Rolf Boldrewood

“ So life again flowed on at Rainbar in a monotonous round of daily duties, which the increasing severity of the season rendered tedious and troublesome, but not exciting. The weak cattle were dragged out of waterholes and creeks; the locust hordes of travelling sheep watched and followed, lest they cleared off the poor remains of the dying pasture. Musters were in abeyance until ‘the rain came.’ The drought still remained unbroken. The great canal remained as innocent of water, and as unlikely to be filled, as if it had been constructed between the tanks and the desert gate of Aden. ”

“ He rose early, which, in the bush, means at or before sunrise. Glorious, in good sooth, is the early morn in the Australian wilds. Cool, clear, invigorating to the inmost nerve. Cloudless for the most part, and, before the mid-day sun asserts his might, perfect as a poet’s dream of the serene untempested heavens of the isles of the blest. Granted that, at cattle stations in the far interior, it is very difficult to know what to do in the way of work, recreation, or exercise, when you are up. ”

“ Can anything be more dreamily lovely than that pale amber sky over which the dark blue shadow is creeping from the headland? What can surpass the softly-gliding magical motion with so much swiftness and so little effort? I don’t wonder that a sea life has always gathered to it so much poetry and romance. I fell in love with a pirate once.’
‘With a pirate? Where?’ exclaimed Ernest, surprised out of the placid enjoyment which pervaded the whole party.
‘In a book, of course,’ answered she; ‘you didn’t think we entertained such gallant rovers at Morahmee, except, like angels, unawares? ”

“ Merlin.
‘What do you think of society on the diggings?’ said Mr. Bright to Ernest; ‘hardly what you would have expected?’
‘It is utterly wonderful,’ said Ernest. ‘I am perfectly amazed at the order and decorum which everywhere prevail, and even at the elegant and enjoyable party to-night―so many nice people you seem to have.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Merlin, ‘nothing is more wonderful, as you say. There are so many extremely nice people here. So well worth knowing. People who have such noble, disinterested views, eh, Greffham?’
‘I quite agree with you,’ answered that gentleman. ”

“ Famous horse of yours, Greffham, nothing like him in Turonia.’
‘Why, Merlin,’ said Bright, ‘what a heavenly temper we are in this morning! Biliary secretions unusually right, I should say!’
‘Of course, Bright, of course; there’s no credit to a jolly, sanguine fellow like you for being in a good temper. Nature in your case has done so much that it would be the basest ingratitude if you did not second her efforts. ”

“ Neuchamp’s constructive faculties had been busy with projects for improving the accepted mode of drafting cattle. Much to his own satisfaction, he had arranged his system beforehand. He was confident that it would work without a hitch. His humane tendencies had been outraged by the unsparing use of the ruthless stockwhip, keenest when unheard, as well as of the long, pliant, wattle-drafting stick, not apparently a weapon upon which to depend your life, but in skilful hands―and such are not wanting at every important muster―sufficient to drop, as by a thunderbolt, the most formidable beast. ”

“ The more he saw of girls generally,―and he did not rate those Australian young ladies, who had equal advantages of training, society, and culture, at a jot below their English contemporaries,―the more deep became his conviction of her unusual range of thought, depth of feeling, and purity of mind. As the dry, cool wind of the Australian autumn wailed and sighed over the wide gray plains, and around the useful but unromantic edifices which went to make up the homestead at Rainbar, Ernest began to feel a somewhat intensified, intolerable sensation of intellectual loneliness. ”

“ Slowly on that eve dropped the sun behind the rugged “divide” which separates the Paroo and Warrego, leaving the rosy-lipped hills smiling adieu till the morrow. The frown on the face of the mulga-studded lowlands deepened, and the wrinkles harshly marked by many a tributary creek bore witness to its sorrow for the dying day.
‘The weather was simply perfect. We anticipated a successful shearing. The mornings were crisp as lettuces, the succeeding portion of the day exhilarating to the degree of making conscious existence a pleasure of the highest order. ”

“ Nature raises him a not ungraceful mausoleum of marsh-mallow. Farewell they of the unstoried herd! Like him, all unknowing of the base pangs of fear―like him, sped with a bullet through his brain, the only true death for a hero!
After the pleasant relaxation of breakfast, one of the few comparatively civilised meals encountered during the last fortnight, pipes were lit, stockwhips greased and garnished with resplendent crackers, and all hands strolled in leisurely fashion towards the stockyard. This enclosure presented on approach a tossing sea, ‘a vision of horns,’ most literally. ”

“ Bright was unusually confined to his bank. Merlin disappeared on the trail of a cattle-stealer long and urgently ‘wanted,’ while every other member of the waif and stray corps, from the police magistrate to Horace Sherrington, seemed to have been snatched away by the Demon of Industry, or otherwise absorbed by abnormal influences. Long, dismal, and cheerless passed the hours of one of those broken, objectless days that are so peculiarly, unaccountably depressing. It was long―very long―since Ernest had spent so miserable a day. ”

“ For mysterious reasons he had apparently decided that he, Ernest, was not fit to run alone, in a pastoral sense, for another year at least. Mr. Neuchamp steeled himself to attack his provisional guardian on this point on the very next opportunity. He would enlist Antonia upon his side. He would recapitulate the reasons which caused him to consider himself the equal in experience of some pastoralists who had been all their lives in the country. Surely a man did not come ten thousand miles across the sea to a new, not to say unexplored country, to spend his life in looking on! ”

