The Australasian/1936/11/07/The Shearer's Colt

Having disposed of the Calabash races and heaped dirt on the head of the Chinaman, Fitzroy and his employer were free to attend to financial business. But it is remarkable how little business a really wealthy man ever needs to do.

James Tyson, an Australian grazier, who died worth over two millions sterling, never even had an office. Applicants for an interview, especially bishops, were always turned down, because, as he said himself, he never saw a bishop but what a bishop wanted something; and when he wished to fix up a deal of £100,000 or so over a station, his bank was always prepared to let him have the use of a room for nothing. The big graziers have all their accounts kept, their returns received, and purchases made by the financial firms that sell their wool.

It is even on record that one grazier, wishing to be married, wrote to his financial house to fix up everything about the wedding. They were to select the church and the parson, to buy presents for the bride and bridesmaids, to choose the place for the honeymoon, to engage the necessary accommodation and buy the railway tickets. And everything went off with the greatest eclat, though, certainly, the man charged with the arrangements did remark to a friend that if he had been allowed to select the bride he might have done better for his client.

A vast amount of correspondence had followed them to Calabash, and Fitzroy shuddered at the amount of dictionary work he would have to do in answering all those letters. But most of them answered themselves. There was a huge envelope from the Empire Pastoral Company containing reports from the various station managers—all very favourable except for one outlying man who reported some mortality among the old ewes.

"Tell him to report something else next time, or I'll think there's nothing but old ewes on the station," the millionaire remarked.

Another report stated that a big stock-dealer wished to buy the whole drop of lambs (about ten thousand) at one station, paying for same with a promissory note, and that the buyer was "undoubted." Red Fred snorted at this and said:

"Well, I doubt him! I knew that fellow when he hadn't got a bob, and I'll know him when he hasn't got a bob again. These big dealers always go broke."

Then they tackled the mass of circulars from tradesmen, begging letters, appeals from cranks, offers to trace his descent from William the Conqueror, letters from people who would be glad to meet Mr. Carstairs any time and show him a good time. All these got short shrift, for the millionaire's mind was on other matters.

"What's this fellow want? Fifty thousand pounds to finance a perpetual motion machine. Tell him to write to Callan Park lunatic asylum: there's plenty there will lend it to thim. I say, Fitz, did you ever see anything like the way the little mare battled it out? Here's another cove wants twenty thousand to develop a goldmine. He says all the mine wants is a capitalist to put some money into it. Well, I suppose that's the only way it'll ever get any money into it. We'll go down to Sydney, Fitz, and buy something to have a crack at 'em while those young ones of Delahunty's are coming on."

Then he opened another letter:

"Here's a letter from a woman with a lot of children, and very hard up. Reads straight enough, too. Put all the letters that look straight into an envelope, and send them to the Empire Pastoral. They've got a man who looks into those cases for me. And some nice birds he ketches, too. One chap wrote that he was starving, and he came round in a motor-car to collect his letters. We help the real cases. If I win the Melbourne Cup I'll give 'em the lot.

"Good gosh, here's a letter from Jimmy the Pat with a cheque for two thousand—lucky you only crippled his left hand. Now you write the Empire and tell 'em to get cash for those lambs, and in everything else to work their own topknots. What do they want to bother me for? It's no use keeping a dog and barking yourself. Dump all the other letters, and when you've finished we'll go out and have a look at the little mare." ••••• The next few days were spent in idling about the station. They did some duck shooting on the river, where the birds came over in clouds. Fitzroy got one with each barrel every time. But Red Fred was no shot, and he even missed a bewildered wallaby that tried to run up his leg. Soured by this misfortune, he was just about to put his gun away in the car when a mob of wood-duck came over. In a great flurry he fired both barrels into the brown of them, and was amazed to see five drop into a little patch of reeds.

Rushing into the water up to his ankles, he grabbed about in all directions, and as he secured each threw it out on the bank. Making sure none were left, he turned round to wade ashore, and nearly sat down in the water with astonishment when he saw the whole five get up and fly away. To make things worse, as he stood gaping after them, Tarpot Tommy, a station black, who had been driving the ducks, rode up and laughed at him just as though he were a common person and not the owner of several stations and a goldmine.

