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Most of the cattle had been drafted into yards, had been branded or handled as required, and the work was nearly complete. Towards sundown we came to be most of us assembled about one of the yards. This was a stockyard, or paddock, of about two acres in extent, and within it an obstinate young bull remained solus, holding his own against us.
He chartered the schooner 'Waterwitch' for 100 pounds a month for six months, and found her in everything. McFarlane borrowed the square punt from the 'Clonmel' wreckers, a weak stockyard of tea tree was erected, and the punt was moored alongside. A block was made fast to the bottom of the punt, and a rope rove through it to a bullock's head, and the men hauled on the rope.
What it would be, or when it would come, we none of us could tell. Starlight and Aileen rode together most of the way, and talked a good deal, we could see. Before we got to the stockyard she rode over to Jim and cheered him up as much as she could about Jeanie.
This is a work of difficulty. All hands are required to achieve it, and often several neighbours will come over to assist. A small paddock, or a stockyard, opens out of the larger one wherein the herd is assembled. The slip-panels between are guarded by four men. Others on horseback, armed with the formidable loud-cracking stock-whips, drive the cattle slowly towards the gate.
To walk up to my pretty bay mare Helen, and lay hold of her mane, and then, vaulting on her back, ride the rest of the mob back into the stockyard, was, even in the deep darkness of a midsummer night, no difficult task for eyes so practised to catching horses under all circumstances.
Then the big, tired fellow put his own head down and went to sleep as he knelt, waking, stiff and sore, in the grey half light that just precedes the dawn. He crept away noiselessly, going out on the balcony for a breath of the chill air. Below him, against the stockyard fence, a black shadow stood and whinnied faintly.
Hudson, on coming up, saw it was useless to attempt driving him further, and so we left him and the cabbage tree, and resumed our course with one bullock, which we actually did succeed in getting to the stockyard as night was falling.
Merwell will have no claim." The ranch owner's orders were carried out, and the next day a duplicate of the stockyard man's declaration, that the cattle were all of the Star Ranch brand, was delivered to Mr. Merwell. "Huh! needn't tell me!" he sniffed, after reading the paper. "I guess Harrison is playing into Endicott's hands."
Our men in their trenches were cleaning rifles, packing away spare kit, yarning there much as they yarned of old over the stockyard fence or the gate of the horse paddock. That night, shortly after dark, there broke out the most fearful bombardment I have ever seen.
The next day we reached Davis's, when Fowler and Legge left us for Dunedin, and Smith and I arranged with Davis for the purchase of a couple of fat steers for £12 10s. each, hoping that if we succeeded in driving them to the diggings we would double our money. In the afternoon we went with Davis to the run, and selected the animals, which we drove with a mob to the stockyard.
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