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Lambing is late in Redesdale, the spring comes late; April is often a month of snow. They had a fire and their cloaks; the ground was dry, and they lay upon it under a clear sky strewn with stars. At midnight George King, the grandfather, was asleep, but Andrew was broad awake. The collie on his feet, ears set flat on his head, shuddering with excitement, whined for orders.
And what would make the sheep go around? Nothing but a thirty-thirty. The price of mutton had gone up too, adding a third to the fortune of every sheepman; the ewes were lambing on the desert, bringing forth a hundred per cent or better, with twins and every lamb must eat! To the hundred thousand sheep that had invaded Bronco Mesa there was added fifty thousand more, and they must all eat.
In the early part of the year 1899 a settler named Hardy, residing at Glenowlan, in the Rylstone district of New South Wales, about 150 miles from Sydney, lost numbers of his lambs during the lambing season. Naturally enough, dingoes were suspected, but none were seen.
The path they followed zigzagged up steep ascents and descended into crumbling valleys and plains filled with split stones, rubble and sand, a desert truly, without sign of a living thing till the shadow of an eagle's wings passed over the hot stones. Jesus told Paul that the birds nested up among the clefts yonder and were most destructive in the spring when the ewes were lambing.
"Spring set in and the birds came back frae beyont the sea, swallows and yallow wagtails and sandpipers; the meadows were breet wi' paigles, and the childer gethered bluebells and lilies o' the valley i' the woods for Whissuntide, and iverything went on same as afore. We had a good lambing time, and a good hay harvest at efter. I kept Jerry under my eye all the while, and nowt went wrang wi' him.
"I don't know," said John, at last, as Fairy repeated her question. "By the bye, how long have I been here exactly?" asked Fairy. "Let me see; twelve years last shearing-time," said the shepherd, whose dates were few and simple, sheep-washing, shearing, lambing, and next and last sheepfair being the principal. "But I want to know the day of the month; and I'll tell you why.
During the lambing season, in April and May, all the sheep were below in the crofts behind the farmsteads, where the herbage was rich and the weakly ewes could receive special attention; but by the twentieth of May the flocks were ready for the mountain grass, and then it was that Peregrine's year would properly begin.
Hetty would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again; they were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs WERE got rid of sooner or later.
When the sheep are lambing they should not be disturbed. You cannot meddle with a mob of lambing ewes without doing them mischief. Some one or two lambs, or perhaps many more, will be lost every time you disturb the flock. The young sheep, until they have had their lambs a few days, and learnt their value, will leave them upon the slightest provocation.
Rumour was not very wide of the fact what with hiring fees, railway expenses, the loss of ewes and lambs at the lambing, and the extra diet and care which panic had undertaken for the survivors, the venture had put about two hundred and sixty pounds on the debit side of Joanna's accounts.
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