Gripped By Drought

by Arthur W. Upfield

  For the merest fraction of a second Feng hesitated.

  “No,” he regretfully admitted. “Our annual expenses are about eighteen thousand. Above that we now have the expense of artificial feeding and scrub-cutting. I wrote Mayne about shortage of cash early last month, and he has written me that he is applying to you for an overdraft of twelve thousand against this year’s clip. Even that amount will not be sufficient to meet all our expenses, but the Atlas credit is good enough to get us through the coming winter, which surely cannot be as dry and rainless as last winter.”

  “How do you or Mayne or I know that it will be better or worse than last year, Feng? After one dry year it isn’t safe to gamble on the second year, or even the third year, being wet. I shall, of course, recommend the overdraft. Rain coming now augurs a better season this year; but, my dear Feng, sound as is Atlas, it will not long stand the drain Mayne is placing on it. Three years on a world tour, spending at the millionaire rate, and, almost immediately afterwards, a four months’ tour, also, I presume, at the millionaire rate, is unreasonable to ask of any property, dependent on the seasons, to give.”

  “I think it likely that when they return they will settle down in earnest,” Feng countered loyally.

  “Well, to use an old English phrase, they’ll have to draw it mild. I understand that the wife is a good-looker?”

  “Exceedingly so.”

  “And doubtless expensive?”

  “She has become used to the best, Smythe.” The financier sighed, and said no more until he had lit another cigar. Then:

  “It is a little easier to convince individuals than it is to convince nations that living above income ends only in one thing–perdition,” he said deliberately. “As you know, I knew Old Man Mayne for years, sometimes advising my firm to assist him with finance. He was a tough old bird, and as game as any the Old Country ever exported. His son suffers from a very natural disability. As the majority of men with rich fathers, he is apt to regard money as something to play with rather than to work with. Frank takes after his mother in many respects, but she, not less than the old man, valued the pence. Talk! She could talk a kookaburra into speechless silence. But to revert. I have known Frank and you since you were toddlers, and I may claim to be a little warmer than a business acquaintance. For Frank’s sake, whisper a word of warning into his ear.”

  “But matters are not as bad as all that, surely?” Feng expostulated. “How much is the Atlas reserve fund?” Smythe demanded sharply.

  “There is no such fund.”

  “I knew that; but why? Why, after many post-war boom years, hasn’t Atlas a reserve fund of at least fifty thousand pounds? Does a farmer owning a good milking cow decline to breed heifer calves to take its place when age dries up its milk? Frank has thought that Atlas is an immortal milking cow, and now that conditions are bad he hasn’t a young heifer, in the form of a reserve fund, with which to carry on. No, matters are not really very bad. They could be much worse–and, Feng, they could be much better. I am not imputing that Atlas is financially unsound. To-day it is worth, lock, stock, and barrel, close on two hundred thousand. When, however, I say that Australia is not sound, despite the stupid mob-catching political cries about our great future, our great natural resources, and all the other greats, I merely state a common, but unappreciated, fact. When John Bull does wake up, he will even burn his cheque-book, so that he will not succumb to the temptation to keep a poor relation. And then Atlas will withstand the almighty shock if, and if only, it has a reserve of strength.”

  “Are you not now a little pessimistic?”

  “Everyone says I am,” Smythe grumbled. “Even my principals accuse me of pessimism. I may be getting too old for my job. Time will judge. Between friends, it is a pity Frank didn’t marry an Australian bushwoman. It is a darn pity he didn’t marry Ann Shelley. However, in a roundabout way, I am telling Mayne to cut his cloth with the scissors which fit his pocket. The recent rain might mean the end of a dry period, or the beginning of a longer one. By the way, did you know that Thuringah fellow, Allwise or Alldyce Cameron, has come into a fortune?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him since before Christmas.”

  “He has. His uncle, the shipping man, slipped his anchor and left him a quarter of a million. Lucky devil! I had an uncle who died worth a hundred thousand, and he left it to a Dogs’ Home or something. Money! Every one has––”

  “Ah!” Feng Ching-wei remembered Cameron holding Mayne’s wife in his arms. Surely now he would leave Australia for good to claim his fortune?

