Boyd Cable - By Blow and Kiss

“I hope so, sir,” said Scottie. “But we’ll hae t’ move the sheep soon. The mulga’s gettin’ thinned, and there’s no more than a few days’ water in the last o’ the tanks.”

“We’ll hold on to the last here,” said the boss, “and then settle whether it’s to be the hills or a boiling down. But every day gained is a day nearer the rains, Mackellar.”

“Oh, I do hope the rain will come, Mr. Sinclair,” said Ess impulsively.

“Thank you, my dear,” said the old man, very softly. “If the prayers of the women will bring it, we’ll surely have plenty. It’s hard on the women, Miss Lincoln. My wife down yonder writes me that the girls are round to the post office every day to see if there’s any bulletin posted of rain in the back country. They know what it means, and it’s hard on them waiting. But we’ll battle through yet, maybe, or we’ll go down trying. Eh, Mackellar?”

“We’ll dae that at least,” said Scottie.

“I’ve good men, Mackellar. Good men. There’s not a lad amongst them wouldn’t spend his last ounce to win through. It helps an old man, Miss Lincoln, to feel that good men are at his back to hammer things through. It helps a lot – a lot.”

He dropped the whip lightly on his horses.

“I’m going to have a look at Number Seven tank, Mackellar,” he said. “Good-bye just now, Miss Lincoln. Cheer the boys up. A woman can always do that, and it all helps – all helps.”

He slacked his reins, and the trotters sprang forward with a jerk and a rush.

“Poor old man,” said Ess. “And poor Mrs. Sinclair. Uncle, you will tell me if there’s anything I can do to help. I would so like to.”

The chiefs had met in council, and cast their plans, and outlined their campaign. The council itself was not an impressive affair, although large issues hung on it; in fact, it had a decidedly casual appearance. The boss was there, sitting in his sulky and leaning out, resting heavily on one arm. The manager stood with his foot on the step, and his fingers drumming a tattoo on his knee, and Scottie slowly and carefully whittled tobacco from a flat cake, and hardly raising his eyes from the operation.

They all looked as if they had met by chance, and were lazily passing the time of day. From the shade of her tent, Ess watched them stand so for ten minutes, and wondered why they idled there. The boss was not given to idling, she knew. Too heavy to walk or ride at a rapid pace, he relied on his trotters and his sulky to get him over the ground, and she rarely saw him that he was not tearing off somewhere or sitting with the reins gathered up ready to move on, while the horses gleamed with sweat, and their sides heaved quickly.

But he stood there now for fully ten minutes, and then Ess saw the council break up. Casual it may have looked, but actually it decided the fate of some twenty to thirty thousand sheep, the ownership of Coolongolong station, and – if she had only known it – incidentally, of Ess’s own life.

The tank was almost dry. Only a tiny pool of foul, thick, muddy water remained in the middle of a stretch of clay that ran from dry, cracking cakes round the outside edge to slimy, greasy, sticky mud near the centre. For days now a gang of men had done little else but toil in the gluey mess, black and fouled to the waists and the armpits with hauling out the sheep that were too weak to extricate themselves. A small army of men worked at top pressure cutting down the trees – all the men of the station and extra hands hired in the township. They lived in calico tents that shone white in the glare of the sun, and at nights their fires flickered and danced in the darkness. All day long the ring of the axes and the wail of the sheep went on under the pitiless sun; the dust lifted lazily, and eddied thick under the feet of everything that moved; the mirage danced and quivered out on the plains.

Ess was fascinated with it all – fascinated, and day by day growing more fearful. She was coming to understand better what lay behind all this activity of man and placid indifference of Nature. She could appreciate better what every twenty-four hours meant as she saw the increasing numbers of the sheep that had to be dragged from the mud of the tank, and noted the thinning of the remaining trees, and she began to fear this cruel, relentless sun, and scorching air, and hot, dry barren earth.

The boss was whirling past her tent when he saw her, and pulled his horses down to a fretful walk.

“You’re looking tired, my dear,” he called. “Don’t let the sun get you down, you know. Come over to the station any time. We’re making a move to-morrow, back to the hills. It’s the last ditch you know, but we’ll win through at that, we’ll hope. We’re not beaten yet – not beaten yet,” and he slacked his reins and disappeared in a smother of dust.

Ess sent a scribbled note to Steve that night, asking him to come over, as they would be moving off next day.

Steve had dropped in on their camp-fire circle on several of the past nights. Ess made welcome any of the men who cared to come and sit and chat with her and her uncle, for the old boss’s words stuck in her mind. “Cheer the boys up – it all helps” he had said, so she was doing the little she could to help.

Most of the men were shy and quiet, but she set herself to draw them out, and led them to talk about the sheep, and the weather, and their work – things they knew well, and were interested in, and at home with, and could make talk on.

And Steve came over alone, or with the others, and every time he came she was a little the more glad of his coming.

His wit was so keen and his tongue was so sharp that she enjoyed talking with him, and the play and fencing of words and ideas brightened and livened her, she told herself.

Usually, she had to admit ruefully, she had the worst of the bouts of fence, and only the night before she had again suffered defeat.

They had been arguing over the sentiment of the verses to the refrain of “He travels the fastest who travels alone,” she attacking and he defending it.

“It’s a most abominably selfish creed,” she cried.

“The writer wasn’t concerning himself with the ethics of it – he was merely stating the fact,” he retorted.

“I don’t admit it is a fact,” she said.

“Few women will admit the truth of what they don’t like,” he said, and “That is mere instinct,” she answered, “because mostly what they like is good, and the truth is good surely.”

“Sometimes truth is only a point of view,” he said.

“Nonsense – truth is truth, as right is right.”

“Then how do you account for it that I claim this writer’s words as the truth, and you claim them to be untruths? The world judging it might be divided as we are. How can you say which is the truth?”

She could not answer this, so swiftly struck at a side issue. “Badness is worse than untruth, and if the principle is bad, why glorify it in verse?”

“But I say it is true; if you admit the truth, to attack the badness, you’re saying the truth is bad.”

“The truth may be a very bad truth,” she cried triumphantly. “It often is. You are a truth, but you may be very bad. You’ll notice I spare you, and don’t say you are .”

“Thanks. But my badness again is a point of view. Here, as I am, if I marry three wives, I’m very bad; if I’m a Mormon or a Turk, I may still be a good one.”

“We’re leaving the subject,” she said; “I began by saying it was an abominable sentiment. It is.”

“Reiteration isn’t argument,” he returned coolly.

“What authority has he for a statement of the sort?”

“Some writings are on conviction, not authority. This may be one; or it may be from experience.”