“Ye seeken loud and see for your winninges.”—_Chaucer_.
“My word,” exclaimed Wildduck, jumping from her horse and gazing at the
rare ruin of her fading race, “this big one fishery one time. Me come
here like it picaninny. All about black fellow that time. Bullo—bullo.”
Here she spread out her hands, as if to denote an altogether
immeasurable muster-roll of warriors.
“Big one corrobaree—shake ’em ground all about; and old man Coradjee
too.”
Here she sank her voice into an awe-stricken whisper.
“Where are they all gone, Wildduck?” inquired Redgrave; “along a
Warroo?”
“Along a Warroo?” cried the girl, mockingly. “Worse than that. White
fellow shoot ’em like possum. That ole duffer, Morgan, shoot fader
belonging to me.”
“Come, come, Wildduck,” said Hawkesbury, “we’re after cattle just
now—never mind about old Mindai. It wasn’t one, nor yet two, white
fellows only that _he_ picked the bones of, if all the yarns are true.”
“You think I no care, because I’m black,” said the girl, reproachfully,
as the tears rolled down her dusky cheeks. “I very fond of my poor ole
fader.—Hallo! there’s cattle—come along, Waterton.”
“Changing the subject with a vengeance,” thought Redgrave, as the
mercurial mourner, with all the fickleness of her race, superadded to
that of her sex, looked back a laughing challenge to the stockman, and
closing her heels upon the eager pony, was at top speed in about three
strides. Looking in the direction of Spitfire’s outstretched neck,
Redgrave and his companion could descry a long dark line of moving
objects at a considerable distance on the plain, but whether horses,
cattle, or even a troop of emu, they were unable to make out with
certainty.
“Let’s back her up quietly,” said Hawkesbury. “She and Charley will head
them; it’s no use bustin’ our horses. This is rather a flash mob, but
they’ll be all right when they’re wheeled once or twice.”
Keeping on at a steady hand-gallop, they soon came up with a large lot
of cattle going best pace in the wrong direction. The accomplished
Wildduck, however, flew round them like a falcon, Spitfire doing his
mile in remarkably fair time. Being ably supported by Waterton, the
absconders were rounded up, and were ready to return and be forgiven,
when Hawkesbury and Mr. Redgrade joined them.
“By Jove!” cried our hero, with unconcealed approval, “what grand
condition all the herd seem to be in! Look at those leaders.” Here he
pointed to a string of great raking five and six year old bullocks,
whose immense frames, a little coarse, but well grown and symmetrical,
were filled up to the uttermost point of development. “You don’t seem to
have drafted them very closely.”
“No,” said Hawkesbury, carelessly. “We never send anything away that
isn’t real prime, and we missed this mob last year. They get their time
at Gondaree; and the last two seasons have been stunning good ones.”
“Don’t you always have good seasons, then?” asked Jack, innocently.
The overseer looked sharply at him for a moment, without answering, and
then said—
“Well, not always, it depends upon the rain a good deal; not but what
there’s always plenty of back-water on this run.”
“Oh! I dare say it makes a difference in this dry country,” returned
Jack, carelessly, thinking of Marshmead, where it used to rain sometimes
from March to November, almost without cessation, and where a month’s
fine weather was hailed as a distinct advantage to the sodden pasturage.
“But the rain never does anything but good here, I suppose.”
“Nothing but good, you may say that, when it does come. This lot won’t
be long getting to camp. Ha! I can hear Jingaree’s and the other
fellows’ whips going.”
By this time they had nearly reached the camp at which the various
scouting parties had separated. They had nothing to do but to follow the
drove, which, after the manner of well-broken station herds of the olden
time, never relaxed speed until they reached the camp, when they stopped
of their own accord, and while recovering their wind moved gently to and
fro, greeting friends or strangers with appropriately modulated
bellowings.
Much about the same time the other parties of stockmen could be seen
coming towards the common centre, each following a lesser or a greater
drove. Jingaree had been fortunate in “dropping across” his lot earlier
in the day, and was in peaceful possession of the camp and an
undisturbed smoke long before they arrived.
