Boyd Cable

“ Straight speech and a straight road are always good things, though they don’t often run between the hearts of an old man and a young maid—the worse for the maid, maybe. But here’s my last word on it. If ever your heart, and your pride, and your love and life are beaten down into the dust, they can be raised up and healed by a kiss, given and taken, on the lips. ”

“ Ess was fascinated with it all—fascinated, and day by day growing more fearful. She was coming to understand better what lay behind all this activity of man and placid indifference of Nature. She could appreciate better what every twenty-four hours meant as she saw the increasing numbers of the sheep that had to be dragged from the mud of the tank, and noted the thinning of the remaining trees, and she began to fear this cruel, relentless sun, and scorching air, and hot, dry barren earth. ”

“ Up and down the track across the hills a string of men clambered and bumped and pounded, the stones rattling under the horses’ hoofs and the sand whirling behind them.
Some of the men rode swaying in the saddle, and some with drowsy heads hanging, but Aleck Gault and Whip Thompson sat with their shoulders hunched and their heads crouched forward, and keen eyes set on the difficult track. They plunged down the stony dips, the horses at times sitting back almost on their haunches, and sliding down with the loose rocks and dirt rolling and cascading around them ”

“ The rider slowly approached the mob, the brutes flinching and crowding back from him. Suddenly the whip flickered out a few swift cuts, swung back and snapped out a string of reverberating cracks, the horse leaped forward and crowded into the opening the yielding bodies gave him, and horse and rider and cattle grew dim and indistinct in the dust that churned up and hung about them. Out of the haze the cattle broke with terrified bawlings, and scattered galloping over the valley and the slope. ”

“ They sat in silence, without move or stir, and each busy with her own thoughts, for long after that, and then Ess spoke:—
“Thank you for telling me, and thank you for listening to me, for of course you’ll blame me for thinking and acting as I did with Steve.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Dan, “I’m older than you, and although you’ve lived in the cities where you see and learn a lot, I’ve lived in the out-back, where we don’t see so much, but learn our lessons deep and hard; and I’ve learned never to blame or praise anything that a man or a woman does, for love, or through love. ”

“ Steve laughed. “You’re a philosopher, or a cynic, Mrs. Dan.”
“I’m both,” she said promptly. “I’m a woman, so I must be both the others—or a fool. The men don’t leave us any other choice nowadays.”
“That’s a nasty one on the men,” said Steve.
“It’s the truth, and that’s apt to be nasty on the men,” returned Mrs. Dan, and then after a little pause she went on more softly, “You got me a little angry, Steve, wi’ your foolishness. Only get a woman angry, and you’ll get the truth from her, if it’s nasty enough.” ”

“ The tank was almost dry. Only a tiny pool of foul, thick, muddy water remained in the middle of a stretch of clay that ran from dry, cracking cakes round the outside edge to slimy, greasy, sticky mud near the centre. For days now a gang of men had done little else but toil in the gluey mess, black and fouled to the waists and the armpits with hauling out the sheep that were too weak to extricate themselves. A small army of men worked at top pressure cutting down the trees—all the men of the station and extra hands hired in the township. ”

“ The cattle had reached the dip at the foot of the Whale-back’s tail, and when he saw that they were going to scatter and try to break up the steeper slope beyond instead of turning down the hillside to the valley, Steve touched the horse with the spur, surged past them, and wheeled them downhill. The cattle and he poured down together in an avalanche of stones and earth, and the long snarling roar of their slide came back to the two men above, mingled with the steady cracks of the stockwhip. ”

“ So a doctor in the back country has to be a bush man who can find an unerring way by dark or light, a rider who, when his own horse is knocked up, must be able and willing to sit any half-broken brute he can pick up, or at a pinch swim a flooded river “running a banker,” with whirling tree trunks and drowned bullocks to add to the hazard, as well as a man brave enough to count life and death risks as nothing worth the counting; who on every round he makes must ride, with his own life in the hollow of his hands and the strength of his knee-grip, to keep the flame of life alive in other people ”

“ The bullock nearest him lunged viciously with its horns, and the horse evaded the thrust by a swift side leap that would have unseated many men. For all they could do, the brutes went back into the main mass with a rush. A shivering heave ran through the mob, spreading from the point of contact as ripples spread in a pond from a flung stone. The leading ranks broke into a trot and quickened to a canter, and the men tore up in front again and fell on them with the whips, and strove to beat them back. They went on so for the best part of a mile, and then Scottie galloped to the front. ”

“ Falls up to now had been a thing to laugh at, for the ground was soft as porridge and a man could hardly hurt. But on the hard track and amongst the stones it was a different thing—a fall there might mean a broken bone, or at best a crippling bruise or sprain. But hard or soft, rock or mud, the men drove forward, galloping where they could, cantering where they could not gallop, and hardly slowing to a less pace than a trot.
“Hupp,” shouted Steve, lifting his horse in a cat-leap over a fallen log, and twisting in the saddle to look back at Scottie. “Can you take it? Jump if he will. ”

