‘That he is, Mary,’ said her husband; ‘and many’s the good turn he’s done me.’
‘Which you thoroughly deserved,’ said Edgar, with a smile.
CHAPTER X.
A WILD SCENE.
Yanda Station was situated in a wild country, and when Edgar Foster arrived there he thought he had never seen such a dreary spot. Accustomed to the green fields of old England and her charming rural landscapes, Edgar found the barren plains and scraggy trees monotonous. Instead of miles upon miles of green, undulating pasture-land, he saw brown, hard-baked ground, the stunted grass growing in patches, and looking parched and dry for want of water.
Although the first glimpse of Yanda disenchanted Edgar of the ideas he had formed of ‘up-country’ scenes, the reception he met with from the station hands reconciled him to the prospect before him. Captain Fife had written to Benjamin Brody, the manager at Yanda, informing him who Edgar Foster was, and how he had behaved at the wreck of the Distant Shore. He also stated that Edgar was the son of the famous cricketer, Robert Foster. This was quite sufficient to ensure Edgar a hearty reception, and his arrival was quite an event on the station.
Ben Brody was a born colonial, a man accustomed to take the rough with the smooth of life and weld them into an even existence. Brody’s temper was none of the best, but he kept it under control. He was a sober man in the accepted sense of the word; that is, he never took more liquor than he could conveniently carry. There was no better rider at Yanda than Ben Brody, and the toughest buck-jumper generally found he had met his match when Brody got on to his back.
Fearless and determined, he was the very man to manage the somewhat mixed lot of hands on Yanda Station. They had some ‘queer customers’—Brody’s expression—on Yanda. It was a wild country, and far out of the beaten track. The wonder to most people who took the trouble to think about such an outlandish place as Yanda was how it was kept going, for they would never have been so rash as to argue that Yanda paid its way.
But Yanda, thanks to good management, did pay its way, and Captain Fife and others were perfectly satisfied with their investment. Yanda was bought cheap at a time when station property in the far West was going begging, and the installation of Ben Brody as manager had resulted in its turning out a good bargain. Brody was a great believer in sheep, but he had not much faith in cattle on Yanda. The hands firmly believed that Ben Brody had been reared from a very early age upon lean mutton, and that the taste for any other kind of meat was foreign to him.
Ben Brody had a horror of fat sheep. He preferred sheep “all wool,” because wool was worth considerably more than flesh. The slaughtering of a bullock at Yanda was the signal for much joy on the part of the hands. When Ben Brody received the news that Edgar Foster would arrive on a certain day at Yanda, he resolved to duly celebrate the event, just to give the ‘new chum’ a better idea of the country.
‘What’s come over Brody?’ asked Will Henton. ‘He’s actually ordered the slaughtering of a bullock. I am overwhelmed with joy.’