In addition to a vast variety of other animals, dingoes came up the hill. Snakes did as well, most of them harmless, but they included a few adders, copperheads, and deadly taipans. Carrying a heavy stick to kill poisonous snakes, David patrolled the fold with his musket, an oilskin over the locks to keep the gunpowder in the flash pans dry. The dogs drove away most of the dingoes, and he shot those that fought the dogs.
To keep his gunpowder dry while reloading in the heavy rain, David crouched beside the fold and sheltered his powder flask inside his sheepskin coat. He had just finished recharging both barrels of the musket when he heard the dogs snarling and fighting on the other side of the fold, and the dogs nearby raced around to join them. David followed them, expecting dingoes.
Coming around the fold, David was confronted by a large wild boar the dogs had at bay beside the rail and brush fence. The dogs darting and snapping at it, the animal squealed in rage as it lunged and slashed with its long, gleaming tusks. Then it turned to David and charged, and the dogs swarmed around it and clung to it with their teeth.
Aiming at the boar's back to avoid hitting one of the dogs, David pulled both triggers. One barrel misfired, the bullet from the other one ripping into the center of the animal's back and breaking its spine. Its hindquarters collapsing, the boar dug at the muddy ground with its forefeet and tried to get to David amidst the bedlam of its shrill, enraged squealing and the snarling of the dogs as they tugged it back.
The uproar battering his ears, David knelt beside the fold and poured gunpowder into the flash pan on the barrel that had misfired. He walked up to the boar and put the musket to its head, its jaws snapping and slavering in its fury. The musket fired, killing the animal. David called the dogs to him and looked them over to make certain none had been injured, then he reloaded his musket and resumed patrolling around the fold.
During the afternoon, the wind abated and the rain tapered off to sprinkles. The hill was surrounded by a sea of floodwater, the tops of trees and other high spots in the terrain jutting above it. Kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, bandicoots, and other animals peacefully shared space in their mutual peril, and no more came to the hill.
Under the remains of the hut, David found enough dry wood to start a fire. He roasted pieces of mutton on the spit, then fed the dogs and ate as darkness fell. The sheep were hungry and thirsty, bleating and moving about restlessly in the fold. They kept it up through the long hours of the damp, frigidly cold night as David sat beside the fire, animal eyes gleaming around the edge of the firelight.
At dawn, the flood had subsided to scattered ponds at low spots in the marshy ground, and the snakes and animals were gone. David turned the sheep out of the fold and trailed them with his horses. In the wet bottomland around the hill, the animals waded about in the mud, gulping down water from the pools and greedily cropping the foliage.
The ground became drier during the day, the ponds shrunk, and by the following morning, the only evidence of the flood was brush and driftwood hanging in trees. A few days later, David drove the flock back to the south, toward Tibooburra Creek.
The last days of August and early spring had arrived by the time the flock was back across the creek. The lambing began late one night, when David was awakened by a ewe bleating in distress. After hastily kindling a fire beside the fold, he pulled the ewe to the light and fumbled inside it to straighten out the tangle of small limbs and bodies. Before he finished assisting the ewe in lambing, other ewes were clamoring in pain.
Through the remainder of the night, he brought one ewe after another to the light of the fire to help it lamb. In the meantime, scores of others were giving birth without difficulty. When dawn came and he turned out the flock to graze, many of the ewes had lambs stumbling beside them, and others lay down to give birth.
The lambing continued all day with numerous ewes in labor all the time and several of them having difficulty. Driving the flock to the fold that evening was slow and tedious, ewes lambing along the way. At nightfall, David hastily cooked for himself and the dogs, in between helping the ewes. Then he was on his feet through the night, assisting them.
After the second night without sleep, time passed in a blur of fatigue. His body aching, somehow David found the strength to continue, stumbling about and responding automatically to the bleating of a ewe in distress. The nights and the days running together, he occasionally woke from a few moments of sleep while kneeling beside a ewe to assist it or kindling a fire to cook, then he went on with what he knew he had to do.
