“Turn sharp to the left, and follow the fence,” replied the jackeroo.
“But I can’t see a solitary sheep!”
“No, because you’re looking slap into the paddock; that’s the ground the others are going over, and they’ve already cleared it as far as we can see for the scrub. Each man takes his own line of country from this gate to the one opposite — seven miles away — and collects every hoof on the way. My line is the left-hand fence. Got to keep it in sight, and drive everything down it, and right round to the gate.”
“Well, my line is yours,” said Moya, smiling; and they struck off together from the track.
“It’s the long way round, but we can’t miss it,” said Ives; “all we have to do is to hug the fence. Slightly inglorious, but I’d rather that than make a fool of myself in the middle.”
“Is it so very difficult to ride straight through the bush?”
“The most difficult thing in the world. Why, only the other week — —”
“I see some!”
The girl was pointing with her riding-switch, to make other use of it next instant. Her mount, a shaggy-looking roan mare, as yet imperfectly appreciated by Moya, proved unexpectedly open to persuasion, and found her gallop in a stride. Ives followed, though he could see nothing but sand and saltbush in the direction indicated. Sheep there were, however, and a fair mob of them, whose behaviour was worthy of their kind. In all docility they stood until the last instant, then broke into senseless stampede, with the horses at their stubby tails.
“Round them up,” cried Ives, “but look out! That mare can turn in her own length, and will when they do!”
The warning was timely to the very second: almost simultaneously the sheep doubled, and round spun both horses as in the air. Moya jerked and swayed, but kept her seat. Ives headed the mob for the fence, and for the moment the nonsense was out of them.
“Bravo, Miss Bethune!” said he. “You’ll make a better bushman than ever I should.”
Moya clouded like an April sky; the instant before she had been deliciously flushed and excited. Her companion, however, was happily intent upon his sheep.
“That’s the way to start,” he said, “with fifty or sixty at one swoop; you can work a mob like that; it’s the five or six that give the trouble. I have reason to know! There’s a corner of one of the paddocks in our South Block where a few of the duffers have a meet every morning, just because there’s some water they can smell across the fence; won’t draw to their own water at the opposite corner of their own paddock, not they! No, there they’d stick and die of thirst if one of us wasn’t sent to rout them out. It was my billet every day last week, and a tougher one I never want. One time there was less than half a dozen of ‘em: think of driving five weak sheep through eight or nine miles of scrub without a dog! It would be ten miles if I followed both fences religiously; but I’m getting so that I can cut off a pretty fair corner. Yes, it’s pretty hard graft, as they say up here, a day like that; but your water-bag holds nectar, while it lasts; and may your wedding-cake taste as good as the bit of browny under a pine, Miss Bethune!”
“What’s browny?” asked Moya hastily.
“Raisins and baking-powder,” said Ives, with a laugh; “but I’ve got enough for two in my pocket, so you shall sample it whenever you like. By the way, aren’t you thirsty yet?”
Moya was.
“It’s the dust from the sheep, which you profess to relish, Mr. Ives.”
“Only because it’s like no other dust,” explained the connoisseur. “And water-bag water’s like no other kind.”
The canvas bag was wet and heavy as he detached it from the saddle and handed it to Moya after drawing the cork from the glass mouthpiece; and from the latter Moya drank as to the manner born, the moist bag shrinking visibly between her hands.
“Steady!” cried Ives, “or we shall perish of thirst before we strike the gate. Well, what do you think of it?”
“A little canvassy, but I never tasted anything cooler, or more delicious,” said Moya in all sincerity, for already the sun was high, and the dry heat of it stupendous.
The jackeroo sighed as he replaced the cork after a very modest sip.
“Ah!” said he, “I wish we were taking sheep to water in the paddock I was telling you about! Long before you get to their water, you strike a covered-in tank, that is if you cut off your corner properly and hit the other fence in the right place. It’s really more like a well, without much water in it, but with a rope and a bucket with a hole in it. That bucket’s the thing! You fill it a bumper, but it runs out faster than it comes up, and you’re lucky if you can pour a wineglassful into the crown of your hat; but that wineglassful’s sweeter than the last drop from the bag; it’s sweeter than honey from the honeycomb, and I shall say so all my life!”
