The next day one more of his strayed cattle found his way home. The rest he never saw again. This was his first dead loss of any importance; unfortunately, it was not the last.
The brutes were demoralized by their excursion, and being active as deer they would jump over anything and stray.
Sometimes the vagrant was recovered—often he was found dead; and sometimes he went twenty miles and mingled with the huge herds of some Croesus, and was absorbed like a drop of water and lost to George Fielding. This was a bitter blow. This was not the way to make the thousand pounds.
“Better sell them all to the first comer, and then I shall see the end of my loss. I am not one of your lucky ones. I must not venture.”
A settler passed George's way driving a large herd of sheep and ten cows. George gave him a dinner and looked over his stock. “You have but few beasts for so many sheep,” said he.
The other assented.
“I could part with a few of mine to you if you were so minded.”
The other said he should be very glad, but he had no money to spare. Would George take sheep in exchange?
“Well,” drawled George, “I would rather it had been cash, but such as you and I must not make the road hard to one another. Sheep I'll take, but full value.”
The other was delighted, and nearly all George's bullocks became his for one hundred and fifty sheep.