Amid the crushing toil, the dingoes came, drawn by the scent of blood and afterbirth. Lean and ravenous at the end of winter, they were bold. An outburst of snarling by the dogs and panic-stricken bleating on the other side of the flock one afternoon gave David a burst of renewed energy. He picked up his muskets, leaped on his horse, and rode around the sheep.
The dogs fought some of the dingoes, while others dragged away four struggling lambs. The ewes clamored and vainly tried to save their offspring. Intent on their attack, the wild dogs failed to notice David until he began firing. He killed two, then as they fled, he cocked his other musket and sprayed them with pellets, bringing down two more and wounding the others.
The lambs were injured beyond recovery, and David had to kill them. He carried the carcasses to a bare spot on the ground, where he piled up wood and burned the small forms to keep the dingoes from feeding on them. Returning to his work, he assisted the ewes as he moved the flock slowly toward the fold. When the sheep were safe for the night, he arduously gathered wood and built fires around the fold, worried that a large pack of dingoes might have moved into the area.
There was a large pack that attacked that night in force. In a daze of fatigue, David moved among the ewes then heard the dogs growling in warning at one side of the fold. Carrying his weapons, he ran to the fence just in time to see a wave of thirty or more wild dogs race into the light of the fires beside the fold.
Firing his musket loaded with bird shot, David killed two and wounded the others. The remainder swarmed into the firelight, and the dogs attacked some of the dingoes and the rest leaped for the fold. David shot one with his pistol and two more with his musket as they scrambled up the side of the fold, then he used the double-barrel musket as a club to sweep dingoes off the rail fence.
The heavy barrels broke bones, and the wild dogs yelped in agony and flailed as they fell. When they stopped trying to invade the fold, David vaulted the fence and joined the dogs. As the wild dogs finally broke away and retreated into the darkness, the dogs turned on injured dingoes beside the fold, and David followed them, swinging his musket.
When it was all over, a dozen dead dingoes lay on the ground. All of the dogs had been bitten, but none was seriously injured. Through the night, while attending to the ewes, David occasionally saw eyes gleaming in the dark beyond the firelight. Each time, he fired a musket at the eyes, and a howl of pain rang out as the bullet hit the dingo.
At dawn, along with spots of blood where some of the dingoes had been wounded, five more dead dingoes were scattered about. The day passed without attacks, but David glimpsed the wild dogs lurking nearby and looking for an opportunity to drag away a lamb. That night, he fell asleep in the fold for some two hours before being awakened by bleating as the lambing finally tapered off.
The last of the ewes gave birth the next day, and for the first time, David surveyed the sheep as a whole and had a full grasp of the over-all results from the past few days. The vast majority of ewes had lambed without difficulty, about half of them having given birth to twins. The flock had become massive, well over seven thousand lambs among the sheep.
When the flock was in the fold that evening, he cooked the first full meal for himself in days, then slept until dawn without being awakened. The following day, dingoes shadowed the flock, and he watched the brush and waited for the right shot. Then, taking careful aim at a tawny form through the brush, he fired and wounded the dingo.
As it yelped and f
led, he left the dogs around the flock and followed the trail made by spots of blood. Presently, he came to a barren, rocky hill. At the foot of it, he found a hole with dingo hair around it and a smear of blood where the wounded animal had gone inside.
On the slope above the main entrance, Kerrick found four more holes. A very large den with interconnecting tunnels was where the pack lived. He stacked rocks beside the holes on the slope and collected a large pile of dry wood and brush at the foot of the hill, then returned to the flock.
At dawn the next morning, when the dingoes would be in the den after their nightly hunt, David rode to the hill. He pushed the wood and brush against the main entrance and set it on fire, then hurried up the slope and tumbled the stacks of rocks over the four holes. As he rode away, yelping and scuffling came from underground as smoke streamed from around the rocks covering the holes on the hill, and the stones stirred as the smothering dingoes vainly tried to force their way out.