“ The abiding in the wilderness is nothing; nay, it has positively beneficial and ennobling tendencies. But this sordid imprisonment of the mind! No books, no companions, no ideas; for how can there be a circulation of ideas if reading, conversation, reflection be wanting?―the whole mind bent and fettered to the level of the branding pen and the cattle market―the smallest outlay affording a glimpse of the heaven of Art and Literature churlishly denied, lest a few broad pieces escape the all-gathering muck-rake. ”

“ When your work’s done with cattle, it’s done; but with sheep it never stops―winter and summer―all the year round.’
‘Well, I must say I share your views about sheep, Charley,’ said Mr. Neuchamp; ‘it’s the most unending grind that I know. Cattle work has the advantage of being more romantic and exciting when you are engaged in it, and of coming to a definite conclusion some time or other, when you can refresh your wearied senses. ”

“ Levison looked Ernest ‘straight in the eye’ with his own singularly clear, penetrating gaze. ‘I hold with you in that,’ he said at length; ‘nothing like a man who acts on his own reason, and sticks to it. He may be right, or he may be wrong, but he’ll come out better in the long run than any fellow that follows the wind wherever it blows. ”

“ Ernest felt each item of guilty extravagance arise and arraign him separately, as Mr. Levison, with judicial enumeration, went on ticking off his pecuniary sins. In one of these lightning flashes of self-accusation with which conscience favours erring man, he realised the difference of his position from what it would have been if he had doggedly adhered to the scale of non-expenditure which he had found at Rainbar, and had retained the proceeds of his drafts of cattle with which to pay off his purchase-money, or re-invest in stores at the tempting tariff of the day. ”

“ Neuchamp’s equable habitude of mind had reasserted itself.
They had not been long occupied with this fascinating exercise, wonderfully suited to so many shades of character, when Greffham lounged in, calm and insouciant, as usual. At the first opening in the game he took his favourite cue and played his usually cool and occasionally brilliant game. If he had been in the saddle the long day through, no trace of more than ordinary exercise or excitement was visible in the soigné attire, which seemed a part of the man’s being, or on his calm, impassive features. ”

“ Neuchamp thought he had never seen such an assemblage of intelligent-looking men. Evidently the flower of the working classes, while from all the trades and professions a large proportion had been lured to Turonia by the golden possibilities of the great rush. What amazed Ernest chiefly was the astonishing order and polite behaviour of this vast concourse of people, containing presumably the ruffianism of all lands under the sun. ”

“ He had since found that the owner of the large herd which Mr. Levison had purchased, as another buyer would have bought a team of bullocks or a flock of sheep, had been compelled to sell on account of the sudden influx of miners upon his run. Gold―the healer, the benefactor, the deliverer, the slayer, the betrayer, the enslaver of mankind in every age, in every clime―had been discovered in the vicinity of the long-silent peaceful valleys in which Abel Drifter’s cattle had roamed for more than a generation. ”

“ The dance was not a particularly short one. Ernest was in reasonably good training after his up-country experience, and Antonia was one of those rare―too rare danseuses that unite in perfection time, pace, grace, and staying power. She could fly down the crowded ballroom properly supported by a partner de la première force, halt, turn, glide in and amid the labyrinth of dancers, without thought or question of collision. ”

“ But when all the calves were branded up, so completely that no more work, in that direction, could be done until more calves were born,―when all the stragglers were got in, and there were no musters to attend; as the days grew longer, the sun hotter, the whole routine more uniform and monotonous,―life commenced to be burdensome to Ernest Neuchamp. ”

“ Norval, leisurely boiling the evening camp kettle, the while watching his flock peacefully nibbling towards the yard, is thunderstruck to see those splendid wethers, filled with salt-bush and water, suddenly sundered as if by a red streak of lightning, and the division farthest from him sent across the plain racing for their lives, with the devil himself whipping in. ”

“ After a voyage of discovery round the yard at full speed, they return, best pace, into the lane, where they are permitted to calm themselves before the next attempt. When it is made, they behave better, though all the while keeping the drafters incessantly popping at the fence by truculent charges. One hand is stationed in the pound to pass the cattle through, where a gate is opened,―no sinecure, with this class of cattle, their rage and desperation being by this time beyond all bounds. Many a man has lost his life in performing this apparently simple task. ”

“ Behind them is a great herd of mixed cattle, of which they are the advanced guard. There are so many of them that the ‘tail’ or rear is not at present visible. From the increasing whip volleys, the barking of dogs, and the shouts and cries of men, it would appear that the ‘tail’ is not actuated by the same lofty feelings of pride and courage which mark the ‘head’ of the column that has just dashed into camp in such distinguished fashion.
‘My word!’ said Charley Banks, ‘that’s something like a mob! What a lot of rattling bullocks, shaking fat too; this is my sort of cattle run ”

“ Levison, old man muster long a Boocalthra Lake.’ The ‘rager’ is old, weak, and crippled now. The time has passed when he could tread the war-path alone. He will not leave his comrades now. He labours along painfully, but on the grand old visage is stamped indelibly the ‘hall-mark’ of courage, the possession of which he shares with the monarchs of mortality. Doubt not that he will reach the yard, and in that enclosure defy menaces, shouts, blows from the unerring waddy, from the stockman’s fire-tailed whips. ”

“ The herd burst after him like a charge of Cossacks. As if by magic, the stockmen form in line, and without a word of warning or command each man stands in his proper place. An advance in line is made upon the flying squadron. Yells, oaths, sticks, and lumps of clay are used to expedite the progress of the maddened animals towards the smaller yards. The leaders beholding a gate, recognise a trap and essay to turn. Vain hope! They are doomed to blind progression like the leaders of a democracy. ”