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A cockatoo-fence was round the barley; and wire-posts, a long distance apart, round the grass-paddock. We were to get the wire to put in when Dad sent the money; and apply for the deeds when he came back. Things would be different then, according to Dad, and the farm would be worked properly.
If towards the grass-paddock or the dam, she was off helter-skelter. If it was n't, she'd go on strike put her head down and chew the bit. Then, when you'd get to work on her with a waddy which we always did she'd walk backwards into the house and frighten Mother, or into the waterhole and dirty the water. Dad said it was the fault of the cove who broke her in. Dad was a just man.
They called, and called, but nothing answered save the ghostly echoes, the rustling of leaves, the slow, sonorous notes of a distant bear, or the neighing of a horse in the grass-paddock. At midnight they gave up, and went home, and sat inside and listened, and looked distracted. While they sat, "Whisky," a blackfellow from Billson's station, dropped in.
"Would n't have anything happen to that colt for a fortune!" he said to himself. Then went away, forgetting to throw the rails down. Dave threw them down a couple of days after. WE preferred Nell to Ned, but Dad always voted for the colt. "You can trust him; he'll stand anywhere," he used to say. Ned WOULD! Once, when the grass-paddock was burning, he stood until he took fire.
It hopped across the yard and sat up, bold and erect, near the dog-kennel. Bluey nearly broke his neck trying to get at it. The kangaroo said: "Lay down, you useless hound!" and started across the cultivation!, heading for the grass-paddock in long, erratic jumps. Half-way across the cultivation it spotted a mob of other kangaroos, and took a firmer grip of the carver.
Next morning, Dad said to Dave and Joe, "Come 'long, and we'll see where he's got to." In a gully at the back of the grass-paddock they found him. He was ploughing sitting astride the highest limb of a fallen tree, and, in a hoarse voice and strange, calling out "Gee, Captain! come here, Tidy! "Blowed if I know," Dad muttered, coming to a standstill. "Wonder if he is clean mad?"
And when Joe stirred him up rattled a piece of rock on his jaw that nearly knocked his head off Dad took after Joe and chased him through the potatoes, and out into the grass-paddock, and across towards Anderson's; then returned and yarded the colt, and knocked a patch of skin off him with a rail because he would n't stand in a corner till he looked at his eye.
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