CHAPTER XIX
BLACK THURSDAY
Autumn and winter passed in the ordinary succession of regular duties and peaceful employments, now become easy and habitual. These the expatriated family had learned to love. The departure of the old stock-rider was felt as a temporary inconvenience, but the brothers with Dick Evans’s aid and counsel felt themselves qualified to supply his place, and decided not to employ a successor.
Guy, indeed, had grown into a stalwart youngster, taller and broader than his elder brother; so much had the pure air, the healthful bush life, the regular exercise and occasional labour demanded by the station exigencies done for his development. He was apt at all the minor rural accomplishments—could ride the unbroken colts, which their own stud now produced, and was well acquainted with the ways and wanderings of outlying cattle. The lore of the Waste, in which old Dick was so able an instructor, was now his. He could plait a hide-rope, make bullock-yokes, noose and throw the unbranded cattle, drive a team, split and put up ‘fencing stuff’; in many ways do a man’s work, when needed, as efficiently as his preceptor. Dick prophesied that he would become ‘a great bushman’ in years to come. Indeed, by tales of ‘taking up new country’ and of the adventurous branches of station life, he had fostered a thirst for more extended and responsible action which gave his parents some uneasiness.
He had begun to acquire the Australian boy’s contempt for the narrow bounds involved by a residence on ‘purchased land.’ He impatiently awaited the day when he should be able to sally forth, with a herd of his own and the necessary equipment, to seek his fortune amid romantic, unexplored wilds. He began to lose interest in the daily round of home duties; and though from long habit and an affectionate nature, as yet dutifully obedient to his parents’ bidding, he more than once confessed that he longed for independent action.
The season was ‘setting in dry.’ There had been no rain for months. Around Lake William and near that wide expanse of water an appearance of verdure was preserved by the more marshy portion of the great flats. Amid these the cattle daily revelled and fed. They might have been seen grouped in large droves far out on the promontories, or wading amid the shallowing reed-beds which fringed the shore, long after the sun had set, and the breathless night, boding of storms which came not, had closed in.
Among the neighbours this state of matters by no means passed without observation and remark. Nought save desultory discussion ensued. Except O’Desmond, no one had been long enough in the colony to have had experience of abnormal seasons. Curiously, he was the one who took the more despondent view of matters, from which men augured ill.
‘I hope to heaven that we are not going to have a repetition of 1827,’ he said; ‘one experience of that sort is enough to last a man for his lifetime.’
‘Was it so very awful?’ said Hamilton, the conversation taking place at Benmohr, at which convenient rendezvous Wilfred and Churbett had encountered that gentleman. ‘One fancies that the ancient colonists were not fertile in expedients.’
‘No doubt we have much to learn from the accomplished gentlemen who have done us the honour to invest in our colony of late years,’ said O’Desmond grandly, with a bow of the regency; ‘but if you had seen what I have, you would not undervalue the danger. I don’t care to talk about it. Only if this year ends badly, I shall leave Badajos to my old couple and the overseer, muster my stock, and start into the wilderness without waiting for another.’