Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/216



let down the heavy, awkward slip-rails, and the gaunt cattle stumbled through, with aggravating deliberation, and scattered slowly among the ragged native apple-trees along the siding. First there came an old easy-going red cow, then a dusty white cow; then two shaggy, half-grown calves―who seemed already to have lost all interest in existence―and after them a couple of 'babies,' sleek, glossy, and cheerful; then three more tired-looking cows, with ragged udders and hollow sides; then a lanky barren ―red, of course―with half-blind eyes and one crooked horn―she was noted for her great agility in jumping two-rail fences, and she was known to the selector as 'Queen Elizaberth [sic];' and behind her came a young cream-coloured milker―a mighty proud and contented young mother―painfully and patiently dragging her first calf, which was hanging obstinately to a teat, with its head beneath her hind legs. Last of all there came the inevitable 'red steer,' who scratched the dust and let a stupid 'bwoo-ur-r-rr' out of him as he snuffed at the rails.

Brook had shifted the rails there often before―fifteen years ago―perhaps the self-same rails, for 188