Old Drumble (8 page)

Harry backed into the fence and felt the jab of rose thorns. He turned away, swung back, felt Jack’s gaze, and leapt for the gate, feeling for it with his hand, but it wasn’t there. He heard a noise, a bit like the baa of a sheep, and wondered where it was coming from. Then his hand found the gap. He leapt through it, and Jack slammed the gate shut behind him.

“Anyway, I wasn’t scared of you, Jack Jackman,” Harry went to say, but Jack ran out his tongue between his front teeth, like a dog panting. Harry was saved by the sound of the kitchen window opening behind him.

“You boys go down the street if you want to make a lot of noise. Don’t go knocking my rose around, Harry. I saw you run into it.” A hand stuck out the window, waving a sugarbag oven cloth. “Off you go at once, the pair of you!”

Jack had vanished into the hedge at the sound of Mrs Jitters’s voice, and Harry had to look for him. “Who taught you to be an eye dog?” he asked, but Jack didn’t describe how Old Drumble had backed him through his own gate.

“Old Drumble taught me,” he said. “Only a strong-eyed dog can teach you, and it takes years to learn.”

Just then, Minnie Mitchell came out her gate to see what all the noise was about. Harry saw her and had an idea. “Try it on her,” he said. “Show her how an eye dog works.”

“I heard you,” said Minnie. “What are you two whispering about? Anyway, what’s an eye dog?”

She was about five or six paces outside her gate when Jack fixed her with his strong eye. He lifted one front foot and stood frozen, pointing straight at Minnie, the way Old Drumble stood pointing straight at a sheep. Just for a moment, Jack wished he had a tail like Old Drumble’s, so he could lay it out straight in line with the rest of his body. He stared at Minnie’s eyes and went to take another step forward.

“Who do you think you’re staring at, Jack Jackman?” Minnie stamped like one of the ewes that Jack had seen try to stand up to Old Drumble’s stare. Next moment, Jack knew, she’d baa, whirl, and run like an old ewe. He frowned, put all his power into his eye, took another step straight towards her, and Minnie Mitchell leapt forward and pulled his nose.

“Don’t you look at me like that, Jack Jackman. What do you think you’re doing?”

It took a lot of explaining, and Jack felt very uncomfortable under Minnie’s accusing stare, but Harry managed to convince her that Jack was just trying to be an eye dog, working sheep with his strong eye. Minnie got the idea quickly; she worked Harry back through his gate and shut it behind him; then she turned her strong eye on to Jack and said he’d better get home unless he wanted his nose pulled again.

As he trotted home, Jack looked back and saw Minnie staring after him. He would have tried barking at her, but she got the idea first and barked at him, and Jack turned and scampered up the top end of Ward Street. Somehow, things hadn’t gone quite right.

“You’ve got a face as long as my arm,” said his mother. “What’s the matter now?”

“Me’n Harry Jitters were playing eye dogs.”

“Harry Jitters and I!”

“I was playing eye dogs with Harry Jitters, and I backed him through his gate, and Minnie Mitchell come out and pulled my nose.”

“Came out. What did you do to make a nice girl like Minnie do that?”

“Nothing. I was just eyeing her, to make her go back inside her gate.”

“Well, I don’t blame Minnie. No girl wants to be stared at as if she’s a sheep and backed through her gate.”

“Yes, but suddenly she turned into an eye dog and backed Harry through his gate, and then she turned into a huntaway and pulled my nose and told me it was time I was getting home unless I wanted my nose pulled again. And when I looked back, she barked at me. Girls don’t know how to play.”

His mother grinned. “And you put your tail between your legs and ran home?”

Jack looked down and shuffled.

“You’d better start learning that’s no way to treat a girl. The idea! Staring at her, and backing her through her gate.”

“But I didn’t. She eyed me, same as you do. Then she turned into a huntaway and barked at me. You can’t be a heading dog and a huntaway all at once. Everybody knows that.”

“Well, next time you’d better bark first. Now, wash your hands. Before I know where I am, your father will be home expecting his lunch to be on the table.”

They were eating lunch, when Jack’s father said, “Your friend Minnie Mitchell barked at me, just now, as I rode past her place.”

“She thinks she’s smart, but she doesn’t know the difference between a heading dog and a huntaway. Girls never play fair.”

