"Done," said I, and dragged the moke home.
We called him Napoleon Bonaparte, and stood looking at him that evening, telling each other he wasn't too bad at all. The old, old saggy-kneed animal would look "noble" when he picked up a bit; he showed quality, didn't he now? in spite of his age—and so forth, until, our eyes meeting, we burst out laughing, with a simultaneous exclamation, "'On Our Selection' to the life."
We found the old chap would eat anything, being used to kids petting him; so we filled him up with odds and ends of porridge, cabbage stalks, bread, spud peelings, and so on, and, strange to say, he did pick up. He was a whale on separated milk, and got plenty of it. Anyway, the poor old fellow carried the cream (attached to his back by a weird contrivance of cornbags and rope) for two years, so he paid for himself. Then he got sick and developed a booming cough—a very curfew, tolling the knell of Bona-parting.
I called in a bloke to look at him.
"Oh," says he: "it's on'y gripes. Give 'im a good 'earty kick in the guts. That'll settle 'im."
I didn't try the recipe, and poor old Boney settled himself that night—in the cowyard; and I had to cut him up and drag him away in sections for cremation.
What sickening shocks we did have that year, to be sure! Our first cheque was sixteen shilings for the month, after share-money and separator instalment were deducted. Then the long-suffering storekeeper stopped credit, and for a while we lived on what we could grow, with scrub turkey, and once or twice bandicoot. The latter weren't bad, in fact, very palatable; but they looked ratty. The Government remitted the year's rent, but bank interest and rates had to be met; and my biggest cheque for the year was £8. Oh, it was a daisy time! However, my cows had all had heifer calves; I brought them safely past weaning point, and got £4 a head for them on the top of a risen market that the week after was fallen to £2. This was one of the rare strokes of luck I have had, and paid two-thirds of Old Store's account, renewing credit.
In October a daughter was born to us, who, thanks to the dreadful climate (whites can't live up here, you know) hasn't had a day's sickness yet! In December my young heifers calved, and the cheques each month from the factory increased, so that I got clear of debt, and actually felt what having a few pounds in the bank was like. I managed to keep the 1917 crop of calves. It was a good year.
In 1918 things went swimmingly again, but a plague of caterpillars ate me out, and I lost half the youngsters, but still I crept ahead a bit financially. In June my son and heir made his appearance. Another miserably bright, bonny, rosy-cheeked victim of the climate. At the end of the year Hood had a look at my timber, and offered to cart logs to the mill, and haul the resulting sawn timber out again if I paid for cutting the logs up; he to charge cartage as a cash deposit to me on my standing timber. I jumped at the chance, for, lo! here was a new house for us. I could just manage to scrape enough cash together to pay for cutting at the mill. In February, 1919, I got the house up, paying for its erection with two young heifers.
Now we had indeed turned the corner, and could begin to believe that our struggling days were really behind us. A month or two later Hood, who had shifted out close to us, made a proposal to join forces: I to look after the cows, of which he had a decent herd; he to work his bullocks; all proceeds to be pooled and shared.