The danger from dingoes eliminated, Kerrick began mulsing, docking tails, and castrating the rams among the lambs. It was backbreaking labor as he bent over lambs from dawn until dark, working carefully to avoid permantently injuring them. The weather remained cool, with relatively few flies to infect the open wounds on the lambs. When he finally finished, he knew that unless some calamity occurred, he would have a large flock of his own from his sheep and his share of the lambs.
Several days later, Kerrick was ready to start driving the flock back toward the fold during the late afternoon when the dogs looked toward the south. Their behavior indicated that someone was approaching, and he rode around to the south side of the flock. Then he saw the tall, heavy-set Patrick Garrity a few hundred yards away, leading a pack horse.
Surprised and intensely pleased, David rode toward him, waving. Pat waved back, a beaming smile on his bearded face. They greeted each other warmly, and Pat explained why he had come. ''I thought you'd be running short on supplies, and I wouldn't want you to have to live on mutton."
"Mutton is about all I have left," David replied, laughing. "I certainly appreciate the supplies, Pat. How did you find me?"
"It took some searching, because you've laid yourself out quite a lot of land, so I followed the trail your sheep made in grazing from one place to another. Those are very good folds you've been building, David."
They talked as they rode toward the flock, and Pat reined up in astonishment as the flock came into full view. "Good Lord, David!" he exclaimed. "You must not have lost a single sheep, and it looks like most of the ewes had twins."
David nodded in satisfaction. "About half of them, I'd say, and the lambs are strong and healthy as well. I've had good fortune."
"You've also worked bloody hard. I'll go to the fold so I can take a look as they go in and get a better idea of how many there are."
Pat circled the flock, leading the pack horse. David summoned the dogs and sent them around the sides of the flock, crowding the sheep closer together, then cracked his whip to start them moving.
Dust boiled up as the sheep flowed toward the fold. Pat sat on his horse near the gate, looking at the sheep as they approached and went inside, then he dismounted and helped David close the gate. As they unsaddled their horses, he told David that he unquestionably had his first flock.
"And a large one," he added, "some six thousand or more. That'll be a hard flock to handle, David."
"If I can handle five, I can handle six," David replied, smiling.
Pat laughed and nodded in agreement as he and David carried the supplies to the hut. With the flour, salt, tea, rice, tobacco, there were delicacies that included treacle, pots of jam and pickles, and cheese. "I also brought some seed," Pat said, pointing to several bags. "I thought you might like to plant a garden, so I brought seed for potatoes, onions, cabbage, and such."
"Yes, I've cleared some land for a garden at the creek where I intend to make my home paddock," David said. "I know little about gardening, but the soil appears to be fertile. I certainly appreciate your bringing the seed as well as all these supplies, Pat."
Pat shrugged off David's gratitude, building up the fire as David made preparations to cook. During their conversation, David commented that he would need to order supplies himself, because he would be grazing his own flock next year. "You'll have the money to pay for them," Pat told him. "The price of wool varies from year to year, but you should get at least three hundred guineas for your share of the wool clip."
"That's far more than I'll need for supplies."
"Aye, but you'll have to start hiring stockmen soon, and your percentum of profits will be less then. No stockman will attend a flock the way you have this one, and you'll also have the expense of wages and rations for the stockmen. Even so, you should still have decent profits."
"I hope I will, Pat. How do you pay for your supplies?"
"Through a bank account in Sydney. When I send my order, I'll order your supplies and send a message to the bank to set up an account and pay for them out of your share of the wool clip. I'll need to give them the name of a station, so do you intend to call your place Kerrick Station?"
"No, I'll call it Tibooburra Station, Pat."
Filling the billys with water to make tea, Pat said that it was a good name for a sheep station. David glanced out at the surrounding terrain in the afterglow of sunset. Before, it had been land, but now it seemed subtly different, with a name. Although it was only a beginning, his sheep station was a reality, and he was blissfully happy.
