Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/328

 click of the shears, the jests, the songs, the oaths of the rude congregation, was silent and deserted. The floors were swept, the pens closed, the sheep on their way to a distant paddock. Not a soul remains about the building but the pressers, who stay to work at the rapidly lessening piles of fleece in the bins, or a meditative teamster who sits musing on a wool-bale, absorbed in a calculation as to when his load will be made up.

It is sundown, a rather later time of closing than usual, but rendered necessary by the possibility of the grand finale. The younger men troop over to the hut, larking like schoolboys. Abraham Lawson throws a poncho over his broad shoulders, lights his pipe, and strides along, towering above the rest, erect and stately as a guardsman. Considerably more than you or I, reader, would have been, had we shorn a hundred and thirty-four sheep, as he has done to-day. Billy May has shorn a hundred and forty-two, and he puts his hand on the four-foot paling fence of the yard and vaults over it like a deer, preparatory to a swim in the creek. At dinner you will see them all, with fresh Crimeans and jerseys, clean, comfortable, and in grand spirits. Next morning is settling day. The book-keeping department at Anabanco being severely correct, all is in readiness. Each man's tally, or number of sheep shorn, has been entered daily to his credit. His private and personal investments at the store have been as duly debited. The shearers, as a corporation, have been charged with the multifarious items of their rather copious mess-bill. This sum-total is divided by the number of the shearers, the extract being the amount for which each man is liable. This sum varies in its weekly proportion, at different sheds. With an extravagant cook, or cooks, the weekly bill is often alarming. When the men and their functionary study economy, it may be kept reasonably low.

The men have been sitting or standing about the office for half an hour, when Mr. Jack Bowles rushes out and shouts, 'William May.' That young person, excessively clean, attired in a quiet tweed suit, with his hair cut correctly short, advances with an air of calm intrepidity, and faces Mr. Gordon, now seated at a long table, wearing a judicial expression of countenance.