Near an old slab cottage adjacent to the Pitt Town Common, Farmer Wigway was drawing rails. His movements were deliberate—deliberate as though he had an assurance that eternity was before him, and he had to put in time. He was well seconded in this endeavour by his team of bullocks, who stopped to ruminate on the vanities of life or some cognate reflection at every step.
Farmer Wigway swore at the oxen in a fatherly way to wake them up occasionally to mundane affairs, and the procession moved on.
The noise of wheels made by a light trap could be heard coming along the ridge, and at once Farmer Wigway stopped to listen. Not that he was a very curious man, but buggies were rare in that part of the Common. None of the neighbours owned one, and the stopping to speculate as to who it might be “put in more time,” and so the end of life was served.
The sound of a trotting horse and light running wheels came nearer and nearer, along the ridge, through the ironbarks, then turned off down the spur into the box-tree flat that led to Farmer Wigway’s. On it came, and before Mr. Wigway had had half the necessary time to study the new development in all its bearings and possibilities, a buggy, driven by a middle-aged man with bushy whiskers, who had a lad seated by his side, pulled up before him.
“Is this the track to Catti Creek?”
“That depends,” answered Wigway, after giving the matter due consideration, “what part of the Creek you want.”
“I’m trying to hunt up some forfeited selections out that way. They tell me at the Lands Office there are several of them.”
“So there are, and much good may they do you! The country is very rough. I should leave that trap behind if I was you, and if you like, one of my boys shall go and show you the way.”
The stranger seemed to fall in with this proposal readily, for, leaving the lad and trap at the house, he soon set off under the guidance of young Mick Wigway. But, strange to say, though they had a map of the parish, and Mick knew every nook and corner of it, it was sundown before they got back, and the gentleman with the bushy whiskers had not seen half what he wanted to see.
He found no difficulty in arranging to stop the night, and that evening was given up to ’possum shooting, in which the stranger professed an almost childish delight.