One Christmas.
Three days to Christmas; and how pleased we were! For months we had looked forward to it. Kate and Sandy, whom we had only seen once since they went on their selection, were to be home. Dave, who was away shearing for the first time, was coming home too. Norah, who had been away for a year teaching school, was home already. Mother said she looked quite the lady, and Sal envied the fashionable cut of her dresses.
Things were in a fair way at Shingle Hut; rain had fallen and everything looked its best. The grass along the headlands was almost as tall as the corn; the Bathurst-burr, the Scotch-thistles, and the "stinking Roger"were taller. Grow! Dad never saw the like. Why, the cultivation was n't large enough to hold the melon and pumpkin vines--they travelled into the horse-paddock and climbed up trees and over logs and stumps, and they would have fastened on the horses only the horses were fat and fresh and often galloped about. And the stock! Blest if the old cows did n't carry udders like camp-ovens, and had so much milk that one could track them everywhere they went--they leaked so. The old plough-horses, too--only a few months before dug out of the dam with a spade, and slung up between heaven and earth for a week, and fed and prayed for regularly by Dad--actually bolted one day with the dray because Joe rattled a dish of corn behind them. Even the pet kangaroo was nearly jumping out of its skin; and it took the big black "goanna" that used to come after eggs all its time to beat Dad from the barn to the nearest tree, so fat was it.
And such a season for butterflies and grasshoppers, and grubs and snakes, and native bears! Given an ass, an elephant, and an empty wine-bottle or two, and one might have thought Noah's ark had been emptied at our selection.
Two days to Christmas. The sun getting low. An old cow and a heifer in the stock-yard. Dad in, admiring them; Mother and Sal squinting through the rails; little Bill perched on one of the round posts, nursing the steel and a long knife; Joe running hard from the barn with a plough-rein.
Dad was wondering which beast to kill, and expressed a preference for the heifer. Mother said, "No, kill the cow." Dad inspected the cow again, and shook his head.
"Well, if you don't she'll only die, if the winter's a hard one; then you'll have neither." That settled it. Dad took the rope from Joe, who arrived aglow with heat and excitement, and fixed a running noose on one end of it. Then--"Hunt 'em round!" he cried.
Joe threw his hat at them, and chased them round and round the yard.
Dad turned slowly in the centre, like a ring-master, his eye on the cow;a coil of rope was in this left hand, and with the right he measuredly swung the loop over and over his head for some time. At last the cow gave him a chance at her horns, and he let fly. The rope whizzed across the yard, caught little Bill round the neck, and brought him down off the post.
Dad could hardly believe it. He first stared at Bill as he rolled in the yard, then at the cow. Mother wished to know if he wanted to kill the boy, and Joe giggled and, with a deal of courage, assured Dad it was "a fine shot." The cow and the heifer ran into a corner, and switched their tails, and raked skin and hair off each other with their horns.
"What do you want to be always stuck in the road for?" Dad growled, taking the rope off little Bill's neck. "Go away from here altogether!" Little Bill went away; so did Mother and Sal--until Dad had roped the cow, which was n't before he twice lassoed the heifer--once by the fore-leg and once round the flanks. The cow thereupon carried a panel of the yard away, and got out and careered down the lane, bucking and bellowing till all the cattle of the country gathered about her.
Dad's blood was up. He was hanging on to the rope, his heels ploughing the dust, and the cow pulling him about as she liked. The sun was setting; a beautiful sunset, too, and Mother and Sal were admiring it.
"Did y' never see th' blasted sun go--go down be----" Dad did n't finish.
He feet slid under a rail, causing him to relax his grip of the rope and sprawl in the dust. But when he rose!
"Are y' going t' stand staring there all night?" They were beside the rails in an instant, took the end of the rope which he passed to them, put it once round the gallows-post, and pulled-pulled like sailors. Dad hung on close to the cow's head, while Joe kicked her with his bare foot and screwed her tail.
"Steady!" said Dad, "that'll about do." Then, turning to the women as he mounted a rail and held the axe above the cow's head: "Hang on there now!" They closed their eyes and sat back. The cow was very patient.
Dad extended himself for a great effort, but hesitated. Joe called out:
