Gripped By Drought by Arthur W. Upfield

Author:Arthur W. Upfield [Upfield, Arthur W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780994309631
Publisher: ETT Imprint
Published: 2015-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

THE SECOND SHEARING

I

As MacDougall had told Frank Mayne on the telephone, the rain that fell that night early in July came too late to save hundreds of lambs abandoned by their mothers; but, by bringing up grass in the sheltered places, it strengthened the adult sheep and maintained the ewes’ milk, which in turn gave strength to the lambs, as well as providing a little green food for them.

That rainfall also deferred the resumption of scrub-cutting and enabled Mayne to halve the artificial feeding costs, but his household and petrol bills did not diminish. Actually he made the rain an excuse to himself to defer, at least for the time, a conversation with Ethel which he foresaw would be fraught with difficulties. If he had but maintained that firmness exhibited when his wife had sulked for several days, if only he had been a tenth part the master of his house as he was of his run, it is probable that the agony and the terror that were to come would have been avoided. Where Ethel was concerned he was strangely weak.

House-party suCCeeded house-party, expense was added to expense. There was delivered to Atlas complete cinematograph equipment, followed by a bi-weekly exchange of films. Food delicacies found usually in only the very best of hotels were imported from Sydney. A constant stream of people came and went-people with whom neither Mayne nor Feng Ching-wei found anything in common-people who were not doing anything worth-while in the world, of that class seldom heard of in Australia, but nevertheless in being, who live their allotted span in stupid idleness.

Feng Ching-wei waited and watched. These winter days he was a much puzzled man; and, whilst with his usual quiet efficiency he acted as Mayne’s chief of administrative staff, drawing four hundred a year from Atlas, he studied Mayne’s wife; and wondered, too, whilst he unobtrusively watched Alldyce Cameron.

The lambs marked this year were seven thousand below the number marked the year before. The lower percentage had been expected, and it indicated heavy losses among the flocks, especially those that were not being hand-fed.

The days of sunshine and nights of frost persisted. Big areas of land were as bare of grass and herbage as the seashore at a time of year when everywhere one looked it should have been covered with a carpet of green. The river had long ceased to run. Bird-life was low excepting along its banks.

Special precautions had to be taken before the shearing was timed to start, precautions entailing much thought on the part of Mayne, and labour on the part of his men. The drought had decimated his battalions of sheep and lowered to C3 the constitution of the survivors. Now completely retired from the trapping trade, which no longer existed. Tom Mace, with his truck, was stationed at White Well, where a dump of maize and compressed lucerne had been made. A smaller dump in charge of Ten Pot Dick was made at Mulga Flat.

The shearers came. Once more the huge shed vibrated with whirring machinery.

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