Ess went to her own room and wrote two notes. To Ned Gunliffe she wrote: “I have received your letter and enclosure. I have only to reply that I refuse utterly to have anything to do with a man who distrusts me or imagines me capable of the conduct you evidently do. I never wish to see you or hear from you again.—Ess Lincoln.”
To her uncle she wrote: “Will you, please, in Ned Gunliffe’s presence, show the enclosed note to Steve Knight, and tell him I wish him to say where and when he received it? You will remember my sending it to him by you when we were all in camp. I have just received it from Ned Gunliffe, and have told him I never want to see him again. Please say nothing of this to the others at the Ridge—only that Ned and I are no longer engaged.—Ess.”
She left the letters in the rack in the hall, knowing that they would probably be taken over next day.
Usually a man rode over to the coach road twice a week—once to leave the letter bag hanging on the roadside for the passing coach to pick up, and once to bring back the bag it dropped. The incoming bag was due next day, and a man would ride over with the Thunder Ridge letters, and would take hers with him.
Next day, when the man brought the mail in, she went to the hall where the boss was sorting it out, and got hers—she still wrote to and heard from her friends in the city—and heard the man say “The river’s coming down good an’ heavy, an’ they tell me there’s been a lot o’ rain out-back in the hills.”
The boss looked at him quietly. “And how high is it in the river?”
“Up to the seven-foot peg,” said the man, and the boss nodded and picked the Ridge letters out, and gave him Ess’s from the rack and sent him off.
“Rain in the hills,” said Ess, who had listened breathlessly to the conversation. “Does that mean we’ll get it here?”
The boss smiled at her sadly. “I’m afraid not, my dear. They often get rain up there, where we don’t get a drop. It’s a long way from here, and much higher you see. But if the river would rise another three foot, we might have it running up the billabongs. There’s an old channel that runs out for a dozen miles beyond the station here, and curves round and back to the river again. If the river rises high enough to flood that, we’d have a few hundred acres in grass soon after. But it’s just as likely to drop the three foot by morning as to rise it. Still, you know, we can hope—we can hope.”
“I do hope, oh, indeed I hope,” said Ess, earnestly. “And if it rose more than the three foot?”