As the ground came to a rolling hollow, Tom set off at a good pace, and away they went, galloping beautifully along the soft earth trail, galloping, galloping, putting the miles between them and Wandoo and women and care. They both rode in a kind of passion for riding, for hurling themselves ahead down the new road. To be men out alone in the world, away from the women and the dead stone of trouble.
They reached the river hours before Rackett's turn-out. Fording it they rode into the mushroom settlement, a string of slab cabins with shingle roofs and calico window-panes—or else shuttered-up windows. The stoves were outside the chimney-less cabins, under brush shelters. One such "kitchen," a fore-runner, had already a roof of flattened-out, rusty tin cans.
But it was a cosy, canny nook, homely, nestling down in the golden corner of the earth, the mimosa in bloom by the river. And it was beautifully ephemeral. As transient, as casual as the bushes themselves.
Jack for the moment had a dread of solid houses of brick and stone and permanence. There was always horror somewhere inside them.
He wanted the empty, timeless Australia, with nooks like this of flimsy wooden cabins by a river with a wattle bush.
There was one older, white-washed cabin with vine trellises.
"That's Paddy's," said Tom. "He grows grapes, and makes wine out of the little black ones. But the muscats is best. I'm not keen on wine, anyhow. Something a drop more warming."
Jack was amazed at the good Tom. He had never known him to drink.
"There's nobody about," said Jack, as they rode up the incline between the straggling cabins.
"All asleep," said Tom.