CHAPTER XVIII
Scottie, as he rode in the rear of the herd next morning, called Steve over to him.
“If ye’re sure it was a whip started your horse last nicht, Steve,” he said, “an’ can tell me who it was, he’ll get his walkin’ ticket this nicht.”
“I’d rather say nothing, Scottie,” said Steve; “it might have been an accident.”
“There’s nae room for accidents when a stampede’s startin’,” said Scottie, grimly; “an’ accident o’ that sort is o’ set design or it’s rank carelessness – I’ve nae room in the Thunder Ridge men for ane o’ either sort.”
“I’d rather let it go, all the same, Scottie,” said Steve, and the subject was dropped.
The mob was kept moving slowly back over the ground they had stampeded, and it took them all the morning to cover what they had done in their flight in little more than an hour.
They were still wild and hard to hold, and several times the men had all they could do to ride round them and steady them from breaking into another rush. They refused to open out and feed, and truly there was little feed for them to find on the ground they were covering. They packed together compactly, and walked or broke into little trotting runs with heads up and eyes alert, and twice during the morning they were only stopped from breaking into a gallop by the hardest of riding.
“What in thunder has got into ’em?” growled Never-Never, as a score of the cattle swerved from the main body and galloped down a gully. Jack and Steve had shot out in pursuit, and were riding with their shoulders rounded and crouched forward, as men ride the finish of a hard race. They caught the cattle and drove past them, and sat erect and began to pour the whips into the leaders. When they had swung and were galloping back, the men had to ride hard again to steady them and slow them down before they reached the mob.
“Hold ’em back, Jack,” shouted Steve. “If they go busting in on the others at this belt, we’ll have ’em starting another rush.”
“Burn ’em,” grunted Jack Ever; “they’re crazy. Take that, you brute,” and he pressed close alongside the leaders and cut across their faces with his whip. The bullock nearest him lunged viciously with its horns, and the horse evaded the thrust by a swift side leap that would have unseated many men. For all they could do, the brutes went back into the main mass with a rush. A shivering heave ran through the mob, spreading from the point of contact as ripples spread in a pond from a flung stone. The leading ranks broke into a trot and quickened to a canter, and the men tore up in front again and fell on them with the whips, and strove to beat them back. They went on so for the best part of a mile, and then Scottie galloped to the front. “Swing out, swing out,” he yelled, “an’ just lat them go.”
The men opened and left the way clear, and clung silently along the flanks. “They’ve a clear road an’ good enough goin’ for a twa-three mile,” Scottie said to Steve as he rode alongside. “It’ll no hurt tae lat them gallop the win’ oot o’ themselves.”
They were passing along a valley with steep-sided hills on either hand and fairly level going along the floor of the valley, but instead of getting winded and slowing down as Scottie had expected, their pace increased.
“Deil tak them,” growled Scottie. “If only we had them past Split-the-Win’ they could just gang their ain gait. Tak a man wi’ you, Steve, an’ cut up ower the Chow Hill and get intae the Gutter aheid o’ them. Get tae Split-the-Win’ an’ turn them frae takin’ the hill road. Ye’ll need tae ride hard.”
He was shouting as he rode, and two or three of the men near heard him. Steve looked round and saw Ned Gunliffe riding near. “Come on, Ned Gunliffe,” he shouted loud and clear. “Come, if you think you can ride it with me,” and he turned his horse and scrambled up the hill to where a spur ran slantingly up. He did not look back to see if Ned had followed, but he heard the rattle of stones behind him and grinned to himself.