"Hoo!" said the black, "that feller young duck. He no fly before. You prighten him bad, he hide longa reeds. Sposin' you ketch him he sham dead, and then he ply away."

This was bad enough, but when they returned to the house the blackfellow started giving imitations of the scene for the benefit of the blacks' camp—and the blacks are the world's best mimics.

Having beaten a Chinaman, Red Fred thought he could beat a black, so he decided to show Tarpot Tommy a point. Liberally smearing an old pair of riding-breeches with aniseed, he sent for all the blacks in camp and presented the breeches to Tarpot Tommy as a compliment to his histrionic powers.

"You go make him bang bang, all same gun, go splash plash, all same duck."

Just as the delighted Tarpot Tommy started on his performance, the half-dozen or so station dogs in the backyard got wind of the aniseed, and a whiff of it was borne on the breeze down to the hundred or so dogs in the blacks' camp. Among this lot there was one fellow with a trace of foxhound in his ancestry; throwing his tongue, he set off to investigate. All the others followed, and the bewildered Tarpot Tommy saw the whole of the mongrel pack coming for him on the full run.

In a second they were all round him, sniffing at his trouser-legs in a sort of ecstasy. Dogs were in front of him, dogs Behind him, dogs shouldering each other and fighting to get near him. He could not move a step for dogs, and could not take his eyes off them for various reasons. Grabbing a big stick, he swung it round to make the dogs keep their distance. As he made a vicious swipe at a particularly persistent mongrel, be said:

"By crikey, Missa Carstairs, these damn dogs think me smell all same you!"

After that the millionaire and his secretary decided it was time to go to Sydney.

Before they left they received a letter from Mr. Delahunty, who wrote just as pompously as he talked:

Coming on top of his unfortunate effort to be funny at the expense of Tarpot Tommy, the theft of these yearlings upset their owner considerably.

"Did you ever hear the like of that?" he said. "I suppose that Chow sent somebody into the paddock with a handful of hay, and when the yearlings come up to him, he slipped halters on 'em, and off they all went. When I started shearin', before the motor-bikes come in, we used many a time to slip into a squatter's paddock and ketch a couple of horses that way, and ride 'em fifty or a hundred miles to a shed. But we always let em' go again. We'll offer five hundred reward, and we'll make it free for all, not only the traps.

"I knew a little bloke named Flash Jack; was out on bail for pinchin' a horse, and he went down to the police station and pinched the horse out of their yard, and they never saw him or the horse again. I s'pose he'll be up in the Territory now—that's where most of 'em go when the traps are after 'em. If Flash Jack hears there's five hundred hangin' to it, he'll come down and find them horses. And look here. You'd better write to the police and get your discharge. Tell 'em you've turned respectable."

Fitzroy himself had been worrying over this for some time. It is fairly hard to get into the police force, but (as with an Australian Eleven) it is much harder to get out of it. The training of a policeman costs a lot of money, even more than the training of a soldier, so the authorities are unwilling to let a man go, even though he may have done something particularly silly—such as Fitzroy had done at Barcoo.

That faux pas had been offset by his magnificent victory over the Chinaman at Calabash, and a strong, willing man can always be used in the criminal districts, where he can arrest pretty well anybody without much fear of a mistake. Acting on the principle of "do it now," he decided to write the letter at once and went in search of a dictionary.

A search in the station bookcase revealed some yellow-backs and a set of Walter Scott's novels, but nothing in the nature of a dictionary; and an inquiry of the manager's wife revealed that there had never been such a thing in the place. Faced with this catastrophe, he thought for a while of going through one of Scott's novels till he found each word he wanted; but on second thoughts he decided that his own natural spelling might be an inducement to them to let him go. So he sat himself down in the station office, with its samples of wool and strong smell of sheep-dip, took up his pen, and wrote:

To the Commissioner of Police—

Sir,

[He was all right so far, as he had written those words hundreds of times, but then he had to launch on an uncharted sea] I regret to say that my sirkumstances have alltered very much for the better since I unlissted in the force. I am now seckertary to a gentleman of wealth and owner of several stations. In regard to my applecation for discharge from the force, consiquent on arresting a milliunar on a charge of theft, I now beg that you will aprove same. [Having got so far, he was soon on safe ground when he wrote the familiar word] I have the honor to be, Sir, your obedient servant

Hilton Fitzroy,
Mounted Trooper No. 79.