Mr. Redgrave rode through the fifteen or sixteen hundred there assembled
by himself, the stockmen meanwhile sitting sideways on their horses, or
otherwise at ease, while he made inspection.
“I should like to have had a lot like this at the Lost Water-hole Camp,
at poor old Marshmead,” thought Jack to himself, “for old Rooney, the
dealer, to pick from, when I used to sell to him. How he and Geordie
would have gone cutting out by the hour. They would have almost
forgotten to quarrel. Why, there isn’t a poor beast on the camp except
that cancered bullock.”
When he had completed a leisurely progress through the panting, staring,
but non-aggressive multitude, he rejoined Mr. Hawkesbury, with the
conviction strongly established in his mind that he had never seen so
many really fat cattle in one camp before, and that the country that
would do that with a coarse, neglected herd would do anything.
Mr. Hawkesbury having asked him whether he wanted to see anything more
on that camp, and receiving no answer in the negative, gave orders to
“let the cattle go,” and the party, proceeding to the bank of the creek,
permitted their steeds to graze at will with the reins trailing under
their feet, after the manner of stock-horses, and addressed themselves
to such moderate refreshment, in the form of junks of corned beef and
wedges of damper, as they had brought with them. Mr. Hawkesbury produced
a sufficient quantity for himself and his guest, who found that the
riding, the admiration, and the novel experience had whetted his
appetite.
Fairly well earned was the hour’s rest by the reeds of the creek.
Hawkesbury had at first thought of putting together the greater part of
the herd, but on reflection concluded that the day was rather far
advanced.
They were twenty miles from home. It would be as well to defer the
collection of the cattle belonging to the main camp until the following
day. In a general way it might be thought that a ride of forty miles,
exclusive of two or three hours’ galloping at camp, was a fair day’s
work. So it would have appeared, doubtless, to the author of _Guy
Livingstone_, who in one of his novels describes the hero and his good
steed as being in a condition of extreme exhaustion after a ride of
_thirty miles_. Whyte Melville, too, who handles equally well pen,
brand, and bridle, finds the horses of Gilbert and his friend in _Good
for Nothing_, or _All Down Hill_, reduced to such an “enfeebled
condition” by sore backs, consequent upon one day’s kangaroo-hunting,
that they are compelled to send a messenger for fresh horses a hundred
miles or more to _Sydney_, and to await his return in camp.
With all deference to, and sympathy with, the humanity which probably
prompted so mercifully moderate a chronicle, we must assert that to
these gifted writers little is known of the astonishing feats of speed
and endurance performed by the ordinary Australian horse.
Hawkesbury, indeed, rather grumbled when the party arrived at Gondaree
at what he considered an indifferent day’s work. He, his men, and their
horses would have thought it nothing “making a song aboot,” as Rob Roy
says, to have ridden to Bimbalong, camped the cattle, “cut out” or
drafted, on horseback, a couple of hundred head of fat bullocks, and to
have brought the lot safe to Gondaree stock-yard by moonlight. This
would have involved about twenty hours’ riding, a large proportion of
the work being done at full gallop, and during the hottest part of the
day. But they _had_ done it many a time and often. And neither the
grass-fed horses, the cattle, nor the careless horsemen were a whit the
worse for it.
However, as Mr. Hawkesbury had truly stated in their first interview,
the economy of time was by no means a leading consideration on the
Warroo. So the next day was devoted to the arousing and parading of the
stock within reach of the main camp. Mr. Redgrave’s opinion, as to the
number and general value of the herd after this operation, was so
satisfactory that on the morrow he once more committed himself to the
tender mercies of the Warroo mail, and proceeded incontinently to the
metropolis, where he without further demur concluded the bargain, and
became the first proud purchaser of Gondaree, and five thousand head of
mixed cattle, to be taken “by the books.”
Jack found the club a paradise after his sojourn in the wilderness. At
that time comparatively few men had explored the _terra incognita_ of
Riverina with a view to personal settlement. Therefore Jack’s fame as a
man of daring enterprise and commercial sagacity rose steadily until it
reached a most respectable altitude in the social barometer. He alluded
but sparingly to the privations and perils of his journey, making up for
this reticence by glowing descriptions of the fattening qualities and
vast extent of his newly-acquired territory. He aroused the envy of his
old companions of the settled districts, and was besieged with
applications from the relatives of wholly inexperienced youths from
Britain, and other youngsters of Australian rearing, who had had more
experience than was profitable, to take them back with him as
assistants. These offers he was prudent enough to decline.
