“Well, I don’t want to be shovin’ in my jor, but I’d take him to be more rogue than fool,” suggested Bum.
“Time he was thinkin’ about repentin’, anyhow,” observed Dixon.
“Now, really Thompson—do you believe in these special malisons?” asked Willoughby, as Price rejoined the company. “Are you so superstitious? I shouldn’t have thought it.”
“I’ve good reason to believe in them,” replied Thompson. “You asked me this morning why I didn’t have two teams. Now I’ll tell you the reason. It’s because I’m not allowed to keep two teams. I’ve got a curse on me. Many a long year ago, when I finished my second season, I found myself at Moama, with a hundred and ten notes to the good, and the prospect of going straight ahead, like the cube root—or the square of the hypotenuse, is it? I forget the exact term, but no matter. Well, the curse came on me in this way: Charley Webber, the young fellow I was travelling with, got a letter from some relations in New Zealand, advising him to settle there; so he offered me his plant for two-thirds of its value—fifty notes down and fifty more when he would send for it. Sheer good-nature of him, for he knew he could have the lot if he liked. But there’s not many fellows of Charley’s stamp. So I paid him the fifty notes and we parted. He was to send me his address as soon as he reached New Zealand; but he never got there. The vessel was wrecked on some place they call the North Spit; and Charley was one of the missing. Never heard of him from that day to this.”
“Good (ensanguined) shot!” remarked Mosey. “I wish that same specie of a curse would come on me.”
“My (ensanguined) colonial!” assented Dixon and Bum, with one accord.
“Well, nobody knows anything about the geography of New Zealand,” continued Thompson, “and I purposely forgot the address of Charley’s people. Any honest man would have hunted them up, but that wasn’t my style; I wasn’t a wheat-sample; I was a tare. Compromised with my conscience. Thought there was no time to lose in making an independence—making haste to be rich, and considering not that’s there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip, as Solomon puts it. I said to myself, That’s all right; I’ll pay it some time.’ Now see the consequence”
“Just two years after I bid the poor fellow good-bye—two years to the very day, and not very lucky years neither—I found myself in the middle of the Death Track, with flour for Wilcannia; one wagon left behind, and the bullocks dropping off like fish out of water; bullocks worth ten notes going as if they weren’t worth half-a-crown. It was like the retreat from Moscow. Finally, I lost fourteen on the trip—exactly the number I had got dishonestly. As for the second wagon, I gave it to Baxter for fetching the load the last fifty mile. I thought this might clear away the curse, so I didn’t fret over it. I felt as if Charley had got satisfaction. But I wasn’t going to get off so cheap. Two years afterward—you remember, Dixon?—I bought that thin team and the Melbourne wagon from Pribble, the contractor. Dixon, here, was driving for Pribble at that very time, and he can tell you how Dick the Devil cleaned me out of my fine old
