Gripped By Drought

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Well, a broken life had ended. It had begun so promisingly till tragedy overtook it. Lady Blain, after having been discovered with her paramour by Sir John, had run away with a neighbouring squire. Sir John had given to his wife a deep and an abiding love. He would have forgiven her her mad act, the hurt she had done to him; but he could find no forgiveness for her desertion of their son, then at Eton.

  The elopement ended as such elopements do. The wife became tiresome as a mistress. She sought forgiveness from her husband, but Sir John declined to receive her. On the railway passing Blain Chase, Lady Blain had laid herself down before an oncoming train.

  Sir John Blain travelled the world–to stop finally at Atlas, persuaded by Old Man Mayne, whose rugged, proud character was so akin to his own. The son entered the Army, was killed early in the Great War. His death was the final blow that decided Sir John never again to see Blain Chase, where great happiness once had been his.

  Old Man Mayne offered to build him a bungalow. Sir John declined, preferring to build himself a home far enough from the homestead to assure peace and independence, yet not so far as to be beyond occasional human intercourse. With his ghosts and his pets, Sir John became Old John….

  The sun was setting, a drop of blood behind the western veil of red dust, when Feng, carrying the deed box, emerged from the hut. The galah already was climbing to its cage, whose door never had been closed. Calling the cat and the dog outside, Feng closed and fastened the door. Beelzebub would not follow when called. He lay before the door, his head resting on his paws, his nose against the narrow slit between door and step.

  Down at the Rest House the lovers were gone, but of them Feng was not thinking. He was seeing a succession of mental pictures in which two mischievous boys, and often a merry girl, were sitting on the river bank, whilst a grey-haired man with a grey Viking moustache told them, in a strong, booming voice, the great stories of England’s past.

  Mayne was in the office when Feng entered.

  “Sir John Blain is dead,” Feng announced softly.

  Frank read Sir John’s letter several times. His eyes were moist on glancing from it to his friend.

  “He was a great gentleman,” he said quietly.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE FALL

  I

  THE morning of September 5th saw Feng Ching-wei at work in the Atlas office studying, as he had studied a dozen times before, the shearing tallies. The figures made heartrending reading even now, those terrible figures that revealed the harvest of Drought, those same figures that had sent Frank Mayne with brooding eyes and sunken shoulders out into the wilderness to fight the cloud of despair in the shadow of which he moved.

  The previous year Atlas had shorn forty-five thousand sheep, and the year before that sixty-six thousand. This third shearing in the great drought had brought the total shorn down to twenty-three thousand, and of that number over three thousand had died of cold after being shorn. At that instant, taking into account the sheep that had perished on their way back to the paddocks, it was doubtful if there were more than twenty thousand sheep on all Atlas.

  Unstinted money had been poured out to save the flocks. The men had worked loyally and without complaint, ignoring the set number of hours per week laid down by the Arbitration Court. MacDougall had fought the drought as though the sheep had been his. Mayne had slaved as hard as MacDougall, whilst Feng had laboured no less. To no avail. From sixty-six thousand to twenty thousand! Of this number the great majority were the hand-fed ewes and rams, but by Christmas the total might well be reduced a further six thousand; by the end of the coming summer, if no rain fell, their number might have shrunk to five thousand–because the end of the stream of money was now in sight.

  The wool clip had been transported to the railway at Menindee and dispatched to the brokers. It was, for a huge run like Atlas, a miserable consignment of six hundred bales, two-thirds of the number dispatched the year before, and but one-third of the number sent down the year before that.

  To worsen the situation, the wool markets were rocking. Buyers from England, Europe, Japan and America awaited the opening sales, no one knowing what the cable advices they were daily receiving might contain, none being able to foretell to what maximum they would bid.

  On Atlas the days passed with dull monotony to the wreck of a man driving a car or riding a horse over the desert that once had been a vast natural paradise: to the woman in Government House, disillusioned, racked by illicit desires, torn this way and that by taboos, affections, and longings; to the pale-faced man working at books and documents in the quiet station office, impotent to avert, unable to close his eyes to, the doom approaching Atlas.

