CHAPTER I

GOLDEN FLEECES

IT was the last day of the shearing on Billabong station, and the men
were beginning to work in leisurely fashion, knowing that the long job
was nearly done. No woolly sheep remained in the yards outside the great
shed; the last stragglers now waited their turn in the little pens
beside each shearer, where they huddled, bleating and
distressful—watching, with what emotions only sheep may know, the swift
blades that ripped the woolly coats from their contorting brethren
already undergoing treatment. The steady hum of the engine filled the
shed with a dull roar, mingled with the rattle of the shears and the
sharp click-click of the tiny hooves on the slabs. Boys ran hither and
thither, gathering up the fleeces as they were tossed aside, and
hurrying them to the tables where the masses of soft wool were swiftly
folded into shape before they were carried to the presses where open
bales yawned to receive them. Every few minutes a shearer straightened
himself, slipped his shears on a hook, and urged a shorn victim through
the tiny gateway before him, to rejoin companions too bewildered and
unhappy to be able to luxuriate in being free. Their chorus of
protesting bleating came steadily from outside.

Three girls, laden with heavy baskets and billies, came in through the
main doorway, and putting down their loads, stood watching the busy
scene. Near them, a tall, grizzled man was pressing a bale of wool,
bringing down the lever with easy strength, the muscles standing out on
his bare arms. Beyond him was a great stack of finished bales, neatly
sewn and symmetrical, bearing the big stencilled brand of Billabong,
with the “L & S” that stood for Linton and Son. The lever went home with
a click, and David Linton turned and smiled at the girls.

“Smoke-oh?” he asked. “You’re a little ahead of time, aren’t you,
Norah?”

“Just a few minutes,” his daughter answered. “We were afraid of being
late, and we hurried. You’ve nearly cut out, haven’t you, Dad? We saw
all the dogs lying asleep under a tree, so we thought their job was
over.”

“Yes—we’ve only the sheep in the pens to do, and they won’t take long.
Not tired of a shearing-shed yet, Tommy?”

Tommy Rainham, whose baptismal name was Cecilia, smiled up at him.

“I never could be—I love each minute of it,” she declared. There was
the faintest hint of a foreign intonation in her voice. “Sheep and I, we
have something akin: I think I must have been a merino in some previous
existence, because I seem to know all they are feeling.”

“Then you beat most sheep-men,” David Linton said. “To me a sheep always
seems something compounded of obstinacy and sheer idiocy in equal
parts—and I fail to see that there’s anything resembling you in that
mixture, Tommy! Give me bullocks: I’d rather see one good Shorthorn than
all the sheep in creation. What do you think, Jean?”

Jean Yorke, who was pretty and fair and plump, sniffed delicately.

“I’m only a ‘townie,’ so I don’t know much about it,” she answered. “I
like them all, when I see them in paddocks. But how you poor men can
bear the smell of this awful shed, day after day, and the grease and the
dirt——! Jim made me feel a fleece yesterday, and it was horrid; I
didn’t think I could ever put on a woolly garment again!”

“Oh, we get used to it,” said her host, laughing. “I believe Tommy likes
it.”

“I do,” said Tommy, sturdily. “I like the nice greasy wool—and the nice
fat cheques it brings! Bob is going to get a car if his wool sells well;
and I feel it is going to, for it was such lovely wool!”

“Now she goes out in the paddocks every day and broods over her beloved
shorn merinoes, and begs them to hurry up and grow new coats,” said
Norah, laughing, as she slipped her arm through her friend’s. “Dad, I’m
sure it’s time for smoke-oh—and Wally has almost finished a sheep!”

“Which makes it time, I suppose,” said David Linton, a twinkle in his
eye. He blew a whistle sharply, and in a moment a tall young fellow took
the low fence of his pen in his stride and came over to the group by the
door.

“Hallo, everybody! Girls, you don’t know how glad I am to see you!”

