Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

“Feeling a bit warm, Dot?” queried Ned Swallow, a youthful, lank, red-headed rider.

“Not exactly,” Dot rejoined, helping himself to what purported to be plum duff. “I was jestwonderin ’whar the draught was coming from. Say, Tom!”-to the second rider-“you sure can make plum duff!”

“That’s a better pudding than general,” Tom growled.

“Well, it’sfillin ’, anyway. Try some, Dash?”

“I think not,” Dash said, eyeing it suspiciously.

“Seems as though the outside third of itkinda got stuck on the cloth when you heaved her out, Tom,” Dot observed.

“Yus. I forgot to wet the cloth afore I put her in. Still, it’ll go better cold. She’ll have lost thatslummicky look. Don’t you blokes wait to washup. Me andNed’ll do that.”

“You are very decent, Tom. I’ll roll a cigarette, and Dot and I will adjourn.” Dash went outside and dried his face, neck and arms with a towel. The sun was getting low, and already thousands of galahs whirled about the tank, or strutted on the banks looking like tiny grey-coated soldiers. Around the tank lay a plain covered with fine red dust. One mile away the scrub began. Before the tank was sunk, all that plain bore scrub-trees, but by now the stock converging there daily had eaten or killed them. Across this arid desert drifted an occasional low cloud of red dust, whilst at a point far to the north-west a huge towering red column denoted that the sheep were coming in to drink.

Dash settled himself at the summit of the rampart at that angle which commanded the iron reservoir tanks, windmill, and troughs giving water to two paddocks, with a great sweep of the plain beyond; whilst Dot, at the opposite angle, commanded the shorter stretch of plain bounded by the range.

As a slowly oncoming destroyer sending up a red smoke-screen, a long line of sheep moved across the plain to the dam. Shadows of tank and windmill lengthened with magical rapidity, and the wind became merely a fitful zephyr.

The red dust-screen came ever nearer. Dash could observe the faint white figures of the leaders of the flock of three thousand sheep. On his side Dot could see a similar flock of sheep coming from the other paddock to drink. A mile away three black pin-heads behaved as well-drilled jumping fleas, and between each jump a spurt of dust arose. They were the vanguard of the kangaroos coming leisurely to the dam in fifteen-foot jumps, tireless, wonderfully speedy, infinitely more graceful in action than a racing horse or whippet-dog. At the edge of the scrub numbers of these animals, who had slept and drowsed away the day, were sitting bolt upright watching their leaders, and in twos and threes and fours they bounded out on the plain, so that a few minutes after Dash had seen the first three pinheads he could easily count thirty.

Water! The Spring of Life!

The nearest water lay eighteen miles to the north; the next nearest thirty miles to the west. Between these places the only moisture to be found was in the sap of the trees. In a week or so, when the last of the tiny grass roots were dead, twenty to fifty thousand rabbits would come to water every night with unfailing regularity. Numbers of them even then were drinking at the edges of the square sheet of water in the dam. Others were converging on it in easy stages of a few yards’ run, with pauses to sit up and look around with alert suspicion.

When the sun, still fiercely hot and flaming red, was but four fingers above the horizon, the dust-cloud was within a quarter of a mile of the troughs. Fifty sheep were to be seen moving at its base. Tens of hundreds walked in the cloud in several parallel lines. Dash could hear their plaintive baaing above the scream of the birds, and he observed with never-slackening interest how but one sheep of all that great flock constituted itself the leader. It was an old yet robust ewe. When but a hundred yards from the troughs she broke into a quick amble, followed by those immediately behind her. That seemed to be the point when every following sheep broke from a walk into a run.

A white flood of wool rolled over the ground to the water. The galahs rose from the troughs with a thunderous roar of wings to fly a short distance away and settle like a grey blanket on the expanse of plain. The white flood, reaching the trough, poured around both sides of it and rolled outward as from a centre when the main body of the sheep swelled its volume.

A vast milling, dust-raising, baaing, struggling mass of animals! The level of water in the reservoir tank feeding the trough began gradually to fall. Then from the surging mass one sheep became detached. It was the old ewe leader. She ran back over the way she had come, followed by several others, and then stopped when two hundred yards from the tank, looking back with cunning placidity. In twos and threes, their bellies distended with water, sheep left the mob and joined her, then, with her, to stand a while looking back. Not one ran ahead. And not before all but a few lingerers had drunk their fill did she lead them out across the plain to the scrub and dry grass, the red mounting dust, now rising straight and to a great height, marking their passage.

The army corps of galahs was retreating by battalions to roosting-places in the mulga-trees on the hills. A thunder of hoofs caused Dash to look to his left and observe the second flock of sheep-also led by a single animal-charge in and around the second trough. When they also had gone the sun was set and Dash lay with his . 22 Savage resting in his arms. There were seven kangaroos within point-blank range of his rifle, namely, three hundred yards.

Dash settled down to careful shooting whilst the light held. The cartridges he used costfourpence each, so that he could not afford to miss often. Dot, firing from his. 44 Winchester his own loading cartridges, the cost of which he had carefully worked out at five shillings per hundred, could well afford to take chances; but his weapon was far less deadly beyond two hundred yards than the Savage.

His partner heard him shooting, and sometimes cursing. A quite friendly rivalry existed between them when in the morning they counted their respective bags, after which the merits of their rifles would be argued. The light began to go rapidly, and presently Dash missed for the first time that evening. His following shot also was a miss; and, slipping down behind the rampart, he walked to where a single blanket was folded in its length. Beside it lay a double-barrelled shot-gun of beautiful workmanship, several boxes of BB size cartridges, a billy-can of cold tea, and a hurricane-lamp.

It was his night position. It was situated in a right-angle on the narrow strip of level ground between the bank of the dam and the rampart of mullock. In a similar position in the opposite angle lay Dot. Each of them commanded two sides of the square-shaped tank, and to shoot each other was impossible unless one fired diagonally across the water.

Lighting a cigarette, Dash lay back on the blanket resting his head on his hands. To regard him then was to wonder what form of madness had exiled him from home and country. There was no trace of dissipation on the strong sunburned face, no hint of weakness about the straight mouth and square chin.

His cigarette finished, he sat up and sipped from the blackened billy-can. Above him the sky was blue-black and the stars did not twinkle with so-called tropical brilliance, despite the fact that it was cloudless. The features of the mullock marking his zone of operations were blurred by the general shadow, but those angles of the rampart commanded by Dot still revealed the crevices among the rubble in a soft amber glow. The level summit of Dash’s rampart was clear-cut against the dull pink sheen of the western sky. That skyline would be visible all night long, hence his then position.