  September the twelfth fell on a Thursday, the day of the week the mail-car reached Atlas at eleven o’clock in the forenoon. Feng took the outward bag to the driver, and from him accepted the inward bag. With forced cheerfulness he asked the man how matters went with the people of Menindee.

  “Crook, Mr. Ching-wei,” the driver replied, rolling a cigarette. “The pubs are full of blokes spending the last cheques they’ll make for some time, and the tracks are covered with blokes looking for jobs wot won’t come to light till the rain falls again–if ever it does rain again, which I doubts. Isn’t there a song which goes–‘It ain’t gonna rain no more?’ I bet an Aussie bushman wrote it. They tell me that Mornington Station has busted, and Myall Creek Station has sacked all hands and is leaving the sheep to take their chance.

  Boynton and Reynolds took over Thunder Downs, and offered Fairway, the owner, five hundred pounds and the station car to go away with. They found old Fairway in a water-hole the next morning. Well, I must get. No passengers this trip, and I’ve got to open and close all the darned gates myself.”

  So Mornington had crashed! It was one of New South Wales’s biggest sheep-runs, and was considered the most solidly financed. And Boynton and Reynolds had taken over Thunder Downs from the owner, Fairway. Poor old Fairway! He had owned Thunder Downs for thirty years. Of course, other crashes would follow. The strain was too severe to be borne by any but stations governed by super-shrewd men or which, like Tin Tin, had been blessed by rain from chance thunderstorms.

  Feng was followed into the office by Eva and Todd Gray, who conversed in low tones whilst he sorted the contents of the bag. Handing them the mail for Government House and the men, he was left with two private letters and the Atlas business mail. The first letter he opened was that which on the reverse side of the envelope bore the imprint of Messrs. Boynton and Reynolds, the brokers and station financiers. The contents acknowledged receipt of six hundred and two bales containing wool which would be included in the first of the series of sales that would start September 25th. The brokers added their opinion that the price would average thirteen pence per pound.

  Thirteen pence per pound! Rapidly Feng figured the average amount each of the Atlas bales would bring at thirteen pence per pound. The resulting estimate was twelve pounds sterling per bale. And last year it had been twenty-two pounds per bale for nine hundred and ninety bales. He rang up White Well.

  “Do you know where Mr. Mayne is?” he asked Fred Lowe, who answered the call.

  “No. Haven”t seen him for a week.”

  Ten Pot Dick at Mulga Flat announced that he had not seen “the boss” for “hell knows when”. Mrs. MacDougal thought that Mayne was with her husband in the paddock round Burnt Hut, and that they were camped there. Should she ring up Burnt Hut?

  “Please, Mrs. MacDougall,” Feng requested. “It is most urgent.”

  But it was not until nine o’clock that Mrs. MacDougall connected with her husband and Frank Mayne at Burnt Hut. She telephoned the information to the anxious Feng, since there was no through connection from Burnt Hut, and he requested her to take down a message and transmit it to Frank Mayne. It ran:

  Brokers advise wool to be sold September twenty-fifth. Forecast price at thirteen pence per pound. Shall I instruct them to withdraw wool from sale?

  May
ne’s answer was:

  Yes. We are not giving away the wool.

  So immediately the Menindee post office opened for business the next day, Feng wired the brokers to withdraw the Atlas wool until the first sale of the series showed the temper of the market.

  To this telegram he received no reply, and was not unduly perturbed, for he expected none. The day continued with the heavy monotony of depression. Mayne came in, stayed two days, and departed, and when he had gone Feng called seven men into the office, explained the position with frankness, and paid them off.

  2

  It was Mary O’Doyle who shocked the anxious Feng out of the business depression into his former world of speculation regarding Alldyce Cameron and his love affairs. It was when he was sipping the after-dinner coffee that Mary had placed before him that she said dramatically:

  “There’s some queer goings-on, I’m thinking, Misther Feng. Goings-on wot tickles me nose:”

  “Indeed! To what goings-on do you refer?” he inquired curiously.

