“Plenty of time to get them out. If the worst came we could soon rig a temporary bridge over the anabranch creek.”
“People about here say,” objected Jack, “that when a real flood comes down all sorts of places are filled which you wouldn’t expect; and sheep are the stupidest things—except pigs—that ever were tried in water and a hurry.”
“You needn’t be uneasy; I’ll have them out of that hours before there is any danger,” said M‘Nab, confidently. “Meanwhile, if they don’t use the feed the travelling stock will only have the benefit of it. What did you think of Mr. Stangrove’s place, sir?”
“I was agreeably surprised,” said Jack, with an air of much gravity. “The whole affair is old-fashioned, of course; but the stock are very good, in fine order, and everything about the place very neat and nice. Mr. Stangrove and his family are exceedingly nice people.”
“So I’ve heard,” said M‘Nab. “So I believe (as if that was a point so unimportant as to merit the merest assent); but the Run!—the run is one of the best and largest on the river, and to think of its being thrown away upon less than twenty thousand sheep, a thousand head of cattle, and a few mobs of rubbishy horses!”
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” said Jack, smiling at M‘Nab’s righteous indignation; “but Stangrove is one of those men who thinks he has a right to do what he wills with his own. And really he has something to say for himself.”
“I can’t think it, sir; I can’t think it,” asserted the stern utilitarian. “The State ought to step in and interfere when a man is clearly wasting and misusing the public lands. I’d give all the shepherding, non-fencing men five years’ warning; if at the end of that time they had not contrived to fence and dig wells the country should be resumed and let by tender to men who would work the Crown lands decently and profitably.”
“You’re rather too advanced a land-reformer,” said his employer. “You might have the tables turned upon you by the farmers. However, you can argue the point of eviction with Mr. Stangrove, who will be here with the ladies, I hope, before shearing. But he has fought for his land once, and I feel sure would do so again if need were. Still I think he will be rather astonished at our four boundary riders.”
The first necessity was an inspection of the new wool-shed, which was raising its unpretending form, like a species of degenerate phœnix, from the ashes of its glorious predecessor. It was strong and substantial, full of necessary conveniences—good enough—but not the model edifice—the exemplar of a district, the pride of Lower Riverina.
Now befell a halcyon time of a couple of months of Jack’s existence, during which the millennium, as far as Gondaree was concerned, seemed to have arrived.