  CHAPTER XI

  LABOUR

  I

  ON their return to Atlas the Maynes were accompanied by a visiting English family whom they had met in Melbourne. There was Sir William Vaux-Middleton, knight; short, pompous, red-faced, monocled, having the appearance of the traditional retired Indian Army Colonel, but actually a London bank director. There was Lady Vaux-Middleton: fair, fat, and forty-five, placid, and, on the surface, subdued; whilst Ursula and Freda Vaux-Middleton were smart young women of twenty-four and twenty-five, who invariably dressed exactly alike. The young ladies were always charmed by the romantic Colonials reputed to be rich, and at all times blissfully unconscious of those Australians who were not rich. Sir William talked incessantly of Australia’s natural resources, which appeared strange in a banking man; whilst his wife said, over and over again: “Yes, father; no, father”; and from long practice ably kept from her features, but not from her eyes, the laughter supplied to her soul by her husband and her two daughters.

  Feng Ching-wei, who charmed the daughters and pacified the father, quickly penetrated the mother’s armour, discovered her delightful sense of humour, and thoroughly enjoyed the visitors’ three weeks’ stay at Atlas. The twenty points of rain which fell early in March had lifted the depression created by a long, dry, and hot summer, and the resources of Atlas were organized to provide the Vaux-Middletons with unflagging pleasure. There occurred only one regrettable incident, and that was the meeting of the Vaux-Middletons with Ten Pot Dick, a meeting which, in the absence of Feng, only Lady Vaux-Middleton appreciated to the full.

  Ten Pot Dick was so named by reason of his habit of years which asserted itself every time he reached Menindee after a long sojourn in the bush. Never had he been known to deviate one inch from the straight line between the vehicle that deposited him at the township and the bar of the nearest of the three hotels. Not once had he altered his demand for ten tankards of beer–known as pots–to be set down in a row before him to be consumed one after another with amazing speed–in order, so he was careful to explain, to banish from his throat the alkaloids and other impurities in the surface-water on which he had been living.

  He was one of those men who scorn to expend time and money on personal appearance. If he shaved at all, no one ever saw him clean-shaven. His whiskers seemed to have stopped growth after about seven days, and those grey whiskers were so sparse, and stuck out from the flesh so stiffly, that they were not like ordinary whiskers. In age he might have been fifty, or possibly seventy. No one knew, since he himself did not know his age.

  At this time he was feeding three thousand ewes with a two-ounce ration of maize. The maize was carted by truck and dumped at his camp five miles up the river, and every morning he set off with the day’s supply loaded on a dray drawn by one horse.

  Mayne drove the Vaux-Middletons out to see the hand-feeding of the best of his breeding ewes the third or fourth morning of their sojourn at Atlas. It was a warm autumn day, and beneath the trees tiny grass shoots struggled to defy the burning sun.

  Two miles from the homestead they were met by four thousand sheep that were awaiting the arrival of the feed-truck. They had become used to being fed regularly on a particular area of clay-pan country by men tipping from the back of a slowly driven truck a stream of maize, and on hearing and seeing the approach of the car rushed towards it with joyful baas. Mayne slowed up before the oncoming flock and began to sound the klaxon, but
the noise of the horn only swelled the uproarious welcome.

  Normally this flock of sheep would have rushed wildly away at the sound of a horn and at sight of a car, but artificial feeding had very quickly tamed them to the docility of domestic cats. They crowded in a compact mass about the halted car, blaring forth their demand for food, refusing to budge, voicing protest at delay, every one of the four thousand heads turned directly to the car.

  The ladies, though set coughing by the fine grey dust of the river flat, yet gurgled their delight. Sir William began to discuss the rise in recent years of the value of Australia’s wool clip, and continued his speech, despite the fact that if he had shouted the words at the top of his voice no human ear could have heard him. In low gear Mayne sent the car very slowly through the press, gently pushing a way, until he at last managed to win clear, whereupon for the first hundred yards four thousand sheep chased the car protestingly.

  His real reason for taking his guests to see the sheep in charge of Ten Pot Dick was that this flock was the cream of his breeding ewes. Arrived at Ten Pot Dick’s camp, the absence of horse and dray denoted that the sheep-feeder had started on his daily trip to the paddock that enclosed the flock; and, having proceeded some four miles west of the river, they found Ten Pot Dick standing over a bag of maize on the dray, and permitting a stream of grain to fall to the ground behind, whilst the old horse trudged on between two ramparts of low sand-dunes.

