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Lady Bridget crossed the gully and roamed the borders of the gidia scrub. Here, in an occasional open patch, were wattles breaking into yellow bloom, and sandalwood trees already in blossom, scenting the air faintly and making bright splashes upon the grey and black background of the mournful gidia.
But the savour was gone for him from adventure the salt out of life. The stroke of luck if it were one had come too late. And now the Great Drought had broken at last. Next evening there came up a terrific thunderstorm, and a hurricane such as had not visited the district for years. It broke in the direction of the gidia scrub, and razed many trees.
That excitement over, the lonely mistress of Moongarr went back to her own habitation. She ate her solitary dinner and paced the veranda till darkness fell and the haunted loneliness became an almost unbearable oppression. Vast plains, distant ranges, gidia scrub and the far horizon melted into an illimitable shadow. The world seemed boundless as the starry sky and yet she was in prison!
These gave a touch of romantic wildness to the otherwise peaceful scene. Lady Bridget's gaze went along a track skirting the gidia scrub, and crossing the lower end of the gully near the lagoon, to the great plain which spread in front of the head-station.
Perhaps it was that which made the ground so stark and bare beneath these trees where no grass will grow. The sun was lowering when they left the gidia. Out in the gum forest again, the birds were chattering before retiring to rest. All life is still in the bush at mid-day, but now there were curious scutterings among the grass tussocks, and the whirr of its insect population sounded all round.
To a certainty he would be hanged if the matter ran its ordinary course. That it should not do, Bridget declared within herself if she could by any possibility prevent it. The half-caste woman and the white lady went swiftly through the gidia scrub towards the head-station.
Otherwise, there appeared to be no elements of disquiet. Lady Bridget noticed with surprise that Ninnis seemed to defer to Maule, which was not his usual attitude towards strangers. She attributed this to a community of experiences in South America, and also to Maule's undoubted knack of managing men. They rounded the lagoon and skirted the gidia scrub.
Even though glorified by the sunset, it had given Lady Bridget a little shock to see how crude and architecturally speaking unlovely was her new home. But her Celtic imagination was stirred by the weirdness of the grey-green gum forest, and of the mournful gidia scrub, framing the picture.
At last, Lady Bridget heard the unmistakable sound of cattle in the distance the low, multitudinous roar of lowing beasts and tramping hoofs and the reverberating crack of stock-whips. It came from the gidia scrub. She knew that they had been mustering SCRUBBERS otherwise, wild cattle from the broken country at the foot of Moongarr Range.
They were still in the gum forest, but now and then came a belt of gidia scrub mournful trees with stiff black trunks and grey green foliage and a pale sort of wattle flower smelling like dead cattle when rain is about, as McKeith explained. But there was no rain about now, and, in truth, he would have welcomed the unpleasant odour.
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