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Updated: August 4, 2024
A boy ran to let down the slip-rails. Presently Mary and her mother heard the clatter of rails let down and put up again, and a minute later a heavy step like the tread of a horse was heard outside. The selector lumbered in, threw his hat in a corner, and sat down by the table. His wife rose and bustled round with simulated cheerfulness. Presently Mary hazarded "Where have you been, father?"
The station homestead was in view from the slip-rails, a long building, all on a floor, with a roof stretching from the ridge-pole down to the rones of the verandah, bungalow fashion. It stood some feet above the ground on a number of tarred and tin-capped piles, a necessary precaution in the land of the white ant.
A large fire near the slip-rails, shining across the lane and lighting up a corner of the wheat-paddock, showed the way in. Dad stood at the door to take the money. The Andersons eleven of them arrived first. They did n't walk straight in. They hung about for a while. Then Anderson sidled up to Dad and talked into his ear.
He dressed in the dark, and we heard him going out, because he fell over Sandy and Kate. They had come on a visit, and were sleeping on the floor in the front room. We also heard him throw the slip-rails down. There was a heavy fog that morning.
He met her glance and smiled, just as he did when Ailleen's switch fell across his hand. Nellie only looked up at him when she was mollified, and he was satisfied that the storm was over for the time being. But he did not attempt to fall back or wait for the others till the slip-rails leading into the home paddock were reached.
"You'll see me within a fortnight, bar accidents" he called back, as the waggon lurched forward towards the slip-rails; and the pub also having little attraction for the Dandy, we decided to expect him, "bar accidents."
Such a crowd! such gear! such a tame lot of horses! and such a motley swarm of lean, lank, lame kangaroo-dogs! We were not ready. The crowd sat on their horses and waited at the slip-rails. Dogs trooped into the yard by the dozen.
At about ten o'clock that night Dan Reynolds, riding from One Tree Hill to 'Tween Bridges, and thinking of Annie, the Cockie's daughter, whom he had left at the slip-rails, was amazed at a terrible apparition that arose before him on the moon-lit road. It was a strange, shaggy creature, half monkey half-man, covered from the top of his head to the knees in thick, crisp, tufted hair.
The sound of a horse, furiously ridden, caused them to turn towards the road just as a rider dashed up to the slip-rails. "There's a fire on Barellan run," he shouted. "We want all the help we can get." Without waiting for an answer he dashed off out of sight, riding as hard as his horse would go to carry the warning and call for help to fight the common enemy. "On Barellan!" Taylor exclaimed.
Jim sent her springing to the saddle from his horny palm like a bird let out of it, and they watched in silence while she crossed two paddocks, leaped two sets of slip-rails, and disappeared as a small dot of white handkerchief from the sun-suffused landscape. "What riding!" Guthrie Carey ejaculated, under his breath.
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