“Or the afternoon-tea—which?” queried Tommy. “I believe it wouldn’t
matter a bit if we let Lee Wing and Hogg bring it over, so long as it
came—don’t you, Norah?”

“We might experiment, by coming without it,” Norah observed. “But I’d
tremble for our popularity if we did.”

“Anyhow, you won’t be able to try dangerous experiments, because it’s
the last day,” said Wally Meadows, comfortably. He pushed his hat back,
thereby lending a pleasing touch of greasy streaks to an already
excessively grimy face. “Norah, you look as if I were grubby.”

“I didn’t mean to—but you are,” Norah answered. “More than grubby. But
it shows that you are an honest, hard-working young man, so I really
don’t mind!”

“As if I needed to get dirty to prove that!” lamented Wally. “I am
frequently at my best when unusually clean, but no one recognizes it.
Here’s Jimmy—he has been creating a record with that old ewe he’s just
turned out, ever since the whistle blew. Did you take off much mutton,
Jim?”

Jim Linton grinned.

“I believe there’s a scar or two on her, here and there,” he said. “She
was an obstinate old wretch, and wouldn’t keep still; and I was afraid
you’d have all the tea finished.”

“He looked longingly at it, but we wouldn’t begin until you came,” said
Norah. “I don’t know if you two would scorn it, but I filled the basin
outside with clean water. This isn’t a hint, merely a statement.”

“Whichever it is, I’ll accept it,” said her brother. “I never did like
the mingled flavour of sheep and scone. Come and wash, Wal: you aren’t
fit to be seen.”

“This is how Norah likes me,” said Wally, going nevertheless. They
returned in a few moments, with hands and faces startlingly clean in
comparison with their grease-soaked dungaree shirts and trousers. The
engine had stopped, and the men were crowding round the tea, while the
girls ladled out steaming cups and dispensed scones and great slabs of
“brownie.” Every one was in high spirits at the near approach of
“cut-out.” Billabong was primarily a cattle-station, and though a
certain number of sheep were kept, nobody regarded them as the serious
business of the run. The stock-men took part in the shearing because
they would have cheerfully undertaken any job, no matter how
distasteful, for the “Boss.” But they rejoiced exceedingly when it was
over, and they were able to get back to the real life—life that was
lived mainly in a saddle.

Murty O’Toole, who had grown grey in David Linton’s service, came over
from sewing the bale his master had pressed. Murty could not shear. He
was as willing as anyone: but just as some men are incapable of learning
to milk, so Murty had never been able to master a pair of shears. He had
struggled heroically: so had the sheep that he chipped and sliced in his
well-meant efforts; and finally it had been agreed that the attempt was
useless. Murty, deeply indignant with himself, had offered to take on
any job in the shed, from tar-boy to rouseabout, and had ended by doing
three men’s work. But he loathed shearing-time with his whole soul.

He wiped his hands upon his trousers as he approached, looked at the
result with some disgust, smelt them, and finally turned aside to polish
them on a clean bale.

“Basin of water outside, Murty,” sang out Wally.

“Yerra, I’ll do,” said the stockman. “Washin’ the hands is only to be
scratchin’ the surface: it’s in a tub of hot water I’ll be this night,
with a bar of yellow soap along with me.” He accepted a cup of tea from
Norah with the quiet courtesy that sat gently upon him, and then put it
down in order to find a passably-clean petrol case to serve her as a
seat. Had it been a dirty one Norah would not have refused it—from
Murty. They had been friends since her babyhood: he had carried her
before she could walk, had guided her first toddling footsteps, proudly,
and had held her, yet more proudly, on her first pony: had been her ally
in a hundred tight places. Now, because he was soon to lose her, his
eyes rarely left her. She was “the little Misthress,” as her dead mother
had been, more than twenty years ago; and it was partly because of Murty
that Norah had never realized the loss of that mother whose arms had
held her such a little while.

“Nearly finished, Murty?” she said.

