[Editor: This short story, by Gertrude Lloyd (Gertrude Lawson), was published in The Dawn (Sydney, NSW), 1 December 1903.]
Black cat’s luck.
(Founded on fact.)
By Gertrude Lloyd.
Jack Wynn moved about the room with deft quick steps preparing his supper.
“There, done to a turn!” he said aloud, as he placed a browned shoulder of mutton on the sapling and bark table, so oddly out of place in the wainscoted room.
An amber loaf unrivalled for its snowy lightness, half a “brownie,” and a steaming “Jack Shay” of tea completed the preparations.
Placing his pipe, tobacco, and knife on the bag tablecloth in readiness for his after meal smoke, he went outside and had a slouch in an old bucket half filled with brackish water, smoothed his hair, and sat down to his evening meal.
The sun was setting blood red through the belar scrub, showing up in all its naked cruelty the traces of the terrible drought. For sixteen dreary weeks he had eaten his meals in solitude, and watched other sunsets such as this. He was living on a deserted out station twenty miles from the head station, scrub cutting for the starving sheep, and was likely to remain in his present lonely quarters until the rain came, or the water in the creek gave out. He saw a white face once in a fortnight when an old ex-bushranger brought him his rations. He had to kill a sheep once a week for food, but, in spite of this he was forced to eat his meals by daylight, for he could not scrape up enough fat even for a “slushy” (fat lamp).
“Ugh! this mutton is tough — a hogget, too. Would have been better cooked up quick, but there was not enough fat for that,” he soliloquised. “I’m mighty glad I can make bread. I never would have lasted the job only for that. If I had a horse I would go up to the station for dinner on Sundays. But it’s no good thinking about it, as there is not so much as a mouthful of salt bush to feed one with. I believe I will throw the job up. I would have done so long ago only I was so heartily tired of humping the swag. I’ve two minds to tell Ned on Monday I won’t stop. I wish there was enough sheep to keep two going, then I would have help with the mutton. It seems ridiculous to roast a joint for one, but it helps put in the time.”
“Have some more mutton, Jack?” he asked himself enquiringly.
He shook his head with a long drawn “No, thank you.”
“Will anyone have any?” he asked jocularly.
To his horror and surprise he was answered promptly — so promptly that he sprang half way across the room in his fright. He pulled himself together with a shame-faced laugh when he saw the cause of his alarm — a great black cat mewing mournfully on the door step.
“Well, what a booby to be scared by a cat!” he exclaimed.
Like one driven to dire despair and desperation the cat continued its melancholy wail.
“Good gracious, stop that!” he commanded, carving off half the still hot meat and throwing it at the uncanny creature. “Take that, and close your features.”
The cat seized the meat and fled into the closing darkness.
Jack lit his pipe, and after a few luxuriant draws meditated thus: “I wonder where that cat came from? There’s not a house within at least twenty miles, and I know for a fact it must be over two years since anyone lived here. She is tame, too. I hope she turns up again. She will help with the mutton.”
He killed a sheep by moonlight, brought wood and water for the morning, laid out his clean clothes, and looked up his soiled ones in readiness for the usual bushman’s clean up on the morrow — Sunday. He had done double cutting that day so as to be free on the next, so he turned into his bunk and slept a tired man’s sleep. In the morning when he was making his breakfast of the freshly killed mutton the cat came again and shared it with him, scampering away as soon as the meal was done.
“It looks very like a storm,” he muttered. And sure enough about 12 o’clock the rain came down in torrents.
He curried some mutton for a change, and just as he was sitting down to his dinner he saw the cat coming.
“Well, I never! She’s like clock work. I believe she has something in her mouth. Why, it is a kitten she is bringing out of the rain.”
Without a moment’s hesitation she placed the dripping creature in the centre of his bunk, and with an anxious look into his face left it to his mercy.
“Gone for another, I suppose. In the middle of my bed too. The brute trusts me so I can’t move it.”
In a few moments she returned with another kitten, and placed it with the first.
