The stores having been purchased, and Mr. M‘Nab with his letter of credit having been shipped, that alert lieutenant, with characteristic promptitude, reporting himself in readiness to embark at six hours’ notice, nothing remained but for Mr. Redgrave to “render himself” again at Gondaree in the capacity of purchaser.
He accordingly cleared out from the club with alarmingly stern self-denial, and, declining to risk his important existence in the Warroo mail, took the road in the light American waggon, with his spare horses and a couple of active lads accustomed to bush work.
After a journey of ordinary duration and absence of adventure, he once more sighted the unromantic but priceless waters of the Warroo, and beheld, with the eye of a proprietor, the “waste lands of the Crown”—most literally deserving that appellation—with the full right and title to which, as lessee, he stood invested.
Mr. Hawkesbury, in apparently the same Crimean shirt, with black and scarlet in alternate bars, stood smoking the small myall pipe in much the same attitude at the hut door as when Jack was borne off by two jibs and a bolter in the Warroo mail. Bob the cook, the dark hues of his apparel unrelieved by any shade of scarlet, appeared in his doorway with his hands in his pockets, but betraying unwonted interest as the cortège ascended the sandhill.
Ordering the boys to let go the horses, and to pitch the tent, which he had used on the journey, at a safe distance from the huts, Jack descended with a slight increase of dignity, as of one in authority, and greeted his predecessor.
“So you’ve bought us out,” he said, after inspecting carefully the letter which Jack handed to him, “and I’m ordered to deliver over the cattle, and the stores,—there ain’t much of them,—and the horses, and in fact the whole boiling. Well, I wish you luck, sir; the run’s a good ’un and no mistake, and the cattle are pretty fair, considering what’s been done for ’em. I suppose you won’t want me after you’ve taken delivery.”
“I shall be very glad if you will stay on,” quoth Jack, whose honest heart felt averse to ousting any man from a home, “until the cattle are cleared off; after that I shall have another gentleman in charge of the sheep and place generally. By staying two or three months you will oblige me, if it suits your arrangements.”
“All right,” answered Mr. Hawkesbury: “I know the cattle pretty well, and I dare say I can save as many as will cover my wages. I think you’ll find them muster up pretty close to their book-number.”
The signal shot of the campaign was fired, so to speak, upon the arrival of Mr. John Rooney, who came in a few days by appointment to take the first draft of the Gondaree fat cattle.
Jack was sitting outside of his tent, like an Arab sheik, and thinking regretfully of the flower-laden evening breeze which he had so often inhaled at the same hour at Marshmead, when a tall, soldierly-looking man rode up on a tired horse and jumped off with an unreserved exclamation of relief.