The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 4
Chapter IV
“Daylight, boys! Day-li-ight———”
“Ut is Moody this toime,” cried Tod, and he waked with a snort. “Will ye be afther givin’ him to me, then, for I’m wantin’ to kill the ould head off him, sure?”
But it was Ted Douglas who roused them out headlong; who chased them with their gear to the yard, and clipped their feeding-time close at each end. At no hour was there give or take in Ted Douglas when work lay to hand. The boys knew and accepted this, and themselves gave tongue with him against a shirker. By this knowledge they read Ted’s curt words when Jimmie hauled his cob through the gate.
“You’re not wantin’ yer hoss this mornin’, Jimmie. Go an’ rake up sticks fur the fires.”
Then he flung himself into the leather, and gave the lead through the long dewy tussock that wiped the dried blood from the spur.
Scott took on six bets before the crowd had homed to the saddles. He believed indubitably that Ted would shield Jimmie this day and the next—and all the other days to come.
“But he’ll sweat for it if he do,” he said, combing his matted whip-lash through his fingers. “Playin’ low-down on Mains, that is.”
“An’ what fur you?” cried Danny in wrath. “What fur you as is on’y sober when yer’s card playin’, an’ on’y workin’ when Ted’s got his toe inter the back of yer? You ter talk o’ low-down!”
Steve split the waking quarrel with the wedge of body and tongue.
“It’s a tough knot fur Ted ter chop through anyways,” he said. “He’s got ter tell Scannell as Jimmie’s a rotter—an’ he does love Jimmie as some chaps loves a gel—or he’s got ter guv Mains a chanst o’ more muckin’ when there comes a tight corner again. But Ted’ll tell Scannell.”
“Bein’ Ted I won’t say you’re wrong,” said Conlon. “But it’ll cut the heart out of him. And nine men out of ten wouldn’t do it.”
Conlon had come to this work for sheer love of it, as many another has done and will do. He knew every head of stock was sacred to Ted Douglas, for he too had given all that he had in payment for the serving of it.
“Bedad, ut’s ter’ble onplaisant to be the tinth man,” remarked Tod, fighting with his young filly as she twisted head-and-tail. “He’s apt to have all the sentiments an’ set-ups as belong be rights to the others too. An’ ut’s a quare old stomach-ache they do be gettin’ in their conscience o’ toimes!”
Then his filly took charge and raced with him into the puffs of mist that lay on the heights.
Scannell’s receiving paddocks lay over three spurs and a rock-ridge and two gullies. Danny explained this once in the township.
“The arcumtect as was given the job o’ makin’ Mains had a high ’pinion o’ hisself,” he said. “An’ he was allers tryin’ ter git ter the top o’ it. That’s why there ain’t as much flat on Mains as yer cud iron yer tombstone shirt on.”
Lossin suggested that the flat had got into the Mains men instead, and Tod, who assisted at the after-result, gave Danny all the praise that was due to science and wind.
Through the dark shadows and the white mist and the shapeless grey clumps of manuka and tutu the cattle heard the sharp-spoken whip-talk, and the crack of branches as the horses crashed through. Uneasy mutters pricked each little group; the bulls stood apart, great heads low, eyes and ears alert, and a swift fore-foot pawing the earth. Then weaner, cow, and scrubber broke all ways, taking shingle slip and riven flint and tussock unerringly, and sending their bellowing fury down the wind to drown the gay mock of the stock-whips.
The white starshine gave to pale amber, to pink, to the first blue of the sky. On the naked spurs that sprang out from the hill, leading straight down to the branding-yard square, red, white, black dots were cast out, as a child flings beads that roll apart, and together, and mix, and tear ever toward the bottom. Scannell saw them come, with sheen of hides and of horns, and all sounds faint and blended as the changes of the dawn. By the yards Scannell sat his cob stiffly. He had grown grey at this game for the love of it, and the old lust drew him out to each muster with an ache in the arm that would wheel no more scrubbers by the swing of a twelve-foot lash. It was a new generation and new blood; but they played the same old game, and only the man who has trod that track knows the joy of it. He passes; and if the clay under the feet of the next man is knit by blood-cement, none ask questions. For the wind keeps the records, and the sunshine, and the old, old grey bitterns that cry from the flax-swamps.
Down the spurs Scannell saw them coming, and sounds swelled to crackling thunder, and the tossing wild river took shape. Between two tin joined mobs rode Lou; his rein loose as he swung his colt with the knees, and the long lash licking full length right and left, drawing sullen ones in until the parallels met. The boys fed more streams to the main, and the whole bulk took the slope together in a grand wild break that stirred Scannell’s blood.
By the yards Jimmie’s fires burnt blue in the sunlight. The branding-muster was heavy work on Mains, with three sets of irons going at once, and the scrub-land to clean up when all was done. The wings of the yard stretched wide, high, and unbending. Unthinkingly Scannell’s fingers closed for a short whip-handle that was not there. Then he pulled his cob back, and the taste of his years was insipid on the tongue, for there was no salt left in them.