  “Well, from this here window I can look across to the far side of the Gutter,” she proceeded impressively. “About a week ago I noticed that Eva went off with Little Frankie down the river, and, a moment or two after, she went off up the river. Why does she want to go up the river all on ’er own? She went up the river this afternoon when Eva and Little Frankie went down the river.”

  “She?” Feng asked blandly.

  Mary O’Doyle jerked her head significantly towards Government House.

  “Her,” she said, with utter simplicity.

  “Do you mean Mrs. Emily?” Feng asked, referring to the cook.

  Not Emily. Her,” Mary said, with what was meant to be cutting sarcasm.

  “Oh!” The enlightened Feng tapped his coffee-cup with an apostle spoon. “Well, I suppose Mrs. Mayne is at liberty to take an airing if she desires to, Mary. Perhaps she goes to tend Old John’s grave, for you will remember he was buried in his own garden plot, as he expressly wished.”

  Mary O’Doyle smiled scoffingly. She sniffed. Feng had heard that sniff before. So had Todd Gray. It indicated Mary’s emphatic disbelief in a subtle way.

  “Well, I ’opes she is enjoying av ’erself a-walking up the river all on ’er own–I don’t think–when ’er own flesh an’ blood takes an airing in the opposite direction. An’ she says to Eva: ‘Take Little Frankie to the Seat of Atlas this afternoon and show ’im ’is inheritance.’ As though she troubles about Little Frankie’s inheritance. She’s a–a––”

  “Mary!” Feng exclaimed sharply, just in time.

  Again Mary O’Doyle sniffed, then rolled away with her laden tray. Left alone, Feng rose to his feet and walked to the window. Beyond, it was quite dark, and he could see nothing. The night-masked view held for him no interest then, for his mind sought an explanation of Ethel Mayne’s stroll up the river toward Old John’s deserted house, when she had instructed Eva to take Little Frankie to the Seat of Atlas to show him his inheritance. He felt inclined to sneer openly as Mary had done when the child’s inheritance was mentioned as of concern to his mother.

  Surely Cameron was not meeting Ethel when he was wooing Eva, the maid?

  The thought flooded his mind as a coloured light. And what did Mary O’Doyle suspect? Trust a woman to be correct in her suspicions, whatever they might be! Even so, he could not very well ask her what precisely were her suspicions. But–he bit his nether lip–should Cameron be wooing Ethel, even though he kissed Eva, then the weapon Ethel had given him, Feng, and which Eva in Cameron’s arms had taken away–that same weapon he would receive back again.

  After considering these points for nearly half an hour, he decided that he must know why Frank’s wife walked up-river when Eva and the boy had been directed to walk down-river. And, obviously, the only method he could adopt to discover the significance of this behaviour was to spy on Ethel Mayne. To follow her, he must know when she went off, and this could not be known without assistance, for it was impossible to spend the whole of every afternoon in that room just to wait and watch Ethel set out. For his friend’s sake, for the sake of Atlas, aye, and for the sake of the woman he loved, Feng Ching-wei decided to spy on the haughty woman who hated Atlas. He rang for Mary O’Doyle.

  “I believe, Mary,” he said, when that mighty woman appeared, “I believe, Mary, that you are a woman of discretion. That being so, I know you will not ask me what I am thinking about or tell me what you are thinking about. That is, our thoughts regarding ‘Her’. When next you notice Eva and Little Frankie going down the river and observe ‘Her’ set out walking up the river, please come to the office at once and let me know. Now, not a word! And not a word to anyone–most certainly not to Eva.”

  Mary O’Doyle’s small blue eyes gleamed delightedly. She opened her wide mouth to its utmost extent, and then shut it with snapping teeth, so that her jaws became emphatically clenched, and her lips were clamped into a straight line. Without speaking a syllable she had conveyed to her employer her silent promise to remain dumb on all matters concerning “Her”.

