THE RIVALS.
For the next couple of weeks, affairs at Kuryong flowed on in usual
station style. A saddle-horse was brought in for Miss Grant, and out of
her numerous boxes that young lady produced a Bond Street outfit that
fairly silenced criticism. She rode well too, having been taught in
England, and she, Poss, Binjie and Hugh had some great scampers after
kangaroos, half-wild horses, or anything else that would get up and run
in front of them. She was always so fresh, cheerful, and ready for any
excitement that the two boys became infatuated in four days, and had to
be hunted home on the fifth, or they would have both proposed. Some
days she spent at the homestead housekeeping, cooking, and giving out
rations to swagmen—the wild, half-crazed travellers who came in at
sundown for the dole of flour, tea and sugar, which was theirs by bush
custom. Some days she spent with the children, and with them learnt a
lot of bush life. It being holiday-time, they practically ran wild all
over the place, spending whole days in long tramps to remote parts in
pursuit of game. They had no “play,” as that term is known to English
children. They didn’t play at being hunters. They were hunters in real
earnest, and their habits and customs had come to resemble very closely
those of savage tribes that live by the chase.
With them Mary had numberless new experiences. She got accustomed to
seeing the boys climb big trees by cutting steps in the bark with a
tomahawk, going out on the most giddy heights after birds’ nests, or
dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow limb. She
learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of a hollow log,
ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken refuge there, and
which flashed out as if shot from a catapult on being poked from the
other end with a long stick. She learned to mark the hiding-place of
the young wild-ducks that scuttled and dived, and hid themselves with
such super-natural cunning in the reedy pools. She saw the native
companions, those great, solemn, grey birds, go through their fantastic
and intricate dances, forming squares, pirouetting, advancing, and
retreating with the solemnity of professional dancing-masters. She lay
on the river-bank with the children, gun in hand, breathless with
excitement, waiting for the rising of the duck-billed platypus—that
quaint combination of fish, flesh and fowl—as he dived in the quiet
waters, a train of small bubbles marking his track. She fished in deep
pools for the great, sleepy, hundred-pound cod-fish that sucked down
bait and hook, _holus-bolus_, and then were hauled in with hardly any
resistance, and lived for days contentedly, tethered to the bank by a
line through their gills.
In these amusements time passed pleasantly enough, and by the time
school-work was resumed Mary Grant had become one of the family.
Of Hugh she at first saw little. His work took him out on the run all
day long, looking after sheep in the paddocks, or perhaps toiling day
after day in the great, dusty drafting-yards. In the cool of the
afternoon the two girls would often canter over the four miles or so of
timbered country to the yards, and wait till Hugh had finished his
day’s work. As a rule, Poss or Binjie, perhaps both, were in attendance
to escort Miss Harriott, with the result that Hugh and Mary found
themselves paired off to ride home together. Before long he found
himself looking forward to these rides with more anxiety than he cared
to acknowledge, and in a very short time he was head over ears in love
with her.
Any man, being much alone with any woman in a country house, will fall
in love with her; but a man such as Hugh Gordon, ardent, imaginative,
and very young, meeting every day a woman as beautiful as Mary Grant,
was bound to fall a victim. He soon became her absolute worshipper. All
day long, in the lonely rides through the bush, in the hot and dusty
hours at the sheep-yards, through the pleasant, lazy canter home in the
cool of the evening, his fancies were full of her—her beauty and her
charm. It was happiness enough for him to be near her, to feel the soft
touch of her hand, to catch the faint scent that seemed to linger in
her hair. After the day’s work they would stroll together about the
wonderful old garden, and watch the sunlight die away on the western
hills, and the long strings of wild fowl hurrying down the river to
their nightly haunts. Sometimes he would manage to get home for lunch,
and afterwards, on the pretext of showing her the run, would saddle a
horse for her, and off they would go for a long ride through the
mountains. Or there were sheep to inspect, or fences to look at—an
excuse for an excursion was never lacking.
For the present he made no sign; he was quite contented to act as
confidant and adviser, and many a long talk they had together over the
various troubles that beset the manager of a station.
It would hardly be supposed that a girl could give much advice on such
matters, and at first her total ignorance of the various difficulties
amused him; but when she came to understand them better, her cool
common-sense compelled his admiration. His temperament was nervous and
excitable, and he let things fret him. She took everything in a cheery
spirit, and laughed him out of his worries. One would not expect to
find many troubles in rearing sheep and selling their wool; but the
management of any big station is a heavy task, and Kuryong would have
driven Job mad.
The sheep themselves, to begin with, seem always in league against
their owners. Merinos, though apparently estimable animals, are in
reality dangerous monomaniacs, whose sole desire is to ruin the man
that owns them. Their object is to die, and to do so with as much
trouble to their owners as they possibly can. They die in the droughts
when the grass, roasted to a dull white by the sun, comes out by the
roots and blows about the bare paddocks; they die in the wet, when the
long grass in the sodden gullies breeds “fluke” and “bottle” and all
sorts of hideous complaints. They get burnt in bush fires from sheer
malice, refusing to run in any given direction, but charging round and
round in a ring till they are calcined. They get drowned by refusing to
leave flooded country, though hunted with frenzied earnestness.
It was not the sheep so much as the neighbours whose depredations were
drawing lines on Hugh Gordon’s face. “I wouldn’t care,” he confided to
Miss Grant, “if they only took a beast or two. But the sheep are going
by hundreds. We mustered five hundred short in one paddock this month.
And there isn’t a Doyle or a Donohoe cow but has three calves at least,
and two of each three belong to us.”
He dared not prosecute them. No local jury would convict in face of the
hostility that would be aroused. They had made “alibis” a special
study; the very judges were staggered by the calmness and plausibility
with which they got themselves out of difficulties.
A big station with a lot of hostile neighbours is like a whale with the
killers round it; it is open to attack on all sides, and cannot
retaliate. A match dropped carelessly in a patch of grass sets miles of
country in a blaze. Hugh, as he missed the stock, and saw fences cut
and grass burnt, could only grind his teeth and hope that a lucky
chance would put some of the enemy in his power. To Mary it seemed
incredible that in the nineteenth century people should be able to
steal sheep without suffering for it; and Hugh soon saw that she was a
true daughter of William Grant, as far as fighting was concerned. She
listened with set teeth to all stories of depredation and trespass, and
they talked over many a plan together. But though they became quite
friendly their intimacy seemed to make no progress. To her he was
rather the employee than the friend. In fact he did not get on half so
far as did Gavan Blake, who came up to Kuryong occasionally, and made
himself so agreeable that already his name was being coupled with that
of the heiress. Ellen Harriott always spoke to Blake when he came to
the station, and gave no sign of jealousy at his attentions to Mary
Grant; but she was waiting and watching, as one who has been a nurse
learns to do. And things were in this state when an unexpected event
put an altogether different complexion on affairs.