Fortunately for him, this letter got to headquarters before any report of the famous victory at Calabash over Kum Yoon Jim, the terror of the force, otherwise he might never have got his discharge. His letter was dealt with by the secretary to the commissioner, a man who was a purist in English, but had been put on to secretarial work because of his dislike for arresting or mixing in any way with desperate criminals. Having shuddered at the spelling and criticised the construction of the letter, this official relaxed so far as to mark it, "applecation granted," and Fitzroy was free—free to indulge in thoughts of a return to England.

When Red Fred and his secretary arrived in Sydney for the second stage of their march to turf honours, they knew practically nobody, and the millionaire had decreed a strict silence on the subject of his wealth.

"If they know I've got money," he said, "they'll want to tear it off me like wool off a hogget."

They quartered themselves at an unpretentious hotel; and instead of chartering a car went out to the races in a tram. As they watched the arrivals, a magnificent limousine car drove up, and out of it stepped a square-built, short-necked man, dressed by a good tailor, with a Talisman rose in his buttonhole. An American would have classed him as the chief executive of a chain of factories; an Englishman would have guessed him to be a big Yorkshire contractor. Dismissing his car with a wave of his hand, he turned to enter the gate, and his eye lit on Red Fred.

"Hello, Fred," he said, "fancy meeting you! I ain't seen you since we done that job o' fencin' for old hungry Williams, and we nearly had to pull him to court to get our money. What are you doin' now?"

Being determined not to make any admissions, Fred sparred for time.

"Why, Jim," he said, "I never thought I'd see you again. How did they let you get out of Queensland? Do you remember that night we camped up on the end of the line of fence, and you went down a quarter of a mile in the dark to fill two buckets at the creek? And just as you got back you fell over a calf asleep in the grass, and you had to go back again. Haw! Haw! You had plenty to say that night, Jim.

"Fitz," he went on, turning to his aide-de-camp, "this is Jim Fraser; used to be fencin' with me in Queensland. Fitzroy and me have just come down for a fly round. Fitz used to be a trap, but he pinched the wrong bloke, so they let him out on his ear. What are you doin', Jim?"

"Me, I'm makin' a book. I strained me back fencin', so I started a barber's shop up in Lost River. But I wasn't too good at it. The first cove I shaved, he said: 'Either your hand's very heavy or your razor's very blunt.' Well, it's no good lettin' 'em jump on you, is it, Fred? So I said: 'No, my hand ain't very heavy nor my razor ain't very blunt. It's your face that's wrong,' I says. And he had a look at me—I weighed 15 stone—and he says: 'Perhaps you're right.' And he pays his money and walks out.

"So then I started layin' 'em the odds in the township, bettin' on the wires, you know, and I done so well that I gave up the shop and followed the races. If you want a bet you'd better come to me. But unless you've got more money than sense you'll leave it alone. There ain't many books would tell you that. But I don't want your money, Fred. If you're broke, I might be able to stake you till you get a job."

The owner of the Daybreak Reef considered this offer for some time, but said that he could carry on for the present.

"Don't nobody ever make any money bettin', Jim?" he said.

"Only the plungers, and they never keep it. There's some that'll bet their shirt while they've got a shirt, and they might run into big money. But they can't stop bettin', and it all comes back to us. They'll never beat us while we've got our health and strength. … Why do you go on workin', Fred? Only fools and horses work!"

By this time he had half-a-dozen men waiting to see him—scouts who touted horses for him, and runners who went round the ring to report any big commissions—and Red Fred and his secretary were left to their own devices.