“As I ride back to work,” said his dad, “I’ll bark at her, before she can bark at me.”

“That’s what I’ll do, too,” said Jack. “Would you bark at her real loud, Dad?”

“A
RE MY EARS DECEIVING ME
? Barking at girls! You’ll do nothing of the sort, my lad,” said his mother. “And what sort of example do you think you’re setting the boy? You’ll be giving the top end of Ward Street a bad name, the pair of you.

“Jack, if you’ve finished playing around with your lunch, you can go out and pick up all the leaves under the cabbage tree. I don’t want to see a single one on the lawn.

“And, as for you, talking of barking at a little girl, isn’t it time you got back to your work before the whistle blows?”

Mr Jackman grinned at Jack, said goodbye to his wife, and got on his bike. As he went out the gate, he winked at Jack under the cabbage tree, barked once, and Jack barked back.

The kitchen window popped open. His mother’s head stuck out. “Did I hear you barking?”

“It was Dad.”

“I’ll show that man! What are you staring at? Get on with those leaves. And when you’ve picked them all up, you can put them on the compost heap. And if I hear so much as another yap, I’ll buckle dog collars round both your necks, chain the pair of you to the clothes-line, and you can have a bone for your tea tonight.”

That afternoon, Mrs Jackman went down to the bottom end of Ward Street to have a look at the Crimson Glory rambler that Mrs Jitters had flowering. “She’s going to give me a cutting, this winter,” she said to Jack when she came home. “How dare you tell Harry Jitters your mother has strong ears? I thought I told you: I’m not some sort of dog!”

“I just told Harry you can see through doors and hear what I’m thinking. I was trying to train him as a huntaway.”

“Yes, well, I don’t think Mrs Jitters wants her son growing up to be a noisy sort of dog. I don’t know what the world’s coming to—dogs barking and eyeing each other up and down Ward Street. Talking of dogs, look who’s tying up his horse—”

J–ck didn’t need to be told who it was. He tore out. Nosy was already trying to undo her reins off the fence, and Old Drumble was holding a mob of sheep the other side of the hall corner.

“I’m training a heading dog and a huntaway down the
bottom end of the street,” Jack told Andy, who nodded as he took a sugarbag filled with bits and pieces from the pikau behind his saddle.

“It’s a good idea to have a young dog coming on,” Andy said. “You never know when you’re going to need him. Just this morning, that Young Nugget nearly got himself skittled as we came round the back of Matamata. Some coot in a cut-down Model A, careering along Burwood Road, doing the better part of thirty miles an hour, not looking where he’s going and, the next thing, he near ploughs into my mob. Young Nugget leaps out of the way, just in time.

“Old Drumble keeps the mob bunched while I give the driver a piece of my mind. I tells him, ‘It would have cost you a tenner to run over Young Nugget, twenty-five quid for Old Nell, and you hit Old Drumble—the sky’s the limit!’

“Here we are,” he said to Jack’s mother, “a cutting out of Mrs Kevin Ryan’s garden, some plum chutney from Mrs Bryce, and the recipe for Mrs Oulds’s seed cake, the one she said you admired at the church Bring and Buy. And these here are from old Tom McGuire out Okoroire, seed potatoes—Maori Chief. Old Tom says they’re a good cropper, and they stand up against the blight better than most.

“ ‘As good a tatie as Oi’ve tasted since Oi came out here from Oireland, just a spalpeen no taller than halfway
up the hoight of a donkey’s shin,’ he told me. Of course, he swears Irish spuds tasted better than ours because they used to dig in seaweed. Enough kelp, and you never had to add salt to the spuds, so he reckons. Now, I wonder if that’s true, or did he just kiss the Blarney Stone? What do you suppose, Jack?”

But Jack was too busy watching Andy’s scalp appear as his hat came off. Also, he was waiting to ask his mother the question that she knew he had trembling on the tip of his tongue.

And, because she knew he wanted to ask it, she didn’t look at him, but busied herself filling the teapot from the kettle on the stove, getting the milk from the safe, the sugar bowl, a teaspoon, and setting out some ginger-nuts on a plate. And all the time exclaiming over the cuttings, the recipe, the seed potatoes, swapping gossip and news, asking questions of Andy, and telling him what she’d got for him to drop in to others along his road.

