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Joe, "poor" Mary's husband, who has been droving in Queensland since the Christmas before last while poor Mary, who is afraid to live alone, shared a skillion and the family quarrels at home Joe rides day and night and reaches home at sunrise on Christmas morning, tired and dusty, gaunt and haggard, but with his last cheque intact.
She was very old, and sat by the ingle day and night, waiting upon death. To her he told the same tale. She listened gravely, nodding with her head. "Ach," she said, "I have heard a like story before. And where will you be going?" "I am going south to Carlisle to try the dealing and droving" said the man, "for I have some skill of sheep." "And will ye bide there?" she asked.
I cannot worship what I hate, Or serve a god I dare not know. "As streams of water in the south, Our bondage, Lord, recall." PSALM cxxvi. It was at the ford of the Clachlands Water in a tempestuous August, that I, an idle boy, first learned the hardships of the Lammas droving.
John Todd, when I knew him, was already "the oldest herd on the Pentlands," and had been all his days faithful to that curlew- scattering, sheep-collecting life. He remembered the droving days, when the drove roads, that now lie green and solitary through the heather, were thronged thoroughfares.
But what she said was not so much of a breaker as what the old gentleman said, for I considered him in many respects a very intelligent man. He came here from Westchester County, near Peakskill. His occupation there was farming and droving. He drove cattle to New York city in an early day, when that great metropolis was but a small city. I have often heard him tell about stopping at Bullshead.
"I ne'er was a great traveller," David was wont to begin: "through the length o' Edinburgh, and as far south as Newcastle, is a' that my legs ken about geography. But I've had a good deal o' crooks and thraws, and ups and downs, in the world for a' that. My faither was in the droving line, and lived in the parish o' Coldstream.
She is not a coward, but recent events have shaken her nerves. A little son of her brother-in-law was lately bitten by a snake, and died. Besides, she has not heard from her husband for six months, and is anxious about him. He was a drover, and started squatting here when they were married. The drought of 18 ruined him. He had to sacrifice the remnant of his flock and go droving again.
"You put me out," said I; "you consider yourself inferior to that droving fellow Bos, and to have travelled without edification, whereas you know a thousand times more than he, and indeed much more than many a person who makes his five hundred a year by going about lecturing on foreign places, but as I am no flatterer I will tell you that you have a fault which will always prevent your rising in this world, you have modesty; those who have modesty shall have no advancement, whilst those who can blow their own horn lustily, shall be made governors.
It was early in the afternoon when the lowing mob came up to the water; so when they had had a drink, Stobart gave directions to his black-boys and rode off, leaving Pat Dorrity to look after the camp. He took with him a boy named Yarloo. This boy was a Musgrave black whom Stobart had picked up on one of his droving trips years before and had kept ever since.
After tea was the time the two white boys enjoyed most, for Mick would light his pipe then, prop himself up against his swag, and, with a quart-pot of tea by his side, tell them yarns about the back country. Many of these narratives included Boss Stobart, for he and Mick had gone about together a great deal, and had established overland droving records which are still unbeaten.
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