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One day in the drought, and in an extra bitter mood, Wall heard that some of his sheep had been dogged in the vicinity of Ross's selection, and he ordered Billy to take a station-hand and watch Ross's place all night, and, if Ross's cattle put their noses over the boundary, to drive them to the pound, fifteen miles away; also to lay poisoned baits for the dogs all round the selection.
It was an awful row, down behind the wool-shed, and things looked so bad that old Peter, the station-hand, who was a witness, took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, ready, as he said afterwards, "to roll into" either the father or the son if one raised a hand against the other.
Then the voice of old Peter, the station-hand, was heard to growl from the darkness at the end of the hut, where he sat on a three-bushel bag on the ground with his back to the slabs. "What's old Peter growlin' about?" someone asked. "He wants to know where Dave got that word," someone else replied. "What word?" "Quint-essents." There was a chuckle.
There's the severe-faced old station-hand in clean shirt and neckerchief and white moleskins in for his annual or semi-annual spree, who contributes on principle, and then drinks religiously until his cheque is gone and the horrors are come. There's the shearer, feeling mighty bad after a spree, and in danger of seeing things when he tries to go to sleep.
Before thirty-six hours had passed a note was delivered to a station-hand at Wandenong addressed to Barbara Golding, and signed by the woman from The Angel's Rest. Within another two days Barbara Golding was at the bedside of Captain Louis Bachelor, battling with an enemy that is so often stronger than love and always kinder than shame.
Mills put Stacey at one end of the table, near a young woman who looked like a teacher, and he had full sweep of the table, which was surrounded by bright and happy faces. The station-hand was there, and a couple of grocery clerks, and a brakeman sat at Stacey's right hand.
"I won't go through the fence a step, mumma," little Wally said. I could see Old Peter an old shepherd and station-hand we had I could see him working on a dam we were making across a creek that ran down there. You remember Old Peter, Walter? 'Of course I do, Maggie.
She was still in hat and riding-habit; had herself, she said, reached home but half an hour ago. Summoning a station-hand to attend to the horse, she raised a blind and ushered Mahony into the dining-room, where she had been sitting at lunch, alone at the head of a large table. A Chinaman brought fresh plates, and Mahony was invited to draw up his chair.
Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. 'They let him hang for a while, said Mrs Spicer, 'till he went black in the face and stopped kicking. Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water over him.
A letter written in a rugged, forcible fist, arrived for Charlie Gordon from a young fellow named Redshaw, once a station-hand on Kuryong, who had gone out to the back-country and was rather a celebrity in his way. His father was a pensioner at the old station, and Redshaw junior, who was known as Flash Jack, evidently kept in touch with things at Kuryong. He wrote Dear Sir,
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