  The car was stopped, and Mayne proceeded to explain that, since the natural food was almost all swept away by the winds of summer, and since the heat had burned off the slight growth of new feed brought up by the recent rain, either maize or lucerne was given in this way to help repair the lack. The Vaux-Middletons could not see anything at all on the country for the sheep to eat, and wondered how well two ounces of maize daily kept the sheep alive. Sir William asked how much per day per thousand sheep the hand-feeding cost, and was informed that even if the cost eventually equalled the value of the sheep by the time the dry spell ended, it was money wisely spent; for otherwise the losses at the end of the dry spell would probably take several years to make good by breeding, whilst making good the losses by purchase would be almost impossible, since all would be buyers and no one a seller.

  2

  Ten Pot Dick had laid a ribbon of maize almost half a mile long, finishing the ribbon by encircling the station car and shouting at his horse to stop when but thirty yards distant. The Misses Vaux-Middleton affected not to observe the man clambering down from the dray to the ground, when was revealed a large patch of red flannelette partly covering the seat of his blue dungaree trousers. Lady Vaux-Middleton shook visibly, but no tell-tale smile irradiated her maternal and plebeian features.

  On reaching the ground Ten Pot Dick struck a match on that strikingly coloured patch, lit his pipe, and shuffled towards the car, his watery eyes gleaming dully, a sheepish grin fractionally widening the space between each dirty grey bristle. With the nonchalance of long habit he expectorated, reached the car, placed one foot on the running-board and his bare and hairy forearm on the front door; proceeding then to speak to his employer, what time he drew noisily at his ill-favoured pipe across the stern and haughty front of Sir William.

  “Good day-ee, Mr. Mayne!” was his drawled greeting. “Weather keepin’ ’ot late this year.”

  “Morning, Dick!” replied Mayne, oblivious of the horror created in the breasts of Sir William and his daughters. “Where are the sheep this morning?”

  Ten Pot Dick chuckled and again expectorated.

  “I gotta trick the cows,” he explained with a casual glance at the frozen faces of the others, a glance that unashamedly admitted them to his confidence. “You see, it’s like this ’ere. I feeds ’em ’ere one day, and over beyant another day, and away back for a change the next day. I got ’em that flummaxed that they don’t know where I’m gonna feed next. You see, if they spots me coming, they crowds around and don’t give old Wall-eye a chance to move ’is feet.”

  “But if they don’t know where you layout the feed, Dick they might very probably miss it altogether. That won’t do,” Mayne objected.

  For the third time Ten Pot Dick expectorated, a long, thin, nicotine-coloured stream. Once more he lit his pipe and enveloped Sir William in a cloud of smoke from tobacco that must have been entirely a brand of his own. It was too much for the bank director, who smoked Triple-Duplex Havanas, and between coughs he muttered his intention of alighting and stretching his legs. But either Ten Pot Dick did not hear Sir William, or he was obstinately decided to expound his methods of “tricking the cows” before he budged, for he made no effort to move from his drooping position over the door. Still chuckling, he said:

  “That’s all right, Mr. Mayne. Don’t you worry. They gits their tucker regular; leave it ter me. They’re never that far away they can’t hear me a-calling of ’em. You watch.”

  He returned to his cart and, again exhibiting the flannelette patch, clambered aboard with a hoarse injunction to the horse to stand still. Sir William descended from the car with a slight show of haste, and his lead was accepted by his daughters, who fanned themselves with three-inch squares of lace-edged cambric. Mayne, whose thoughts were centred on his sheep, failed to notice Sir William’s irritation, or the faint indignation apparent in two pairs of blue eyes. Neither did he observe Lady Vaux-Middleton’s ample bosom shaking as a rocked jelly. The sheep-feeder, standing up on the dray, cupped his hands and roared with extraordinary volume:

  “Ya, ho-ee! ya, ho-ee! Pea-nuts! pea-nuts! Ya, ho-ee! Pea-nuts! Roast pea-nuts! Salt and peppah! Ya, ho-ee!”

  For a while he kept still in an exaggerated attitude of listening. Then abruptly he turned towards the astonished visitors and grinned triumphantly, a grin that spoke as loudly as his pea-nut call, “I told you so.”

