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Updated: May 4, 2025
It was the first morning on the creek: I was greasing the waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary hanging out clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood, when I heard her being hailed as 'Hi, missus! from the front slip-rails. It was a boy on horseback.
For long after that we turned the horses and cows into the little paddock at night, and if ever the dog barked Dad would jump up and go out in his shirt. We put them back into the paddock again, and the first night they were there two cows got out and went away, taking with them the chain that fastened the slip-rails. We never saw or heard of them again; but Dad treasured them in his heart.
But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree, looking at the rows of river-willows in the moonlight. I didn't expect anything, in spite of what Jack said. I didn't like the idea of hanging myself: I'd been with a party who found a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round where he was.
Mother and Sal ironing, mopping their faces with a towel and telling each other how hot it was. The dog stretched across the doorway. A child's bonnet on the floor the child out in the sun. Two horsemen approaching the slip-rails. Dad had gone down the gully to Farmer, who had been sick for four days. The ploughing was at a standstill in consequence, for we had only two draught-horses.
It was nearly midnight as Harrington took down the slip-rails and led his horse through the paddock up to the house, which, except for a dimly burning lamp in the dining-room, was in darkness. The atmosphere was close and sultry, and the perspiration ran down his skin in streams as he gave his horse to the head-stockman, who was sitting on the verandah awaiting him.
And then, one late afternoon, when I had arrived at the milking-yards a few minutes before the others of the milking gang, I stood with two pails in my right hand, leaning over the slip-rails at the very spot upon which I had caught my first glimpse of Ted at St. Peter's.
It was wonderful how much she know. She knew when she was wanted; and she would go away the night before and get lost. And she knew when she was n't wanted; then she'd hang about the back-door licking a hole in the ground where the dish-water was thrown, or fossicking at the barn for the corn Dad had hidden, or scratching her neck or her rump against the cultivation paddock slip-rails.
You won't want me to go with you. Will you have the baggy?" But the ladies said that they would ride. The air was cooler now than it had been, and they would like the exercise. They would take Jacko with them to open the slip-rails, and they would be back by seven for dinner. So they started, taking the track by the wool-shed.
"They belongs t' ME," Casey answered, "until you pay damages." Then he put his back to the slip-rails and looked up aggressively into Dwyer's face. Dwyer was a giant beside Casey. Dwyer did n't say anything he was n't a man of words but started throwing the rails down to let the cows out. Casey flew at him. Dwyer quietly shoved him away with his long, brown arm.
Smith smiled. Dad put one leg through the slip-rails and promised Smith, if he'd only come along, to split palings out of him. But Smith did n't. The instinct of self-preservation must have been deep in that man Smith. Then Dad went home and said he would shoot the horse there and then, and went looking for the gun. The horse died in the paddock of old age, but Dad never ploughed with him again.
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