He had found the new life for himself that he had envisioned, a life of grueling labor and hardship, but also one of complete contentment on his own sheep station in the solitude of the outback. Months had passed since he had last looked at his former wife's picture and tormented himself with the bitter sorrow of his love for her.
That was now in the past, as distant from him as the outside world. With nothing and no one within hundreds of miles to resurrect that agony of grief within him, he knew that it would remain in the past while his flocks expanded and he built on what he had begun.
PART II
Chapter Seven
"Everyone knows that Australia is destined to be a great land," Mary Reibey commented humorously. "After all, most of the population here has been especially chosen for Australia by the best judges in England."
Alexandra Hammond laughed, but the subject was a sensitive one, because Mary was an emancipist. As she replied, Alexandra chose her words carefully. "Your presence here is a great boon, Mrs. Reibey. You've contributed immeasurably to progress and to the welfare of people in the colony."
The woman scoffed, retorting that what she had done had been for her children and herself, but her eyes were sparkling with humor, and Alexandra knew she was being gently teased. She was fully aware of the woman's generous contributions to various charities, and she also knew that Mary Reibey was easily able to afford those contributions.
Transported to Australia at the age of thirteen for thievery, Mary had married a free immigrant merchant. When he had died in 1811, leaving her with seven children and a struggling firm, she had begun expanding the business. Now she owned farms in the outlying districts and buildings in the center of Sydney, along with warehouses and coastal trading brigs.
The other guests in the large, well-furnished parlor of the Hammond home were also emancipists who had achieved financial success, in addition to being clients of Alexandra's father, Nevil Hammond, an attorney. While he had other clients who were free immigrants, the two groups never mixed socially. Alexandra viewed that as tiresome, having friends among both groups which she had to be careful to keep separated.
A maid served drinks before dinner as Nevil and his wife, Augusta, chatted with guests. In addition to his law practice, Nevil had investments in property, shipping, and other interests that were managed by Alexandra's brother, Creighton, who was talking with guests in another part of the room with his attractive wife, Martha. Tall and dapper in his neat suit, he was thirty-two, thirteen y
ears older than Alexandra.
Alexandra smiled wistfully, replying to a question from Mary Reibey about how she liked Australia. "Far be it from me to belittle the colony," she said, "but I still miss London. My younger brother, Robert, is attending school there, and I do envy him."
"Indeed?" Mary mused. "I thought you might be settled in here happily now. For some time, gossip has had it that you're keeping company with that lawyer who works with your father at times."
"John Fitzroy? No, that's making far too much of it, Mrs. Reibey. I have a number of friends in the town, including Mr. Fitzroy."
"He's probably the one spreading the gossip," Mary suggested with a smile, "and trying to keep others away from you." Her smile fading, she arched an eyebrow. "Although he works with your father, I hear that he'll have nothing to do with anyone but the bunyip aristocracy. I daresay that's true, because he isn't here this evening."
"I'm informed that he's working on an urgent matter," Alexandra replied, telling the truth, even though she knew that what John had told her was untrue. As long as she had known him, John had been a snob.
Changing the subject, Mary asked about Alexandra's maternal grandmother, Christine Waverly, who lived with the family. "She's very well for her age," Alexandra told Mary. "She is over seventy, of course, and she chose to remain in her room this evening. She might have become too tired."
Mary agreed emphatically, then the conversation moved on to other subjects. Andrew and Henrietta Thompson, wealthy landowners, were talking nearby with Henry Kable and his wife, Jane, who controlled a large proportion of the sealing and whaling industry in Australian waters. One of them made a remark that drew Mary's attention, and she began talking with them.
Alexandra walked away, moving toward the maid. Some of the guests were still without drinks, and the maid was making too much of a bustle as she pushed the serving cart about. Although she was inept, her job was secure because servants were difficult to find and to keep in Australia. Alexandra began helping her and the maid smiled gratefully. As they moved among the guests, most of the conversation was about the new governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, who had arrived a short time before.
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