“That’s the trick, is it? You just put the yearlings through the yard, and then tackle the two-year-olds.” he commented, finding that after a run through the Alphabet we had settled down to the first pages of Bett-Bett’s discarded Primer.
Jack, having “roped all the two-year-olds” in that first lesson, spent all evening handling them, and the Quarters looked on as he tested their tempers, for although most proved willing, yet a few were tricky or obstinate. All evening he sat, poring over the tiny Primer, amid a buzzing swarm of mosquitoes, with the doggedness all gone from his face, and in its place the light of a fair fight, and, to no one’s surprise, in the morning we heard that “all the two-year-olds came at his call.”
Another lesson at the midday spell roped most of the three-year-olds, and another evening brought them under the Quiet Stockman’s will, and then in a few more days the four-year-olds and upwards had been dealt with, and the Primer was exhausted.
“Got through with the first draught, anyway,” Dan commented, and, no Second Book being at our service we settled down to Kipling’s “Just-So Stories.” Then the billabong “petering out” altogether, and the soakage threatening to follow suit, its yield was kept strictly for personal needs, and Dan and the Măluka gave their attention to the elements.
“Something’s got to happen soon,” they declared, as we gasped in the stifling calm that had now settled down upon the Territory; for gradually the skirmishings had ceased, and the two great giants of the Territory element met in the centre of the arena for their last desperate struggle. Knee to knee they were standing, marvellously well matched this year, each striving his utmost, and yet neither giving nor taking an inch; and as they strove their satellites watched breathlessly.
Even the Willy-Willys had lain down to watch the silent struggle, and Dan, finding himself left entirely without occupation, “feared he would be taking to book-learning soon if something didn’t happen!” “Never knew the showers so late,” he growled; and the homestead was inclined to agree that it was the “dead-finish”; but remembering that even then our Fizzer was battling through that last stage of the Dry, we were silent, and Dan remembering also, devoted himself to the “missus,” she being also a person of leisure now the Willy-Willys were at rest.
For hours we pitched near the restful green of the melon-beds, and as we pitched the Măluka ran fencing wires through two sides of the garden fence, while Tiddle’ums and Bett-Bett, hovering about him, adapted themselves to the new order of things, finding the line the goats had to stop at no longer imaginary. And as the fence grew, Dan lent a hand here and there, the rejected and the staff indulged in glorious washing-days among the lilies of the Reach; Cheon haunted the vegetable patch like a disconsolate ghost; while Billy Muck, the rainmaker, hovered bat-like over his melons, lending a hand also with the fence when called upon. As Cheon mourned, his garden also mourned, but when the melons began to mourn, at the Măluka’s suggestion, Billy visited the Reach with two buckets, and his usual following of dogs, and after a two-mile walk gave the melons a drink.