  Came to the Vaux-Middletons a low, far-off rumble of sound rapidly rising to a dull hum, which burst into a roar when five thousand ewes hurtled over the crest of a sand-dune and raced down to the ribbon of maize with a blare of baaings.

  The dust rose straight into the air, churned and scattered by twenty thousand hoofs. Light red in colour, as fine as flour, it swirled about the Vaux-Middletons, the car, and blotted out Ten Pot Dick, until he appeared coming through it as some wonderful object appearing on a developing photographic plate. Almost at once the baaings ceased, the sound to be replaced by one most resembling a thousand machine-guns in action a mile distant–a sound caused by five thousand sets of teeth cracking maize grains.

  Slowly the dust drifted southward. Mayne, still oblivious of his discomfort, still thinking of his sheep–for sheep were his world and the dust but a floating speck in it–idly watched Ten Pot Dick standing near, his hat half-filled maize. No one, apparently, saw one ewe detach itself from the long double line of sheep marking the corn stream, and rush towards the group standing by the car.

  It was unfortunate that Sir William was the unit farthest from the group, and as unfortunate that the ewe was no respecter of persons. It butted the unsuspecting Sir William, sent him sprawling on his hands and knees, and began determinedly to nuzzle the Birthday Knight’s expensive panama hat.

  “Hey! Wot cher doing of?” shouted Ten Pot Dick, and Sir William thought that the question was addressed to him. The voice differentiated the humans in the mind of the sheep, which rushed on the feeder, who permitted it to eat the grain in his hat. “She’s a funny cuss, she is. She persists in eatin’ ’er tucker outer me ’at.”

  The man’s voice evinced affection and pride. He saw no humour in Sir William’s wild scramble to his feet and quick stoop to snatch up his ruined panama. Of them all only Lady Vaux-Middleton fully appreciated the spectacle, and doubly appreciated her husband’s remarks addressed to a genuinely astonished Ten Pot Dick. She choked when Ten Pot Dick said aggrievedly:

  “Strike me dead! ’Ow was I ter know Little Mary was gonna bunt you?”

  It took Frank Mayne the whole of the drive home to banish Sir William�
�s ill-humour. More than once during the drive the Misses Vaux-Middleton regarded their mother with suspicion.

  3

  A few days after the departure of the Vaux-Middletons the station car and the truck were dispatched to Mildura on the Victorian border to bring to Atlas half a dozen people the Maynes had met in New Zealand, together with their luggage. This party was timed to stay two weeks, and, unlike the Vaux-Middletons, the members of it were of that peculiarly obnoxious Australian monied class which considers a high falsetto voice and ridiculous emphasis on certain words are the hall-mark of English culture. Mayne was irritated almost beyond bearing, and Feng, who kept aloof with the excuse of much work, noticed that Ethel Mayne’s speech became more affected than usual. Other parties were to follow, and it was borne in on Feng Ching-wei that Ethel Mayne had planned relays of visitors throughout the autumn and the coming winter, and he wondered if this plan was evolved to defeat nostalgia, or something more subtle and consequently more dangerous–the approaches of Alldyce Cameron.

  During the remainder of March no rain fell. Not unduly worried, Mayne proceeded to nurse his giant holding back to the prosperity indicated by the rain that had fallen early in the month. He schemed, directed, sometimes laboured, a secret gladness in his soul that once again he was home, again overlord of his ancestral kingdom. He felt once more a whole man now that this earth and those tens of thousands of animals were within sight of his eager eyes. Ethel could have her jarring visitors. To him remained the freedom and the quiet peace of the real Atlas.

  Throughout the first half of April, each day warm, each night cool and calm, he and the rugged MacDougall inspected all the back country of Atlas. In his overseer Mayne had implicit trust, and between them they reached decisions to be put in force immediately winter vigorously tweaked the tail of summer. For fourteen days, using an old Ford truck on which were carried water and rations and swags, guns and two kangaroo dogs, those two had roamed the vast paddocks, roughing it almost as severely as did Tom Mace when he was rabbiting, cooking their own food, shooting kangaroo, a steak of which grilled on a wood fire was Mayne’s secret delight, and camping wherever they might be when the sun set.