With the South-east Trades to back it up it was fighting desperately against the steadily advancing North-west monsoon, drying up, as it fought, every drop of moisture left from last Wet. There was not a blade of green grass within sight of the homestead, and everywhere dust whirled, and eddied, and danced, hurled all ways at once in the fight, or gathered itself into towering centrifugal columns, to speed hither and thither, obedient to the will of the elements.
Half the heavens seemed part of the Dry, and half part of the Wet: dusty blue to the south-east, and dark banks of clouds to the north-west, with a fierce beating sun at the zenith. Already the air was oppressive with electric disturbances, and Dan, fearing he would not get finished unless things were kept humming, went out-bush next morning, and the homestead became once more the hub of our universe—the south-east being branded from that centre. Every few days a mob was brought in, and branded, and disbanded, hours were spent on the stockyard fence; pack-teams were packed, unpacked, and repacked; and every day grew hotter and hotter, and every night more and more electric, and as the days went by we waited for the Fizzer, hungry for mail-matter, with a six weeks’ hunger.
When the Fizzer came in he came with his usual lusty shouting, but varied his greeting into a triumphant: “Broken the record this time, missus. Two bags as big as a house and a few et-cet-eras!” And presently he staggered towards us bent with the weight of a mighty mail. But a Fizzer without news would not have been our Fizzer, and as he staggered along we learned that Mac was coming out to clear the run of brumbies. “Be along in no time now,” the Fizzer shouted. “Fallen clean out with bullock-punching. Wouldn’t put his worst enemy to it. Going to tackle something that’ll take a bit of jumping round.” Then the mail-bags and et-cet-eras came down in successive thuds, and no one was better pleased with its detail than our Fizzer: fifty letters, sixty-nine papers, dozens of books and magazines, and parcels of garden cuttings.
“Last you for the rest of the year by the look of it,” the Fizzer declared later, finding us at the house walled in with a litter of mail-matter. Then he explained his interruption. “I’m going straight on at once,” he said “for me horses are none too good as it is, and the lads say there’s a bit of good grass at the nine-mile”, and, going out, we watched him set off.
“So long!” he shouted, as cheerily as ever, as he gathered his team together. “Half-past eleven four weeks.”
But already the Fizzer’s shoulders were setting square, for the last trip of the “dry” was before him—the trip that perished the last mailman—and his horses were none too good.
“Good luck!” we called after him. “Early showers!” and there was a note in our voices brought there by the thought of that gaunt figure at the well—rattling its dicebox as it waited for one more round with our Fizzer: a note that brought a bright look into the Fizzer’s face, as with an answering shout of farewell he rode on into the forest. And watching the sturdy figure, and knowing the luck of our Fizzer—that luck that had given him his fearless judgment and steadfast, courageous spirit—we felt his cheery “Half-past eleven four weeks” must be prophetic, in spite of those long dry stages, with their beating heat and parching dust eddies—stages eked out now at each end with other stages of “bad going.”
“Half-past eleven four weeks,” the Fizzer had said; and as we returned to our mail-matter, knowing what it meant to our Fizzer, we looked anxiously to the northwest, and “hoped the showers” would come before the “return trip of the Downs.”
In addition to the fifty letters for the house, the Fizzer had left two others at the homestead to be called for—one being addressed to Victoria Downs (over two hundred miles to our west), and the other to—
F. Brown, Esq.,
In Charge of Stud Bulls going West
Via northern territory.