Ned was at his elbow as they pressed over the top of the hill, and Steve shouted, “We’ve got to move in something of a hurry to get there ahead of them. Keep as close as you can,” and he touched his horse with the spur and shot ahead. They dipped down over the other side of the hill, and went down with a rush into the bush at the foot. They plunged and tore a way through it, and down another swift drop. Steve took it without drawing rein, the iron shoes of the horses striking fire from the stones that turned under their feet, and picking their way in springing leaps like mountain goats. They reached the foot in a torrent of flying stones and swirling dust, and Steve heard the hoof-beats of Ned’s horse close behind. He clapped the spurs in again and raced over a strip of level ground, littered with fallen logs and seamed with dry water courses. He leaped a log as high as a five-wire fence, and saw Ned’s shadow rising as he landed. He took a five-foot drop in his stride, and heard the clash of the other horse landing the next instant. He raced at the wide gully of a dry water course, and took his horse by the head and sent him straight at it and lifted him over, and Ned’s horse baulked and swerved, almost unseating his rider. Ned turned him and cursed savagely, and beat him about the flanks with the butt of his stockwhip, headed him back to the leap, and jambed his spurs in hard as he could drive. With a snort of pain the brute rushed and leaped and landed safe, and Ned beat at him again and kept his spurs working. Steve led the way up a spur that sloped to the rise of Chow Hill, and scrambled labouring up it, his horse climbing and clambering like a cat. The ridge narrowed as it rose into a sharp hogback, with a steep drop to either side, and the dislodged rocks rolled over the sides, and went bounding and splintering a hundred feet down. And now, as they rode along the hill that bordered the valley that led to Split-the-Wind, they could see the cattle already turning into the head of the valley, and Steve flung an oath to the wind and spurred his horse again. The two men swept slanting down the hillside, swerved into a sloping gully, and thundered down it over tangled sticks and the dry boulders of the stream-bed, up and over the bank with a rush, swooped into another dip and over it, and flung themselves recklessly down the last steep pitch to the foot of the hill. At a less desperate pinch they would have hesitated to take that slope, perhaps, but they could see that the cattle were coming at a gallop again, and it would be a close race for the dividing roads at Split-the-Wind. One of the roads kept on down the descending valley, and if the cattle took this they could run themselves to a standstill without injury. If they took the other, they would be up and away into the broken tangle of the hills, criss-crossed with cliffs, and scored with gullies, and pitted with a hundred traps. Both of them knew this, so without hesitation took the slope and the risk of landing right side up at the foot.
Steve went down with the whirling rush of a toboggan on an ice-run, and spun clattering out into the valley. He was a good hundred and fifty yards ahead of Ned, and turned in his saddle and watched him slide to the foot, and pick up his stride and come after him at a gallop. Steve turned and sat down and rode again.
He had covered a half of the mile to go to Split-the-Wind when he heard a startled yell, a rattle and crash, and silence. He knew well what that meant, and sat back and hauled at his rein, and swung and galloped back for the spot where he could see Ned’s horse scrambling to its feet and Ned himself lying on the ground. The horse went off at a trot, and Steve swerved to ride and catch it. Then, with a glance at the cattle coming down the valley, he turned again and left it, and galloped for Ned.
Ned had sat up, and was rising slowly to his feet as Steve pulled up beside him.
“Are you hurt, Ned?” he shouted. “Here – your foot on mine, and up behind me – quick.”
Ned stood swaying and looking at him stupidly. “Wake up, man,” yelled Steve. “The cattle are near on us. Hurry.” But Ned still stood slack and inert as a drunken man, and even as he spoke Steve saw his knees give beneath him, and he almost sank to the ground. The cattle were perilously close, and Steve could see the man was half stunned. “Ned,” he yelled again, but Ned’s chin dropped on his chest. With an oath Steve jerked his whip round, the thong swung up, and with a hissing snap slashed down across Ned’s back in a vicious drawing cut. The shirt split from waist to shoulder, and the blood sprang under the lash as if under the stroke of a knife. Ned’s knees straightened with a snap, and he reached a hand up and back over his shoulder, and he swore thickly. But the sting had brought some of his senses back to him, and Steve saw his quickened glance round. “Up, Ned,” he shouted. “Give me your hand, and up behind me.” The cattle were almost on them – Ned reached out and took the outstretched hand. With his eye on the charging line Steve waited to feel the foot on his that would tell him Ned was mounting. Ned’s foot fumbled and slipped, and Steve clenched his teeth and waited. The cattle had only fifty yards to come – thirty – twenty – Ned heaved himself heavily up, and Steve sank his fingers in his grip on the other’s, and helped the heave with every tense muscle of his body. He waited till he felt the other drop into place, and then with a yell gave his horse the spurs.
It was a close thing – deadly close. The front ranks of the cattle had split a little at the sight of them, and crowded aside to try to pass clear, and for the first few bounds of his horse Steve was riding in the front rank of the mob with a galloping brute so close on either side that he could have reached out and touched it. He yelled and cut at them with his whip once or twice, and then gave all his attention to racing to get first to the fork of the roads at Split-the-Wind.
