In Bad Company and other stories - Rolf Boldrewood

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have his own place done up, though he lives like a gentleman, as we all know.'

      'Yer 'arf a gentleman yerself, ain't yer, Mister O'Kelly?' replied Stoate sneeringly. 'No wonder yer don't take no interest in the workers – the men that makes the wealth of this country, and every other. Yer the makin's of a first-class "scab," and if the chaps here was of my mind you'd be put out of every hut on the river.' Before the last word was fully out, O'Kelly made a couple of steps forward with so vengeful a glare in his blue eyes that Stoate involuntarily drew back – with such haste also, that he trod on the foot of a man behind him and nearly fell backward.

      'You infernal scoundrel!' he cried; 'dare to take my name into your ugly mouth again, and I'll kick you from here to the woolshed, and drown you in the wash-pen afterwards. I've done a man's work in Australia for the last five years, though I wasn't brought up to it, as some of you know. I've nothing to say against the men who gave me honest pay for honest work, and whose salt I've eaten. But skulking crawlers like you are ruining the country. You're worse than a dingo —he don't beg. You come here and whine for food, and then try to bite the hand that feeds you. Didn't I see you at the store to-night, waiting for grub, like the other travellers?'

      'No, yer didn't then,' snarled Stoate.

      'Well, I have before this, and more than once. I expect you're loafing on your mate, who's a decent fellow, and the sooner he parts company with a hound like you, the better. But this is our hut, and out you go, or I will, and that's the long and short of it. Come on, Joe!'

      'The public's not on for a sermon to-night, Janus, old man,' said the young fellow before mentioned. 'Paddy's got his monkey up, and it'll be bloody wars if you don't clear. Yer mate's a cove as we'd like to spend the evenin' with, but the votin's agin yer, Janus, it raly is.'

      'I came in with Stoate,' said Bill, 'and in course I'm here to see it out with him, man to man. But this is your hut, and not ours, mate, so we'd better get back to our camp – good-night all!'

      CHAPTER II

      The sun-rays were slowly irradiating 'the level waste, the rounded grey' which accurately described the landscape, in the lower Riverina, which our travellers had reached after a fortnight's travel, and where the large and pastorally famous sheep station of Tandāra had been constructed. Far as the eye could range was an unbroken expanse of sea-like plain, covered at this spring time of year with profuse vegetation – the monotony being occasionally relieved by clumps of the peculiar timber growing only amid the vast levels watered by the Darling. The wilga, the boree, and the mogil copses were in shape, outline, and area so curiously alike, that the lost wanderer proverbially found difficulty in fixing upon any particular clump as a landmark. Once strayed from the faint irregular track, often the only road between stations thirty or forty miles apart – once confused as to the compass bearings, and how little hope was there for the wayfarer, especially if weary, thirsty, and on foot! The clump of mogil or wilga trees, which he had toiled so many a mile in the burning afternoon to reach, was the facsimile of the one left, was it that morning or the one before? More than once had he, by walking in a circle, and making for apparently 'creek timber' at variance with his original course, found himself at the same clump, verified by his own tracks, and the ashes of his small fire, as the one which he had left forty-eight hours ago.

      Reckless and desperate, he takes the course again, feeling weaker by two days' hard walking – footsore, hungry – above all, thirsty, to the verge of delirium. Let us hope that he falls in with a belated boundary rider who shows him an endless-seeming wire fence, which he commands him to follow, till he meets the jackaroo sent with a water-bag to meet him. If this good angel (not otherwise angelic-seeming) 'drops across' him, well and good; if not so, or he does not 'cut the tracks' of a station team, or the lonely mailman going a back road, God help him! Soon will the crows gathering expectant round a pair of eagles, telegraph to the sharp-eyed scouts of the wilderness that they may ride over and see the dried-up, wasted similitude of what was once a man.

      No such tragedy was likely to be enacted in the case of our two shearers. They were fairly mounted. They had food and water to spare. Bill was an experienced bushman, and both men had been along this track before. So they followed the winding trail traced faintly on the broad green sheet of spring herbage, sometimes almost invisible – or wholly so, where an old sheep camp had erased the hoof-or wheel-marks – turning to the right or the left with confident accuracy, until they 'picked up' the course again. Wading girth-deep through the subsidiary watercourses – billabongs, cowalls, and such – bank high in this year of unusual rain and plenty (they are synonymous in riverine Australia, 'arida nutrix'), and scaring the water-fowl, which floated or flew in countless flocks.

      That gigantic crane, the brolgan (or native companion), danced his quadrille in front of them, 'advance, retire, flap wing, and set to partner,' before he sailed away to a region unfrequented by the peaceful-seeming but dangerous intruder. Crimson-winged, French grey galah parrots fluttered around them in companies, never very far out of shot; the small speckled doves, loveliest of the columba tribes, rose whirring in bevies, while the

      swift-footed 'emu' over the waste

      Speeds like a horseman that travels in haste.

      To the inexperienced European traveller beholding this region for the first time, all-ignorant of the reverse side of the shield, what a pastoral paradise it would have seemed! Concealed from his vision the dread spectres of Famine, Death, Ruin, and Despair, which the shutting-up of the windows of Heaven for a season, has power to summon thereon.

      This was a good year, however, in pastoral parlance. Thousands of lambs born in the autumnal months of April and May were now skipping, fat and frolicsome, by the sides of the ewes, in the immense untended flocks. They had been but recently marked and numbered, the latter arithmetical conclusion being obtained by the accurate if primitive method of counting the heaps of severed tails, which modern sheep-farming exacts from the bleeding innocents. The percentage ranged from ninety to nearly a hundred, an almost abnormally favourable result.

      How different from the famine years of a past decade, still fresh in men's minds, when every lamb was killed as soon as born 'to save its mother's life,' and in many stations one-half of the ewes died also, from sheer starvation; when immense migratory flocks, like those of the 'mesta' of their Spanish ancestors, swept over the land, destroying, locust-like, every green thing (and dry, too, for that matter), steering towards the mountain plateaux, which boast green grass and rill-melodies, the long relentless summer through – that summer which, on lower levels, had slain even the wild creatures of the forest and plain, inured from countless ages to the deadly droughts of their Austral home.

      When the kangaroos by the thousand die,

      It's rough on the travelling sheep,

      as 'Banjo' sings.

      This station, when reached, presented a different appearance from North Yalla-doora. The prairie-like plain, far as the eye could reach, was bisected by a wide and turbid stream, flowing between banks, now low and partly submerged, now lofty and precipitous; occasionally overhanging as if cut away by the angry waters, in one of the foaming floods which, from time to time, alternated with seasons when the shallow stream trickled feebly over the rock-bars in the river-bed.

      The buildings were large, but less complete in appearance than those of Yalla-doora. An air of feverish energy pervaded the whole establishment, which seemed to denote that time was more valued than finish, for the pressing work in hand. The windings of the river could be distinctly marked by the size of the great eucalypts which fringed the banks, refusing to grow away from its waters. How often had they been hailed with joy by the weary wayfarer, athirst even unto death, who knows that his trials are over, when from afar he sights the 'river timber.' And now, the signs of the campaign were visible. Men rode in at speed from distant parts of the immense area known as Tandara 'run.' From the far horizon came nearer and yet nearer the lines of unladen waggons, with long teams of lagging horses or even bullocks, from twelve to twenty in number.

      Far from fat and well-liking were these necessary beasts of draught, but sure to leave the station frolicsome and obese after a few weeks' depasturing upon the giant herbage which for a hundred leagues in every direction waved in vast meads like ripening corn. An assemblage

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