THE RINGER OF THE SHED
A sweet breeze and a flawless sky rendered it an exquisite morning when
Naomi and her piano-tuner took their seats behind the kind of pair which
the girl loved best to handle. They were youngsters both, the one a
filly as fresh as paint, the other a chestnut colt, better broken,
perhaps, but sufficiently ready to be led astray. The very start was
lively. Engelhardt found himself holding on with his only hand as if his
life depended on it, instead of on the firm gloved fingers and the taut
white-sleeved arm at his side. He looked from the pair of young ones to
that arm and those fingers, and back again at the pair. They were
pulling alarmingly, especially the filly. Engelhardt took an anxious
look at the driver's face. He was prepared to find it resolute but pale.
He found it transfigured with the purest exultation. After all, this was
the daughter of the man who had returned the bushranger's fire with
laughter as loud as his shots; she was her father's child; and from this
moment onward the piano-tuner felt it a new honor to be sitting at her
side.
"How do you like it?" she found time to ask him when the worst seemed
over.
"First-rate," he replied.
"Not in a funk?"
"Not with you."
"That's a blessing. The filly needs watching--little demon! But she
sha'n't smash your other arm for you, Mr. Engelhardt, if I can prevent
it. No screws loose, Sam, I hope?"
"Not if I knows it, miss!"
Sam Rowntree had jumped on behind to come as far as the first gate, to
open it. Already they were there, and as Sam ran in front of the
impatient pair the filly shied violently at a blue silk fly-veil which
fluttered from his wide-awake.
"That nice youth is the dandy of the men's hut," explained Naomi, as
they tore through the gates, leaving Sam and his fly-veil astern in a
twinkling. "I daren't say much to him, because he's the only man the hut
contains just at present. The rest spend most nights out at the shed, so
I should be pretty badly off if I offended Sam. I wasn't too pleased
with the state of the buggy, as a matter of fact. It's the old Shanghai
my father used to fancy, and somehow it's fallen on idle days; but it
runs lighter than anything else we've got, and it's sweetly swung.
That's why I chose it for this little trip of ours. You'll find it like
a feather-bed for your bruises and bones and things--if only Sam
Rowntree used his screw-hammer properly. Feeling happy so far?"
Engelhardt declared that he had never been happier in his life. There
was more truth in the assertion than Naomi suspected. She also was
happy, but in a different way. A tight rein, an aching arm, a clear
course across a five-mile paddock, and her beloved Riverina breeze
between her teeth, would have made her happy at any time and in any
circumstances. The piano-tuner's company added no sensible zest to a
performance which she thoroughly enjoyed for its own sake; but with him
the exact opposite was the case. She was not thinking of him. He was
thinking only of her. She had her young bloods to watch. His eyes spent
half their time upon her grand strong hand and arm. Suddenly these gave
a tug and a jerk, both together. But he was in too deep a dream either
to see what was wrong or to understand his companion's exclamation.
"He didn't!" she had cried.
"Didn't what?" said Engelhardt. "And who, Miss Pryse?"
"Sam Rowntree didn't use his screw-hammer properly. Wretch! The near
swingle-tree's down and trailing."
It took Engelhardt some moments to grasp exactly what she meant. Then he
saw. The near swingle-tree was bumping along the ground at the filly's
heels, dragged by the traces. Already the filly had shown herself the
one to shy as well as to pull, and it now appeared highly probable that
she would give a further exhibition of her powers by kicking the
Shanghai to matchwood. Luckily, the present pace was too fast for that.
The filly had set the pace herself. The filly was keeping it up. As for
the chestnut, it was contentedly playing second fiddle with traces
drooping like festoons. Thus the buggy was practically being drawn by a
single rein with the filly's mouth at one end of it and Naomi's hand at
the other.
"Once let the bar tickle her hoofs, and she'll hack us to smithereens,"
said the latter, cheerfully. "We'll euchre her yet by keeping this up!"
And she took her whip and flogged the chestnut.
But this did not ease the strain on her left hand and arm, for the
chestnut's pace was nothing to the filly's, so that even with the will
he had not the power to tighten his traces and perform his part.
Engelhardt saw the veins swelling in the section of wrist between the
white sleeve and the dogskin glove. He reached across and tried to help
her with his left hand; but she bade him sit quiet, or he would
certainly tumble out and be run over; and with her command she sent a
roar of laughter into his ear, though the veins were swelling on her
forehead, too. Truly she was a chip of the old block, and the grain was
as good as ever.
It came to an end at last.
"Hurray!" said Naomi. "I see the fence."