Despite the double burden the horse carried, he was gaining in the race. “Feel all right, Ned?” he asked. “Can you hang on?”
“I’m right,” said Ned, thickly. “I can hang on.” He was still a little dazed, but his mind was clearing, and he settled himself in his seat and took a closer grip round Steve’s waist. Steve was in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, and as he held on, Ned found his thumb in the pocket of the waistcoat. He felt a screw of paper there. He hardly knew why he did it, but his finger slipped in with his thumb, and next instant he had the twisted paper in his hand.
The horse stopped with a sliding jerk, and Steve shouted at him; he slid down, and Steve flung himself to the ground and ran forward shouting and cracking his whip, and leaving Ned standing with the paper in his hand.
Steve looked over his shoulder and shouted to him.
“Get some of those dry gum-branches and leaves, Ned, and make a blaze – quick – here they come.”
Ned slipped the paper in his pocket.
CHAPTER XIX
When the men came back to Thunder Ridge, they found that Ess had gone down to the home station at Coolongolong. Sinclair, the boss, had been up in his sulky, and asked her if she was ready to go back with him.
“We won’t have room for half-a-dozen huge trunks, you know, Miss Lincoln,” he laughed. “You’ll have to pack close this time.”
“I’ve got everything I’ll need in one dress-basket, which will go under the seat,” she assured him. “I’ve had some lessons on the necessity of travelling light.”
She flushed a little to herself at the memory of the giving of that lesson and the buggy ride that had followed, and ran in to say good-bye to Aleck Gault.
“Good-bye, Miss Ess,” he said. “Don’t be away longer than you can help, and see if you can find some roses to bring back in your cheek. I’ll be getting into trouble with Ned Gunliffe if you don’t. He’ll be saying you’ve worn yourself to death doing sick-nurse.”
She bade him good-bye gaily enough, but went wishing that he and the others would not talk so about her in connection with Ned Gunliffe. She knew that she had no right to resent such talk or feel hurt by it, but the fact remained that she did, and again she found herself wishing that she had not agreed to their engagement being spoken of yet – she would not allow herself to wish that she had not consented to it at all.
She went out and took her seat in the sulky, and the boss laid his whip lightly across the trotters, and they spun through the gate and on down the rocky slope.
“And what are you thinking of the out-back country, Miss Lincoln?” he said. “You’ve seen a slice of it now.”
“I still think it’s rather dreadful,” she answered. “It seems so cruel. The way the poor sheep had to be handled and driven nearly made me sick, and then it was such a narrow escape they had after all.”
“And I’m afraid they’re not quite escaped yet,” he said. “The feed on the hills is giving out, and the wild dogs are playing havoc. I’ve nearly made up my mind to bring down as many as I can get again, and kill them all and boil them down for tallow.”
Ess shuddered, and they drove in silence down to the high fence, which had been repaired again where the rails had been pulled out to let the sheep through.
“Don’t get down,” he said, when she made a movement to spring out and open the gate. “The horses and I have come here too often not to know the trick of doing without dismounting.”
He drove alongside and lifted the latch, and pushed the gate open with the butt of his whip, whirled the horses round and trotted through, leaned out and swung it back, so that it slammed to and the latch clicked into place.
“It’s hot down here,” he said, lifting his hat and wiping his brow. Ess laughed.
“It’s hot everywhere, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m really forgetting what it feels like to be cool.”
“You’ll get the heat into your bones if you stay here a time,” said the boss; “most of us do, and we shiver like a wet dog if it comes a cold wind. We get them cold enough in the winter sometimes in the hills – cold enough for us, anyway.”
“You might almost think we were at sea here,” said Ess, looking round the straight-edged empty horizon.
“We have plenty of space round us,” agreed the boss. “Ten thousand acres is a Small Holding with us. And some of the holdings run up toward the million acres. Big figures, eh, but this is a country of big figures. It’s eight miles across this paddock as the crow flies, and it’s longer the other way. You don’t find the like of that in the inside country now, do you?” He spoke with an air of subdued pride, and Ess looked round her at the flat dead plain, with nothing in sight but an occasional scurrying rabbit, and wondered that a man could find anything to be proud of in such country.
