Seven Little Australians Part 23

At a sudden signal from Mr. Ha.s.sal the men dropped down inside, half along, one side and half the other. The object was to get a hundred or two of the cattle into the forcing-yard adjoining, the gate to which was wide open. Pip marvelled at the courage of the men; for a moment his heart had leaped to his mouth as bullock after bullock essayed to charge them, but the air resounded with cracks from the mighty stock whips and drafting-sticks, and beast after beast retreated towards the centre with its face dripping with blood.

Then one huge black creature, with a bellow that seemed to shake the plain, made a wild rush to the gate, the whole herd at his heels.

Like lightning, the men made a line behind, shouting, yelling, cracking their whips to drive them onward. Pip stood up and halloed, absolutely beside himself with excitement. Then he held his breath again.

Mr. Ha.s.sal and one of the black boys were creeping cautiously up near the gateway through which the tumultuous stream of horns and backs was pouring. Half a dozen mighty blows from the men, and the last leader fell back for an instant, driving the mult.i.tude back behind him.

In that second the two had slipped up the rails and the herd was in two divisions.

Two lines of stockmen again, whip-crackings, bellows, blood, horns, hide and heels in the air, and some forty or fifty were secure in a third yard, a long narrow place with a gate at the end leading into the final division.

Pip learnt from Mr. Gillet the object of these divisions: some of the beasts were almost worthless things, and had been a.s.signed to a buyer for a couple of pounds a head, just for the horns, hides, and what might be got for the flesh. Others were prime, fat creatures, ready for the butcher and Sydney market. And others again were splendid animals, of great value for prize and breeding purposes, and were to be made into a separate draft.

The man at the last gateway was doing the all important work of selecting. He was armed with a short thick stick, and, as the other men drove the animals down towards him, decided with lightning speed to which cla.s.s they belonged. A heavy blow on the nose, a sharp, rapid series of them between the eyes, and the most violent brute plunged blindly whither the driver sent him. All the day work went on, and just as the great hot purple shadows began to fall across the plain they secured the last rail, the battle was over, and the animals in approved divisions.

Pip ate enough salt beef and damper to half kill him, drank more tea than he had ever disposed of at one sitting in all his fourteen years, swung himself into his saddle in close imitation of the oldest stockman, and thought if he only could have a black, evil-looking pipe like Tettawonga and the rest of the men his happiness would be complete and his manhood attained.

He reached home as tired as "a dozen dogs and a dingo," and entertained his sisters and Bunty with a graphic account of the day's proceedings, dwelling lengthily on his own prowess and the manifold perils he had escaped.

The next day both Esther and Judy rode with the others to the yards to see the departures.

The best of the contingent, which Mr. Ha.s.sal had only wanted to separate, not to sell, were driven out through the gate and away to their old fields and pastures stale.

The "wasters," some hundred and fifty of them, with half a dozen stockmen mounted on the best horses of the place told off for them, were released from their enclosure in a state of frenzied desperation, and, with much cracking of whips and yells, mustered into a herd and driven across the plain in the direction of the road.

And some hour or two later the best "beef" lot were driven forth, and quiet reigned at Yarrahappini once more. During the two days of excitement the children all decided upon their future professions, which were all to be of a pastoral nature.

Pip was going to be a stockman, and brand and draft cattle all the days of his life. Judy was going to be his "aide-de-camp", provided he let her stay in the saddle, and provided her with a whip just as long as his own. Meg thought she should like to marry the richest squatter in Australia, and have the Governor and the Premier come up for shooting and "things," and give b.a.l.l.s to which all the people within a hundred miles would come. Nell decided the would make soap and candles, coloured as well as plain, when she arrived at years of discretion; said Baby inclined to keeping paddocks full of pet lambs that never grew into sheep.

Bunty did, not wax enthusiastic over any of the ideas.

"I'd rather be like Mr. Gillet," he said, and his eyes looked dreamy.

"Pooh! no books and figures far me; give me a run of Salt Bush country, and a few thousand sheep," said Pip.

"Hear! hear!" chimed in Judy.

"Stoopids!" said Bunty, in a voice of great scorn. "Doesn't Mr.

Gillet keep the store keys--just think those currants and figs."

CHAPTER XVIII

The Picnic at Krangi-Bahtoo

Esther had gone to a ball, not in a dress of delicate colour with great puffed sleeves, and a dazzling neck bare and beautiful under its wraps, not through the darkness to a blaze of lights and swinging music.

