Gripped By Drought

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “You have got to learn discrimination. You have to arrive at the thorough understanding that Woman and Wine are alike in requiring it. How on earth do you expect to appreciate good wine if you swill slush? With your breeding and your education, I fail to understand you. Damn it! Your discrimination is nil, your tastes plebeian and atrocious. You are an animal. You appear to have no appreciation of the joys obtainable from the chase, which to a man of your class should be far more exquisite than the actual conquest. If you do not use discrimination, you will end in a madhouse. Idiot! Read Aristotle! If you do not use discretion you will soon lie in a coffin. Queensland for you! Should you be alive at the end of three years and unattached to a black gin, should you prove yourself to be a business man, I will alter my will in your favour.”

  The old fellow had grinned delightedly, and with not a little affection for the young man who stood stiffly before him. There followed the affair on board the ship, when a man looked for him with a revolver. Cameron had coolly secured the gun. There had been the affair in Central Queensland, when a six-and-a-half-foot Australian-Irishman objected to his wife flagrantly favouring Cameron. No guns were used, but Cameron resided in hospital for six weeks. Where Cameron’s father, his uncle, and several other relatives had failed, the Australian-Irishman succeeded. Cameron learned discretion, but not discrimination.

  Thus he had managed to live, had resolutely kept clear of the gins, and had learned his business. True to his grim word, the uncle had left him most of his money. And now that it was possible for him to escape the bush, now freedom and opportunity were his to worship his god with fervency, he elected to remain the manager of Thuringah Station because the loveliest manifestation of his god, the most beautiful fish he ever had lifted out of the sea, lived a few miles down the river at Atlas.

  5

  Late in the afternoon Cameron left the Thuringah homestead, driving the American car provided by his company. A gentle wind from the south met him with cold crispness. The cloudless vault of the sky, a wonderful blue at the zenith, was glowing with gradations of green, yellow, and pink, for the sun had set. The down-river track led him to a river bend, and to the towering avenue of big gums where he was mocked and jeered by the all-seeing kookaburras, as though they laughed at him, this fine-looking man, the worshipper of the god, Woman, on his way to worship.

  Regardless of the birds’ satanic laughter, Cameron drove on, passing with indifference a party of abandoned lambs, bleating at him pitifully, leaving a few yards to their rear a poor struggling baby with both its eyes plucked out by the attendant crows loth to roost. He did not see the fox crouched beyond the tree-stump, like a cat, waiting for darkness to fall before he slashed at red flesh in the grip of the lust to kill. Unrecognized by Alldyce Cameron, the Great Enemy was at his dreadful work, having at last conquered the Great Friend, and reigning supreme. Plenty lay defeated. King Drought, he whose heraldic sign is the picture of a bloody crow, had destroyed the rabbits, was destroying the seed-eating birds, would destroy the foxes escaped from the poison, was now destroying the lambs; was about to destroy the sheep, the cattle, the horses, and the kangaroos, even at long last many of the crows. The drama of this silent, terrible war was in progress, a one-sided war against defenceless things with the foul weapons of hunger, thirst, and pain. Cameron ignored it. His god was his all; it rode his mind and dominated his thoughts, whilst Feng Ching-wei and others were beginning to worry about the endless drought, and Frank Mayne was experiencing the horror of watching animals tortured to death, realizing his impotency.

  The manager of Thuringah stopped his car beneath an old gum tree opposite the Atlas homestead. With his usual care he made sure that his battery was switched off, for he was not the kind of man to risk a run-down battery, which would prevent his dashing start for home, probably heard by feminine ears if not seen by feminine eyes. Carefully he picked his way down the steep, annoyingly muddy bank of the river, crossed the now dry bed above the rock-lined hole below the homestead, and, climbing the opposite bank, reached the Atlas garden.

  With infinite pains he removed the mud from his pumps with a piece of rag brought for that very purpose. To sweeten his breath he sucked a scented cachou. Dusk was now deep over the garden. It was very quiet, very peaceful, very lonely in that darkened garden. Presently he reached the cane-grass bower-house wherein first he had tasted the dew on the lips of that wonder-woman, the mistress of Atlas, since when he had but tasted once again, and now was exceedingly athirst. When he came opposite the entrance of the little house he was confronted by Eva, the affianced of Tom Mace.