The very air sang with life and wide sound, and the smell of new blood, and sweat and cow-breath. Conlon was mad with the delight of it, and Ted Douglas turned reckless Tod from certain death by a well-delivered cut on his mare’s quarter. The quickness of eye and limb on a foot-ball field falls before the swift craft of the stockman. Scannell drew in his breath as he saw the boys handle the run, blocking them, ringing them, wheeling them ever nearer and nearer with swaying bodies and lashes that spun dripping red in the light, and cunning horses that raced and swung to the knee-grip.
An angry mother chased Moody thrice round the yards. He brought her back with some sleeve and flesh gone, and rode in the first flight thereafter with his shirt-tail bound round his forearm.
The leading rush struck the wing, and the jar of posts sent Jimmie’s heart to his throat. The boys fastened on the sweating flanks as flies fasten; relentless, unafraid; giving no inch when a piker turned at charge, or a silly weaner dodged between a hack’s forelegs. And above the wild talk and the hoof-beats and the snarl of unresting whips, Ted Douglas held sway yet: assigning place by the crook of his arm; hustling, steadying, leading a rush; telling a man off to ring in an outcast, and drawing tighter the unbroken rope that was vivid, alert, eager life. Steve had said once that Ted Douglas was made up of nerves and that each nerve had a separate eye, and Tod answered, smarting under deserved chastisement:
“Bedad; some of thim nerves have quare ould muscles to them, thin.”
Scannell saw his head-man’s face just once, as the bay mare shot past with Ted stooped over the wither and the threat of his long whip slung out. And it startled him for the pain that under-lay the work-look. Each man who engages to rule over men takes more than their bodies under his power. By the strength of the personality which makes the ruler, his men grow to dress their consciences by him, and their ideals, and many things that go to make up their manhood. Ted Douglas had learned it all in his youth, and he paid for it this day, full tale. And there lay no side-track for has feet if he would keep Mains’ honour unsmirched in the eyes of the boys.
No man on Mains could ride the bay mare save Ted Douglas only. The boys of that day had slung him on her back when she was raw, young and untamed as himself. They had broken each other to cattle-work, and taken their falls together when ways were rough; and not a stockman from Riverton north to the Stour could wheel a breaking piker against the pair.
The echoes were mad among the black spurs and the naked scarps and the long slopes where the toi-toi shook. The mid-day pressed its hot hands down on the yards; and through the dust and the weary crying of weaners, and the bellow and stampede of furious scrubbers, the Mains boys yarded their muster, slacked girths, and squatted straightway on the grass with damper and floods of hot tea. They were sweat-marked and blood-marked, burnt black to the shirt-line, and cheerful as the moko-mokos in the bush-comer by the waterfall. Scannell fed them; and winks flickered the round of rough faces as Ted Douglas talked technicalities with nothing behind.
“Hand over that five bob you owe me,” said Scott, suddenly.
Tod knocked aside the stretched hand.
“Well, I niver, an’ set you up! Do ye think Ted won’t be backin’ up to the brandin’-iron wid the divil a—there! Did I not say it?”
Ted Douglas was on his feet before Scannell. He did not see Jimmie’s start, and quick-whitened face; nor Lou’s steady gaze; nor the pulsing of the pale flames beyond Scannell’s head. But he knew all these things, and he toed the mark with his head up.
“We lost twenty beasts on Black Hill yes’day,” he said. “They pitched over inter a creek-bottom. Near all young steers an’ calves, they was.”
Scannell’s face set to a look that his son knew well.
“Any special man’s fault?” he demanded.
Scott nudged Ike where they lay arm by arm on their stomachs.
“Doubles er quits?” he muttered.
Ike hit out at him loosely, unlooking. For the whole tide of his half-baked lumpish youth set with reverence and puzzlement toward Douglas.
“They broke out o’ hand on the hill,” said Ted Douglas, “from Lou’s lot; but ’tweren’t his fault. I tried to head them, an’ I couldn’t. An’ I was nearer down than Lou.”
“Then no man was to blame?” asked Scannell.
Ted answered slowly; and the shake of his voice ran through each man that he governed, “Yes. There was a chap down on the spur. He orter turned them; but—he funked it.”
Lou smiled a very little, blinking round at the tense faces. He recognised the bitter, unbending tenets of duty whereby Ted Douglas scourged himself and his men. Scannell’s eyes were not good to see. Always he had ridden in the first flight in the old days.
“And the man who funked was?”
“Jimmie Blaine,” said Ted Douglas, and stood unmoving, his hard hands shot up at his sides, and the whole bright earth smudgy before him.
“Was he out with you this morning?”
“No. I couldn’t let him ride for Mains again.”
Scannell’s keen eyes met Ted’s for one instant of understanding.
“You’ve done more for Mains than that,” he said. “That’ll do. Jimmie Blaine! Come over here a minute.”
Scannell sacked Jimmie in three pointed sentences that sent the boys to the branding with new grit to bite on, and amaze in their souls.
“I believe Ted thinks more o’ Mains then he do o’ Jimmie,” cried Moody, goggle-eyed, and scruffing a kicking calf for the iron. “Thinks more o’ Mains then he do o’ us! He’d tell on us if he reckoned he orter! Us!”
Lou pressed on the sizzling iron, and the laugh danced up in his eyes.
“Ted’s got Scannell’s ear to the tether’s end now,” he said. “You didn’t happen to remark that Ted Douglas thought more of Mains than he did of himself, did you?”