Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/178

 What are we to do? There are some famous bullocks among them—rather coarse, perhaps, but rolling fat—ugly with fat, as the stock-riders say. And as cattle are a first-class price just now, and the feed grand all the way to market, there's no use talking; we must have a shy at them. It won't do for me, a native-born Australian, and manager of my father's best cattle-station, to be beaten by anything that ever wore a hide. Have 'em we must. The new paddock is just finished. We are going to muster the other side of the run—the quiet side—the day after to-morrow, and if we can make a good haul out of these 'scrub danglers' we shall have together as fine a lot of fat cattle as ever left the Macquarie.

And how are we going to do it? There are half-a-dozen as good hands on this Milgai Run, including the black boys Johnny Smoker and Gundai, as ever rode stock-horse or followed a beast. And yet, if we rode after this lot for a month we shouldn't get more than a couple of dozen, tear our clothes to rags, stake our horses, and get knocked off in the Wilgah scrubs—after all get next to no cattle—that's what I look at. Still, there is a way—and only one way—that we may fetch 'em by, and perhaps in one night. I'm going to tell you about it. We must moonlight 'em.

It is a strange thing and I've no doubt it was found out by some rascally 'duffer,' some cattle-stealing brute that went poking about after his neighbours' calves (but the amount of cleverness they show when it's 'on the cross,' no man would believe, unless he knew it from experience)—it's a strange thing that wild cattle are twice, ten times, as easy to drive by night as they are by day. Whether they are afraid—like children—whether they can't see so well, or what it is, I don't know. But every old stock-rider will tell you that all cattle, particularly wild ones, are much easier to handle by night than by day. Another reason is, they go out a long way into the open plains to feed at night. Whereas by day they lie in their scrubs like rabbits near a hole, and directly they hear a whip, or a voice, or a stick crack almost, they're off like a lot of deer. Not that I ever saw any; but one thinks about the red deer listening and then popping into fern-brakes and heather-glens. Perhaps I shall see them some day, who knows, if cattle keep up?

Well, we had to wait for a day or two, till the moon rose,