The Pioneers

by Katharine Susannah Prichard

He lost no chances of letting Thad think there was nothing to hide in his movements. He returned to the Black Bull a few moments later, and Davey went on to Hegarty's.

Teddy, Steve's black boy, and the dogs, watched the cattle on the edge of the road.

Conal and Davey spent few words on each other. They went their separate ways by mutual consent, avoiding the occasions that mean association or talking.

On the road during the first days, when the cattle were fresh, they had swung their stock-whips, keeping the mob going, like one man. There had been headlong gallops after breakaways, the thrashing-in of stragglers, the crowding of beasts up steep, slippery hillsides with curses and yelping dogs, the watchfulness that driving a mob of wild cattle short-handed meant; nerves and muscles were stretched to the job in hand.

When a halt was made the first night, the mob was ringed with brushwood fires. The wildest of the scrub-bred warrigals, broken by the long day's steady trotting, hustled up quietly against Maitland's well-fattened store beasts. Conal and the black boy took the first watch, Davey and Conal the second, and Davey and the black the third.

Ordinarily the fires flaring against the darkness were enough to keep the cattle in a bunch during the night. Sometimes when a fire died down and there was a longer gap in the links between the fires, a restless heifer or steer made a dash for it, and the watcher had to be quick with a burning bough, brandish and whack it about the head of the runaway before the beast with a moaning bellow and roar turned back to the mob again.

It was on the second night out when Conal was sleeping and Davey and Teddy watching, that the black, stupid with sleep, let his fires go down, and a red bull and half a dozen cows broke through the ring. It looked like a stampede. Davey dashed after the bull. Conal's dog, Sally, alert at the first rush of the cattle's movement, leapt after them. Her long, yellow shape flashed like a streak of lightning in the wan light over the plains. She raced level with the leader's sleek shoulder and laid her teeth in his hide, wheeled him, snapping at his nose and dragging him by it, until he turned in toward the mob again. Davey lashed the cows after the leader. Sally flew round them, a yellow fury, yelping and snapping. Conal, half-asleep, flung on to his horse, and laid about him with his whip, cursing. He and the black boy had all their work cut out to keep the mob steady.

It was a near thing, and Conal used his tongue pretty freely when he talked of it. He had had very little to say to Davey, ordinarily. The memory of that evening in the kitchen at Steve's rankled. It bred a sense of resentment and secret antagonism which he took less pains to hide, from that night. He used his lungs to curse Teddy and the red steer, but did not talk to Davey unless he had something to say about the cattle or the road. From dawn till sunset they rode silently within a dozen yards of each other.

When they came within easy distance of Rane and the lake settlements they kept the mob moving all night. The Snowy was swollen with recent rains when they came to it; but Conal had set his mind on crossing without delay.

He rushed the mob down the incline to the river, and drove it into the swirling stream. Whip thongs swung together ripped and racked in the clear air. The struggling, terrified beasts were crowded, with no more than their heads above water, against the strong currents of the stream until, with rattling and clashing horns, they clambered up the bank on the further side.