“There was a man lost in one of our back paddocks that’s not as big as this,” the boss went on. “One of the boundary riders found his bones and rags of clothes near two years after, and there was a note safe and tight in his billy can. He’d tried to take a short cut from one tank to another, and it had come on a grey day or two – the sun clouded over so he couldn’t steer his way – and he wandered round and round and crossways for four days, and then wrote the note. And Lord knows how long he walked or crawled after that. And one of my own men lost the track coming across this very paddock, although the road’s scored plain enough, as you see. He took a track that branched off, and he thought was the main one, and it petered out, and he tried to cut across to the other track. He missed it somehow, and was out for a day and a night. You’d wonder a man could get lost with the hills back there to guide him, but he said a mirage or something hid them. But he’s no bushman of course – he’s an Englishman. And often men lose their heads when they first find they’re lost.”
After they passed through the next fence and trotted some distance in the next paddock, Ess pointed.
“Are those trees?” she asked. “Or another mirage?”
“They’re trees,” said the boss; “dead ones. There’s quite a clump of them, and nobody knows where they came from. They grew where there wasn’t a sign of one before, and died in a couple of years. It was the rain that brought them up. It’s fair wonderful what the rain brings up at times, and how quick. You wouldn’t think now to look round you that a week’s good rain would be enough to fetch the grass out up to your knees. But I’ve seen the time when the kangaroo grass came to my waist, and me sitting in the saddle. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever see Coolongolong green again,” he finished with a little sigh.
“Why, surely, Mr. Sinclair,” said Ess. “It must rain before very long now.”
“There’s no must about that out here,” said the boss. “It mightn’t rain enough to spoil a lady’s silk dress in the next twelve months. It mightn’t rain a good heavy shower in the next five years or twenty-five for all we know, though that would be worse than is ever likely. Five is easy possible, though. And, then again, it might start to-night, little and all as it looks like it, and not stop for a month. We’re fifteen miles from the nearest bend of the river here, but I’ve seen it flooded and running like a river over this very paddock. You spoke of it looking like a sea, but I’ve seen it like a sea – water from one horizon to the other.”
“Let’s hope we’ll see it again,” said Ess, brightly, “although not if it’s going to flood Coolongolong out. I’d rather be in the hills then.”
The boss smiled at her. “The home station stands higher than ever a flood has reached yet,” he said, “but I’d be glad enough to see it washing round the walls of it to-morrow. I could build another one if I wanted, with the money that would mean. There it is amongst the trees now – can you see?”
“How beautifully green the trees are,” cried Ess. “They look so cool and refreshing, too.”
“Yes,” said the boss, proudly. “And I can give you fresh fruit and green vegetables for your dinner to-night, and you can walk on grass as thick and soft as velvet in the garden. And it’s all the work of man’s hands, and I’ve watched every blade and leaf grow. I put an oil engine pump in, and we carry the water from the river by a pipe.”
“Why did you put the house so far from the river?” said Ess. “I should have thought it would have been so much nicer right on the banks.”
“So it would,” said the boss, laughing; “so it would – as long as it stayed on the banks. But the first time the river came down in flood – ” he finished the sentence with a significant sweeping gesture.
They drove in through the homestead gate, and Ess’s eyes sparkled at the sight of trim green hedges and vivid green grass. The contrast was the more pleasant after the heat and dryness and dust of the arid wastes they had been driving over.
“Oh, I’m so glad I came, Mr. Sinclair,” she cried. “It is beautiful.”
“You’ll understand maybe how proud I am of it,” said the old boss, lovingly looking round, “and what it would mean to me to lose it.”
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “You won’t – you can’t lose it.”
“Well, well, I’m glad to have it to show you while it’s still my own,” he said. “Now jump down. There’s the housekeeper at the door. She’ll show you your room and make you comfortable. And you can have a real bath and a shower, and maybe Ah Sing will let you walk in the garden and pluck a flower or two.” He nodded towards the Chinaman who was spraying the grass with a hose, and oddly enough the thought in Ess’s mind as she watched the sparkling shower fall was the pity that such beautiful water should be wasted – she would have liked to drink it all.
Ess stayed at the home station for over a week, and the old boss and the housekeeper made much of her, and petted her, and let her ask questions to her heart’s content.