  “Hallo! What are you doing in there?” he inquired in the silky tone of voice used when in the presence of Woman.

  A little breathlessly, Eva said:

  “I am looking for Master Frankie’s play-ball.”

  She recognized this tall, magnificent man, standing so easily, so grandly before her, the man she so constantly was comparing with her hard-working lover, the man who laughed so gently, whose eyes were so expressive.

  “Is that not a task for Master Frankie’s nurse?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cameron. I am now Master Frankie’s nurse. You see, Ella left yesterday without notice, and Mrs. Mayne offered me the position.”

  “Ah! In that case the play-ball must be found,’“ Cameron murmured. “A light on the subject will help, will it not?’“

  Entering the bower-house, Eva following, he struck a match, and soon discovered the ball beneath the rustic settee. Retrieving the toy, Cameron handed it gravely to Eva, a now unnecessarily lighted match revealing their faces.

  “Your name is Eva, is it not?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cameron.”

  Her reply pleased. Her voice pleased. Her really pretty face pleased more. Her slight but well-covered figure pleased him still more. The old fire began to course through his veins.

  “l thought so,” he said vibrantly. “I have noticed you many times. Do you know what I think about you–Eva?” “No,” tremblingly.

  “I think,” he told her with deliberation, “I think you are much too lovely to be a child’s nurse. You were intended for something so much better than a maid. You were expressly made for happiness, for joy, for…this.”

  She felt one cool hand placed under her chin whilst the match died out on the ground. She felt another hand brush her neck, an arm, so firm and strong, slipped across her shoulders. She was drawn–drawn forward. She felt his lips against her own–firm, warm, scent-laden lips that kissed her without haste.

  “I shall think of you–Eva,” he whispered, his voice a caress, and–then–was walking toward the house.

  Eva almost collapsed on the settee. As though the man had taken with him the oxygen from the air, her lungs fought for breath. Every nerve in her body was throbbing with strange fire. Her life, her past, Little Frankie, Tom Mace, all were blotted from her mind by the letters of flaming gold before her eyes which formed the astounding sentence:

  “He kissed me! He kissed me! He kissed me!”

  And Alldyce Cameron reached the veranda steps, cool, unmoved, the incident within the bower-house docketed away in his mind for probable future reference–and advantage. Now, whilst he stood before one of the closed drawing-room windows and saw Ethel Mayne in conversation with a tall, white-haired man, his pulses began to throb with expectancy. Within that room was the loveliest woman he ever had held in his arms, loving him now, waiting for him, fearing her weakness because of his strength, surrounding herself with a protective barrier of visiting people.

  Silly of her, really. As though she could for ever defeat Him!

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE SECOND SHEARING

  I

  As MacDougall had told Frank Mayne on the telephone, the rain that fell that night early in July came too late to save hundreds of lambs abandoned by their mothers; but, by bringing up grass in the sheltered places, it strengthened the adult sheep and maintained the ewes’ milk, which in turn gave strength to the lambs, as well as provi
ding a little green food for them.

  That rainfall also deferred the resumption of scrub-cutting and enabled Mayne to halve the artificial feeding costs, but his household and petrol bills did not diminish. Actually he made the rain an excuse to himself to defer, at least for the time, a conversation with Ethel which he foresaw would be fraught with difficulties. If he had but maintained that firmness exhibited when his wife had sulked for several days, if only he had been a tenth part the master of his house as he was of his run, it is probable that the agony and the terror that were to come would have been avoided. Where Ethel was concerned he was strangely weak.

  House-party suCCeeded house-party, expense was added to expense. There was delivered to Atlas complete cinematograph equipment, followed by a bi-weekly exchange of films. Food delicacies found usually in only the very best of hotels were imported from Sydney. A constant stream of people came and went-people with whom neither Mayne nor Feng Ching-wei found anything in common-people who were not doing anything worth-while in the world, of that class seldom heard of in Australia, but nevertheless in being, who live their allotted span in stupid idleness.

