say, ‘You ought to knock a buggy out of this job, Joe;’ but something always turned up— bad weather or sickness. ”

“ Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went— a tray-body arrangement, and she thought she’d do with that. ‘It would be better than the buggy, Joe,’ she said— ‘there’d be more room for the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong, or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.’ Then James heard of a small flock of sheep that a selector— who was about starved off his selection out Talbragar way— wanted to get rid of. ”

“ I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection at Lahey’s Creek—for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed— and shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong, with Mary’s young scamp of a brother James to keep them company while I was on the road. The first year I did well enough carrying, but I never cared for it—it was too slow; and, besides, I was always anxious when I was away from home. The game was right enough for a single man—or a married one whose wife had got the nagging habit (as many Bushwomen have—God help ’em!) ”

“ What was the use of grinding to save money until we were too old to enjoy it. If we had to go down in the world again, we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray— there’d be some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary had the buggy she wouldn’t be tied down so much to that wretched hole in the Bush; and the Sydney trips needn’t be off either. I could drive down to Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney ”

“ I knew of an independent man in that district who’d made his money out of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring ’Fifties —’54—when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a hundredweight (in Sydney) , on account of the gold rush. We might get good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn’t cost much to put the potatoes in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the crop was a failure, I’d have a better show with Mary next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble about when I felt grumpy. ”

“ You wouldn’t get a better one in the colonies, and you won’t see another like it in the district again in a hurry—for it doesn’t pay to build ’em. Now you’re a full-blown squatter, and it’s time you took little Mary for a fly round in her own buggy now and then, instead of having her stuck out there in the scrub, or jolting through the dust in a cart like some old Mother Flourbag.’
He called her ‘little Mary’ because the Galletly family had known her when she was a girl. ”

“ But then, the farther I got away from poverty the greater the fear I had of it—and, besides, there was always before us all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks. ”

“ Then Mary would say, ‘Ah, well—never mind, Joe. Wait till we are better off.’ But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed and didn’t get paid for it, for we’d as good as settled about another second-hand buggy then.
I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made a spring-cart—body and wheels—in spare time, out of colonial hardwood, and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the cart myself. ”

“ There was no getting away from that buggy. Whenever Mary’s sister started hinting about a buggy, I reckoned it was a put-up job between them.
PART III. The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice. WHEN I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly’s coach-shop to leave the cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers—one was a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men—the biggest men in the district, ’twas said. Their old man had died lately and left them some money; they had men, and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined, or there was a special work to do ”

“ He took the west road, and down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool) offered James as much for them as he reckoned I’d get in Sydney, after paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.
I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks—one in James’s name, to encourage him with the fencing. ”

“ You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do you think I don’t know land when I see it?’
‘But you haven’t tried to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you know——’
I didn’t listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I’d be talking she’d just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead, on the track she’d started,—just as if I wasn’t there,— and it used to make me mad. She’d keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my temper,—I did both at the same time, mostly. ”

“ There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used to keep out the dust when they were varnishing. It was a first-class piece of work—pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete. If you only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in the shafts, and there you were. There was a tilt over the front seat; if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back seat, and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy. It would go near fifty pounds. ”

“ Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop. He was rather quieter than his brother, but the two were very much alike.
‘Look here, Bob,’ said Bill; ‘here’s a chance for you to get rid of your harness. ”

“ This work is also in the public domain in the United States because it was first published outside the United States (and not published in the U.S. within 30 days) , and it was first published before 1989 without complying with U.S. copyright formalities (renewal and/or copyright notice) and it was in the public domain in Australia on the URAA date (January 1, 1996) . This is the combined effect of Australia having joined the Berne Convention in 1928, and of 17 USC 104A with its critical date of January 1, 1996. ”