“Does it sound different now to you?” said Steve. “Hark—did you ever hear a crowd of men in the distance cheering ... like that ‘Hoo-ray-ay-ay’?”
“It is,” she said, “exactly that. And we’ve won—we’ve won.”
And over the hill a stronger puff of wind sighed gently, and brought the pulsing waves of sound back clear to them—“ray-ay-ay-ay.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“Connor’s Leap” the little township called itself, and was deeply indignant with the men of Coolongolong for twisting it into “Gone-Asleep”—a name which stuck more closely than its own, and had more than once been the gage of battle between the men of the town and the men of the stations.
And at any rate there was to be little enough sleep this night for the township or its inhabitants, for it was Saturday night and the station men were up and out in full force—the men from Coolongolong and its back station of Thunder Ridge, and even the boundary riders from the lonely huts on the back paddocks.
The sheep were in the hills, and Sinclair, the boss, had said that the men had earned a night’s spree, and had given them leave for the trip to Connor’s Leap.
Trooper Dan Mulcahy, the red-faced Irish constable and sole representative of the law in Connor’s Leap, left his peaceful dinner hurriedly and ran out into the drowsy heat at the sound of the first long yell and the roaring thunder of hoofs across the planks of the bridge that led to the town. Then he went straight to the cells and turned out two sleepy and half-sobered townsmen and pushed them into the road.
“Go home,” he said; “go home an’ sober yersilves. ‘Tis willin’ enough I am to help a man in disthress an’ put him where the shnakes won’t get at him. But it’s no room there’ll be for the likes o’ you this night, wid the station bhoys ragin’ through the township like flame through a grass paddock. Go home wid ye, an’ don’t be sthandin’ there like a pair o’ trussed owls wi’ th’ blind staggers. D’ye take this for an Orphin Asyl-i-um or a Soberin’ Home for Insoberables?”