Norah of Billabong

by Mary Grant Bruce

“Since it’s no use to expect decent sympathy from you, you can certainly do all the helping you like,” said Mr. Linton, smiling broadly. “We’ll muster all the cattle down towards the far end of the paddock, and take them out through the gate there—we might have a pretty hard job if we tried to take them through the Bush Paddock. Wally, my lad, just canter back and put up those slip-rails, will you? Jean, you can’t get bushed in this paddock, because there isn’t enough timber; we can’t get out of sight of each other for any length of time. Now we’ll each take a line and get hold of the bullocks in front of us, and hope as hard as we can that they’ll go quietly. I believe much is said to be done by hoping, though I don’t know what happens if the cattle are hoping to stay where they are!”

It was soon distressingly evident that such was indeed the high ambition of the bullocks. They were very contented on the short, sweet clover and rye grass; they saw no reason whatever to justify being driven towards some unknown region. For a good many weeks they had been on the roads, these long-horned Queenslanders, travelling through regions that were all unknown. Most of them had been very comfortless—bare roads where scarcely a picking could be obtained, or through runs where fierce stockmen and unpleasant dogs were jealously indignant if they took so much as a bite of grass or failed to cover each day the prescribed number of miles for travelling stock. Now they had come at last into a peaceful haven, where clover grew thickly, and a creek flowed for their special benefit. Was it to be expected that they should tamely leave it? On the whole, the bullocks thought that it was not, and that whoever was so weak as to expect it must be taught by painful experience the futility of so hoping.

The half-fat cattle went readily enough. The tracks were familiar to them—the crack of a stock-whip was sufficient to start them lazily along the way towards the gate. They had grown philosophic as they attained weight; it was known to them now that when mounted people, with dogs, express an inclination for bullocks to move in a particular direction, it is as well to be acquiescent and move. But the Queenslanders had learned no such lesson, or, if they had learned it, it had been forgotten since they had exchanged the roads for Billabong. Tracks meant nothing to them; they galloped madly hither and thither, made off for the farthest corners of the paddock, with tails wildly streaming in the air, and dodged back with a persistence calculated to reduce the most patient drover to wrath and evil words. Their spirits infected some of the staider cattle, and they also fled to the four winds, with a lumbering agility wonderful in such mountains of beef. It was quite too hot a day for such pranks, and their owner groaned as they fled.

“You can see the condition simply evaporating from them,” he declared.

The heat did not seem to affect the Oueenslanders at all. But the horses were soon sweating and the riders almost as hot, while the dogs became almost useless, and sneaked off to the creek to wallow luxuriously in the fern-fringed pools. Wally looked after them eagerly.

“Lucky brutes,” he uttered, “wish I could follow their example.”

He was tailing behind a dozen bullocks—eight of the quieter section and four of the “stores.” For once they seemed inclined to go quietly, and Wally began to breathe more freely, with visions of handing them over to augment the little mob he could see Jim bringing alone, away to the right. Then came a sudden descent before him, where a little hill ran down into a grassy hollow. The Oueenslanders began to trot down it; then the slope proved too much for them, and the trot broke into a canter and merged to a stretching gallop, striking across the plain. There was no chance of catching them—Wally could only bring up the rear, sending the spurs into old Warder in his fruitless hope of heading them before they should reach Jim’s mob, and upset their serenity.

The cattle had all the best of it. Here and there one dropped out of the chase, panting, or broke back to try to reach the open country they were leaving; but the leaders made for Jim’s little mob, even as the swallows homeward fly. They scattered it hither and thither; heels flew up, and hoofs pounded, as they tore in different directions, and not one the right one. Jim’s eloquence failed him. He could only give Garryowen his head in somewhat vague pursuit, since it could not be definitely said which beast to pursue.

“Hard to know which has most call on a fellow’s time,” Jim muttered grimly as he galloped.

Further across the paddock, Jean was having troubles of her own. The width from fence to fence was all too great for five to guard; although Mr. Linton had said she could not get lost—which she knew very well—it was lonely enough in the wide space, catching only an occasional glimpse of fellow-musterers to right and left across the undulating ground. The bullocks had no sense of chivalry; they treated her with scorn and derision, and her hopes of being of definite use in the muster faded swiftly.