“All in the day’s work,” he said, and turned to the sheep again. “Get well out from the dust,” he shouted to her, “and canter till you’re clear.”
The spot selected for the night’s camp was by an old well, nearly a mile wide of the line of march the sheep were taking to the hills.
The well was almost dry, and would provide barely enough water for the horses and men, and when Blazes got up the first bucketful, he looked at it ruefully.
“Seems ter me we won’t need to put no tea in that,” he remarked; “pretty near thick enough an’ black enough as it is.”
Ess inspected it gravely. “I should rather say it will need a lot of tea in it, to kill the taste it looks like having,” she said.
Ess and Blazes were acting advance guard, and none of the others had arrived, although, far off on the horizon, they could see the dust cloud that heralded the coming of the sheep. Blazes had brought a load of wood from the last camp—there was not a stick or a chip or twig in sight on the glaring, sun-scorched plain round the well—and immediately got to work preparing a meal for the riders, who would arrive later on. Ess insisted on helping him, although he tried to protest. “I dunno wot your uncle would say to see you stabbin’ round wi’ that knife,” he urged. “Choppin’ up sheep carcases ain’t no work for a girl.”
“There are some parts of the world—and even of Australia, Blazes—where they’d tell you that, and all sorts of cooking, was a woman’s work, and decidedly not a man’s.”
“Mebbe,” said Blazes. “But ’tain’t the way ’ere, an’ I don’t see it’s right. I can easy manage myself. I’d ’ave brought my ’elper along, but knowin’ how stiff the sheep was, I knew they’d be glad of ’im there to give a ’and, so I said as I’d do without ’im. But I didn’t think you’d go messin’ yourself up like this.”
By the time the vanguard of the sheep was abreast of them out on the plain, the first of the meal was ready for the men, who began to canter out from the moving dust cloud towards them, and for the next hour they were fed in relays, and pile after pile of chops and pot after pot of tea vanished rapidly.
Ess’s face was scorching and her knees trembling under her when her uncle and Steve Knight rode up.