Then silently they all turned to the sheep-tallying.
V
Jack was still sewing sacks. It was afternoon. He listened for the sound of the shay, though he did not expect it until nightfall at least.
His ear, training to the Australian alertness, began to detect unusual sounds. Or perhaps it was not his ear. The old bushman seems to have developed a further faculty, a psychic faculty of "sensing" some unusual disturbance in the atmosphere, and reading it. Jack was a very new Australian. Yet he had become aware of this faculty in Tom, and he wanted it for himself. He wanted to be able to hear the inaudible, like a sort of clair-audience.
All he could hear was the audible: and all he could see was the visible. The children were playing in the yard: he could see them in the dust. Mrs. Ellis was still at the wash-tub: he saw the steam. Katie was upstairs: he had seen her catching a hornet in the window. The men were out ploughing, the horses were away. The pigs were walking round grunting, the cows and poultry were all in the paddock. Gran never made a sound, unless she suddenly appeared on the scene like the Lord in Judgment. And Dr. Rackett was always quiet: often uncannily so.
It was still rainy season, but a warm, mellow, sleepy afternoon, with no real sound at all. He got up and stood on the threshold to stretch himself. And there, coming by the grain-shed, he saw a little cortege in which the first individual he distinguished was Red Easu.
"Go in," shouted Red, "and tell A'nt as Herberts had an accident, and we're bringin' him in."
Sure enough, they were carrying a man on a gate.
Mrs. Ellis clicked:
"Tt-tt-tt-tt-tt! They run to us when they're in trouble." But she went at once to the linen closet, and on into the living room.