Slowly and reluctantly we left that roaring fireside to accompany Dad that bitter night. It WAS a night!--dark as pitch, silent, forlorn and forbidding, and colder than the busiest morgue. And just to keep wallabies from eating nothing! They HAD eaten all the wheat--every blade of it--and the gra.s.s as well. What they would start on next--ourselves or the cart-harness--was n"t quite clear.
We stumbled along in the dark one behind the other, with our hands stuffed into our trousers. Dad was in the lead, and poor Joe, bare-shinned and bootless, in the rear. Now and again he tramped on a Bathurst-burr, and, in sitting down to extract the p.r.i.c.kle, would receive a cl.u.s.ter of them elsewhere. When he escaped the burr it was only to knock his shin against a log or leave a toe-nail or two clinging to a stone. Joe howled, but the wind howled louder, and blew and blew.
Dave, in pausing to wait on Joe, would mutter:
"To h.e.l.l with everything! Whatever he wants bringing us out a night like this, I"m d.a.m.nED if I know!"
Dad could n"t see very well in the dark, and on this night could n"t see at all, so he walked up against one of the old draught horses that had fallen asleep gazing at the lucerne. And what a fright they both got! The old horse took it worse than Dad--who only tumbled down--for he plunged as though the devil had grabbed him, and fell over the fence, twisting every leg he had in the wires. How the brute struggled! We stood and listened to him. After kicking panels of the fence down and smashing every wire in it, he got loose and made off, taking most of it with him.
"That"s one wallaby on the wheat, anyway," Dave muttered, and we giggled. WE understood Dave; but Dad did n"t open his mouth.
We lost no time lighting the fires. Then we walked through the "wheat"
and wallabies! May Satan reprove me if I exaggerate their number by one solitary pair of ears--but from the row and scatter they made there were a MILLION.
Dad told Joe, at last, he could go to sleep if he liked, at the fire.
Joe went to sleep--HOW, I don"t know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet he seemed to be listening.
We mooched around from fire to fire, hour after hour, and when we wearied of heaving fire-sticks at the enemy we sat on our heels and cursed the wind, and the winter, and the night-birds alternately. It was a lonely, wretched occupation.
Now and again Dad would leave his fire to ask us if we could hear a noise. We could n"t, except that of wallabies and mopokes. Then he would go back and listen again. He was restless, and, somehow, his heart was n"t in the wallabies at all. Dave could n"t make him out.
The night wore on. By-and-by there was a sharp rattle of wires, then a rustling noise, and Sal appeared in the glare of the fire. "DAD!" she said. That was all. Without a word, Dad bounced up and went back to the house with her.
"Something"s up!" Dave said, and, half-anxious, half-afraid, we gazed into the fire and thought and thought. Then we stared, nervously, into the night, and listened for Dad"s return, but heard only the wind and the mopoke.
At dawn he appeared again, with a broad smile on his face, and told us that mother had got another baby--a fine little chap. Then we knew why Mrs. Brown had been staying at our place.
Chapter VI.
Good Old Bess.
Supper was over at Shingle Hut, and we were all seated round the fire--all except Joe. He was mousing. He stood on the sofa with one ear to the wall in a listening att.i.tude, and brandished a table-fork.
There were mice--mobs of them--between the slabs and the paper--layers of newspapers that had been pasted one on the other for years until they were an inch thick; and whenever Joe located a mouse he drove the fork into the wall and pinned it--or reckoned he did.
Dad sat pensively at one corner of the fire-place--Dave at the other with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his palms.
"Think you could ride a race, Dave?" asked Dad.
"Yairs," answered Dave, without taking his eyes off the fire, or his chin from his palms--"could, I suppose, if I"d a pair o" lighter boots "n these."
Again they reflected.
Joe triumphantly held up the mutilated form of a murdered mouse and invited the household to "Look!" No one heeded him.
"Would your Mother"s go on you?"
"Might," and Dave spat into the fire.
"Anyway," Dad went on, "we must have a go at this handicap with the old mare; it"s worth trying for, and, believe me, now! she"ll surprise a few of their flash hacks, will Bess."
"Yairs, she can go all right." And Dave spat again into the fire.
"GO! I"ve never known anything to keep up with her. Why, bless my soul, seventeen years ago, when old Redwood owned her, there was n"t a horse in the district could come within coo-ee of her. All she wants is a few feeds of corn and a gallop or two, and mark my words she"ll show some of them the way."
Some horse-races were being promoted by the shanty-keeper at the Overhaul--seven miles from our selection. They were the first of the kind held in the district, and the stake for the princ.i.p.al event was five pounds. It was n"t because Dad was a racing man or subject to turf hallucinations in any way that he thought of preparing Bess for the meeting. We sadly needed those five pounds, and, as Dad put it, if the mare could only win, it would be an easier and much quicker way of making a bit of money than waiting for a crop to grow.
