T is difficult to describe Bowker.
Outwardly he was sufficiently unremarkable to cheat analysis. Small, quick, busy about being busy, you may find his prototype in any City office. But that is precisely where you would never find Bowker. It is the first peculiarity to be noted in the man that he shunned the environment to which he so obviously belonged. It was ever the "great outside" for him, the home of big men and big things, where, by the way, he looked uncommonly like a black-beetle strayed from its fastness in the light of day.
From this it must not be inferred that Bowker was incapable of holding his own in the strenuous sphere of his choice. He chose it for the very reason that amongst men of his own calibre his cunning would be met, perhaps submerged, by a like quality in others, whereas amongst the comparatively unintelligent he passed for a man "with a headpiece."
In dispute, for instance, his tongue took the place of his fist with surprising effect. A large, more or less inarticulate man knows what to do with one of his own species, but how is he to treat a physical worm who in a few well-chosen words flays his adversary alive and holds the carcase up to public ridicule? Bowker came to be known in the toughest camps as a man best left alone.
At work he contrived to make as good a living as most by manual labour in a world of manual labourers, which is something of an accomplishment for a man of five feet four with flat feet and a thirty-inch chest. He had merely plumbed the fundamental truths that brains will tell even in the wielding of a pickaxe, and that, apart from his own particular genius for successful malingering, there was a knack in most things, which, once mastered, gained the utmost effect with a minimum of effort.
Had not the final futility of all human endeavour so impressed him, it is probable that he would have made an excellent inventor of labour-saving devices. The spectacle of a strong man employing the last ounce of his strength filled Bowker with pitying contempt. He longed to argue with the fellow, show him the error of his ways. And this, during a nomadic career, he came to do. It grew to be his hobby, his mission, if you will, to preach the doctrine of "What's the use?" to assail all forms of honest endeavour with the battering-ram of destructive logic, and watch the effect. It amused him.
From which it will appear that Bowker was not a pleasant sort of person. He was not, though you would never have thought it—at first.
Bob Kemp, for instance, engaged in the pristine struggle for independence, via poultry, a few miles out of Sydney, found him a distinct asset for nearly a month. Bowker had tired of wharf-lumping, or wharf-lumping had tired of Bowker, and he had undertaken to watch the incubators and the house for his board and a nominal wage, while Kemp worked about the place or went to town with produce. The position suited Bowker to a nicety. A corrugated iron shed called a house, set in a dusty expanse of nothing in particular, needs little watching. As for the incubators, they gave equally little trouble, and both tasks could be accomplished with no more effort than was necessary to sit in the sun and smoke.
He also watched Kemp. It afforded him endless entertainment. The man was quietly working himself to death. As well as pandering to the wants of countless silly fowl that appeared to indulge in every ailment from "pip" to plain inanition, and produced a grossly inadequate number of eggs in return, he was digging a well. During his spare time, which consisted, at the most, of an hour or two after dark, Kemp was digging a well. And all for what? There were moments when Bowker could have laughed aloud, but he never did. It was contrary to his methods.
"How is it going?" he would ask, his small mouth twisting into a smile as his bone-weary employer dropped into a chair.
"Not so bad," was Kemp's invariable response.
"Think you'll strike water?" Bowker enlarged on one occasion.
"May," grunted Kemp. "Worth while trying, anyway."
"I suppose it is," mused Bowker, with a delicate upward inflection of the voice that converted the remark into a question.
Kemp looked up, his tired eyes momentarily alert.
"It'll just about treble the value of this place," he asserted. "Think what it'd mean, water laid on instead of man-handling it." He relapsed into blissful reverie at the prospect. Bowker contemplated the strip of nothing in particular comprising "the place that would be trebled in value," and contrived not to smile.
"Yes," he said. "To be sure, yes."
