Morley Roberts

“ Salmon's face darkened.
"I had Main up there," said Jim; "and he rode himself sore, and had the sheep up to feel their tails to see if they were fat. Come up yourself."
"I'm an old man, Mr. Ivett."
"None too old to make money and do your old enemy in the eye."
"So you knew we were against each other over that mine?"
"Who doesn't?" asked Ivett. "And I'll tell you another thing. Main is coming up on the fifteenth of October to say whether he'll foreclose or not. But he means to, anyway. Be up there before he comes. You'll never have so good a chance. ”

“ I want to go back."
"You can't," said Jim. "It's impossible. The creeks are roaring. Hear them!"
"I shall have rheumatism," said Salmon. "Oh, Mr. Ivett, take me in out of the wet."
Jim could have roared with laughter, but he held himself in.
"It's fifty miles to shelter; but you must get there by morning."
Salmon sobbed.
"Why did I come?" he asked.
"To make money."
"But I shall die."
"No, no," cried Jim. "This rain is worth tens of thousands of pounds to us. Every drop is a shilling. Main is up at my place chuckling. He knows what it's worth." ”

“ He was at his last fifty pounds, and the sky was brass and the forehead of the chief mortgagee was brass too.
The rainy season of the southern world had never come to Ivett; if it damped a dry skin on a fence it was all it did. Skins on dead sheep crackled; the live ones bored up against a hot breeze, nosing for water. But the tanks were empty and the wells about dried; the air was aflame; night was like day for incredible heat.
A month was yet to run before the mortgagees could foreclose, and Ivett had run it fine for his last chance. He called Harry up at midnight. ”

“ They were on horseback by the banks of the Willandra Billabong, up to the horses' withers in a cane-brake.
Jim was a long, thin, wire-built man, with a big hand, and he reached it out and clawed Harry by the shoulder-blade and clavicle. The youngster felt his bones crack, but he said nothing. Jim's mind was spread out over the plain, he was thinking at large in millions, and he never knew what a vice he set to work on the shoulder next him. ”

“ It was eight when he came to the heavier timber about the creeks nine miles north of Bulligal. He had been ten hours doing fifty miles, and his horse was almost done. It was now dark, and the rain lost nothing of its fervour; he wondered whether he could pass the creeks and get into Bulligal. He doubted it much; even by day the creeks running full must be dangerous. And just then his horse whinnied, and he saw a fire leap redly through some thin pine scrub. In two minutes he was shaking hands with Harry. But where was Salmon, or had the buggy returned empty? ”

“ I borrowed ten thousand and another five to make wells and dams and tanks, but I'm behind with the interest and Main is to foreclose in a month. If it rains I could get what I wanted, but it looks like a long drought, and the summer's coming on again."
"If it rains," said Salmon, "ah, yes; but it won't rain."
"It may."
"What do you want with me?" asked Salmon rather pettishly.
"I can make you a millionaire," said Jim.
"No," said Salmon, "but you might unmake me."
"Ah," cried Jim, "then I can double it. Main will boss New South Wales if he has the head to hold on. Why let him? ”

“ We have all this and the world. It only means digging our nails in deep enough to hold on."
They were running the billabong up towards the river. A billabong is an outlet from a river, a creek from it, not into it. There are few or none elsewhere than in Australia. When the Lachlan flooded and roared "a banker" some of its waters ran three hundred miles into the Ivetts' county. But they had not seen it yet: they doubted the word of the Conoble black fellows. Perhaps it never came down.
A good season preceded their squatting, and the remains of past rain lay in some water-holes still. ”

“ At first they lived in tents near Bulligal, and afterwards moved up beyond Mossgiel, across the Willandra, where they built a "tin hut." Their few men occupied a tent on the sand dune under the biggest pine. The horses were hobbled at night till they got time to fence in a horse paddock. The sheep were shepherded, but the cattle ran free between the rivers; their brand sometimes turned up a thousand miles away.
"If we can put in five years we shall be golden kings," said Jim.
"We can't," cried Harry. ”

“ Is it a very bad road?"
"You shall have it more comfortable than any man ever had it," swore Ivett, who was hugely delighted. "Start on the first of October; you can coach it up to Deniliquin; at Echuca I'll have a buggy and pair for you and a light wagon with a tent, and so on. I'll have you up to my desert dry and comfortable and sweet."
"Very well, Ivett," said Salmon, dropping the Mister, "I'll do it. But I dare say it'll be my death."
"It will finish Main," cried Jim. So they shook hands, and Ivett went to his lawyer's. ”

“ His blue eyes dilated: the pupils darkened them, he pulled his big hat down against the sun.
"I see all this white with cotton-bush, and it shall be white with jumbucks to eat it down. My boy, look at the salt-bush! thick, oh! thick and fat, and what matters grass? ”

“ Against the drought he dug wells with borrowed money. At eighty feet they struck brackish water that would support life but tasted foul. It held the ancient soakings of that world, and though sheep could drink it and the crows came for it, it sickened men. They began to dig huge tanks, and caught some sweet rain-water. Work hummed in the land: the track to Bulligal and Hay deepened and widened with Ivett's hired wagons. Far off [ [w:swagman|swagsmen}] heard talk of work at Ivett's, and some faced the strange barren wilderness of One Tree Plain with courage ”

“ A PAWNED KINGDOM
BY MORLEY ROBERTS
JIM IVETT took up the land, and his brother Harry came up country to him later. For Jim clawed out east and west and south and into the unknown north, and took out block after block in a Government map of part of New South Wales which was barren of printer's ink except for the phrase, "No permanent water." On the south he was bounded by the stations on the meandering river Lachlan; on the north-west he almost reached the Darling; then he stretch d out east nearly to the Bogan. Cotton bush and salt bush he measured in tens of thousands of acres ”