The boy’s enthusiasm was very hard on Moya. It pricked every impression deep in her heart for ever; she caught the contagion of his acute receptivity, upon which the veriest trifles stamped themselves with indelible definition; and it was the same with her. She felt that she should never quite lose the sharp sensations of this one day of real bush life, her first and her last.
Down the fence they fell in with frequent stragglers, and the mob absorbed them in its sweep; then Moya made a sortie to the right, and Ives lost sight of her through the cloud of dust in which she rode, till the beat of hoofs came back with a scuttle of trotters, and the mob was swollen by a score at least, and the thickening cloud pierced by Moya radiant with success. Her habit was powdered as with sullen gold, and the brown gold streamed in strands from her adorable head. Ives worshipped her across the yellow gulf between their horses.
“Where’s the dog?” she asked. “I’m certain that I heard one barking.”
He turned his head and she heard it again, while the lagging rearguard broke into a run.
“Yet you say you are no bushman!” remonstrated Moya. “No wonder you can do without a four-wheeled dog!”
“It’s my one worthy accomplishment,” said the barker, modestly; “picked it up in that other paddock; simply dumb with it, sometimes, when I strike the covered-in well I was telling you about. But here we are at the corner; there’s a seven-mile fence to travel now, and then as much again as we’ve done already. Sure you can stand it, Miss Bethune?”
“Is there any water on the way, if we run short?” queried Moya.
Ives considered.
“Well, there’s an abandoned whim in the far corner, at the end of this fence; the hut’s a ruin, but the four-hundred-gallon tank belonging to it was left good for the sake of anybody who might turn up thirsty. Of course it may be empty, but we’ll see.”
“We’ll chance it, Mr. Ives, and have another drink now!”
For it was nearing noon, and beyond the reek of the travelling mob, now some couple of hundred strong, the lower air quivered as though molten metal lay cooling in the sand. Moya had long since peeled off her riding gloves, and already the backs of her hands were dreadfully inflamed. But the day would be her first and last in the real bush; she would see it through. She never felt inclined to turn back but once, and that was when a sheep fell gasping by the way, its eyes glazed and the rattle in its neck. Moya insisted on the remnant of water being poured down its throat and the tears were on her cheeks when they rounded up the mob once more, leaving a carcass behind them after all, and the blue crows settling on the fence.
Otherwise the seven miles were uneventful travelling; for even Moya’s eyes discerned few more sheep on their side of the wires; and beyond these, to the left, was the long and ragged edge of a forest so dense (though low) that Moya, riding with Ives at the tail of the mob, said it was no wonder there were no sheep at all on the other side.
“Oh, but that’s not Eureka over there,” explained Ives; “that’s the worst bit of country in the whole of Riverina. No one will take it up; it’s simply fenced in by the fences of the blocks all round.”
Moya asked what it was called. The name seem
ed familiar to her. It was Blind Man’s Block.
“Ah! I know,” she said presently, suppressing a sigh. “I heard them speaking of it on the verandah last night.”
“Yes, Spicer was advising your brother to sample it if he wanted an adventure; but don’t you let him, Miss Bethune. I wouldn’t lose sight of the fence in Blind Man’s Block for all I’m ever likely to be worth: there was a man’s skeleton found there just before I came, and goodness knows how many there are that never will be found. Aha! there’s the whim at last. I’m jolly glad!”
“So am I,” said Moya, with a little shudder; and she fixed her eyes upon some bold black timbers that cut the sky like a scaffold a mile or two ahead; yet more than once her eyes returned to the line of dingy scrub across the fence to the left, as if fascinated by its sinister repute.
“We must bustle them along, by Jove!” exclaimed Ives, and he yelped and barked with immediate effect. “You can’t do more than a couple of miles an hour with sheep; and at that rate we shan’t be at the gate much before three o’clock; for I see that it’s already close upon one.”
