“Wait till we’ve settled a bit, and have landed the sheep all safe,” said Hubert. “That will be stage the first. After we ‘see’ that, we must ‘go one better.’ Barrington Hope is a good backer, and outside country is to be had cheap just now.”
Events—in that sort of contrary way which occasionally obtains in this world—went far to justify the bold policy of this confident young man, who quietly ignored his elders, and to confound the wise, represented by the cautious croakers who stayed at home and disparaged him.
There had occurred a drought of crushing severity but three years since, and only one “good”—that is, rainy season had intervened, so rendering it unlikely, and in a sense unreasonable and outrageous, as one exasperated impeacher of Providence averred, that another year of famine should so soon succeed. Nevertheless, the rain came not. The long, hot summer waned. Autumn lingered with sunny days and cold nights. Winter too, with hard frosts, with black wailing winds, that seemed to mourn over the dead earth and its dumbly dying tribes. But no rain! No rain! The havoc which then devastated all the great district watered by the Warroo and its tributaries was piteous, and terrible to behold.
Rich and poor, small and great, owners of stock fared alike. A herd of five thousand head of cattle died on Murragulmerang to the last beast. Eight thousand at Wando. John Stokes, Angus Campbell, Patrick Murphy, struggling farmers, lost every milch cow, every sheep, every horse. They were too short of cash to travel. Their small pastures of a few hundred acres were as dust and ashes. Too careless to provide a stock of hay and straw, selling all when prices were good, and “chancing it,” they lost hoof and horn. Mammoth squatters were short—fifty thousand sheep—seventy thousand—a hundred thousand. Smaller graziers with fifteen or twenty thousand, lost two-thirds, three-fourths, four-fifths, as the case may be. Ruin and desolation overspread the land. Waggon loads of bales stripped from the skins of starved sheep—“dead wool” as it was familiarly called—were seen unseasonably moving along the roads in all directions.
From all this death and destruction Hubert’s family and the Wantabalree people had been preserved, as they now gratefully remembered, by his prompt yet well-considered action. Harold Stamford, as he watched his stud flocks, fairly nourished and thriving from constant change of pasture which the empty paddocks permitted, thanked God in his heart for the son who had always been the mainstay of his father’s house, while the Colonel was never weary of invoking blessings on Hubert’s head, and wishing that it had been his lot to have been presented with a Commission in the Imperial army, in which so bold and cool a subaltern would have been certain to have distinguished himself.
“Better as it is, father,” said Miss Dacre; “he might have sold out and lost his money in a bad station. Except for the honour and glory, I think squatting is the better profession, after all; if Willoughby only turns out successful, I shall think Australia the finest country in the world.”
“We shall have to live in it, my darling, for a long time, as far as I see, so we may as well think so,” said the Colonel. “Suppose we drive over to Windāhgil, and have another rubber of whist? Stamford plays a sound game, though he’s too slow with his trumps; and Laura has quite a talent for it—such a memory too!”
Many games of whist were played. Much quiet interchange of hopes and fears, discussions of small events and occurrences, such as make up the sum of rural daily life, had taken place between the two families ere the famine year ended. It left a trail of ruin, not wholly financial. Old properties had been sold, high hopes laid low, never to arise; strong hearts broken. “Mourning and lamentation and woe” had followed each month, and still Nature showed no sign of relenting pity.
Through all this devastation the life of the dwellers at Windāhgil had been comparatively tranquil; if not demonstratively joyous, yet free from serious mishap or anxiety. The tidings from the far country were eminently satisfactory, and as regular as circumstances would permit.