“No, it’s too late,” she said, when Jack went to open his mouth. “You’re certainly not going down to the cemetery crossing with Andy. It’s far too far for somebody who’s silly enough to let a little girl pull his nose. Besides, your father’s gone back to work, and there’s no way he could bike down and give you a double home.”

“Aw!” Jack’s voice rose to a whine.

“That’s quite enough of that, my boy. There’ll be plenty more opportunities to go down to the cemetery
crossing. I’m not promising anything, mind you. We’ll see when the time comes.”

“Can I go as far as the factory crossing today, like last time?”

“I suppose so, but only if Andy can be bothered taking you.”

Jack followed Andy out, grinning at Old Drumble’s tail waving ahead of the mob, saying hello to Old Nell and Young Nugget, rubbing Nosy’s nose when she put it down to him.

“Just as far as the corner of Cemetery Road,” his mother called from the front porch, “and not a step further. You hear me now?”

Jack waved, and Andy touched his hat. They walked in silence, Jack’s feet feeling the Smarter Pills that covered the road and sniffing the ammoniac air.

“Did I ever tell you,” said Andy, “about the time Old Drumble made me take him to the Te Aroha Races?”

“No.”

“We’re riding out to pick up a mob one day and, going past the racecourse, Old Drumble stops dead in his tracks in the middle of the road and, before I can open my mouth, he’s turned his strong eye on me. Next thing I know, he’s backing me and Old Nosy through the gate and into the racecourse. I didn’t have any say in it.

“We wanders over to have a look at the racehorses dancing around and getting themselves worked up in the
birdcage, and Old Drumble catches me eye and nods at a two-year-old gelding who’s starting for the first time. Next thing I know, I’m being backed across to put on a bet. I know what he means by that nod, so I puts ten bob on the two-year-old’s nose.”

Andy whistled, but already Old Nell was streaking along to guard an open gate. Past her, Jack saw Harry and Minnie dive inside and slam their gates behind them.

“Why did you put ten bob on the gelding’s nose?”

“You think a horse is going to come in first, so you put your bet on his nose—for a win. If you put it on for a place—coming second or third—you get paid less. Five bob each way means you’re putting five bob on for a win, and five bob for a place. It still costs ten bob, but you’re not sure it’ll win, so you’re sort of covering yourself.”

“Did the gelding win?”

“The clodhopping goorie!” Andy’s voice creaked, dry with dust. “The leaders are turning into the back straight, and he’s half a furlong behind the rest of the field. I looks down in disgust at Old Drumble, but he’s vanished. He told me to bet on the mongrel; now he’s too embarrassed to hang around and look a man straight in the eye.

“There used to be some weeping willows, the other side of the Te Aroha course, that hid a couple of chains of the back straight. By the time the leaders come out from behind the willows, the gelding’s in front! How in the
name of all that’s wonderful did he catch up so fast? The crowd roars. He comes thundering down past the stand, past the judges, wins by a nose.”

“That’s the nose with the bet on it?” asked Jack.

Andy nodded. “He didn’t just win, but he caught up from away behind the field—in record time. Just about everyone’s done their money, but nobody’s worried; they’re all too busy screaming and yelling that New Zealand’s found a new Phar Lap.”

“E
VERYONE’S OVER THE MOON
because of the unknown gelding winning the race,” said Andy the Drover.

“Up on the members’ stand, the cockies’ wives are dancing in their best silk dresses, jumping out of their high-heeled shoes, and waving their silly hats. And the cockies in their brown pinstripe suits, with their members’ tickets jiggling from their waistcoat buttonholes, they’re jigging and tossing betting slips, hats, and race cards in the air. Old Tom Mihi from Manawaru throws up his field glasses, and they come down and knock him out cold.

“They’re all so busy cheering the gelding, I’m probably the only person watching the jockey. The other horses slow down, and the steward rides out to lead the winner in, but the gelding’s going too fast to pull up. Round the first bend he goes on a victory lap. Along the back straight, he disappears behind the weeping willows, and there’s a pause.”

Andy’s voice dropped, so Jack looked up. “The gelding
must have slowed down behind the trees, then he comes trotting round the bend into the home straight, dancing sideways past the members’ stand, showing off, snorting and tossing his head. The crowd goes even wilder. The steward takes the reins from the jockey, so he can wave back to the crowd, and leads him in to unsaddle.