Engelhardt saw it soon after, and in another minute the horses stood
smoking, and the buggy panting on its delicate springs, before a
six-bar gate which even the filly was disinclined to tackle just then.
"Do you think you can drive through with your one hand, and hold them
tight on t'other side?" said Naomi. "Clap your foot on the break and
try."
He nodded and managed creditably; but before opening the gate Naomi made
a temporary fixture of the swingle-tree by means of a strap; and this
proved the last of their troubles. The shed was now plainly in sight,
with its long regular roof, and at one end three huts parallel with it
and with each other. To the left of the shed, as they drove up, Naomi
pointed out the drafting yards. A dense yellow cloud overhung them like
a lump of London fog.
"They're drafting now," said Naomi. "I expect Mr. Gilroy is drafting
himself. If so, let's hope he's too busy to see us. It would be a pity,
you know, to take him away from his work," she added next instant; but
Engelhardt was not deceived.
They drove down the length of the shed, which had small pens attached on
either side, with a kind of port-hole opening into each. Out of these
port-holes there kept issuing shorn sheep, which ran down little sloping
boards, and thus filled the pens. At one of the latter Naomi pulled up.
It contained twice as many sheep as any other pen, and a good half of
them were cut and bleeding. The pens were all numbered, and this one was
number nineteen.
"Bear that in mind," said Naomi. "Nineteen!"
Engelhardt looked at her. Her face was flushed and her voice unusually
quiet and hard. But she drove on without another word, save of general
explanation.
"Each man has his pen," she said, "and shears his sheep just inside
those holes. Then the boss of the shed comes round with his note-book,
counts out the pens, and enters the number of sheep to the number of
each pen. If a shearer cuts his sheep about much, or leaves a lot of
wool on, he just runs that man's pen--doesn't count 'em at all. At
least, he ought to. It seems he doesn't always do it."
Again her tone was a singular mixture of hard and soft.
"Mr. Gilroy is over the shed, isn't he?" said Engelhardt, a little
injudiciously.
"He is," returned Naomi, and that was all.
They alighted from the buggy at the farther end of the shed, where huge
doors stood open, showing a confused stack of wool-bales within, and
Sanderson, the store-keeper, engaged in branding them with stencil and
tar-brush. He took off his wide-awake to Naomi, and winked at the
piano-tuner. The near-sighted youth was also there, and he came out to
take charge of the pair, while Engelhardt entered the shed at Naomi's
skirts.
Beyond the bales was the machine which turned them out. Here the two
wool-pressers were hard at work and streaming with perspiration. Naomi
paused to see a bale pressed down and sewn up. Then she led her
companion on to where the wool-pickers were busy at side tables, and the
wool-sorter at another table which stood across the shed in a commanding
position, with a long line of shearers at work to right and left, and an
equally long pen full of unshorn sheep between them. The wool-sorter's
seemed the softest job in the shed. Boys brought him fleeces--perhaps a
dozen a minute--flung them out upon the table, and rolled them up again
into neat bundles swiftly tied with string. These bundles the
wool-sorter merely tossed over his shoulder into one or other of the
five or six bins at his back.
"He gets a pound a thousand fleeces," Naomi whispered, "and we shear
something over eighty thousand sheep. He will take away a check of
eighty odd pounds for his six weeks' work."
"And what about the shearers?"
"A pound a hundred. Some of them will go away with forty or fifty
pounds."
"It beats piano-tuning," said Engelhardt, with a laugh. They crossed an
open space, mounted a few steps, and began threading their way down the
left-hand aisle, between the shearers and the pen from which they had to
help themselves to woolly sheep. The air was heavy with the smell of
fleeces, and not unmusical with the constant swish and chink of forty
pairs of shears.
"Well, Harry?" said Naomi, to the second man they came to. "Harry is an
old friend of mine, Mr. Engelhardt--he was here in the old days. Mr.
Engelhardt is a new friend, Harry, but a very good one, for all that.
How are you getting on? What's your top-score?"
"Ninety-one, miss--I shore ninety-one yesterday."
"And a very good top-score, too, Harry. I'd rather spend three months
over the shearing than have sheep cut about and wool left on. What was
that number I asked you to keep in mind, Mr. Engelhardt?"
"Nineteen, Miss Pryse."
"Ah, yes! Who's number nineteen, Harry?"
Harry grinned.
"They call him the ringer of the shed, miss."
"Oh, indeed. That means the fastest shearer, Mr. Engelhardt--the man who
runs rings round the rest, eh, Harry? What's _his_ top-score, do you
suppose?"
"Something over two hundred."
"I thought as much. And his name?"
"Simons, miss."
"Point him out, Harry."