His cash had been duly paid down, and the name of John Redgrave attached
to sundry bills at one and two years—bearing interest at eight per
cent.—the whole purchase-money being about twenty thousand pounds, with
right of brand, stock-horses, station-stores, implements, and furniture
given in. What was given in, though it cost some hard bargaining and
several telegrams, was not of great value. Among the twenty stock-horses
there were about two sound ones. The stores consisted of three bags of
flour, half a bag of sugar, and a quarter of a chest of tea. There was
an old cart and some harness, of which only the green hide portion was
“reliable.” Several iron buckets, which served indifferently for boiling
meat and carrying the moderate supplies of water needed or, more
correctly used on the establishment. Of the three saddles, but one was
station property. The others belonged to Mr. Hawkesbury and the
stockman.
Jack had decided to take the cattle at five thousand head without
muster, being of opinion, from the “look of the herd,” and from a
careful inspection of the station-books, wherein the brandings had been
carefully registered, and a liberal percentage allowed for deaths and
losses, that the number was on the run. He knew from experience that a
counting muster was a troublesome and injurious operation, and that it
was better to lose a few head than to knock the whole herd about. He
therefore made all necessary arrangements for going up and taking
immediate possession of Gondaree.
His plan of operations, well considered and carefully calculated, was
this: He had sternly determined upon “clearing off” the whole of the
cattle. Sheep were the only stock fit for the consideration of a large
operator. For cattle there could be only the limited and surely
decreasing local demand. For sheep, that is, for wool, you had the world
for a market. Wool _might_ fall; but, like gold, its fashion was
universal. Every man who wore a Crimean shirt, every woman who wore a
magenta petticoat, was a constituent and a contributor; the die was
cast. He was impatient of the very idea of cattle as an investment for a
man of ordinary foresight. He was not sure whether he would even be
bothered with a score or two for milkers.
To this end he now directed all his energies; and being able to work, as
Bertie Tunstall had truly observed, when he liked, now that he was
excited by the pressure of a great undertaking—an advance along the
whole line of his forces, so to speak—he displayed certain qualities of
generalship.
He first made a very good sale of all the fat cattle on the run (binding
the buyer to take a number which would give the herd “a scraping”) to
his old acquaintance Rooney, the cattle-dealer. These were to be removed
within two months from date of sale. He left instructions with his
agents, Messrs. Drawe and Backwell, to sell the whole of the remaining
portion of the herd (reserving only twenty milkers) as store cattle, to
any one who was slow and old-fashioned enough to desire them. He bought
and despatched stores, of a quality and variety rather different from
what he received, sufficient to last for twelve months; all the fittings
and accessories for a cottage and for a wool-shed, including nails, iron
roofing, doors, sashes—everything, in fact, except the outer timber,
which could be procured on the spot. He had no idea of trusting himself
to the war-prices of the inland store-keepers. A few tons of wire for
preliminary fencing, wool-bales, tools, a dray, carts, an earth-scoop
for dam-making, well-gearing and sixty-gallon buckets, a few tents,
plough and harrow (must have some hay), a few decent horses, an American
waggon with four-horse harness, and other articles “too numerous to
mention,” about this time found themselves on the road to Gondaree. All
these trifling matters “footed up” to a sum which gave a temporarily
reflective expression to Jack’s open countenance. Necessaries for a
sheep-station, especially in the process of conversion from cattle
ditto, have a way of coming out strong in the addition department.
“What of that?” demanded Jack of his conscience, or that quiet
cousin-german, prudence; “a sheep-station must be properly worked, or
not at all. The first year’s wool will pay for it all. And then the
lambs!”
