“H’m,” said her father. “No, I won’t come out, I think Jim and Murty can manage without me; and Green and I are up to our eyes in the books. Take care of yourself, my daughter.” He returned to the society of the warlike Green, while Norah raced across to the stables.
A rather small lad of sixteen, a newcomer whom Murty was endeavouring to train in the place of one of the enlisted stockmen, was trying to saddle Jim’s big bay, Garryowen—an attempt easily defeated by Garryowen by the simple process of walking round and round him. Norah came to his assistance, and the horses were ready by the time Jim and Wally, clad in suits of blue dungaree, ran over from the house.
“Good girl,” said Jim, well understanding that the new boy would not have finished the task unaided. He dashed into the harness-room, returning with two coils of strong rope, which he tied firmly to his saddle. Norah and Wally were already mounted and out of the stable-yard.
There was a keen westerly wind in their faces as they cantered steadily across the paddocks. Billabong was looking its worst; the drought had laid heavy hands upon it, and its beauty had vanished. On every side the plains stretched away, broken here and there by belts of timber or by the long, grey, snake-like lines of fencing. The trees were the only green thing visible, since Australian forest trees do not shed their leaves; but they looked old and faded, and here and there a dead one stood grey and lonely, like a gaunt sentinel. Grey too were the plains; their withered grass merged into the one dull colour. It was sparse and dry; even though the season was winter, a little cloud of dust followed the riders’ track.
They crossed the river by a rough log bridge, built by Mr. Linton and his men from trees felled by the stream. The dry logs clattered under the horses’ feet. Looking up and down stream the water showed only a shrunken remnant of its usual width, with boggy patches of half-dried mud between the thin trickle and the dusty banks, where withered docks reared gaunt brown stems. Even the riverside was dull and lifeless. But the wattle-trees, bravely defying the drought, already showed among their dark-green masses of foliage the buds that hinted at the spring-time shower of gold.
“This time last year,” said Jim, “the river came down in flood, and all but washed this bridge away.”
“It doesn’t look much like a flood now,” Wally remarked, surveying the apology for a river with disfavour.
“No—it’s hard to imagine that it was over the banks and half across these paddocks. By Jove, we had a busy time!” Jim said, reminiscently. “It came down quite suddenly; it was pretty high to begin with, and then a big storm brought a lot of snow off the mountains, and whish! down came the old river. We had sheep in these paddocks, and saving them wasn’t an easy job. Sheep are such fools.”
“Sheep and turkey-hens,” said Norah, “have between them an extraordinary amount of idiocy.”
“They have,” agreed her brother. “Our blessed old Shrops. decided that they would like to die—so, instead of clearing out on the rises at the far side of the paddocks, they camped on little hills near the river; and, of course, the water came all round them, and there they were, stranded on chilly little islands, surrounded by a healthy brown flood. Some slipped in and were drowned; the rest huddled together, and bleated in an injured way, as if they hadn’t had a thing to do with getting themselves into the fix.”