'Charge be hanged!' laughs De Vere (with two very bright-patterned Crimean shirts, one in each hand, which he offers to a tall young shearer for inspection). 'There's a well there, and whenever either of the two men, of whom you'll have charge, gets sick or runs away, you'll have to work the whim in his place, till another man's sent out, if it's a month.'
This appalling view of station promotion rather startles Mr. Bowles, who applies himself to his meerschaum, amid the ironical comments of the shearers. However, not easily daunted, or 'shut up,' according to the more familiar station phrase, he rejoins, after a brief interval of contemplation, that 'accidents will happen, you know, De Vere, my boy—apropos of which moral sentiment, I'll come and help you in your dry-goods business; and then, look here, if you get ill or run away, I'll have a profession to fall back upon.' This is held to be a Roland of sufficient pungency for De Vere's Oliver. Every one laughed. And the two youngsters betook themselves to a humorous puffing of the miscellaneous contents of the store: tulip beds of gorgeous Crimean shirts, boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom salts, pipes, pickles, pain-killer, pocket-handkerchiefs, and pills, sardines, saddles, shears, and sauces; in fact, everything which every kind of man might want, and which apparently every man did want, for large and various were the purchases, and great the flow of conversation. Finally, after everything had been severely and accurately debited to the purchasers, the store was cleared and locked up. A store is a necessity of a large station; not by any means because of the profit upon goods sold, but it obviously would be bad economy for old Bill the shepherd, or Barney the bullock-driver, to visit the next township, from ten to twenty miles distant, as the case may be, every time the former wanted a pound of tobacco, or the latter a pair of boots. They might possibly obtain these necessary articles as good in quality, as cheap in price. But there are wolves in that wood, oh, my weak brothers! In every town dwells one of the 'sons of the giant'—the Giant Grog—red-eyed, with steel muscles and iron claws; once in these, which have held many and better men to the death, Barney nor Bill emerges not, save pale, fevered, nerveless, and impecunious. So arose the station store. Barney befits himself with boots without losing his feet; Bill fills his pockets with match-boxes and smokes the pipe of sobriety, virtuous perforce till his carnival, after shearing.
The next day was wet, and threatened broken weather. Matters were not too placid with the shearers. A day or two for rest is all very well, but continuous wet weather means compulsory idleness, and gloom succeeds repose; for not only are all hands losing time and earning no money, but they are, to use the language of the stable, 'eating their heads off' the while. The rather profuse mess and general expenditure, which caused little reflection when they were earning at the rate of two or three hundred a year, became unpleasantly suggestive now that all was going out and nothing coming in. Hence loud and deep rose the anathemas, as the discontented men gazed sadly or wrathfully at the misty sky.
A few days' showery weather having well-nigh driven our shearers to desperation, out comes the sun in all his glory. He is never far away or very faint in Riverina.
All the pens are filled for the morrow; very soon after the earliest sunbeams, the bell sounds its welcome summons, and the whole force tackles to the work with an ardour proportioned to the delay, every man working as if for the ransom of his family from slavery. These men work, spurred on by the double excitement of acquiring social reputation and making money rapidly. Not an instant is lost; not a nerve, limb, or muscle doing less than the hardest taskmaster could flog out of a slave. Occasionally you see a shearer, after finishing his sheep, walk quietly out, and not appearing for a couple of hours, or perhaps not again during the day. Do not put him down as a sluggard; be assured that he has tasked Nature dangerously hard, and has only just given in before she does. Look at that silent, slight youngster, with a bandage round his swollen wrist. Every 'blow' of the shears is agony to him, yet he disdains to give in, and has been working 'in distress' for hours. The pain is great, as you can see by the flush which surges across his brown face, yet he goes on manfully to the last sheep, and endures to the very verge of fainting.
A change in the manner and tone of the shed is apparent towards the end of the day. It is now the ding-dong of the desperate fray, when the blood of the fierce animal man is up, when mortal blows are exchanged, and curses float upwards with the smoke and dust. The ceaseless clicking of the shears—the stern earnestness of the men, toiling with feverish, tireless energy—the constant succession of sheep shorn and let go, caught and commenced—the occasional savage oath or passionate gesture, as a sheep kicked and struggled with perverse, delaying obstinacy—the cuts and stabs, with attendant effusion of blood, both of sheep and shearers—the brief decided tones of Mr. Gordon, in repression or command—all told the spectator that tragic action was introduced into the performance; indeed, one of the minor excitements of shearing was then and there transacted. Mr. Gordon had more than once warned a dark, sullen-looking man that he did not approve of his style of shearing. He was temporarily absent, and on his return found the same man about to let go a sheep, whose appearance, as a shorn wool-bearing quadruped, was painful and discreditable in the extreme.
'Let your sheep go, my man,' said he, in a tone which arrested the attention of the shearers; 'but don't trouble yourself to catch another.'
'Why not?' said the delinquent sulkily.
'You know very well why not!' said Gordon, walking closely up to him, and looking straight at him with eyes that began to glitter. 'You've had fair warning; you've not chosen to take it. Now you can go!'
'I suppose you'll pay a man for the sheep he's shorn?' growled out the ruffian.