“We are—praise the pigs. Great practice I do be having with the sewing
this year, Miss Norah: I’ll not be asking Mrs. Brown to patch me old
pants any more, I’m that distinguished with the needle!”

“I’ll give you a job, Murty,” said Dave Boone, exhibiting a long rip
where a shear-blade, kicked aside by a struggling sheep, had slit his
trousers-leg down from the knee.

“I cud do it,” said Murty, with the conscious superiority of an artist.
“But I’m not taking on any conthracts. Did it get your leg as well,
Dave?”

“It did: but a dab of tar fixed that. Wish I could mend the pants the
same way,” said Dave, grinning.

“Great stuff tar,” said Jim. “Do you remember the old chap that took us
out in a curragh on the Shannon, Wally? That’s the queerest sort of boat
you ever saw, Dave—built of laths, with canvas stretched over them, and
the whole thing tarred; they look like a big black cigar, and they hold
six or eight people. This one leaked pretty badly, and Mr. Wally and I
were hard at it baling all the time—she shipped water in bucketfuls,
and it was pretty exciting, because the river is about a mile wide just
there, and there was a very lively sea on. We landed on an island we
wanted to explore, and I spoke my mind to the boatman for bringing us
out in such a rotten craft. He said, ‘Ah, now, sir, don’t you mind—sure
I’ll aisy mend her with a coal of fire!’ He did, too.”

“Go on!” said Dave, unbelievingly.

“Oh, he mended her all right. He got a little fire going, up-ended her,
and held a burning stick so that the tar melted and ran over the holes.
She came home as dry as a bone. The part that annoyed us was that he
hadn’t done it before we started.”

“Them’s the boats,” said Murty; “you’d be very safe in a curragh. Many’s
the time I’ve gone out, when I was a slip of a gossoon, after mackerel
with the Kilkee fishermen. Dancing over the tops of the waves they’d be,
and if you didn’t know them you’d think they’d be swamped every minute,
for they’re only like a big cockle-shell; a curragh that’d hold six men
’ud only be a weight that two could aisy carry up the strand. But you’d
never be anxious in one, barring you’d the bad luck to meet a rock with
an ill-conditioned little point on it that’d tear the bottom. I’ve seen
them come in loaded down with mackerel—an’ the boats the full of green
and silver fish, and the women ’ud be cryin’ them in the streets before
breakfast. ‘Mackerel! Fresh mack-erel!’ Them was the great nights for a
boy!”

“Doesn’t seem to fit in much with this,” said one of the shearers,
glancing round the long shed, with its reek of greasy wool and the
peevish bleating of the penned sheep. “That ol’ ewe I’m goin’ to shear
next’ll be callin’ worse than ‘Mackerel!’ at me if I keep her waitin’
much longer.” He nodded sideways at one of his mates. “Race you who cuts
out first, Bill.” In a moment the engine was humming again, and the work
was in full swing.

The three girls climbed to the top of the stacked wool bales and sat
watching the busy scene. Refreshed by “smoke-oh,” the men were suddenly
seized with ambition to end the job quickly: they flung themselves at
the sheep with a will, and the shear-blades flashed as the grimy wool
fell in long folds, revealing the crinkled creamy-white masses below the
matted brown surface. One after another the pens were emptied, and the
men gradually collected round the two last, where Bill and his mate, Joe
Burke, were racing. Bill was the “ringer” of the shed: a professional
shearer, no man could touch his record; but Joe seized his last sheep a
moment ahead of his friend, and for a few minutes it was a neck-and-neck
race. The sheep were an even pair in weight of wool; the men were both
good workmen. Woe to the unlucky sheep that kicked or fought in those
last few moments! Finally Joe urged his sheep out a second ahead of
Bill, amid a shout from the crowding men, and the Billabong shearing was
over.

“That’s a new ’at you owe me, Bill, ol’ son,” said the victor, grinning.