"Why, there he is; that big chap now helping himself to a woolly."
They turned and saw a huge fellow drag out an unshorn sheep by the leg,
and fling it against his moleskins with a clearly unnecessary violence
and cruelty.
"Come on, Mr. Engelhardt," said Naomi, in her driest tones; "I have a
word to say to the ringer of the shed. I rather think he won't ring much
longer."
They walked on and watched the long man at his work. It was the work of
a ruffian. The shearer next him had started on a new sheep
simultaneously, and was on farther than the brisket when the ringer had
reached the buttocks. On the brisket of the ringer's sheep a slit of
livid blue had already filled with blood, and blood started from other
places as he went slashing on. He was either too intent or too insolent
to take the least heed of the lady and the young man watching him. The
young man's heart was going like a clock in the night, and he was
sufficiently ashamed of it. As for Naomi, she was visibly boiling over,
but she held her tongue until the sheep rose bleeding from its fleece.
Then, as the man was about to let the poor thing go, she darted between
it and the hole.
"Tar here on the brisket!" she called down the board.
A boy came at a run and dabbed the wounds.
"Why didn't you call him yourself?" she then asked sternly of the man,
still detaining his sheep.
"What business is that of yours?" he returned, impudently.
"That you will see presently. How many sheep did you shear yesterday?"
"Two hundred and two."
"And the day before?"
"Two hundred and five."
"That will do. It's too much, my man, you can't do it properly. I've had
a look at your sheep, and I mean to run your pen. What's more, if you
don't intend to go slower and do better, you may throw down your shears
this minute!"
The man had slowly lifted himself to something like his full height,
which was enormous. So were his rounded shoulders and his long hairy
arms and hands. So was his face, with its huge hook-nose and its
mouthful of yellow teeth. These were showing in an insolent yet savage
grin, when a good thing happened at a very good time.
A bell sounded, and someone sang out, "Smoke-oh!"
Instantly many pairs of shears were dropped; in the ensuing two minutes
the rest followed, as each man finished the sheep he was engaged on when
the bell rang. Thus the swish and tinkle of the shears changed swiftly
to a hum of conversation mingled with deep-drawn sighs. And this stopped
suddenly, miraculously, as the shed opened its eyes and ears to the
scene going forward between its notorious ringer and Naomi Pryse, the
owner of the run.
In another moment men with pipes in their hands and sweat on their
brows were edging toward the pair from right and left.
"Your name, I think, is Simons?" Naomi was saying, coolly, but so that
all who had a mind might hear her. "I have no more to say to you,
Simons, except that you will shear properly or go where they like their
sheep to have lumps of flesh taken out and lumps of wool left on."
"Since when have you been over the board, miss?" asked Simons, a little
more civilly under the eyes of his mates.
"I am not over the board," said Naomi, hotly, "but I am over the man who
is."
She received instant cause to regret this speech.
"We wish you was!" cried two or three. "_You_ wouldn't make a blooming
mull of things, you wouldn't!"
"I'll take my orders from Mr. Gilroy, and from nobody else," said
Simons, defiantly.
"Well, you may take fair warning from me."
"That's as I like."
"It's as _I_ like," said Naomi. "And look here, I won't waste more words
upon you and I won't stand your impertinence. Better throw down your
shears now--for I've done with you--before I call upon your mates to
take them from you."
"We don't need calling, miss, not we!"
Half a dozen fine fellows had stepped forward, with Harry at their head,
and the affair was over. Simons had flung his shears on the floor with a
clatter and a curse, and was striding out of the shed amid the hisses
and imprecations of his comrades.
Naomi would have got away, too, for she had had more than enough of the
whole business, but this was not so easy. Someone raised three cheers
for her. They were given with a roar that shook the iron roof like
thunder. And to cap all this a gray old shearer planted himself in her
path.
"It's just this way, miss," said he. "We liked Simons little enough,
but, begging your pardon, we like Mr. Gilroy less. He doesn't know how
to treat us at all. He has no idea of bossing a shed like this. And mark
my words, miss, unless you remove that man, and give us some smarter
gentleman like, say, young Mr. Chester----"
"Ay, Chester'll do!"
"He knows his business!"
"He's a man, he is----"
"And the man for us!"
"Unless you give us someone more to our fancy, like young Mr. Chester,"
concluded the old man, doing his best to pacify his mates with look and
gesture, "there'll be further trouble. This is only the beginning.
There'll be trouble, and maybe worse, until you make a change."
Naomi felt inexpressibly uncomfortable.
"Mr. Gilroy is the manager of this station," said she, for once with a
slight tremor in her voice. "Any difference that you have with him, you
must fight it out between you. I am quite sure that he means to be just.