In order to manage a decent-sized sheep property (and nothing is so
expensive as a small one), you must have an overseer. Jack was not going
to be penny-lunatic enough to be his own manager. And the right sort of
man must be thoroughly up to all the latest lights and discoveries—not a
working overseer, a rough, upper-shepherd sort of individual who counted
sheep and helped to make bush-yards, but a fairly-educated modern
species of centurion, whose intelligence and knowledge of stock (meaning
sheep) were combined with commercial shrewdness and military power of
combination. A man who could tell you in a few minutes how much a dam
displacing several thousand cubic yards of earth ought to cost; how many
men, in what number of days, should complete it; what provisions they
ought to consume; and what wages, working reasonably, they ought to
earn. A man full of the latest information as to spouts and soda, hot
water and cold, with a natural turn heightened by experience, for
determining the proportionate shades of fineness, density, freeness, and
length of staple which, in combination, could with safety be taken as a
model for the ideal merino. A man capable of sketching, with accuracy
and forethought, the multifarious buildings, enclosures, and
“improvements” necessary for a sheep-station in the first year of its
existence, or of conducting the shearing to a successful issue without
them at need.
For subalterns so variously gifted a demand had of late years grown up,
owing to the large profits and wonderful development of the
wool-producing interest. Of one of these highly-certificated
“competition-wallahs” John Redgrave had determined to possess himself.
In Mr. Alexander M‘Nab, late of Strathallan, and formerly of Mount
Gresham, he deemed that he had secured one of the most promising and
highly-trained specimens of the type.
Sandy M‘Nab, as he was generally called, was about eight-and-twenty
years of age, the son of a small but respectable farmer in the north of
Ireland, in which condition of life he had acquired an early knowledge
of stock, and an exceedingly sound rudimentary education. Far too
ambitious to content himself with the limited programme of his
forefathers, he had emigrated at sixteen, and worked his way up through
the various stages of Australian bush apprenticeship, until he had
reached his present grade, from which he trusted to pass into the ranks
of the Squatocracy.
Having secured this valuable functionary, and covenanted to pay him at
the rate of three hundred per annum, his first act was to despatch him,
after a somewhat lengthy consultation, to inspect a small lot of ten
thousand ewes, and on approval to hire men and bring them to Gondaree.
It was necessary to lose no time; lambing would be on in June, in August
shearing would be imminent. And the cattle would require to be off, and
the sheep to be on, somewhere about April, if the first year’s
operations were to have any chance of being financially successful.
The stores having been purchased, and Mr. M‘Nab with his letter of
credit having been shipped, that alert lieutenant, with characteristic
promptitude, reporting himself in readiness to embark at six hours’
notice, nothing remained but for Mr. Redgrave to “render himself” again
at Gondaree in the capacity of purchaser.
He accordingly cleared out from the club with alarmingly stern
self-denial, and, declining to risk his important existence in the
Warroo mail, took the road in the light American waggon, with his spare
horses and a couple of active lads accustomed to bush work.
After a journey of ordinary duration and absence of adventure, he once
more sighted the unromantic but priceless waters of the Warroo, and
beheld, with the eye of a proprietor, the “waste lands of the
Crown”—most literally deserving that appellation—with the full right and
title to which, as lessee, he stood invested.
Mr. Hawkesbury, in apparently the same Crimean shirt, with black and
scarlet in alternate bars, stood smoking the small myall pipe in much
the same attitude at the hut door as when Jack was borne off by two jibs
and a bolter in the Warroo mail. Bob the cook, the dark hues of his
apparel unrelieved by any shade of scarlet, appeared in his doorway with
his hands in his pockets, but betraying unwonted interest as the
_cortège_ ascended the sandhill.
Ordering the boys to let go the horses, and to pitch the tent, which he
had used on the journey, at a safe distance from the huts, Jack
descended with a slight increase of dignity, as of one in authority, and
greeted his predecessor.
“So you’ve bought us out,” he said, after inspecting carefully the
letter which Jack handed to him, “and I’m ordered to deliver over the
cattle, and the stores,—there ain’t much of them,—and the horses, and in
fact the whole boiling. Well, I wish you luck, sir; the run’s a good ’un
and no mistake, and the cattle are pretty fair, considering what’s been
done for ’em. I suppose you won’t want me after you’ve taken delivery.”