  3

  September 25th saw Frank Mayne about the homestead, a silent, physically weary, spiritually depressed man. The post-shearing work had been finished, the sheep having been reclassified and placed in the best of the desert paddocks, with all the breeding ewes adjacent to White Well, from which depot Tom Mace and Ten Pot Dick hand-fed them with maize. The few surviving lambs had been marked and the rams occupied a paddock south of the homestead.

  On Westmacott’s old selection there was not a hoof. One could ride over it all day and not see a living thing, not a crow or an eagle. Of the two hundred horses a bare fifty survived to be drafted into one of the western salt-bush paddocks to which MacDougall now trucked daily sufficient water for them. In that same paddock the three surviving bullocks were also put. The country between the outstation, Forest Hill and White Well–tens of thousands of acres–was a vast stretch of river sand and dying scrub trees. It had not rained for eleven months.

  “It is tough on those men being put on tramp, Feng, but you did right,” Mayne said whilst he and his friend waited for the Adelaide telegram to be sent over the telephone to the Menindee postmaster. That telegram would give them the opening prices of wool in the first series of this season’s sales.

  “There was no help for it, Frank.”

  “No, I know. And now we shall have to dismiss two of the married men, as well as the teacher, if the wool prices are as low as the brokers estimate they will be.”

  Feng made no comment. He knew that never since the drought early in the history of the century had Atlas been unable to afford a teacher for the children. Not only three children of the married family to be retained, but also five others who rode horseback from as far as seven miles, would be deprived of schooling. Why comment on the dismissal of the teacher? The position was so hopeless. Until the rain came, Atlas and many other stations would be reduced to the position of mere selections.

  The telegram arrived a few minutes before six o’clock, sent by a wool expert, acting for Mayne, who had attended the sale. It read:

  Average price over day twelve pence halfpenny pound.

  Feng, who had taken down the dictated message, had turned his back to Mayne after giving him the slip. From it Frank Mayne looked out through the window that revealed the bare earth stretching away beneath the sturdy river-flat box trees. Pushing back his chair, he rose and passed out, and when the dinner-gong sounded he was on the Seat of Atlas.

  4

  blow fell on Atlas on the first day of October. It was struck by the Postmaster-General, when the mail-driver delivered the letter-bag. Mayne, being in the office, opened Boynton and Reynolds’ long envelope and perused the contents. When he had read part he began again at the beginning, reading aloud to Feng:

  As per our communication of recent date, the average price of wool over the first of the recent series of sales was a fraction below thirteen pence per pound. At the second of the series the av
erage dropped fourpence.

  Your consignment of six hundred bales was divided into those two sales and the amount realized after all expenses therewith deducted totals £4,985.

  There is no evading the disturbing fact that the world’s warehouses are overstocked with finished goods. As the financial outlook of all European countries and the South Americas is extremely bad, no rise in prices can be expected for several years. You will consequently readily understand that the depreciation of wool values will be instantly reflected in the values of station property and stock.

  In view of these regrettable facts we were unable to withdraw the Atlas wool as requested, and the amount realized will be set against your indebtedness to us, the balance remaining of your indebtedness being at date forty-three thousand, five hundred pounds.

  Governed by these circumstances, we must request you to dismiss all your employees save a cook and one maid for service in the house, to cease artificial feeding when present supplies of maize and lucerne are exhausted, and to turn the sheep into the best of your paddocks to take their chance of survival of this drought.

  All future financial accommodation will have to be most carefully scrutinized, and our Mr. Rowland Smythe will be visiting you shortly to explain the situation fully to you. Whilst expressing our sympathy…

  Mayne stood near the table looking blankly at Feng, who was seated. He was swaying slightly on his feet, his face drained of colour. His voice was hardly louder than a whisper.

  “Oh, God!” he said. “They have got Atlas. They’ve got my Atlas!”

  “Frank!” exclaimed Feng sharply, alarmed by the despairing face of the man he loved. Springing to his feet, he passed round to Mayne and gripped his arm. “Frank! Brace up! It is not as bad as all that. Smythe will explain, and, if necessary, will find for us a way out.”