“ But they swallowed the scalding tea and leaped for their horses again as if their lives hung on the passing moments.
Then the boss flashed up to them out of the smother and dust of the rear guard.
“They tell me you’ve tea, Miss Lincoln,” he cried. “May I—ah, thank you,” as she handed up a pannikin to him where he sat in his sulky.
“How are they going, Mr. Sinclair?” asked Ess.
“Slowly, slowly,” he said; “they’re beginning to lie down to it, and it’s harder each time to get them on their feet and moving again. But I’ve hopes yet—I’ve hopes yet.” ”

“ She tried to stop him speaking after his first few words, but he begged her to let him finish, and went on to pour an impassioned love speech on her troubled ears.
“Stop, stop, please, Ned,” said Ess, when at last he allowed her to speak. “I don’t want to listen to you. It isn’t right for me to, for I can never feel for you in any degree that way. I cannot be any other than a friend.”
“A friend,” he said scornfully. “The same as Whip Thompson, and Darby the Bull, and Blazes, and the rest are your friends. I want more than that, Ess. I want you. ”

“ And when Darby, saying that now he was dirty and half wet he might as well have the pleasure of getting properly wet, went out grinning and took his stand under a spouting water pipe, they shed their clothes and flung them into the hut, and ran down and stood in the downpour. They slapped one another’s naked backs and limbs, and came on the verandah and soaped themselves, and stood out in the rain and washed and lathered themselves, and held their arms wide and turned their faces to the sky, and let the clean, sweet water sluice their mother-naked limbs and bodies. ”

“ Scottie was a little surprised himself, but he merely grunted and made no remark.
Each night and morning for the rest of the week Ess was in the yard to wish the men good evening or good-bye as they came or went, and usually spent a few minutes chatting to one or the other of them. But she never chatted to Steve Knight, and it was impossible for her to help noticing that he did nothing more than raise his hat and murmur a conventional word, and then ignore her.
No girl likes to be ignored by a man, even a wicked man, and especially if he is good-looking as well as wicked. ”

“ But in a country where the sheep tanks are the only water within hundreds of miles; where the same tanks are merely holes scooped in the plain, with nothing to mark them until you are right on them; where an ordinary paddock is ten miles across, and you may walk forty miles round the fence and see no soul, and have to cross into the next paddock and repeat the walk; where the sun is beating down like iron flails; where the ground underfoot is hot enough to burn the soles of the boots off the heat-rotted stitches ”

“ D’you think my brow is getting fevered now, Miss Ess?”
Ess laughed a little, but then frowned anxiously. It was just after he had been brought in, and Scottie was finishing re-tying the splints, after satisfying himself that the setting was all right. Aleck’s face was grey and drawn, and the sweat stood in heavy beads on his forehead, but he still talked cheerfully.
“Only thing wrong about this,” he said, in aggrieved tones, “is your being engaged to Ned. You ought to fall in love with me, and marry me and live happy ever after. That’s what the nurse always does in the very best books.” ”

“ But when they came into the hills and got to work on the cattle, Steve forgot everything else in the wild delight of tearing over the rough ground, heading and turning the mad rushes of the cattle, picking them out of the gullies and sending them flying headlong to join the bellowing mob. His horse was as clever a stockman as he was, and enjoyed the game to the full as much as he did himself. ”

“ Trooper Dan Mulcahy, the red-faced Irish constable and sole representative of the law in Connor’s Leap, left his peaceful dinner hurriedly and ran out into the drowsy heat at the sound of the first long yell and the roaring thunder of hoofs across the planks of the bridge that led to the town. Then he went straight to the cells and turned out two sleepy and half-sobered townsmen and pushed them into the road.
“Go home,” he said; “go home an’ sober yersilves. ‘Tis willin’ enough I am to help a man in disthress an’ put him where the shnakes won’t get at him. ”

“ One or two of the men were laughing, and Blazes stopped and glared at them.
“Isn’t a niece the same as a nephy?” said Darby the Bull, hesitatingly. “Only a woman instead o’ a man?”
“He said niece, didn’t he?” said Aleck Gault.
“He said niece right enough, and a niece is a woman right enough,” said Steve Knight. “Fancy Scottie with a niece!”
“Wonder what she’s like,” said Whip Thompson; “young or old, pretty or ugly.”
“Pretty,” snorted Blazes; “she would be pretty, bein’ a niece o’ his, wouldn’t she? ”

“ From the shade of her tent, Ess watched them stand so for ten minutes, and wondered why they idled there. The boss was not given to idling, she knew. Too heavy to walk or ride at a rapid pace, he relied on his trotters and his sulky to get him over the ground, and she rarely saw him that he was not tearing off somewhere or sitting with the reins gathered up ready to move on, while the horses gleamed with sweat, and their sides heaved quickly. ”

“ Steve’s not the man I take him for if that doesn’t wipe it off his mind as a dog licks a plate. It’s not so long since I was telling Steve that if he wanted to make it up with a woman who had wronged him, to ask her to forgive him. But Steve has more pride than a man ought to have by rights, or than he’s likely to find of use to him, and I doubt if ever he’d take that easy way out.”
“I was wrong, and I know it now,” said Ess, submissively. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have lied to me. ”