“Reckon I can stand it,” said his mate. “You’ll make a shearer yet, ol’
chap, if you stick to the game.” They hurried off to the men’s hut to
clean up and change before coming up to the house to draw their cheques.
Half an hour later they were spinning down the road on their
motor-cycles, to the next shed, twenty-five miles distant, where another
job awaited them next day.

Jim Linton and Wally Meadows gathered up the empty baskets and billies
and strolled homeward with the girls, rejoicing in feeling free to be
lazy after the strenuous weeks that lay behind them. The wool-shed
paddock was the scene, at the moment, of hundreds of domestic tragedies.
Woolly lambs, hungry and distressful, sought urgently for their mothers,
failing to recognize, in the lean white figures that sought them no less
fervently, the comfortable brown matrons they had known.

“Look at that poor old ewe,” said Jim, laughing. “She has just found her
lamb, and said to him, ‘Billy, come here, you little beast—don’t you
know your own dear Ma?’ And Billy said, ‘No, I don’t—you’ve got Ma’s
voice, but you aren’t her!’”

“That’s not grammar!” said Jean.

“Well, lambs don’t learn grammar. Anyhow, Billy has fled from her sight,
and she’s just longing to spank him. I don’t see how ewes can ever bring
up their children properly, since they can’t administer punishment when
it’s due.”

“No one ever accused a lamb of being brought up properly,” said Wally,
with some bitterness. “Their conduct all through life proves that. Thank
goodness we’ve done with them for awhile, anyhow. I want to get on a
horse to-morrow and ride out to look at bullocks, just to refresh my
mind.”

“I’m with you there,” said Jim. “Let’s all go—unless you and Norah want
to go bullock-gazing all alone. But you’ll be able to do that to your
heart’s content in a week, so you might as well be sociable now.”

“Rather!” said Norah. “We haven’t the least wish to be unsociable, have
we, Wally?” They smiled at each other. Wally was no figure of romance at
the moment, in his torn and filthy dungarees, but there was something
very heartsome about his twinkle.

“These two are going to have the most original honeymoon, Jean,” chaffed
Jim. “They’re going to drive up and down country roads all over Victoria
and New South Wales, looking at cattle. At short intervals they will be
found leaning over fences and quarrelling violently over the respective
merits of Herefords and Shorthorns!”

“Not so—because we both prefer Shorthorns,” said Wally, cheerfully.
“Otherwise the picture is entirely correct. Sometimes we will separate
for most of the day while Norah goes to purr over a poultry-farm, which
I decline to look at, or while I depart to inspect pigs, which she
loathes.”

“And we’ll speed up furiously and break all limits when we have to pass
a sheep-run,” added Norah. “That’s one of the few points on which we
shall be completely agreed. And then we’ll be stopped and prosecuted,
and no local magistrate will be in the least moved by our plea that if
we hadn’t scorched, Wally would have felt that he had to get out and
begin shearing!”

“Well, that isn’t the sort of honeymoon that will suit me, if I’m ever
so foolish as to get married,” said Jean. “I think it sounds dreadful.
Me for Sydney and ‘The Australia,’ where you meet all sorts of exciting
people from England and America, and see wonderful frocks——”

“Won’t that thrill your husband!” breathed Wally.

“It will thrill me, anyhow,” returned she. “And there will be new
theatres, and dances at The Ambassadors, and balls on the ships. You
just can’t be dull for a moment in Sydney. It will have to be warm
enough for surfing, and for picnics—I know heaps of jolly people in
Sydney, and we’d be asked everywhere and have a splendid time. As for
driving round dull country roads, all ruts and potholes, and looking at
cattle——! But you always were like that, Norah. Even when you were at
school in Melbourne you’d get quite sentimental over a cow!”

“Always!” said Norah, lightly. “I could stand the surfing part of your
programme, Jeanie, but not the rest. If I notice Wally beginning to
yearn for society and frocks, I’ll send him off to Sydney alone, and
continue to meander among cattle!”

