Thus far matters had gone on with undeviating regularity in all respects as where the stock were concerned. Mr. Neuchamp found that whenever his account with Messrs. Oldstile and Crampton needed replenishing on the credit side of the ledger—a position of affairs of which he was informed with much precision and regularity—he had only to muster for fat cattle and despatch a draft to market. He began to believe that such was the invariable state and condition of things. He wondered why all cattle-holders did not make rapid fortunes. He wondered why doubt should be expressed about the expediency or otherwise of investing in such a steadily profitable speculation; and inasmuch as his brandings became more numerous each quarter, far more than replacing the numbers sent away for sale, it amazed him to think how such an easy and pleasant way of doubling or quadrupling capital had not simultaneously entered the brain of every man of average intelligence in Australia.
He was now to learn that other factors in the calculation existed. The first slight ripple of the tidal wave which might or might not overwhelm was the remark of Charley Banks one day that they had had no rain for a month; that the appearance of the weather indicated none for another month, ‘in which case,’ said Mr. Banks, ‘the grass would go back.’
‘I had not remarked it,’ said Ernest, looking up (it was breakfast-time) from an interesting article in the Fortnightly Review. ‘Now you mention it, it does seem rather dry. However, I suppose we shall soon have rain.’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said Charley; ‘it looks very like setting in dry, and what’s more, Jack Windsor thinks the same, and the blacks say “big one water, longa lake dry up, like’t long time”—that looks bad.’
‘And suppose it does,’ said Ernest, cutting his Review carefully, ‘surely there will be grass and water enough on the run for all our stock?’
‘Not so sure of that. In this part the grass goes all to nothing in a dry year, breaks off, and blows away, making the country look like a brick-field. Besides, I was reading in Sturt’s Exploration; capital book it is’—(Mr. Banks had been craftily led into the path of literary exercise by tastes of travel and adventure, of which line of action he was passionately fond)—‘well, I was reading that the year the Captain went down the Murrumbidgee first, 1827, was a terrible drought—worse than anything we have had since. That year was the driest summer in England known for a century.’
‘What of that?’
‘Why, didn’t you tell me that your letters from England, the last mail, said they were having an awfully hot season for them, brooks nearly dry, people having to cart water ten miles, and so on. Well, our summer follows theirs in a kind of way six months after. So I’m afraid we are in for a regular dry season, if not a drought.’
‘And does that make so much difference?’ asked Ernest coolly. ‘This seems a dry country at the best of times; Nature should be equal to any emergency in that line, from the practice she ought to have had in this topsy-turvy continent.’
‘My word, and so she is in a general way,’ said the youngster, standing up for his native land. ‘But a drought, the real thing I mean, a dry summer after a dry winter, is something awful. I can recollect one when I was a little chap at school, and that was something I never forgot.’