His jaw fell even as he spoke. What use was the Lachlan to him out in the beyond, when Grear’s lay between? He had no river frontage. Grear had it all.
In such a country, in spite of its apparent desolation, news travels fast. They heard that the Lachlan, so quiet at Condobolin, was running hard at Forbes. It was out in the flats, where the felled trees marked the old mining camp. There had been a storm, a great cloudburst, in its head waters, and the river grew alive. Wilson saddled up and rode thirty miles to see it, and came to the gum-lined ditch just in time to hear the stream awake. It stirred before his eyes, it became turbid, grew grey, bubbled, moved and ran, with sticks and leaves and branches on its full tide.
And still the sky overhead was fire, and the sun a flame. Wilson cursed it, and prayed to the beautiful grey water. Why should not rain come there? And soon. But as he rode back he came to sheep of his that stood against a fence, and pressed on it, as though water was beyond it. Pity stirred him; he drove them through a gate, and let them suck his last low tank.
That night Wilson came to the men’s hut under its pines in the sand dune, and called to Hill.
“Hill, I want to speak to you,” he said, and presently his man came out into the night. The stars were brilliant. Jupiter was like a little moon, and cast faint shadows.
“There’ll be no rain here,” said Wilson. “Were you sleeping? I can’t sleep! Do you hear?”
He waved his hand around the barren horizon.
“I hear,” said Hill.
He heard the sheep.
“You say that old Billabong once came down to Warribah?” asked Wilson.