“And what is the quickest time we have done it in?” he asked, without turning his head. Ralph opened the gate and they moved slowly beyond it.
“Sixty-four, the time before last,” she replied at once.
“That’s nothing,” Thornton remarked. “One time last February, when I had an important appointment, and we were late, Dug hit her up to seventy-eight.”
“No, really! Oh Dug, you’ve been cheating me of fourteen miles an hour.”
Ralph having shut the gate and got in, the sub-overseer let in the clutch. He said gently:
“The back country is rather proud of the Women of Barrakee. If it were known that I ever endangered the life of one of them I would be due for a rough time.”
“Oh, Dug, but it’s quite safe,” she said reproachfully.
“Quite,” he agreed. “Unless a wheel comes off, or a tyre blows out, or the steering-gear fails, or I want to sneeze.”
“Well, if you keep me down to only sixty-four, I shall never forgive you.”
“I would do anything in reason to avoid that,” he said gravely. “But not to avoid it will I risk your life.”
Eighteen miles from the homestead they pulled up at a boundary-rider’s hut, near a great earth dam. The stockman was out in one of his paddocks, so his mail was left on the table, the door shut again, and they went on, stopping sometimes to open the few gates dividing the eight- and twelve-mile-square paddocks, once to take a survey of a flock of three thousand sheep.
“They’re not looking bad, Dug, considering the dry time,” their owner decided.
“No, they look quite all right, so far. Pity we can’t have a good rain to bring on the feed for the lambs,” came from the sub-overseer.
“We might get it yet. How much water left at the Basin Tank?”
“About two feet.”
“Humph! Remind me that we send O’Grady out there to get the bore and engine in order next Monday. Right! We’ll get on.”
The stockman at Cattle Tank had just come home when they arrived there. He was a lank, bow-legged man about forty, and when they pulled up he lounged beside the car, after removing his felt to Kate Flinders, who said:
“Good morning, David.”
“Morning, Miss Flinders,” he returned with conscious awkwardness.
“How’s the sheep, David?” inquired the squatter.
“The weaners are losing a bit, but the wethers in top paddock are holdin’ their own.”
They conversed for ten minutes about sheep. At one time Kate, who often accompanied her uncle on these journeys of inspection, asked the squatter why he tarried so long at these places, talking over matters of which the evening telephone reports must have fully advised him. And this was his reply:
“My dear, if you led the life these men lead, you would not like to see your boss flash past in his car. You would enjoy a short chat with him, or with any other human being.”
When Thornton decided to go on, she had ready a large square basket, which she offered to David.
“Auntie sent this out to you, David,” she said. “Leave the basket on the table, and we’ll get it on our way home if you are out.”
David smiled, a genuinely grateful smile. No wonder Mrs Thornton was known affectionately far and wide as the “Little Lady”. She always gave her husband baskets of eggs and fruit for the riders, adding butter in the winter.
“Now we forgot Alec’s basket, Uncle,” she said when they moved off. “Don’t let me forget to give it him on our way back. Has David got his mail?”
“I gave it to him, Kate,” Ralph informed her.
“What, Ralph, have you just awoken? That is the first time you’ve spoken since we started.”
“The wise are always silent,” he said, with a smile, looking back at her. “As a matter of fact, I have been thinking.”
“Oh—of what, if I am not rude?”
“You are, but I’ll tell you,” he said. “Peculiarly enough I was thinking of Nellie Wanting, and I arrived at the stupendous conclusion that she would be a really pretty girl if she was white.”
Kate Flinders laughed deliriously. Dugdale suddenly smiled. Thornton was absorbed in watching the country, i.e. the state of the sheep feed.
“I believe, Ralph,” she said, “that you are falling in love with little Nellie Wanting, the lady of colour.”
“You would, doubtless,” he replied dryly, “be much astonished if I did.”
Chapter Nine
The Washaways
Ten miles west of Cattle Tank they reached the Washaways. It had been a standing joke for years that Thornton repeatedly stated he would have a bridge, or series of bridges across this maze of creeks, winding in and out among themselves like the strands of a rope. The bridges, however, never materialized.
On Barrakee these creeks, divided by steep box-lined banks, ran from north to south, and in flood-time carried water from the Paroo to the Darling, a kind of overflow. The Paroo itself, when it does run water, empties it into the Darling, just above Wilcannia.
The Barrakee road to Thurlow Lake crossed five creeks, forming the Washaways at that point, in three-quarters of a mile, and it was on the west bank of the last of them that Thornton directed Dugdale to pull into the shade of a great box-tree for lunch.
Kate Flinders always enjoyed these alfresco lunches. While she set out the food on the car’s running-board to baffle the myriads of ants, Dugdale gathered the wood for a fire, and Ralph filled the billy from one of the two canvas water-bags hanging from the side of the car.
Dugdale invariably arrogated to himself the task of boiling the billy, and whilst he was thus engaged the squatter announced that that morning the annual Land Lottery was opened.
As a sop to the insatiable hunger for land in the western half of New South Wales, the Government “resumes” a dozen or so small areas of land every year from the big pastoral leases, and these areas, commonly known as “blocks”, are offered to the public. For every block thus thrown open there are up to a hundred applicants. A Land Board, consisting of two or three highly-salaried gentlemen, eventually visits the bush towns and hears the applicant’s qualifications. Since no special qualifications are demanded and since the qualifications of past successful applicants are by no means uniform, the necessary qualifications for success are purely a matter of guesswork to the bush public.
Hence this annual allotment of blocks is humorously called, in many places, the “Great Land Lottery”. To Frank Dugdale, any one of these blocks would enable him, in a few years, to ask Kate to marry him. Success in the Lottery would be infinitely quicker than waiting weary years for a managership.
“Do you know any of the blocks, Mr Thornton?” he asked promptly.
“Yes. One of them is Daly’s Yards paddock.”
Dugdale’s eyes gleamed.
Daly’s Yards was a large paddock on Tindale Station, and joined the west boundary of Barrakee. In area it was some 25,000 acres, and, whilst this does not constitute a large area for Australia, everyone knew that Daly’s Yards was well scrubbed, and that there was a very fine surface dam in the west, and a good well in the east. The rent would be about thirty pounds per annum, and the value of the water supply—to be paid by arrangement to the owners of Tindale—would be something like six hundred pounds. Ownership of such a lease meant independence in less than ten years.
“There will be a lot in for that block,” murmured Dugdale.