Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/242

230 The lambing was good; the wool sold at a paying price, considering the primitive style of washing. Next year, of course, all this would be altered. Meanwhile I surveyed the imprint 'R.B.' over Murrabit on the wool-bales with great satisfaction.

'But surely,' says the practical reader, 'things were going well; season, prices, increase satisfactory. How did the fellow manage to make a mull of it? 'There were reasons. The cost of a run bought 'bare' is unavoidably great. Huts, yards, woolshed, homestead, paddock, brushyards, lambers, washers, shearers, all cost money—are necessary, but expensive. The cheque stream was always flowing with a steady current, it seemed to me. Fat stock, too, the great source of profit in that district, gradually declined in price. Interest and commission, which amounted to 12½ per cent or more, in one way and another, gradually told up. In 1861 an unprecedented fall took place in cattle, such as had not been felt 'since the gold.' Beeves fell to the price of stores. Buyers could not meet their engagements. The purchaser of my cattle-station in Western Victoria was among these. He was compelled to return it upon my hands after losing his cash deposit. Thus seriously hampered, the finale was that I 'came out' without either station or a shilling in the world. What was worse, having caused others to suffer through my indebtedness.

The Murrabit was then sold, well improved, though not fenced, with twenty thousand good sheep on it, at £1:5s. per head—£25,000—nearly the same price at which I had purchased; but with four thousand more sheep, and costly improvements added, including a woolshed which had cost £500. The new purchaser paid £10,000 down, and I was sorry to hear afterwards lost everything in about the time it had taken me to perform the same feat. But he had, I believe, the expense of fencing—an economical luxury then so impossible for a squatter to deny himself. In addition to this, that terrible synonym of ruin, sheep-scab, broke out in the district, and in time among the Murrabit sheep. This, of course, necessitated endless expenditure in labour, dressing-yards, dips, and what not. No further explanation is needed by the experienced as to why my equally unlucky successor went under.