When men have beep cooped up together for weeks, as Red Fred and Fitzroy had been, they are apt to get on each other's nerves. Something of the sort might have happened to these two, but relief was in sight. Through the crowd came an enormously fat man dressed in the height of fashion, and looking as Mr. Pickwick would have looked if he had weighed nearly 17 stone. He was all smiles and affability, although his eyes had the strained and weary look of a night subeditor, or a gigolo in the height of a New York season. ••••• Charley Stone was what is called the entertainment officer for the Empire Pastoral Company, and his job was to keep in touch with the firm's clients on their visits to Sydney. His duties were first and foremost to prevent the emissaries of other firms from getting hold of these clients; then to take them to the races, theatres, night clubs, the museum, or Wesleyan lectures, according as their tastes dictated.

He had to be an authority on the purchase of clothes, pictures, furniture, saddlery, or sheep-dip. He had to be able to get tickets for everything, from a Government House ball to the best seats at a popular prize fight. He had to be prepared to sit drinking and playing cards all night with a party of young western squatters, and then turn up sober, shaved, and in his right mind, to see an elderly lady off the early train.

He never did any work, in the generally accepted sense of that word; but his firm paid him a big salary, and he was able to get his clothes, food, and entertainment for practically nothing. A glorious life, but apt to be very short.

He lumbered up to Red Fred and shook his hand vigorously.

"Been looking all over the place for you," he said. "Heard you were down. I could ha' got you a ticket for the members' stand. I didn't know you were a racing man."

Having won the only race in which he had ever started a horse, Red Fred had a fair claim to the title of racing man, but bitter experience in life had taught him never to overbid his hand.

"My secketary here knows more about racin' than I do," he said; "but I'm thinkin' of buyin' some horses and goin' in for it. Meet Mr. Fitzroy. Him and me are goin' to buy some horses at the sales."

"Going to buy some horses, are you? I'll put you on to a man that'll tell you what to buy, and I'll get you a good trainer. I'll introduce you to Jim Frazer, if you like. He's our biggest bookie. Bet you a million if you want it."

"Oh, I know Jim Frazer all right. We was mates in Queensland. But Jim says you can't beat the ring. I won two thousand off a bookie in Queensland. I didn't tell Jim, and do you know what he done—he offered to lend me some money."

This set the giant back on his heels, so to speak, for never in his life had he met a non-racing man—and very few racing men for that matter—who had won two thousand pounds from a bookmaker. Thinking that he had better feel his way a bit before trying to impress this peculiar client he turned to Fitzroy.

"You come with me to the office," he said, "and I'll get you those tickets. You wait here, Mr. Carstairs, and I'll send Fitzroy back with the tickets. Then I'll meet you upstairs before the first race."

As they shouldered through the crowds he took a good look at Fitzroy and decided to unburden his spirit.

"What's your boss's line?" he asked. "Horses, theatres, booze, gambling? They all come at something, and whatever it is I have to come at it with them. The firm'd tear me to pieces if we lost this man's business. Will I offer him a drink?"

Fitzroy laughed:

"He's racehorse mad just now. Keep him off the drink. He's a fine chap, but he can't carry too much, and when he gets a few in he wants to fight somebody. You might have to fight him out of trouble. How are you on fighting?"

"Not too good. You mightn't think it to look at me, but I could always run too well to fight much. But if he gets into any scrap I've only got to hold up my finger and I'll get 10 men round me who can fight like thrashing machines. If he gets into a scrap I'll soon fight him out of it."

As they drew near the office they were aware of a bleating sort of voice trying to make itself heard behind them.

"Here! I say! Hello! Fitzroy. What!"

Looking round, they saw a young man of about 22, a vision in morning coat, top hat, spats, cane, eyeglass—a typical Ascot Johnnie, incongruous in Australia. A small man, he seemed to be all top hat and eyeglass, but Fitzroy had no difficulty in recognising an old undergraduate friend in the Honourable Algernon Salter, better known in the university as Psalmsey, owing to the way in which the word Psalter is spelt on the cover of the hymn-book.