“Now, that’s very thoughtful of you,” said Wally, gratefully. “I’ll
practise a suitably yearning expression, in case I need it—if I copied
that old ewe over there I think it would do the trick. She looks as if
life were all one long yearn.”

“If you do it near meal-times Norah will merely think you’re hungry, and
suggest boiling the billy,” said Jim. “I’ve often seen you look like
that in France, when the Huns managed to delay the rations. By Jove,
doesn’t the lagoon look tempting!”

They had topped a little rise, coming in sight of the backwater from the
river that widened out into a deep, still lagoon. At the far side it was
marshy, and wildfowl paddled among the rushes that nodded to their
reflections in the shallows; but nearer the homestead nothing ruffled
the dark surface of the dreaming water. Under spreading trees, where the
bank was high, stood the boat-house and bathing-shed, whence a couple of
spring-boards ran out over the deepest part. Beyond was Billabong House,
of mellow red brick, nestling in its deep green of shrubbery and
orchard, with flashes of colour from the flower-beds that were the pride
of old Hogg, the Scotch gardener. To the eyes of the tired boys it was a
very heaven of coolness and rest after the long day in the reeking
wool-shed.

“Tempting!” echoed Wally. “Oh, and I’m so dirty! Jimmy dear, I’ll soon
be an old married man, burdened with responsibility—that’s you,
Norah—and you’ll be just a care-free young lad, as usual; but before my
fate descends on me, I’m game to race you across to the far side, just
as we are!”

“Clothes and all?” asked Jim, laughing.

“_And_ boots. Goodness knows, they all need washing. Are you game?”

“Me!” said Jim. “Catch this dunnage, Norah!” The girls suddenly found
themselves encumbered with the baskets. They stood laughing as the two
tall figures pounded across the grass, with heavy boots thudding.
Together the boys reached the landing-stage and darted out upon the
spring-boards, taking the water in clean dives to which boots and
flapping dungarees lent a curious effect. They thrashed across the
lagoon with powerful over-arm, strokes, neck and neck for most of the
way; then Jim drew ahead and came out upon the gravelled bank, a couple
of yards ahead of his friend, with a shout of triumph.

They returned to meet the girls, their soaked clothes clinging to them,
while the water squelched in their boots at every stride.

“Gorgeous!” uttered Jim.

“Too good to leave,” said Wally. “We’re going in again—minus boots.
Norah, if you were the nice young person I have always believed, you’d
bring us down clean shirts and trousers. It will take all the water in
this lagoon to make Jim clean!”

“You don’t deserve it, for calling me a nice young person,” said Norah,
laughing. “But, yes—you do look as if you ought to go in again. You’ve
gone all streaky. There’s soap in the bathing-house, if you’d care to
use it, and I wouldn’t say that it would be a disadvantage!”

“Race you for it, Wal!” Jim cried. They squelched across to the sheds,
while the girls went on to the house. Ten minutes later, when they
returned, with armfuls of clean clothes, all that could be seen of Jim
and Wally was wildly bobbing heads at the far side of the water, whence
the waterfowl had risen in dismayed flight. Much soap-lather had
collected in the tiny bays near the sheds, and on the gravel lay the
meagre remains of a large piece of soap which had evidently been pulled
in two with some violence.

“And to think that one of them is going to be married next week!”
uttered Jean. “Norah, it’s ridiculous! Wally may be whatever age you say
he is, and he may have gone to the War and killed people and come home a
captain—I suppose he did, as he got the M.C. But he isn’t grown-up, or
anything like it!”

Norah was collecting the remnants of soap and stowing them in the
bathing-house. She came out and stood on the landing-stage for a moment
before answering—a tall, slender figure, with brown curls round a brown
face, and eyes that were at once merry and steadfast. She looked at the
two bobbing heads. But it was at Jim’s that she looked longest, and
there was a shade of wistfulness in her eyes.

“Wally never will be grown-up,” she said. “He is Peter Pan. But, Tommy
dear—promise me you won’t let Jim get grown-up, either, while we are
away!”