Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

A form, soundless in movement, grotesque, almost monstrous, slowly pushed up on that skyline. Dash reached for his shot-gun. The form became still for a moment, then slowly changed from the grotesque to the beautiful, from the monstrous to the lovely, when the kangaroo sat up, his tail resting on the ground balancing him like a third leg, his small but noble head and lifted stiffened ears outlined as a clear-cut silhouette against the darkening sky.

A sharp flash, a roar, and the ’roo lay thrashing in its death agonies.

“Poor devil!” sighed Dash.

From beyond the bank a succession of twin thuds went out as warning to the converging kangaroos, when one or more gave the signal by jumping and bringing their tails down on the earth with a sound like that of a stick beating a dusty carpet.

Dot fired, and Dash heard the wounded ’roo “queex-queex” with pain and anger. Then his attention was taken by the rising figures of two ’roosdirectly opposite him and less than twenty yards distant. He fired twice rapidly, and both animals fell dead. Dash was thankful.

At about eleven o’clock the shooting became less frequent, and Dot at last called out for an armistice. Dash agreed, and lit his lamp. Whereupon each man dispatched his wounded animals with his hunting-knife.

“How many?”Dot asked when the lights revealed both at their respective camps.

“Twenty-nine,” replied Dash without enthusiasm. “What is your tally?”

“Thirty-three,”came the triumphant answer.

After that silence fell once more. The tall partner lay on his side, smoking and thinking. The air was still heated by the roasted earth. The silence became oppressive, more oppressive than the sounds of continuous thunder.

Presently the armistice was called off and hostilities were resumed till dawn.

• • • • •

“Thank heaving, to-day’s the last day of me week’s cooking!” Tom said during breakfast, with tremendous fervour in his drawling voice. “Yours starts to-morrow, Ned. An’ then you can show usyous can cookbetter’n Bony.”

“He wants a lot of beating, does Bony,” the young rider conceded. “I’ve met that bloke beforesomewhercs, but I can’t place ’im. When ’e smiles I nearly get ’im, but not quite. Anyways, ’e can cook, and ’e can break-in ’orses, and ’e can play on a box-leaf. Not a bad sort of a bloke, Bony.”

“Naw. Quiet-like,” Dot agreed.

“Deep,” rumbled Tom.

“Deep as ’ell,” chimed in Ned. “I’ll place ’imone of these days. I know Irunned across ’imsomewheres. Maybe in Queensland; maybe up in the Territory.”

Dash rose from the table and wiped his lips with a handkerchief. Dot rose immediately after, and wiped his with a bare forearm.

“We’ll do thewashin ’-up,” he said to the stockman.

“Good-oh!”

When the washing-up had been done and they went outside to smoke cigarettes in the long shade cast by the hut, they watched the two riders set out in their respective paddocks on jogging horses. The army corps of galahs was mobilizing in continuous battalions about the dam. The crows were strutting suspiciously around the dead kangaroos, whilst high above them several eagles circled with wings as still as those of aeroplanes.

The cigarettes smoked, Dash went over to the ton truck, whilst Pot procured the skinning-knives and steels. Into the truck presently they loaded a dozen ’roosand took them a mile away towards the hills, where they were dumped and Dot fell to skinning them. Dash brought the others to Dot in similar loads, and when all were thus removed from the vicinity of the dam he also fell to with his skinning-knife.

It was not work that an English gentleman would do voluntarily.

By ten o’clock the animals were skinned, for both were practised workers. Back again at the hut, they drank cold tea and smoked another cigarette; after which Dot set to work pegging out the wet skins on a hard clay-pan with short pieces of wire used as nails, whilst his partner mixed and baked a damper and a brownie, and peeled the potatoes in readiness for that evening’s dinner.

For lunch they had cold mutton, bread and jam, and tea. The merciless sun beat down on the iron roof above them, and set all the plain outside dancing in the mirage. The stillness of noonday settled on the world, and the only things that moved were the heat-defying crows and the eagles settled on the heap of carcasses one mile nearer the hills.

Having lunched, they smoked, and slept until four o’clock, when Dash put the leg of mutton in the camp oven and prepared the simple dinner, and Dot went out to take up skins pegged out the day before, and now as hard and dry as boards. Ned came riding home, and, pausing beside Dot, announced triumphantly:

“I remember Bony now. He was a police-tracker at Cunnamulla in ’twenty-one. Got his man, too.”

“You don’t say!” Dot calmly observed.

The Great Will-o’-the-Wisp

DECEMBER WAS born in a temperature of 100°. When it was twelve hours old the mercury of the thermometer on the homestead veranda recorded 115°.

Every well on the Windee holding was in requisition, for three of the great open dams were dry, and the water-level in others was rapidly sinking. The early summer thunderstorms that year were extraordinarily erratic in their courses and afforded no measurable rain. It was now more than three months since the last rain fell.

Over all that vast extent of country owned by one man there was not to be found a single green shoot of grass or herbage. East of the range of hills the hot and rainless period had no apparent effect on the sturdy salt-bush; but the salt in this tiny shrub, plus summer heat, caused the sheep to linger round the troughs at the watering-places and consume much more water than those on the range itself and on that vast stretch of country west of the range. Here the winter grasses raised by a plenitude of rain to the height of a tall man’s knee were wheat-coloured. Mile after mile of yellow grass, like an illimitablewheatfield just before harvest, lay encircling the ever-widening areas of bare land in the neighbourhood of the dams and wells.

Bony was out, riding the last horse of his breaking-in contract-a contract he had extended as long as possible. His horses were a credit to him, and Stanton was pleased, as well he might be. He offered the half-caste the contract of erecting a set of sheep-yards a mile above the homestead on the creek, and the versatile Bony accepted, exceedingly glad that his open stay at Windee was to be prolonged.

He was riding a gay young filly, all black without a single white blemish, and, whilst riding with his habitual care, he was considering a point that required explanation. Within the last week he had definitely felt a change in Marion Stanton’s attitude towards him.

Her pleasing democratic bonhomie, pleasing because bonhomie was the natural expression of her sunny nature, had vanished, and had become replaced by an unaccountable coldness. Instead of personally asking Bony to saddle Grey Cloud for her evening ride, when he almost always accompanied her, she had instructed the station groom to perform the office on three consecutive evenings. Once she and Bony almost met on the office side of the house; but, seeing him, Marion had deliberately turned in through a wicket-gate.

Not only was Bony perplexed. He was saddened also by this inexplicable change of front, because he had delighted in her beauty as well as in her personality. Going back over the rides they had taken together, he could find not one that indicated how he had offended.

Her coldness apparently affected Jeff Stanton as well. During the last few days when he had met the squatter Stanton was subtly changed from the bluff, downright man of his reputation. When Jeff looked at him Bony felt that he was being rejudged, and by a man carefully adjusting the scales. His changed attitude was not the result of bad work on Bony’s part. Of that Bony was quite sure.