“But how do you see it?” asked Moya curiously. “I’ve never seen you look at a watch.”
Ives smiled, for he had led up to the question, and was about to show off in yet another branch of the bushman’s craft which even he had succeeded in mastering.
“The fences are my watch,” said he; “they happen to run due east and west and north and south on this station. This one is north and south. So at noon the shadows of the posts lie exactly under the wires: put your head between ‘em, and when the bottom wire bisects the shadow it’s as near noon as you would make it with a quadrant and sextant. The rest comes by practice. Another dodge is to put a stick plumb in the ground and watch when the shadow is shortest; that’s your meridian.”
“Yet you say you are no good in the bush!”
“I have two of the unnecessary qualifications, Miss Bethune, and I’ve taken care to let you see them both,” laughed the open youth. “My only other merit as a bushman is a good rule which I am sorry to say I’ve broken through talking to you. I always have my lunch at twelve under the biggest tree in sight. And I think we shall find something in that pine-ridge within a cooee on the right.”
But they could not find shade for two, and Moya voted the pine-tree a poor parasol; whereupon her companion showed off still further by squatting under the very girths of his horse, but once more spoilt his own effect by confessing that they gave him the quietest horse on the station. So the two of them divided bread and meat and “browny” for one, of which last Moya expressed approval; but not until she was asked; for she was not herself during this interval of inaction, or rather she was herself once more. Care indeed had ridden behind her all the morning; but now the black imp was back before her troubled eyes, and for the moment they saw nothing else. But Ives began to see and to wonder what in the world it could be. She was engaged to one of the best of good fellows. She took to the bush as to her proper element, and but now had seemed enchanted with her foretaste of the life. Why then the grim contour of so sweet a face, the indignant defiance in the brooding eyes? Ives thought and thought until his youthful egoism assumed the blame, and shot him from his precarious shelter, all anxiety and remorse.
“What a brute I am! You’re simply perishing of thirst!”
Moya coloured, but had the wit to accept his construction.
“Well, it isn’t your fault, at any rate, Mr. Ives.”
“But I might have ridden on and filled the bag; there’s certain to be something in the tank at the hut.”
“Then let’s ride on together.”
“No, you ride ahead and fill the water-bag. It’ll save time, Miss Bethune, because I can be cutting off the corner with the mob.”
But the mob had first to be rounded up, for it had split and scattered, and over a square mile every inch of shade was covered by a crouching fleece. The mounted Ives made a circuit with his patent yelp, and each tuft and bush shook out its pure merino. It was harder work to head them off the fence at an angle of forty-five, and to aim for the other fence before a post of it was discernible by near-sighted eyes. Ives was too busy to follow Moya’s excursion, but was not less delighted than amazed at the speed with which she returned from the hut.
“Good riding, Miss Bethune! A drink, a drink, my kingdom — —”
Moya’s face stopped him.
“I’m sorry to say I’ve got nothing for you to drink, Mr. Ives.”
Ives licked the roof of his mouth, but tried to be heroic.
“Well, have you had some yourself?”
“No. I — the fact is I couldn’t see the tank.”
“Not see the tank! Why, you ought to be able to see it from here; no, it’s on the other side; give me the bag!”
“What for?” asked Moya, more startled than he saw.
“I’ll go this time. You stay with the sheep.”
“But what’s the good of going if the tank has been removed? If I couldn’t see it I’m sure you can’t,” said Moya bluntly.
“Did you ride right up?”
“Of course I did.”
And Moya smiled.
“Well, at all events there’s the whim-water. It’s rather brackish — —”
“Thank you,” said Moya, smiling still.
“But I thought you were knocked up with thirst? I am, I can tell you. And it’s only rather salt — that’s why we’ve given up using that whim — but it’s not salt enough to make you dotty!”
Moya maintained the kindly demeanour which she had put on with her smile; it cost her an effort, however.
