“It’s a peety ye hadna been comin’ tae it at better times,” said Scottie. “But come a sup o’ rain ye’ll see it bonnie enough yet.”
They drove in silence for another hour along the edge of the hill, and then turned in round the shoulder of one of the spurs and trotted steadily into a narrowing valley. The road crept into the side of the valley, and presently the shuffling thuds of the horses’ hoof-beats in the dust gave way to sharp clicks and rattles as the road climbed gradually up the side of the hill. Beyond the head of the valley the hills rose blue and hazy, and Ess sighed with relief.
“I’m so glad the house is up in the hills,” she said. “They’re bare enough near at hand, but the distance at least looks better than that dreadful flat. But how still and dead everything seems.”
A high fence came creeping down the hill to join the road, and where it crossed their path Scottie pulled up his horses and jumped down to open the gate.
“That’s the last o’ the out paddocks,” he said, when he had led the horses through and closed the gate, and climbed to his seat again. A heap of whitened bones with a horned skull amongst them lay just inside the gate, and Ess pointed to it. “More dead things,” she said; “we seem to have seen nothing but dead things all the way. Why is this fence so much higher than the others we passed, uncle?”
“Tae keep the wild dogs—dingoes—off the flats. They’re murder amongst the sheep, but they’ll no tackle the cattle. They’ll hae a merry time if we hae t’ shift the sheep up here.”
“Murder and killing and dead things,” said the girl. “It’s worse than a battlefield.”
“Maist o’ the outside country is a battlefield, lass,” said Scottie. “We’re battlin’ wi’ the drought or the floods, or bush an’ grass fires, or starvation an’ disease, or rabbits an’ dingoes, or ae thing an’ anither near a’ the time. Up here a man pits his brain an’ his money, an’ whiles his life, against Natur’ an’ a’ her warks. There’s nae bullets nor bay’nits, bit it’s juist steady battle a’ the same.”
He had lapsed into the broader speech he always used when he was moved to deeper feelings or excitement, and the girl glanced at his set face curiously.
“I wonder you get men to face it,” she said, “when there are easier lives to be lived elsewhere.”