It was many a day since I’d felt father’s hand in kindness; he didn’t do them sort of things. I held out mine and his fingers closed on it one minute, like a vice—blest if I didn’t expect to feel the bones grate agin one another; he was that strong he hardly knew his own strength, I believe. Then he sits down on the log by the fire. He took out his pipe, but somehow it wouldn’t light. “Goodbye, Crib,” says I. The old dog looked at me for a bit, wagged his tail, and then went and sat between dad’s knees. I took my horse and rode away slowish. I felt all dead and alive like when I got near the turn in the track. I looked back and seen the dog and him just the same. I started both horses then. I never set eyes on him again. Poor old dad!
I wasn’t very gay for a bit, but I had a good horse under me, another alongside, a smartish lot of cash in notes and gold, some bank deposits too, and all the world before me. My dart now was to make my way to Willaroon and look sharp about it. My chance of getting through was none too good, but I settled to ride a deal at night and camp by day. I began to pick up my spirits after I got on the road that led up the mountain, and to look ahead to the time when I might call myself my own man again.
Up the mountain side track I went steady enough, wouldn’t do to lame a horse at starting. When I got to the top I couldn’t help turning round and looking at the old place for the last time—the last time.
The sun was well up now, and everything looked that bright and jolly you couldn’t hardly believe as there could be anything wrong in the world. The grass was rushing up after the spring showers, and making even the bare mountain range look first-rate. The night fog was lying over most of the Hollow, but here and there you could see a big sheet of green when it had lifted, and a clear bit of river with the sun shining on it. Old Nulla Mountain was full of shadows, pale green, and dark, then lightish colours, with purple over all. The birds whistled, and called; the same long strings of waterfowl was flying far overhead, heading down to the marshes, low down the Macquarie, that Jim and I used to wonder at when we were boys. Everything was full of life and enjoying itself but us. Why should we be out of it? Could we have helped it—beginning, as we did, when we were quite little chaps, and hardly knew right from wrong? or was it all fixed for us from the beginning, before we was born, as some people believe, and there was no get away for us, try as hard as we could? Sometimes I think one thing, and sometimes the other. It’s mighty hard to say.
Well, after riding in and out, and round and round, a bit, I started a straight course northeast where I knew I could make the Macquarie River in 25 miles. Dreadful thick, broken country, but I didn’t mind that. All the better for not being followed. When I pulled up after two hours sharpish riding I’d struck the leading range that falls and falls down to the rivers.
It was awful steep in places, but I had no time to lead the horses, we had to do it; and as I went along at a hard jog, the stones rolled down from between the horse’s feet, and rattled as if they were going miles away. It was a long hour’s ride before I got on to the riverbank at last, and pulled up for a spell.
The river there runs through deep rocky valleys and over slate bars; just like the Turon. Plenty of gold was found there afterwards, but none of the diggers had managed to make out that way. There was any amount at the Turon, and as long as that held out they were sure not to go further just yet. I picked upon a small green flat where I hobbled the horses for half an hour, and had a smoke myself. Then I mounted and pushed on.
I made a big push of it that night and didn’t pull up till the Southern Cross was pretty low down in the sky and wrong end up besides. That told me it wasn’t so far off daylight. Many a night when I’d been camped with cattle I’d watched it go lower and lower and change in its shape like till the stars that were on the top of it, the
