“But where are you going to take ’em to?” I said. “They’re all Mr. Hunter’s and Mr. Falkland’s; the brands are plain enough.”
“Are the calves branded, you blasted fool?” he said, while the black look came over his face that had so often frightened me when I was a child. “You do what I tell you if you’ve any pluck and gumption about you; or else you and your brother can ride over to Dargo Police Station and give me away if you like; only don’t come home again, I warn you, sons or no sons.”
If I had done what I had two minds to do—for I wasn’t afraid of him then, savage as he looked—told him to do his own duffing and ridden away with Jim there and then—poor Jim, who sat on his horse staring at both of us, and saying nothing—how much better it would have been for all of us, the old man as well as ourselves; but it seemed as if it wasn’t to be. Partly from use, and partly from a love of danger and something new, which is at the bottom of half the crime in the bush districts, I turned my horse’s head after the cattle, which were now beginning to straggle. Jim did the same on his side. How easy is it for chaps to take the road to hell! for that was about the size of it, and we were soon too busy to think about much else.
The track we were driving on led along a narrow rocky gully which looked as if it had been split up or made out of a crack in the earth thousands of years ago by an earthquake or something of that kind. The hills were that steep that every now and then some of the young cattle that were not used to that sort of country would come sliding down and bellow as if they thought they were going to break their necks.
The water rushed down it like a torrent in wet winters, and formed a sort of creek, and the bed of it made what track there was. There were overhanging rocks and places that made you giddy to look at, and some of these must have fallen down and blocked up the creek at one time or other. We had to scramble round them the best way we could.
When we got nearly up to the head of the gully—and great work it was to force the footsore cattle along, as we couldn’t use our whips overmuch—Jim called out—
“Why, here comes old Crib. Who’d have thought he’d have seen the track? Well done, old man. Now we’re right.”
Father never took any notice of the poor brute as he came limping along the stones. Woman or child, horse or dog, it’s the same old thing—the more any creature loves a man in this world the worse they’re treated. It looks like it, at any rate. I saw how it was; father had given Crib a cruel beating the night before, when he was put out for some trifling matter, and the dog had left him and run home. But now he had thought better of it, and seen our tracks and come to work and slave, with his bleeding feet—for they were cut all to pieces—and got the whip across his back now and then for his pains. It’s a queer world!
When we got right to the top of this confounded gully, nearly deadbeat all of us, and only for the dog heeling them up every now and then, and making his teeth nearly meet in them, without a whimper, I believe the cattle would have charged back and beat us. There was a sort of rough tableland—scrubby and stony and thick it was, but still the grass wasn’t bad in summer, when the country below was all dried up. There were wild horses in troops there, and a few wild cattle, so Jim and I knew the place well; but it was too far and too much of a journey for our own horses to go often.
“Do you see that sugar-loaf hill with the bald top, across the range?” said father, riding up just then, as we were taking it easy a little. “Don’t let the cattle straggle, and make straight for that.”
“Why, it’s miles away,” said Jim, looking rather dismal. “We could never get ’em there.”
“We’re not going there, stupid,” says father; “that’s only the line to keep. I’ll show you something about dinnertime that’ll open your eyes a bit.”
Poor Jim brightened up at the mention of dinnertime, for, boylike, he was getting very hungry, and as he wasn’t done growing he had no end of an appetite. I was hungry enough for the matter of that, but I wouldn’t own to it.
“Well, we shall come to somewhere, I suppose,” says Jim, when father was gone. “Blest if I didn’t think he was going to keep us wandering in this blessed Nulla Mountain all day. I wish I’d never seen the blessed cattle. I was only waiting for you to hook it when we first seen the brands by daylight, and I’d ha’ been off like a brindle ‘Mickey’ down a range.”
“Better for us if we had,” I said; “but it’s too late now. We must stick to it, I suppose.”
We had kept the cattle going for three or four miles through the thickest of the country, every now and then steering our course by the clear round top of Sugarloaf, that could be seen for miles round, but never seemed to get any nearer, when we came on a rough sort of log-fence, which ran the way we were going.
“I didn’t think there were any farms up here,” I said to Jim.
“It’s a ‘break,’ ” he said, almost in a whisper. “There’s a
