The Squatter's Dream. Rolf Boldrewood
to lose no time; lambing would be on in June, in August shearing would be imminent. And the cattle would require to be off, and the sheep to be on, somewhere about April, if the first year’s operations were to have any chance of being financially successful.
The stores having been purchased, and Mr. M‘Nab with his letter of credit having been shipped, that alert lieutenant, with characteristic promptitude, reporting himself in readiness to embark at six hours’ notice, nothing remained but for Mr. Redgrave to “render himself” again at Gondaree in the capacity of purchaser.
He accordingly cleared out from the club with alarmingly stern self-denial, and, declining to risk his important existence in the Warroo mail, took the road in the light American waggon, with his spare horses and a couple of active lads accustomed to bush work.
After a journey of ordinary duration and absence of adventure, he once more sighted the unromantic but priceless waters of the Warroo, and beheld, with the eye of a proprietor, the “waste lands of the Crown” – most literally deserving that appellation – with the full right and title to which, as lessee, he stood invested.
Mr. Hawkesbury, in apparently the same Crimean shirt, with black and scarlet in alternate bars, stood smoking the small myall pipe in much the same attitude at the hut door as when Jack was borne off by two jibs and a bolter in the Warroo mail. Bob the cook, the dark hues of his apparel unrelieved by any shade of scarlet, appeared in his doorway with his hands in his pockets, but betraying unwonted interest as the cortège ascended the sandhill.
Ordering the boys to let go the horses, and to pitch the tent, which he had used on the journey, at a safe distance from the huts, Jack descended with a slight increase of dignity, as of one in authority, and greeted his predecessor.
“So you’ve bought us out,” he said, after inspecting carefully the letter which Jack handed to him, “and I’m ordered to deliver over the cattle, and the stores, – there ain’t much of them, – and the horses, and in fact the whole boiling. Well, I wish you luck, sir; the run’s a good ’un and no mistake, and the cattle are pretty fair, considering what’s been done for ’em. I suppose you won’t want me after you’ve taken delivery.”
“I shall be very glad if you will stay on,” quoth Jack, whose honest heart felt averse to ousting any man from a home, “until the cattle are cleared off; after that I shall have another gentleman in charge of the sheep and place generally. By staying two or three months you will oblige me, if it suits your arrangements.”
“All right,” answered Mr. Hawkesbury: “I know the cattle pretty well, and I dare say I can save as many as will cover my wages. I think you’ll find them muster up pretty close to their book-number.”
The signal shot of the campaign was fired, so to speak, upon the arrival of Mr. John Rooney, who came in a few days by appointment to take the first draft of the Gondaree fat cattle.
Jack was sitting outside of his tent, like an Arab sheik, and thinking regretfully of the flower-laden evening breeze which he had so often inhaled at the same hour at Marshmead, when a tall, soldierly-looking man rode up on a tired horse and jumped off with an unreserved exclamation of relief.
“Hallo! Rooney, is that you, in this uncivilized part of the world? Rather different from the old place, isn’t it! Come in, and I’ll have your horse hobbled out. You mustn’t expect stables or paddock or any other luxuries on the Warroo.”
“Sure, I know it well – my heavy curse on the same river; there never was any dacency next or anigh it. Didn’t they lend me a buck-jumper at Morahgil to-day, and the first place I found myself was on the broad of my back.”
“What a shame! Did they give you another horse?”
“They did not. I rode the same devil right through. It’s little bucking he feels inclined for now.”
“So I should think, after an eighty-mile ride. When did you leave?”
“About twelve o’clock. I was riding all night, and got there to breakfast. The last time I took cattle from Morahgil I happened to knock down the superintendent with a roping pole, maybe that’s why he treated me so – the mane blayguard.”
“Well, he ought not to have let such a trifle dwell on his mind, perhaps. But take a glass of grog, Rooney, while the fellow gets your tea.”
“Faith, and I will, Masther John; and it’s sound I’ll sleep to-night, fleas or no fleas. A man can’t do without it for more than three nights at a time.”
In a few days the muster was duly concluded, and three hundred prime bullocks secured in the ancient but massive stockyard. One of Rooney’s drovers and a couple of road hands had arrived the evening before, to whom they were intrusted. Rooney was too great a man to be able to afford the time to travel with his own cattle, and had, indeed, a score of other mobs to meet, despatch, buy, or sell, to arrive in as many different and distant parts of the colony.
“Well, Masther John,” said he, “I won’t deny that I haven’t lifted a finer mob this season. Isn’t it a murthering fine run, when it puts the beef on them big-boned divils like that? If ye had some of those roan steers we used to get at the Lost Waterhole Camp, sure they wouldn’t be able to see out of their eyes with fat. I’ll be able to get the eight hundred out of these aisy enough. I’ll send Joe. Best for the cows and the rest of the bullocks the moment he’s shut of those circle-dot cattle. I must be off down the river. I’ve a long ride before me. But, Masther John, see here now, don’t be building too much on the saysons in these parts. It’s not like Marshmead; I’ve seen it all as bare as a brickfield, from the Warroo to the Oxley; and these very cattle with their ribs up to their backbones, and dyin’ by hundreds. D’ye hear me now? Don’t be spending all your money before ye see how prices are going. I’m thinking we’ll see a dale of changes in the next three or four years – all this racin’ and jostlin’ for breeding sheep can’t hould out. Good-bye, sir.”
And so the kindly, stalwart, shrewd cattle dealer went on his way, and Jack saw him no more for a season. But his warning words left an impression of doubt and distrust upon the mind of his hearer that no caution had previously had power to do. Was it possible that he had made a mistake, and an irrevocable one? Was such a change in the seasons credible, and could all his stretch of luxuriant prairie turn into dust and ashes? It was impossible. He had known bad seasons, or thought he had, in the old west country; he had seen grass and water pretty scarce, and had a lower average of fat cattle in some seasons than others; but as to any total disappearance of pasture, any ruinous loss of stock, such he had never witnessed and was quite unable to realize.
CHAPTER V
“So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece.” —King Henry VI.
Jack had soon quite enough upon his hands to occupy him for every waking hour and moment, to fatigue his body, and, consequently, to lay to rest any obtrusive doubts or fears as to the ultimate success of his undertaking. The stores began to arrive, and he had to fix a site for the new cottage and the indispensable wool-shed. The former locality he selected at Steamboat Point, before alluded to by Mr. Hawkesbury, which was a bluff near a deep reach of the river, shaded by couba trees and river-oaks of great age, and at an elevation far above the periodical floods which from time to time swept the lowlands of the Warroo, and converted its sluggish tide into a furious devastating torrent.
Sawyers were engaged, carpenters, splitters, and labourers generally. With these, as, indeed, with all the station employés, much conflict had to be gone through as to prices of contract and labour. A new proprietor was looked upon as a person of limited intelligence, but altogether of boundless wealth, which, in greater or less degree, each “old hand” believed it his privilege to share. It was held to be an act of meanness and unjustifiable parsimony for one in his position to expect to have work done at the same rate as other people. Jack had much trouble in disabusing them of this superstition. Eventually it came to be admitted that “the cove knew his way about,” and “had seen a thing or two before;” after which matters went