I, at any rate, must interfere no more. I am sorry I interfered at all."
So they let her go at last, the piano-tuner following close upon her
heels. He had stuck to her all the time with shut mouth and twitching
fingers, ready for anything, as he was ready still. And the first person
these two encountered in the open air was Gilroy himself, with so white
a face and such busy lips that they hardly required him to tell them he
had heard all.
"I am very sorry, Monty," said the girl, in a distressed tone which
highly surprised her companion; "but I simply couldn't help it. You
can't stand by and see a sheep cut to pieces without opening your
mouth. Yet I know I was at fault."
"It's not much good knowing it now," returned Gilroy, ungraciously, as
he rolled along at her side; "you should have thought of that first. As
it is, you've given me away to the shed, and made a tough job twice as
tough as it was before."
"I really am very sorry, Monty. I know I oughtn't to have interfered at
all. At the same time, the man deserved sending away, and I am sure you
would have been the first to send him had you seen what I saw. I know I
should have waited and spoken to you; but I shall keep away from the
shed in future."
"That won't undo this morning's mischief. I heard what the brutes said
to you!"
"Then you must have heard what I said to them. Don't try to make me out
worse than I am, Monty."
She laid her hand upon his arm, and Engelhardt, to his horror, saw tears
on her lashes. Gilroy, however, would not look at her. Instead, he
hailed the store-keeper, who had passed them on his way to the huts.
"Make out Simons's account, Sandy," he shouted at the top of his voice,
"and give him his check. Miss Pryse has thought fit to sack him over my
head!"
Instantly her penitence froze to scorn.
"That was unnecessary," she said, in the same quiet tone she had
employed toward the shearer, but dropping her arm and halting dead as
she spoke. "If this is the way you treat the men, no wonder you can't
manage them. Come, Mr. Engelhardt!"
And with this they turned their back on the manager, but not on the
shed; that was not Naomi's way at all. She was pre-eminently one to be
led, not driven, and she remained upon the scene, showing Engelhardt
everything, and explaining the minutest details for his benefit, much
longer than she would have dreamt of staying in the ordinary course of
affairs. This involved luncheon in the manager's hut, at which meal
Naomi appeared in the highest spirits, cracking jokes with Sanderson,
chaffing the boy in spectacles, and clinking pannikins with everyone but
the manager himself. The latter left early, after steadily sulking
behind his plate, with his beard in his waistcoat and his yellow head
presented like a bull's. Tom Chester was not there at all. Engelhardt
was sorry, though the others treated him well enough to-day--Sanderson
even cutting up his meat for him. It was three o'clock before Naomi and
he started homeward in the old Shanghai.
With the wool-shed left a mile behind, they overtook a huge horseman
leading a spare horse.
"That's our friend Simons," said Naomi. "I wonder what sort of a
greeting he'll give me. None at all, I should imagine."
She was wrong. The shearer reined up on one side of the track, and gave
her a low bow, wide-awake in hand, and with it a kind of a glaring grin
that made his teeth stand out like brass-headed nails in the afternoon
sunshine. Naomi laughed as they drove on.
"Pretty, wasn't it? That man loves me to distraction, I should say. On
the whole we may claim to have had a rather lively day. First came that
young lady on the near side, who's behaving herself so angelically now;
and then the swingle-tree, which they've fixed up well enough to see us
through this afternoon at any rate. Next there was our friend Simons;
and after him, poor dear Monty Gilroy--who had cause to complain, mind
you, Mr. Engelhardt. We mustn't forget that I had no sort of right to
interfere. And now, unless I'm very much mistaken, we're on the point
of meeting two more of our particular friends."
In fact, a couple of tramps were approaching, swag on back, with the
slow swinging stride of their kind. Engelhardt colored hotly as he
recognized the ruffians of the day before. They were walking on opposite
sides of the track, and as the buggy cut between them the fat man
unpocketed one hand and saluted them as they passed.
"Not got a larger size yet?" he shouted out. "Why, that ain't a man at
all!"
The poor piano-tuner felt red to his toes, and held his tongue with
exceeding difficulty. But, as usual, Naomi and her laugh came to his
rescue.
"How polite our friends are, to be sure! A bow here and a salute there!
Birds of a feather, too, if ever I saw any; you might look round, Mr.
Engelhardt, and see if they're flocking together."
"They are," said he, next minute.
Then Naomi looked for herself. They were descending a slight incline,
and, sure enough, on top of the ridge stood the two tramps and the
mounted shearer. Stamped clean against the sky, it looked much as though
horses and men had been carved out of a single slab of ebony.