A trifling distraction was created about this time, much to Ernest’s relief, by the arrival of Mr. Cottonbush, who had received instructions from Mr. Levison to muster, brand, and take delivery of the small herd of cattle, the single flock of sheep, and the lot of horses which that far-seeing speculator had purchased from the brothers Freeman. This pastoral plenipotentiary, a wiry, reticent individual, utterly impervious to every wile and stratagem which the art of man in Australia had hitherto evolved from the very complicated industry of stock-raising, first informed the Freemans of his mission, producing a written authority with the awe-striking signature of Abstinens Levison, and then reported himself to Mr. Neuchamp.
‘It is a bad season, sir,’ he said, in answer to that gentleman’s greeting, which of course comprehended the disastrous state of the weather, ‘and many a one wouldn’t bother mustering these three or four hundred crawling cattle. They might be all dead in three months for all we can see. But Mr. Levison isn’t like any one else. He sends me a line to do this, or go there, and I always do it without troubling about the reasons. He finds them for the lot of us, and pretty fair ones they generally are when time brings ’em out.’
‘I think I know why he made this bargain,’ said Ernest, ‘and I must say I wonder more about it every day. But I am so far of your opinion, now that I am becoming what you call an “old hand,” that I shall imitate your example in letting Mr. Levison’s reasons work themselves out in practice.‘
‘That’s the best way, sir,’ assented the colonel of cavalry under this pastoral general of division. ‘I’ve never done anything but report and obey orders since I’ve been with Levison, this many a year. I used to talk and argue a bit with him at first. I never do now, though he’s a man that will always hear what you’ve got to say, in case he might pick something out of it. But I never knew him alter his mind after he’d got all the information he wanted. So it’s lost time talking to him.’
‘And what do you think about this terrible season?’ asked Ernest, anxiously looking at this iron man of the desert, whose experience was to his, he could now in this hour of wreck and ruin realise, as immeasurably superior as the grizzled second mate’s to the cabin boy’s when the tempest cries aloud with voice of death and the hungry caverns of the eternal deep are disclosed.
‘It’s bad enough,’ assented Mr. Cottonbush thoughtfully, ‘bad enough; and there’s many a one will remember it to his dying day. In some places they’ll lose most of their stock before the winter’s on for want of feed, and all the rest, when it does come, from the cold. There were ten thousand fat sheep (or supposed to be fat) of Lateman’s caught in the Peechelbah mallee the other day as they were going a short cut. When I say “caught,” the water had dried up that they reckoned on, and was only found out when they was half way through. The sheep went mad and wouldn’t drive. So did the chap in charge, very nigh. When he got out he had only some four thousand three hundred odd left. That was a smash, wasn’t it?‘
‘Sheep are not so bad as cattle in one way,’ said Mr. Neuchamp; ‘you can travel them and steal grass. A good many people seem unprincipled enough to resort to the meanness of filching from their neighbours and the country generally what no man can spare in this awful time.’
‘Well,’ said Mr. Cottonbush, smiling and wincing slightly, ‘it ain’t quite the clean potato, of course; but if your sheep’s dying at home, what can you do? Every man for himself, you know; and you can’t let ’em stop on the run and die before your eyes. We’ve had to do a bit of it ourselves. But the old man, he bought two or three whacking big bits of country in the Snowy Mountains, Long Plains, the Gulf, Yarrangobilly, and two or three more, enough to feed all the sheep in the country, and started ours for it directly after shearing, while the roads were good. He knew what was coming and provided in time, same as he always does. Blessed if he didn’t lease a lot of the country he could spare to people who were hard pushed and came late, so he got his own share cheap.’
‘And was there abundance of grass and water?’
‘Green grass two feet high, running creeks all the summer, enough to make your mouth water. If we get rain down before the snow comes next month our flocks will come back better than they went, and with half as much wool again as the plains sheep.’