  Feng Ching-wei waited and watched. These winter days he was a much puzzled man; and, whilst with his usual quiet efficiency he acted as Mayne’s chief of administrative staff, drawing four hundred a year from Atlas, he studied Mayne’s wife; and wondered, too, whilst he unobtrusively watched Alldyce Cameron.

  The lambs marked this year were seven thousand below the number marked the year before. The lower percentage had been expected, and it indicated heavy losses among the flocks, especially those that were not being hand-fed.

  The days of sunshine and nights of frost persisted. Big areas of land were as bare of grass and herbage as the seashore at a time of year when everywhere one looked it should have been covered with a carpet of green. The river had long ceased to run. Bird-life was low excepting along its banks.

  Special precautions had to be taken before the shearing was timed to start, precautions entailing much thought on the part of Mayne, and labour on the part of his men. The drought had decimated his battalions of sheep and lowered to C3 the constitution of the survivors. Now completely retired from the trapping trade, which no longer existed. Tom Mace, with his truck, was stationed at White Well, where a dump of maize and compressed lucerne had been made. A smaller dump in charge of Ten Pot Dick was made at Mulga Flat.

  The shearers came. Once more the huge shed vibrated with whirring machinery. Again the great army of sheep were on the move.

  Whilst the comparatively robust maize-fed ewes and rams were being shorn, those flocks that had been fending for themselves were slowly and by easy stages moved eastward to the shed. On arrival of every sheep, either at Mulga or at White Well, it was given a ration of one ounce of maize and a little lucerne, with a second ration the morning of its departure. It was essential, this hand-feeding of the hoggets, the wethers, and the culled ewes, for they were so poor in condition when mustered in their paddocks that without artificial feeding the travelling losses were likely to be enormous.

  Mayne and MacDougall did not spare themselves. Weeks were spent in the station car or the truck, and on the backs of horses, sleeping anywhere beneath the blazing stars on ground dusty and dry. To Mayne, Government House was become a place of pandemonium. Only occasionally did he encounter among Ethel’s guests one sufficiently staid and serious to interest him. The noisier, the wilder her guests the more satisfied with life did his wife appear to be. It was a relief, thankfully recognized, to get away into the quiet of the bush with dour MacDougall.

  Tom Mace was finding cause for worry too, although from a different source. The loss of his living, to be replaced, certainly, by that afforded by station work, was accountable only in part for the unease experienced by this go-ahead Englishman.

  His chief cause of worry was engendered by the faint suspicion that Eva did not seem so keen on marriage as she had been. On neither word nor look could that suspicion be based; it was as though she herself was not aware of her changing heart, and, because of that, Mace was the more puzzled. Able to run into the homestead only about once a week, he might, had his been a jealous disposition, have sought for the solution in the right direction.

  He was laying a trail of maize in readiness for a flock due at White Well from the shed, when Mayne drew up and spoke to him. Mayne was dressed in old, serviceable clothes, and was wearing a soiled and dilapidated felt hat.

  “Tom, I want you to leave at daybreak to-morrow with enough maize for thirty-five hundred sheep which will be camped to-night four miles on the Mulga Flat road. Mr. Andrews is in charge. There will be no time to give ’em a feed to-night. They should have got here for a feed before being put into the yards. Fred Lowe will take them over to-morrow and bring them on. If he has to leave any along the track, you truck the best of them here, and yard ’em with a little lucerne. Clear?”

  “Y-yes, Mr. Mayne. Aren’t they travelling too well?”

  “Bad-very bad,” Mayne admitted. “Well, I must go.”

  Mace watched him stride to his car, pondered over the lines of anxiety criss-crossing his employer’s face, and felt glad he had not seized that opportunity of reminding Mayne about his promise of a house.

  2

  Early next morning three thousand five hundred sheep were freed from a roughly constructed enclosure built of long lengths of hessian stretched on stakes driven into the ground. Mace, who had arrived before sunrise, had scattered over a series of near clay-pans the ounce ration of maize, and now Mr. Andrews and his three riders shepherded and held the sheep to the clay-pans. At this point of their journey the sheep had become used to the maize-feeding. and for twenty minutes the cracking of the grain denoted keen appetites. But almost as soon as the maize had disappeared a number of them lay down.