“I trust there are no more than three,” he said, looking a little doubtfully at the two precocious black balls trying to dry their wet fur with their mites of tongues, but he was doomed to disappointment. Nine times she made the trip, and nine jet black kittens were nestled in his bunk.
“One black cat for luck,” he said. “What is nine for? Luck,” he repeated bitterly. “Where in God’s earth is there a more unlucky chap than I? When I think of it — but there, Jack, old man, you must not think out here in this old hole. It would drive you mad. The first time I’ve shown the white feather for years. I wonder why these cats unnerve me? I suppose I must kill them, as they will only go wild in the bush. I will be here about nine days more if this rain continues; the herbage will be up by then. No hope of Ned coming, until three days after it stops raining. Twenty miles of black mud between me and civilisation!”
He hunted around for something to put the cats in, and all he could find was an old tin dish. This he lined with a flour bag and placed them near the fire, “to rise” as he laughingly said — which they promptly did, and returned to his bunk, when he had a battle royal to gain possession.
Early next morning he was nearly scared out of his wits by the nine of them having a game of chasings over him. It proved rather a difficult task to get breakfast ready with nine restless mites continually under foot.
“I never thought I had such patience,” he murmured. “Poor Nancy! I wonder what she would think if she saw me now?”
His face grew grey, and old, and worn as a flood of recollections crowded upon him. A girl wife, an unexpected retrenchment; the weary hunt for work, a pampered girl suddenly reduced to poverty; the lost temper and misunderstandings; the horrid humiliation of seeing her work night and day at the sewing machine, whilst people looked askance at him, calling him a brute to allow a young wife to keep him, the final split coming when she disbelieved his story of the useless hunt for work. All this happened four years before. It seemed a lifetime to him since he went out of the door vowing never to return until he could support her. He had turned his face to the west and tramped towards the setting sun. Inexperienced white-faced accountants were at a discount in the drought-stricken bush. But the puniness soon disappeared, the soft skin became like tan, the dormant muscle like steel, and the broad shoulder swayed with the steady swing of the axe all day long without a moment’s distress. A month ago he had picked up an old paper with the announcement of his child’s birth. She had never told him, and it accounted for her almost hysterical anxiety for work. Poor girl, he was too ashamed to write, and, besides, he was not sure of her address.
The cat left her brood and came to rub herself against his legs, and finally jumped on his knee.
“Animals are good judges of character, they say,” he mused. “I wonder if you would come to me so fearlessly if you knew that I was a wife deserter and a — ah, puss!”
She had been intently watching his face, and had suddenly struck him in the eye with her softly cushioned foot, then left the room suddenly.
At 4 o’clock the next morning he awoke, and finding the cat away, hurriedly dressed, tumbled the kittens into a bag, and hastened to the creek flowing past the house. It had risen during the night, and was flowing nearly a banker. Not seeing clearly in the half light, and half stupid with sleep, he lost his looting in the slippery mud and fell head first into the yellow stream, in the fall losing his hold of the bag of kittens. He scrambled out and went home, chilled and angry. After lighting the fire and taking off his drenched clothes, he rolled himself in his blankets ready for another hour’s sleep, but overslept himself, and, after jumping out of bed in a great hurry, sat down on the edge of it in helpless amazement.
“Well, that beats all,” he ejaculated.
Nine drenched kittens were industriously drying themselves before the fire, while the cat was trying to attract his attention to the doorstep, whereon lay a rabbit.
“Goodness, what luck! A rabbit, whose scalp is worth a shilling, and whose tender flesh is not to be compared with the tough mutton. Oh, lor, still nine kittens!”
That day the manager came to him on horseback with some rations for him to go on with. He would need his services as scrub cutter no longer after another week, but a mustering camp was to take up its quarters in the old house and he was offered the job of cooking.
Next week about a dozen men came, and Jack had to bring all his good temper and forbearance to bear, for the unmerciful chaffing he got over the cats was a sore trial to a man who had lived so long alone.
An altercation of rather a serious nature took place a few days later. One of the men, not a favourite, in a fit of impatience, kicked a friendly kitten and killed it. A little man, who was always ready for a fight, promptly took up the cause of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and Jack had some difficulty to part the combatants. To prevent further trouble he expressed his intention of making a second attempt at drowning. They all rose up in arms against this, and those living on the adjoining selections promised to take their share of kittens home.
