“Every foot it rose would flood hundreds of acres more of my paddocks,” said the boss. “There’s another billabong further over towards Thunder Ridge that begins to flow even before this ten-foot mark is covered. Twelve or fourteen foot would mean thousands of acres flooded, and it might keep the sheep going quite a spell longer. But twelve foot and over is running a banker, and we can hardly expect that.”
It was evident however that hope had risen in his heart, for twice that day he sent a man to the river to see how it was, and twice the report came back—“Still rising.”
The next time the old man had his own sulky brought round, and Ess asked that she might go with him. They drove fast, the boss flicking constantly at the horses, and when they dodged through the trees and swept up the slope of the river banks and halted abruptly within a pebble toss of the steep cliff that dropped to the water’s edge, Ess looked eagerly at the crawling brown flood, and then—for that told her nothing of what she wished to know—at the boss’s face.
“It’s dropped a couple of inches,” he said quietly, and Ess could not understand his calm in the face of such possibilities as hung on the rise or fall of inches of water. “A couple of inches,” he repeated, “since the last man was here, and that’s only a few hours ago. I’m afraid it’s only been a heavy shower in the hills, and it’s over.”
He pointed out the pegs he had had driven deep in the steep bank opposite, so that he could mark the rise and fall, and he drove along the bank amongst the trees to show her the entrance to the billabong he had spoken of. “You’ll notice that the banks are several feet higher than the plains beyond,” he said, “and here at the entrance to the billabong there’s a cut out of this embankment. When the water rises to the level of the cut, it overflows, and wanders round the depression in the plain till it finds its way back lower down.”
“Wait,” said Ess, and jumped down and ran to the break in the bank, and slid down into it, and stooped and laid something in the centre of it, and clambered out again and ran back to the sulky.
“You’ll think me horribly childish, or foolish, or superstitious, or something,” she said breathlessly, “when I tell you what I was doing. It was a little charm I had, something that was given to me by a very dear friend years ago, and has always been dear to me. It’s a luck-bringer, and I’ve laid it there with a little wish that it will bring the water up and up, and flooding over it, and out across the plains.”
But there was no laughter in the eyes of the boss as he looked at her, only his unspoken thanks for the thought and the wish.
They drove back in silence, each busy with their own thoughts.
And next morning Ess was wakened by a shrill coo-ee and a rattling at the door just after daybreak. She heard opening and shutting doors and the boss’s voice at the front door.