gish and a hot wind blasted the earth. Scott agreed, with the additional assertion that he was sick of graft and meant to take it easy thereafter. And it was on the following morning that Ted’s hand fell heavier yet. This was when the cut tussock, bared to the starlight by the drawn tents, was yet warm with the weight of their bodies, and when the cooking-fire held flame to the chill that goes before dawn. Round the fire the boys gathered, sucking life into their pipes, and Ted Douglas came up with the roster.
“We’re takin’ the Brothers country to-day,” he said, “and out to the head of the Dome. It’ll be a brutal long day, an’ you chaps’ll have to put your backs into it. We got to get back to the station Friday, an’ it’ll take us all we know to do it.”
The shearers were booked for Mains in the week following, and all the draughting was yet to do. The boys knew it. But a sudden tension ran into the group round the fire, and talk and laughter died on their mouths. The Brothers country made the cruellest muster on Mains. It was slippery tussock and running shingle and rotten slag where no sane goat would climb. But the Mains sheep loved it with all their demon souls, and the Mains boys drew many thousands from it; climbing, hour after hour, hand over hand, through places where no dog would follow.