Indeed it is doubtful if the boss did not get more pleasure from answering her questions and showing her the house than she had from asking them and being shown it.
He took her round the outside and pointed out the walls made of concrete – concrete brought up in bags from the coast, and carried by the station waggons the long miles from the railway to the township, and the township to the station, and mixed and moulded in moulds made on the station, and built in walls by his own men’s labour. Everything had been done under his own direction and planning and eye. He had drawn his own plans, his own men had hewn the timber from his own trees, and sawn them in the saw-pit by hand. They had dug the foundations, and laid the floors, and built the walls, and cut joists and rafters, and put the roof on; they had made and fitted every door and window, and done their own plumbing and glazing and painting and papering – only in one or two of the bedrooms was there any wall paper in the house, though; the other rooms were walled with beautiful light-coloured native woods. A considerable amount of the furniture was station made, and, looking at it, Ess could hardly believe that it had not been turned out by a city factory. There were no carpets on the wood floors; they were merely stained, and scattered thick with rugs made from the black and white skins of the station sheep, or of the foxes trapped and killed on the run. The wide hall from which the living rooms opened was hung round with native weapons, boomerangs, and spears, and waddies, the huge head and sweeping horns of an immense bull, the masks and brushes of foxes, the skins of kangaroos, wild dogs, black swans, and snakes.
This hall was the boss’s chiefest pride, and he told Ess endless tales of the trophies round the walls; of how much he had paid for that ram, whose head looked down on them – “the first stud ram I bought, Miss Lincoln, and I’d only about twelve hundred sheep then. I’ve shorn over sixty thousand in one shearing since then” – the ancestry for generations back of the prize bull; the tale of the riding down and killing of that fox; the long hunts and innumerable traps and poison baits it took to kill that dingo; this skin of a snake that had been killed when they were clearing the ground for the foundations of the house (“he bit me too, and I’d a bad day from the bite I tell you. And I said I’d have his skin, and hang it over where he was killed; and so I did – right under where we stand was the spot”).
And as the stories went on, and the boss ran back over the years and told the tales of his first days there, when the country was rank wild and there wasn’t a fence on or near it, the thought kept haunting Ess – “And now what if he loses it?”
And then one night the boss came back from Thunder Ridge and told her quietly and simply that he was at the end of the string – he had given orders for the sheep to be brought down, as many as could be rounded up and were fit to travel in, and killed to boil down for tallow.
Ess could have wept for very pity.
“I brought you a letter,” said the boss, and handed it to her. She took it mechanically and glanced at the strange writing, and when the boss left her she tore it open and looked first at the signature. It was signed “Ned.”
With a little gesture of impatience – she hated the thought of receiving or having to write anything in the way of a love-letter, she told herself, although, if she had analysed the feeling, she would have known it was love-letters from or to Ned that she disliked the thought of – she turned back and read the letter through.
Her amazement grew as she read – grew and changed swiftly to indignation, and then to hot anger.
“My Dear Ess,” the letter said, “I was sorry to find you had gone when we returned here, especially as I had something of importance to say to you. I had meant to wait till you returned here or till I could see you, but I feel that it is a thing I ought not to delay letting you know my views of, as possibly your knowing them, and how emphatic they are, may check the mischief. If you will look at the enclosed note, you will understand what I refer to. No matter how it came into my possession – it is enough that it did so, and that it shows me clearly that you have been led, cheated into it perhaps by a misguided sense of pity, to meeting secretly the man I told you I wished you to have nothing whatever to do with. I am not concluding that you meant any harm by these meetings, but whether harm would come of them or not I do not care – I wish them to stop for ever. My own feelings to you have in no way changed, but – ”
Ess ceased to read, with an angry exclamation. “What does he mean? What note – ” She looked in the envelope she still held, and plucked a twisted scrap of paper from it.
On the outside fold was clearly written “Steve Knight,” and inside was a scribbled pencil note – “Come over again to-night. Sorry I was rude last night, but remember our compact. – E.L.”
She recognised the writing and initials instantly. They were her own.
Ess went to her own room and wrote two notes. To Ned Gunliffe she wrote: “I have received your letter and enclosure. I have only to reply that I refuse utterly to have anything to do with a man who distrusts me or imagines me capable of the conduct you evidently do. I never wish to see you or hear from you again. – Ess Lincoln.”
