First in the Field: A Story of New South Wales

by George Manville Fenn

Janet uttered a low sigh, and as Mrs Braydon turned to her wonderingly the poor girl fainted away.

Meanwhile, urged now as he had never been urged before, by voice and heel, Sorrel forgot his long morning’s ride, and stretching out like a greyhound skimmed over the soft turf like a swallow in its flight.

Nic rode on with his heart a prey to varying emotions. He knew perfectly well that the convict’s fate would be that of all unruly assigned servants. He had heard it from old Sam again and again,—how that if Jack did not behave well, he was sent by his master to another station, where he would have so many dozen lashes of the cat-o’-nine-tails and be sent back; while another time Joe, who had behaved ill at that next station, was sent across to the first. So the masters avoided the administration of punishment to their own men, but punished those of their neighbours. It was the rough-and-ready custom in the early days of the colony, and common enough for small offences. Where a convict servant’s offence became a crime, he was returned to the prisons—marked.

To Nic, then, it was horrible that the man for whom he had gradually grown to feel a warm sense of friendship should suffer this horrible indignity. It would be, he felt, an outrage; for he was as fully convinced as if he had been present that Leather had been maddened by Brookes’s ill usage until he struck him down.

The boy felt old as he galloped on in the direction of the Wattles Station. He had never been there, but he knew it lay some ten or a dozen miles away to the north, and he hoped to find it by riding on and on till he came upon flocks of sheep, and then going up some one or other of the eminences, and looking about till he caught sight of white buildings, which would be the place. This would come the easier from the fact that stations were built close to water, but high enough up to be beyond the reach of floods.

When he had gone three or four miles he began to repent not bringing Nibbler, who would, in all probability, have been there in his time, and consequently might take it for granted, when going in that direction, that his young master was aiming at this place. But in his excitement he had thought of nothing but getting over there; and faint, hungry and hot, he began now to find that he had done a foolish thing.

A chill ran through him at the idea of missing the place, and he was about to change his direction and ride up a hill to his left; when it suddenly struck him that after once starting he had done nothing in the way of guiding his horse, which kept right on in one direction, merely deviating to avoid great trees or patches of scrub.

Then he uttered a joyful cry, for gazing down he could see hoof marks faintly on the thick grass, and it dawned upon him that these were quite fresh, and the horse was following them as steadily as if going along a main road.

Elated by this he slackened the rein just sufficiently to feel the horse’s mouth, and left it to itself. And then it galloped in its easy, swinging pace, with its rider leaning forward, heart-sick where the footprints were invisible, and exultant as he caught sight of them again and again, after feeling that all was over and the trail entirely lost.

“If I only were clever as one of the blacks,” he thought. “Bungarolo, Rigar, or Damper would follow the faintest trail.”