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McKeith was evidently busy upon preparations for his absence from the station. He must have been cleaning guns and pistols. There were two or three shots which startled and kept her in a state of tension. At last she heard the interchange of good-nights, and the withdrawal of Ninnis and Harris to the Bachelor's Quarters.
Then after shewing her the different bottles, he took the supply out to Ninnis to be put in the buggy. Everything was ready now the buggy packed, the hood unslung so that it could be put up and down in protection against sun or rain this last alas! an improbable eventuality. Alexander and Roxalana were champing their bits.
We're quite friends already. Ninnis and I he's been in South America, too. 'You'll find him somewhere about the Bachelors' Quarters, and I'll go and put on my habit, she said. Lady Bridget appeared as Maule and Ninnis were finishing saddling the horses. Ninnis had stayed near the head station, and was keeping a sharp look-out for bush fires, he said.
It did not occur to her that he might wish to see Ninnis, who, when at the station, was usually about this time, in his office at the back of the Bachelors' Quarters. After a time, she heard Colin's voice again in the yard, and his step on the Old Humpey veranda. He came now by the covered passage on to that of the New House, and advanced towards her.
He and the few hands left to look after the head-station and the tailing-mob held the men's horses when their riders literally tumbled off them. Ninnis made McKeith take a strong pull of whiskey and supported him along to the Old Humpey. For Colin had had strength to say that Lady Bridget must on no account be disturbed.
And what Harris doesn't think he knows about the heel of the law being kept on Blacks and every other darned unit in the creation scheme' muttered Ninnis in parenthesis 'ain't entered in the Almighty's Log-book. Ninnis expectorated over the veranda railings a habit of his that jarred on Lady Bridget. 'Well, what about Harris?
During these seven days she had rushed recklessly on as though impelled by a fatality, never pausing to consider how near she might be to a precipice. Whenever possible, she had ridden out with Maule and Ninnis, or with Maule alone. She found relief from painful thoughts of Colin in the excitement and emotion with which Maule's society provided her.
But Colin she rushed on, for he could not speak, and the sight of a great man struggling with his tears is one that a woman who loves him can scarcely bear to see. And yet the sight made Bridget happy for all its pain 'Colin, when I first saw Ninnis, do you know what I thought ? That you had sent him to meet me. That you, too, had been warned in a dream?
I'd left Ninnis to oversee up here, and Ninnis didn't know the Leura like some of the old hands, who told me afterwards they'd seen the big drought coming as long back as that. I remember one old chap on the river, when he was sold up by the Bank in the last bad times, and his wife had died of it all, saying to me, 'The Leura isn't the place for a woman. And he was right.
I must be off.... Here, give me the LEICHARDT LAND CHRONICLE, and don't expect me till you see me.... And by the way, Biddy, I hear there's a Unionist Organiser going the round of the stations and pretending to parley with the masters. Don't you be philanthropic enough to let him open his jaws I've told Ninnis he's to be hounded off before he has time to get off his saddle.
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