“I shall be very glad if you will stay on,” quoth Jack, whose honest
heart felt averse to ousting any man from a home, “until the cattle are
cleared off; after that I shall have another gentleman in charge of the
sheep and place generally. By staying two or three months you will
oblige me, if it suits your arrangements.”
“All right,” answered Mr. Hawkesbury: “I know the cattle pretty well,
and I dare say I can save as many as will cover my wages. I think you’ll
find them muster up pretty close to their book-number.”
The signal shot of the campaign was fired, so to speak, upon the arrival
of Mr. John Rooney, who came in a few days by appointment to take the
first draft of the Gondaree fat cattle.
Jack was sitting outside of his tent, like an Arab sheik, and thinking
regretfully of the flower-laden evening breeze which he had so often
inhaled at the same hour at Marshmead, when a tall, soldierly-looking
man rode up on a tired horse and jumped off with an unreserved
exclamation of relief.
“Hallo! Rooney, is that you, in this uncivilized part of the world?
Rather different from the old place, isn’t it! Come in, and I’ll have
your horse hobbled out. You mustn’t expect stables or paddock or any
other luxuries on the Warroo.”
“Sure, I know it well—my heavy curse on the same river; there never was
any dacency next or anigh it. Didn’t they lend me a buck-jumper at
Morahgil to-day, and the first place I found myself was on the broad of
my back.”
“What a shame! Did they give you another horse?”
“They did not. I rode the same devil right through. It’s little bucking
he feels inclined for now.”
“So I should think, after an eighty-mile ride. When did you leave?”
“About twelve o’clock. I was riding all night, and got there to
breakfast. The last time I took cattle from Morahgil I happened to knock
down the superintendent with a roping pole, maybe that’s why he treated
me so—the mane blayguard.”
“Well, he ought not to have let such a trifle dwell on his mind,
perhaps. But take a glass of grog, Rooney, while the fellow gets your
tea.”
“Faith, and I will, Masther John; and it’s sound I’ll sleep to-night,
fleas or no fleas. A man can’t do without it for more than three nights
at a time.”
In a few days the muster was duly concluded, and three hundred prime
bullocks secured in the ancient but massive stockyard. One of Rooney’s
drovers and a couple of road hands had arrived the evening before, to
whom they were intrusted. Rooney was too great a man to be able to
afford the time to travel with his own cattle, and had, indeed, a score
of other mobs to meet, despatch, buy, or sell, to arrive in as many
different and distant parts of the colony.
“Well, Masther John,” said he, “I won’t deny that I haven’t lifted a
finer mob this season. Isn’t it a murthering fine run, when it puts the
beef on them big-boned divils like that? If ye had some of those roan
steers we used to get at the Lost Waterhole Camp, sure they wouldn’t be
able to see out of their eyes with fat. I’ll be able to get the eight
hundred out of these aisy enough. I’ll send Joe. Best for the cows and
the rest of the bullocks the moment he’s shut of those circle-dot
cattle. I must be off down the river. I’ve a long ride before me. But,
Masther John, see here now, don’t be building too much on the saysons in
these parts. It’s not like Marshmead; I’ve seen it all as bare as a
brickfield, from the Warroo to the Oxley; and these very cattle with
their ribs up to their backbones, and dyin’ by hundreds. D’ye hear me
now? Don’t be spending all your money before ye see how prices are
going. I’m thinking we’ll see a dale of changes in the next three or
four years—all this racin’ and jostlin’ for breeding sheep can’t hould
out. Good-bye, sir.”
And so the kindly, stalwart, shrewd cattle dealer went on his way, and
Jack saw him no more for a season. But his warning words left an
impression of doubt and distrust upon the mind of his hearer that no
caution had previously had power to do. Was it possible that he had made
a mistake, and an irrevocable one? Was such a change in the seasons
credible, and could all his stretch of luxuriant prairie turn into dust
and ashes? It was impossible. He had known bad seasons, or thought he
had, in the old west country; he had seen grass and water pretty scarce,
and had a lower average of fat cattle in some seasons than others; but
as to any total disappearance of pasture, any ruinous loss of stock,
such he had never witnessed and was quite unable to realize.