After the muster he had to put the old house “to rights,” and plough and sow the cultivation paddock in readiness for the new sub-manager, who was to make his home there. Then a week’s kangaroo shooting brought him to shearing time. He had become a great favourite on the station, and “Jack o’ the Black Cats,” as he was commonly called, was chosen cook and storekeeper for the shearers.
It rained often during the season, and wet sheep never being shorn and requiring three days to dry, it took seven weeks to “cut out,” thus making Jack’s cheque the largest. With the scrub-cutting, camp cooking, ploughing, skins, scalps of the rabbits which the cat brought him every morning, and finally the wool wash, and the cooking he had the luck to secure, brought his cheque close on to three figures.
All was finished now, his cheque in his pocket, his swag neatly rolled, and the publican’s waggonette ready to take its victims to their usual spree. Jack was weary of the hard work, cooking in the broiling heat and sleeping anywhere. A clean white bed and a properly laid table would be a luxury. The publican was eager for his prey, for this man had THE cheque. He was almost on the step when he felt something rub against his leg and heard a faint mew. He paused, puzzled to know what to do with his friend, the cat, but while he was considering the manager rode up on a hard pushed horse. He called Jack aside and asked him at a favour to remain a week to cook in his own residence. The heat and the strain of the extra visitors had told on the cook, and she was broken down and needed rest. He would have refused, only it would probably mean securing a home for the cat. The publican drove off none too pleased, and Jack went to the station.
Mrs. May was waiting rather anxiously for her husband to return, as she thought it a vain quest getting a man after the cheques were paid.
“My dear,” he said, “I have secured Wynn. He seems a very superior man, and is evidently not a drinker or he would not have come so readily. He is a steady worker and I may put him on permanently by and by. He is the makings of a good ganger or perhaps something better.”
After leading the horses to the stable Jack returned to the verandah with his swag and his cat.
“Come,” said the dainty little mistress sweetly, “I will take you to the cook who will show you your work.”
He followed along innumerable shady verandahs unti1 they came to the kitchen. A little child ran out of one of the doors to meet them.
“This is cook’s boy,” she explained. “A dear little fellow, too.”
Jack, who was fond of children, and who was feeling uncomfortable with the cat on his arm, gave it in charge of the child, who held out eager arms to receive it. The cook was cleaning the ashes from the fire bars, and looked up as they entered. She turned deadly pale, and blindly throwing out her arms, reeled, and would have fallen if Jack had not sprang forward and caught her in a passionate embrace. Mrs. West immediately took in the situation and withdrew leading the child.
Just twelve months later Jack Wynn was back once again at the out station — no longer scrub cutter, but sub-manager. He is never lonely now, for a happy woman and a merry child keep him company.
The horses in the home paddock are sleek and fat, and their well-kept coats glisten in the sun’s rays. The cows away down on the creek bend, grass-fed, give milk mellow and rich, untainted with the herbage, and the fowls in the stable yard yield abundance of delicate eggs. But the sleekest, slimmest, and best fed of them is a great black cat, who is the dreaded enemy of every snake and crawling creature likely to upset the serenity of the household.
Jack often speculates as he smoothes her soft coat whether the fateful episode in his life was due merely to coincidence, or if, after all, there is any truth in the superstition, “A black cat for luck.”
Source:
The Dawn (Sydney, NSW), 1 December 1903, pp. 17-18, 20, 25
[Editor: Changed “Black cats luck” to “Black cat’s luck” (inserted an apostrophe, as per the title on page 25), “(fat lamp)” to “(fat lamp).” (inserted a full stop), “closing dark ess” to “closing darkness”, “she turns again” to “she turns up again”, “she is bring out of the rain” to “she is bringing out of the rain”, “chap than I.” to “chap than I?”, “wonder why” to “I wonder why”, “wirh nine” to “with nine”, “him calling” to “him, calling”, “allcw a young” to “allow a young”.]
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