Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/308



' begins to-morrow!' These apparently simple words were spoken by Hugh Gordon, the manager of Anabanco Station, in the district of Riverina, in the colony of New South Wales, one Monday morning in the month of August. The utterance had its significance to every member of a rather extensive corps dramatique, awaiting the industrial drama about to be performed.

A low sandhill, a few years since, had looked out over a sea of grey plains, covered partly with grass, partly with salsiferous bushes and herbs. Three huts built of the trunks of the pine and roofed with the bark of the box-tree, and a skeleton-looking cattle-yard with its high 'gallows' (a rude timber arrangement whereon to hang slaughtered cattle), alone broke the monotony of the plain-ocean. A comparatively small herd of cattle, numbering two or three thousand, found more than sufficient pasturage during the short winter and spring, but were often compelled to migrate to mountain pastures when the precarious water-stores of the 'Run' were dried up. But, at most, half-a-dozen stock-riders and station hands were ever needed for the purpose of managing the herd, so inadequate in number and profitable occupation to this vast area of grazing country.

But a little later, one of the chiefs of the pastoral interest—a shepherd king, so to speak—of shrewdness, energy, and capital—had seen, approved of, and purchased the Crown lease of this waste kingdom. As if by magic, the scene changed. Gangs of navvies appeared, wending their way across the silent plain. Dams were made, wells were dug. Tons of