She had gone, in the broad light of the morning, in a holland suit with a blue Henley s.h.i.+rt, a sailor hat, and a gossamer.

Under the front buggy seat where Mr. Ha.s.sal sat was a box containing a beautiful gown, all daffodil silk and delicate wavelets of chiffon.

And there were daffodil shoes and stockings, a plume fan in a hat-box on her knee, and a lovely trained white underskirt with billowy frills of torchon, the very sight of which made Meg wild to be grown up.

But none of these things were to be donned for many an hour yet.

The ball was a neat little matter of fifty-five miles away, across country, so she had to start tolerably early, of course, in order to have comfortable time to "t.i.tivate," as Pip expressed it.

The children, as compensation for having no part in this pleasure, were to have a very, out-of-the-way kind of picnic all to themselves.

In the first place, the picnic ground was fourteen miles away; in the second, the journey was to be made, not in everyday buggies, or on commonplace horses, but on a dray drawn by a team of twelve yoked bullocks.

A boundary-rider had reported that a magnificent blue gum that they had long called King Koree had been blown down during a violent gale, and Mr. Ha.s.sal immediately declared that, whatever the trouble, it must be brought for the foundation of a kind of dam across the creek at Krangi-Bahtoo, the picnic spot. The fallen bush monarch lay twenty miles away from the station, and six beyond the place chosen for the picnic; so it was arranged the trolly should carry the party for the fourteen miles, leave them to picnic, go forward for the tree, bring it back, and deposit it near the creek ready for future operations, and bring the children back in the cool of the evening.

But for escorting his daughter to the ball, Mr. Ha.s.sal would have gone himself to the place and seen about it in person. As it was, he placed the great trolly in the charge of four men, with instructions to pick up a couple of men from distant huts to help in the task.

Krangi-Bahtoo--or Duck Water, as, less prettily, we should call it--was the name given to the head of the creek, which had scooped out the earth till it made itself a beautiful ravine just there, with precipitous rocks and boulders that the kangaroos skipped across and played hide-and-seek behind with hunters, and great towering blue gums and red gums, that seemed to lose themselves in the blue, blue sky-canopy above.

Tettawonga told of a Bunyip that dwelt where the trickling water had made a pool, deep and beautiful, and delicate ferns had crept tenderly to fringe its edge, and blackwood, and ti-trees grown up thick and strong for a girdle. The water-hen made a home there, the black swan built among the gra.s.s-like reeds, the wild duck made frequent dark zigzag lines against the sky. From the trees the bell-bird, the coach-whip, the tewinga, the laughing-jacka.s.s, the rifle-bird and regent, filled the air with sound, if not with music. And the black snake, the brown snake, the whip, the diamond, and the death adder glided gently among the fallen leaves and gra.s.ses, and held themselves in cheerful readiness for intruders.

That was why a condition was attached to the freely granted picnic.

Everyone might go, and go on the bullock-dray, but the picnic was to take place above the ravine, and no one was to venture down, on pain of being instantly packed back to Sydney.

They all promised faithfully. Mrs. Ha.s.sal, tiny as she was, had a way of commanding implicit obedience.

Then an incredible number of hampers, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with good things, was packed.

Mr. Gillet went, to give an appearance of steadiness to the party, and to see no one got sunstroke.

He had a Heine in one pocket against the long, unusual day, a bulging Tennyson in the other, and a sheaf of English papers under his arm as he climbed on the trolly, where the whole seven were already seated.

The SEVEN? Even so, Judy had refused to stir without the General, and had promised "on her life" not to allow any harm to come near him.

Mr. Gillet gave a glance almost of dismay when he found the whole number was to be present, without the subtraction of the mischievously disposed ones, or the addition of anyone but himself weighted with authority. For a moment he distrusted his own powers in such a situation.

Judy caught the doubting look.

"You're quoting poetry to yourself, Mr. Gillet," she said.

"I?" he said, and looked astonished. "Indeed, no. What makes you think so, Miss Judy?"

"I can hear it distinctly," she said. "Your eyes are saying it, and your left ear, not to mention the ends of your moustache."

"Judy!" reproved Meg, whom something had made strangely quiet.

He pretended to be alarmed--shut his eyes, held his left ear, covered his moustache.

"What can they be saying?" he said.