That day Mr. Cottonbush informed the Freeman family that, inasmuch as the Rainbar stockyard was a strong and secure enclosure, and as his employer, Mr. Levison, was a very particular man in having cattle that he bought properly branded up, he didn’t like any to be left over, and they must yard every mother’s son of ‘em.
So, as Mr. Neuchamp had kindly given permission for his yard to be used, the entire Freeman clan, including a swarm of brown-faced, bare-legged urchins, arrived on the following day with the whole of their herd. It was a strange sight, and not without a proportion of dramatic interest. The cattle were so emaciated that they could hardly walk; many of them staggered and fell. In truth, as they moved up in a long woebegone procession, they looked like a ghostly protest against man’s lack of foresight and Heaven’s wrath. The horses were so weak from starvation that they could barely carry their riders. One youngster was fain to jump off his colt, that exhausted animal having come to a dead halt, and drive him forward with the cattle.
Even the men and the boys had a wan and withered look. Not that they had been on short commons, but, dusty, sunburned, and nervously anxious to secure every animal that could walk to the yard, they harmonised very fittingly with their kine.
When they arrived at the yard Mr. Cottonbush counted them carefully in, and then signified to the vendors that, in his opinion, it would be wise of them to go back and make a final ‘scrape,’ as he expressed it, of their pasture-ground, lest there might inadvertently have been any left behind.
‘That sort of thing always leads to trouble, you know,’ said he; ‘there’s a sort of doubt which were branded and which were not. Now, Mr. Levison bought every hoof you own, no milkers reserved and all that; he don’t believe in having any of the best cattle kept back. So you’d better scour up every beast you can raise before we begin to brand. We can tail this mob, now they’re here.’
This supplementary proceeding resulted in the production of about thirty head of cattle, among which there curiously happened to be, by accident, half a dozen cows considerably above the average in point of breeding and value.
This very trifling matter of a ‘cockatoo’s’ muster having been thus concluded, all the horses having been yarded, and the flock of sheep driven up—Mr. Levison having made it a sine quâ non that he would have all or none—the fires were lighted and the brands put in.
To the wild astonishment of the Freemans, Mr. Cottonbush, having put the
brand in the fire, commenced to place that conjoined hieroglyph upon every cow, calf, bullock, and steer, assisted by Mr. Windsor, Charley Banks, and the black boys.