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He came to live with us without asking and I thought he'd find enough work at Lahey's Creek to keep him out of mischief. He wasn't to be depended on much he thought nothing of riding off, five hundred miles or so, 'to have a look at the country' but he was fond of Mary, and he'd stay by her till I got some one else to keep her company while I was on the road.
The road by Lahey's Creek to a place called Cobborah branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the left, just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the Cudgeegong were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.'s coaches and the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus.
The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong to 'settle on the land' at Lahey's Creek. I'd sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making, and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load of rations and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station out that way. Mary drove out in the spring-cart.
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.
Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again next day. As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said 'I wish you wouldn't come down any more till I'm on me feet, Mrs Wilson. The children can do for me. 'Why, Mrs Spicer? 'Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me. We were the aristocrats of Lahey's Creek.
Whether he is or not, the reader must judge. It seems to me that the man's natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature, 'softness', or weakness call it which you like developed as I wrote on. I know Joe Wilson very well. He has been through deep trouble since the day he brought the double buggy to Lahey's Creek. I met him in Sydney the other day.
Down at the lower end of our selection Mary called it 'the run' was a shallow watercourse called Snake's Creek, dry most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just above the junction, where it ran into Lahey's Creek, was a low piece of good black-soil flat, on our side about three acres.
Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasn't too well and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadn't time to get them cut, so we let Jim's time run on a week or so longer, till I happened to come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of flour for Lahey's Creek way.
He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom Tarrant's big van to increase the surprise. We were swells then for a while; I heard no more of a buggy until after we'd been settled at Lahey's Creek for a couple of years.
Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I'd sink a shaft somewhere, prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out of that. I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm that an old mate of mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked up about thirty miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Lahey's Creek.
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