The Bimbalong boundary, now a long line of wire fence, with egress only by a neat gate on the track, was reached in due time. Here Jack’s memory, unbidden, recalled the day of their first muster of the cattle—the glorious day, the abundant herbage, the free gallop after the half-wild herd, in which poor Wildduck had distinguished herself; and, fairer than all, the glowing hope which had invested the unaccustomed scene with brightest colours. How different was the aspect of the spot now! The bare pastures, the prosaic fence-line—the Great Enterprise carried through to the point of conspicuous failure; the reckless, joyous child of these lone wastes lying in her grave, under the whispering streamers of the great coubah tree yonder. And is every hope as cold and dead as she? He was faring forth a wanderer, a beggar. Better, perhaps, thought he, in the bitterness of his spirit, that I had dropped to the bushranger’s bullet. Better to have fallen in the front of the battle than to have survived to grace the triumph and wear the chain.
The landless and dispossessed proprietor rode steadily on along the well-marked but unfrequented track which led “back”—that is, into the indifferently-watered, sparsely-stocked, and thinly-populated region which stretched endless at the rear of the great leading streams. In this desolate country, compared with which the frontage properties on the Warroo, slightly suburban as they might be deemed, were as fertile farms, lay grand possibilities—the Eldorado which always accompanies the unknown. Here were still tenantless, as wandering stockmen had told, enormous plains to which those on the Warroo were as river flats, fantastic, isolated ranges, full of strange metallic deposits and presumably rich ores. Immense water-holes, approaching the character of lakes, where curious tribes of aboriginals hunted, some of which were entirely bald, others bowed in the limbs from the continuous chase of the emu and kangaroo. From time to time Jack had listened to these tales of Herodotus; had, with some trouble, verified the localities indicated, and seen a pioneer or two who had explored this terra incognita.
Full of eager anticipation of the new untrodden land, in which wonders and miracles might still survive, leading to fortune by a triumphant short cut—a new run with limitless plains and hidden lakes, a copper mine, a gold mine, a silver mine, a navigable river—all these were possible in the unknown land, waiting only for some adventurer with purse as empty and need as desperate as his owner. Lulled by these glorious phantasies, John Redgrave gradually recovered his spirits—they were elastic, it must be confessed; and as the horses, poor but plucky, like their master, stepped cheerily along the level trail, he caught himself more than once humming a half-forgotten air. He had proposed to himself to make for a small township about forty miles distant, the inhabitants of which were composed in equal proportions of horse-stealers, persons “wanted,” and others, these last lacking only the courage, not the inclination, to turn bushrangers. Gurran—this was the name of this delectable settlement—of course boasted of two public-houses.
About an hour before sundown Jack calculated that he was about ten miles from his destination. He had of course not been pressing his horses, and had plodded steadily on without haste, but without halt, since the morning. He could not, as he calculated, reach Gurran by Sundown, but an hour’s travelling along the smooth, broad trail by the clear starlight would be pleasant enough. He did not want, Heaven knows, to get to the beastly hole too early. A simple meal, hunger sweetened, a smoke by the fire, and then to bed, with a daylight start next morning. Such were his intentions.
As he thought over and arranged these “short views of life,” he became aware that the sky was overclouded. Clouds were by no means rare on the Warroo, but no one had been in the habit of connecting them with rain for many a month past. And so Jack rode on carelessly, while the sky grew blacker, the air more still and warm, bank after bank rose in the south, and at length—no, surely, it never can be, by Jove! it is—a drop of rain!
“I shouldn’t wonder, now I think of it,” said Jack, sardonically, “if it were to rain cats and dogs, just when I am regularly cleaned out. A month ago it might have made a difference.” He unfastened an overcoat which he threw over himself, and as the rain commenced in a gentle but continuous drizzle (he knew the sign) paced gloomily forward.
His cynical anticipations were but too literally fulfilled. At first light and almost misty, then a steady downpour, in twenty minutes it was half a shower-bath, half a water-spout. Every shred of Jack’s clothing was soaked and resoaked, till the feeling was as if he were clad in wet brown paper. The horses slipped, and boggled, and stumbled, and laboured in the black soil plain which alternated with the sand, and which has the peculiar and vexatious quality of balling, or gathering on hoof or wheel, when thoroughly moistened. The air changed, the temperature was lowered, the night became dark, so that Jack more than once lost his way. The thunder pealed, and the lightning in vivid flashes from time to time showed a watery waste, with creeks running, and all the usual Australian superabundance of water immediately succeeding the utter absence of even a drop to drink. It was nine o’clock when, tired, soaked to the skin, with beaten horses, and temper seriously damaged, John Redgrave pulled up before the “Stock-horse Inn” at Gurran. The person who kept the poison-shop came out, with his pipe in his mouth, and, seeing a traveller, expressed mild surprise, but did not volunteer advice or assistance.
“Have you any hostler here?” demanded Jack, with pardonable acerbity.
“Well, there is a chap, but he’s on the burst just now, as one might say. Are you going to stop?”
“Yes, of course,” said Jack; “why don’t you look a little more lively! If you were as wet and cold as I am you’d know what I want.”