“Go on your own account, by all means,” said she; “but not on mine, for I shan’t touch a drop. I’m really not so thirsty as you suppose; let me set you an example of endurance, Mr. Ives!”
That was enough for him. He was spurring and yelping round his mob next moment. But Moya did not watch him; she had turned in her saddle to take a last look at the black hieroglyph of a whim, with the little iron roof blazing beside it in the sun. She even shaded her eyes with one sunburnt hand, as if to assure herself that she had made no mistake.
“So the whim is abandoned, and the hut unoccupied?”
“Yes, ever since Mr. Rigden has been manager. I hear it was one of his first improvements.”
They had struck the farther fence, and the mob was well in hand along the wires. Moya and the jackeroo were ambling leisurely behind, and nothing could have been more natural than Moya’s questions.
“And the hut is unoccupied?” was her next.
“Quite; as a matter of fact, it’s unfit for occupation.”
“Yet you wanted me to drink the water!”
“That might have been all right; besides any water’s better than none when you’re as thirsty as I thought you were.”
Moya said no more about her thirst; it was intolerable; but they must be getting near the gate at last. She was silent for a time, a time of imaginative torment, for her mind ran on the latter end of such sufferings as she was only beginning to endure. She was just uncomfortable enough to have a dreadful inkling of the stages between discomfort and death.
“It’s a pity not to use the hut,” she said at length.
“I believe it was more bother than the class of water was worth,” returned Ives. “Yes, now I think of it, I remember hearing that they couldn’t get men to stay there. Blind Man’s Block used to give them the creeps. They’re frightfully superstitious, these back-blockers!”
“I’m not surprised,” said Moya, with a shudder. “I never want to see Blind Man’s Block again, or the hut either.”
“But you will, you know!” the jackeroo reminded her. And that put an end to the conversation.
Over a thousand sheep were at the gate waiting for them, with half a dozen horses and as many men. Of course Ives was the last to arrive with his mob, but the goodly numbers of the latter combined with the amazing apparition of Moya to save her friend from the reprimand
he seldom failed to earn. Rigden came galloping to meet them, and for both men’s sake Moya treated him prettily enough in front of Ives. Even through that day’s coat of red, Rigden glowed, and told Ives that he should make something of him yet. His water-bag was not quite empty, and Moya had enough to make her long for more as she cantered with the bag to Ives, who had forged discreetly ahead.
“Don’t let him know we went so long without, Mr. Ives!”
And his cracked lips were sealed upon the subject.
“Of course you cut off the corner, and didn’t go right round by the hut?” said Rigden, riding up; and the jackeroo felt justified in speaking strictly for himself; and thought it so like Miss Bethune not to compromise him by saying how near to the hut they had been: for Moya said nothing at all.
“And now you shall see a count-out,” cried Rigden, in better spirits than ever, “as soon as we’ve boxed the mobs.”
“Boxed them!” cried Moya. “Where?”
“Joined them, I mean. To think of your coming mustering of your own accord, Moya!”
His voice had fallen; she did not lower hers.
“It’s one of the most interesting days I ever had,” she informed all within hearing; “now let me see the end of it, and I’ll go back happy.”
The adjective was not convincing, but Rigden would not let it dishearten him. The very fact of her presence was the end of his despair.
“I met one of our rabbiters, and arranged for tea at his tent,” he said. “He little expects a lady, but you’ll have to come.”
The prospect had material attractions which Moya was much too honest to deny. “Then make haste and count!” was what she said.
And that followed which appealed to Moya more than all that had gone before. The gate gaped wide, and Rigden on foot put his back to one post. The rest kept their saddles, and began gently rounding up the mob, till it formed a pear-shaped island of consolidated wool, with the headland stretching almost to Rigden’s feet. He turned and beckoned to the jackeroo.
“Tally, Ives!”
“Tally, sir,” the jackeroo rejoined, and urged his horse to the front. He had managed to drift back to Moya’s side, to ensure her complete appreciation of a manoeuvre he delighted in, but at the word of command he was gone without a glance, and visible responsibility settled on his rigid shoulders.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 174