Bess was hobbled and put into a two-acre paddock near the house. We put her there because of her wisdom. She was a chestnut, full of villainy, an absolutely incorrigible old rogue. If at any time she was wanted when in the gra.s.s paddock, it required the lot of us from Dad down to yard her, as well as the dogs, and every other dog in the neighbourhood. Not that she had any brumby element in her--she would have been easier to yard if she had--but she would drive steadily enough, alone or with other horses, until she saw the yard, when she would turn and deliberately walk away. If we walked to head her she beat us by half a length; if we ran she ran, and stopped when we stopped. That was the aggravating part of her! When it was only to go to the store or the post-office that we wanted her, we could have walked there and back a dozen times before we could run her down; but, somehow, we generally preferred to work hard catching her rather than walk.
When we had spent half the day hunting for the curry-comb, which we did n"t find, Dad began to rub Bess down with a corn-cob--a sh.e.l.led one--and trim her up a bit. He pulled her tail and cut the hair off her heels with a knife; then he gave her some corn to eat, and told Joe he was to have a bundle of thistles cut for her every night. Now and again, while grooming her, Dad would step back a few paces and look upon her with pride.
"There"s great breeding in the old mare," he would say, "great breeding; look at the shoulder on her, and the loin she has; and where did ever you see a horse with the same nostril? Believe me, she"ll surprise a few of them!"
We began to regard Bess with profound respect; hitherto we had been accustomed to pelt her with potatoes and blue-metal.
The only thing likely to prejudice her chance in the race, Dad reckoned, was a small sore on her back about the size of a foal"s foot.
She had had that sore for upwards of ten years to our knowledge, but Dad hoped to have it cured before the race came off with a never-failing remedy he had discovered--burnt leather and fat.
Every day, along with Dad, we would stand on the fence near the house to watch Dave gallop Bess from the bottom of the lane to the barn--about a mile. We could always see him start, but immediately after he would disappear down a big gully, and we would see nothing more of the gallop till he came to within a hundred yards of us. And would n"t Bess bend to it once she got up the hill, and fly past with Dave in the stirrups watching her shadow!--when there was one: she was a little too fine to throw a shadow always. And when Dave and Bess had got back and Joe had led her round the yard a few times, Dad would rub the corn-cob over her again and apply more burnt-leather and fat to her back.
On the morning preceding the race Dad decided to send Bess over three miles to improve her wind. Dave took her to the crossing at the creek--supposed to be three miles from Shingle Hut, but it might have been four or it might have been five, and there was a stony ridge on the way.
We mounted the fence and waited. Tommy Wilkie came along riding a plough-horse. He waited too.
"Ought to be coming now," Dad observed, and Wilkie got excited. He said he would go and wait in the gully and race Dave home. "Race him home!" Dad chuckled, as Tommy cantered off, "he"ll never see the way Bess goes." Then we all laughed.
Just as someone cried "Here he is!" Dave turned the corner into the lane, and Joe fell off the fence and pulled Dad with him. Dad d.a.m.ned him and scrambled up again as fast as he could. After a while Tommy Wilkie hove in sight amid a cloud of dust. Then came Dave at scarcely faster than a trot, and flogging all he knew with a piece of greenhide plough-rein. Bess was all-out and floundering. There was about two hundred yards yet to cover. Dave kept at her--THUD! THUD! Slower and slower she came. "d.a.m.n the fellow!" Dad said; "what"s he beating her for?" "Stop it, you fool!" he shouted. But Dave sat down on her for the final effort and applied the hide faster and faster. Dad crunched his teeth. Once--twice--three times Bess changed her stride, then struck a branch-root of a tree that projected a few inches above ground, and over she went--CRASH! Dave fell on his head and lay spread out, motionless. We picked him up and carried him inside, and when Mother saw blood on him she fainted straight off without waiting to know if it were his own or not. Both looked as good as dead; but Dad, with a bucket of water, soon brought them round again.
It was scarcely dawn when we began preparing for a start to the races.
Dave, after spending fully an hour trying in vain to pull on Mother"s elastic-side boots, decided to ride in his own heavy bluchers. We went with Dad in the dray. Mother would n"t go; she said she did n"t want to see her son get killed, and warned Dad that if anything happened the blame would for ever be on his head.
We arrived at the Overhaul in good time. Dad took the horse out of the dray and tied him to a tree. Dave led Bess about, and we stood and watched the shanty-keeper unpacking gingerbeer. Joe asked Dad for sixpence to buy some, but Dad had n"t any small change. We remained in front of the booth through most of the day, and ran after any corks that popped out and handed them in again to the shanty-keeper. He did n"t offer us anything--not a thing!
"Saddle up for the Overhaul Handicap!" was at last sung out, and Dad, saddle on arm, advanced to where Dave was walking Bess about. They saddled up and Dave mounted, looking as pale as death.
"I don"t like ridin" in these boots a bit," he said, with a quiver in his voice.
"Wot"s up with "em?" Dad asked.
"They"re too big altogether."
"Well, take "em off then!"
Dave jumped down and pulled them off-leaving his socks on.