  Fred Lowe, with his three riders, reaching the temporary sheep camp half an hour later, sighed at the significance of sheep lying down after having been in a temporary yard all night.

  “Seems as though they’re pretty tired,” he said to Andrews.

  “They are,” the jackeroo agreed. “We started with forty hundred. About five hundred fell behind. We couldn’t get them along. Mighty pleased you’ve taken over this mob. Did Mr. Mayne give any orders for me?”

  “You are to go into Ware’s Dam and muster the hoggets to-day and to-morrow.”

  “All right. We’ll be getting along. We’ll camp near the dam.”

  “An’ we’ll be getting a move on too. Only four miles, but by the look of them woollies it’ll be dark before we get ’em to White Well. Darn the drought! Why in hell can’t it rain sometimes?”

  Sending a man to each wing, Lowe and his third rider, with three dogs, got the flock moving eastward. There was absent the wild, purposeless rush of good-conditioned sheep at the start of the day’s stage. The leaders of the flock did make a half-hearted breakaway, but soon fell back to a brisk walk. They were yet strong, but the main body were too poor to maintain the pace they set, and the wing men were kept busy for an hour keeping the leaders back.

  At the expiration of three hours Lowe had moved the flock two miles nearer White Well, and Mace, who followed with his truck, had picked up eleven “dead-beats”. These he took on to White Well, dumped into a yard, and, returning, was obliged to pick up seven others that had fallen during his absence. They had lain down, and neither dogs nor men could force them onward.

  By noon the flock had been moved barely two miles.

  Lowe wisely halted the flock and decided on a two hours’

  camp. Within ten minutes hundreds of sheep were lying down, with the leaders placidly looking at them and making no attempt to wander. The men boiled their quart pots, made tea, and lolled in the lee of a ten-foot ridge of pure red sand, for the south wind was cold, eating their lunch and afterwards smoking the inevitable hand-made cigarette, whilst the horses stood near by, held prisoner only by their bridle-reins hanging to the ground.

  “How’s yer
voice, Bill?” asked Lowe.

  “Crook, Fred, crook!” replied a lank man of middle age, whose narrow face was distinguished by an outsize nosc. “I feels as though I couldn’t ya-hoodle again for a fiver.”

  “Even my dogs can’t yap no more,” a man with a Cockney accent said. “An’ I’ve worn me ’at out flailing ’em. Look at it! When they talks about the cost of living in the Arbitration Court, they never says any think about the cost of ’ats a bloke wears out on sheep’s backs.”

  “Naw,” Lowe drawled, pessimism clouding his usually cheerful face. “They’re all too busy in the Court rushing through the business so’s they can get out and enjoy theirselves on the workin’ man’s money. They’re having the good times–judges, lawyers, and union bosses. We’re only the bush mugs, without any say as to what’s the value of our labour.”

  “There’s one thing though,” put in a tubby, red-faced, wild-whiskered man. “We are helping to produce wealth for the blasted country, while them politicians can only spend borrowed money and call theirselves statesmen. Statesmen! Coo! I could borrow a fiver any day and booze it up in Menindee, and no one calls me a statesman.”

  “No one ain’t lookin’ to fight you, Blue.”

  “Well, you can call me the Governor-General now. I’m too darned tired to fight. Me arms are near dropping off. It takes a sheep to rile a bloke proper.”

  “Well, we’d better get riled some more,” Lowe decided, lurching to his feet and stretching his lithe body. “Come on or we won’t get ’em to White Well till sun-up to-morrow.”

  When Mace had trucked two more loads of “dead-beats” to White Well yards he said, when he returned for the third load: “Look here, Fred! Just camp the mob here and I’ll truck the whole darn lot.”

  “Wot about goin’ into the homestead and bringing the ruddy shearers out here?” the lank man shouted, now walking and leading his horse, and “pushing” about fifteen sheep along.