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Updated: May 19, 2025
The shepherd entreated us to assist him in bringing in the body of the hut-keeper a task, from a sense of humanity, we undertook, while he remained to look after his sheep. We accordingly brought the body in on the dominie's horse and placed it in the bunk in which the unfortunate man, a few hours before, had been sleeping, little dreaming of the fate awaiting him.
We had been some days at Mr Strong's, and Bracewell was talking of returning home, when a hut-keeper from the most distant station arrived in great alarm, stating that he had been beset the previous evening by a party of white men on horseback, who, taking his gun and ammunition, his week's supply of provisions and everything else, they could lay hands on in the hut, had lashed him hand and foot, threatening that if he gave information of their visit, they would return and kill him.
For an instant he seems to have idly wondered who they were, and have had time to notice a thickset gaudily dressed man, who rode in front of the others, when the kitchen-door was thrown suddenly open, and the old hut-keeper, with his grey hair waving in the wind, run out, crying, "Save yourself, in God's name, Master Cecil. The Bushrangers!" Cecil raised his clenched hands in wild despair.
"All the shepherds," said the Major. "The stockman and his assistant are free men, but their hut-keeper is bond." "Are any of them married?" "Two of the shepherds; the rest single; but I must tell you that on our run we keep up a regular circulation of books among the huts, and my wife sticks them full of religious tracts, which is really about all that we can do without a clergyman."
More promising materials for a tragedy could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak: "At Nie Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he slept."
Haast, a German who is making a geological survey of the province, sleeps upon the opposite one; my bullock- driver and hut-keeper have two bunks at the far end of the hut, along the wall, while my shepherd lies in the loft among the tea and sugar and flour. It was a fine morning, and we turned out about seven o'clock.
It was rather large for two bachelors, to be sure; but their ideas must have expanded of late. They had much more assistance than formerly rendered by Craven, their most efficient and active overseer, and his assistant, Larry. No one would have recognised the dispirited, almost broken-hearted hut-keeper in the fine, active, intelligent man he had now become.
The hut-keeper was seated in a rough sort of easy-chair, and was apparently fast asleep. "Hillo, my man, call off your dog, or he and I may do each other an injury," shouted Arthur; "he is a noble brute, and I should not like to hurt him, if I could help it!" The man started up, a book dropping from his hand. "Come back, good Brian; come back, sir!" he cried out.
And when we got there, we saw the old hut-keeper, he of the colliery explosion experiences, shepherding the sheep himself, and found that the man we were in search of had left the hut that morning, apparently to take the sheep out. But that going out about eleven the old man had found them still in the yard, whereby he concluded that the shepherd was gone, which proved to be the case.
The old hut-keeper sits sulkily smoking, and the yellow-haired man lies in his bunk with his back towards them. Lee had meanwhile come in, and, after recognitions from those inside, sat quietly down close to the door.
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