To her uncle she wrote: “Will you, please, in Ned Gunliffe’s presence, show the enclosed note to Steve Knight, and tell him I wish him to say where and when he received it? You will remember my sending it to him by you when we were all in camp. I have just received it from Ned Gunliffe, and have told him I never want to see him again. Please say nothing of this to the others at the Ridge – only that Ned and I are no longer engaged. – Ess.”
She left the letters in the rack in the hall, knowing that they would probably be taken over next day.
Usually a man rode over to the coach road twice a week – once to leave the letter bag hanging on the roadside for the passing coach to pick up, and once to bring back the bag it dropped. The incoming bag was due next day, and a man would ride over with the Thunder Ridge letters, and would take hers with him.
Next day, when the man brought the mail in, she went to the hall where the boss was sorting it out, and got hers – she still wrote to and heard from her friends in the city – and heard the man say “The river’s coming down good an’ heavy, an’ they tell me there’s been a lot o’ rain out-back in the hills.”
The boss looked at him quietly. “And how high is it in the river?”
“Up to the seven-foot peg,” said the man, and the boss nodded and picked the Ridge letters out, and gave him Ess’s from the rack and sent him off.
“Rain in the hills,” said Ess, who had listened breathlessly to the conversation. “Does that mean we’ll get it here?”
The boss smiled at her sadly. “I’m afraid not, my dear. They often get rain up there, where we don’t get a drop. It’s a long way from here, and much higher you see. But if the river would rise another three foot, we might have it running up the billabongs. There’s an old channel that runs out for a dozen miles beyond the station here, and curves round and back to the river again. If the river rises high enough to flood that, we’d have a few hundred acres in grass soon after. But it’s just as likely to drop the three foot by morning as to rise it. Still, you know, we can hope – we can hope.”
“I do hope, oh, indeed I hope,” said Ess, earnestly. “And if it rose more than the three foot?”
“Every foot it rose would flood hundreds of acres more of my paddocks,” said the boss. “There’s another billabong further over towards Thunder Ridge that begins to flow even before this ten-foot mark is covered. Twelve or fourteen foot would mean thousands of acres flooded, and it might keep the sheep going quite a spell longer. But twelve foot and over is running a banker, and we can hardly expect that.”
It was evident however that hope had risen in his heart, for twice that day he sent a man to the river to see how it was, and twice the report came back – “Still rising.”
The next time the old man had his own sulky brought round, and Ess asked that she might go with him. They drove fast, the boss flicking constantly at the horses, and when they dodged through the trees and swept up the slope of the river banks and halted abruptly within a pebble toss of the steep cliff that dropped to the water’s edge, Ess looked eagerly at the crawling brown flood, and then – for that told her nothing of what she wished to know – at the boss’s face.
“It’s dropped a couple of inches,” he said quietly, and Ess could not understand his calm in the face of such possibilities as hung on the rise or fall of inches of water. “A couple of inches,” he repeated, “since the last man was here, and that’s only a few hours ago. I’m afraid it’s only been a heavy shower in the hills, and it’s over.”
He pointed out the pegs he had had driven deep in the steep bank opposite, so that he could mark the rise and fall, and he drove along the bank amongst the trees to show her the entrance to the billabong he had spoken of. “You’ll notice that the banks are several feet higher than the plains beyond,” he said, “and here at the entrance to the billabong there’s a cut out of this embankment. When the water rises to the level of the cut, it overflows, and wanders round the depression in the plain till it finds its way back lower down.”
“Wait,” said Ess, and jumped down and ran to the break in the bank, and slid down into it, and stooped and laid something in the centre of it, and clambered out again and ran back to the sulky.
“You’ll think me horribly childish, or foolish, or superstitious, or something,” she said breathlessly, “when I tell you what I was doing. It was a little charm I had, something that was given to me by a very dear friend years ago, and has always been dear to me. It’s a luck-bringer, and I’ve laid it there with a little wish that it will bring the water up and up, and flooding over it, and out across the plains.”
But there was no laughter in the eyes of the boss as he looked at her, only his unspoken thanks for the thought and the wish.
They drove back in silence, each busy with their own thoughts.