第14章

It looks like it, at any rate.I saw how it was; father had given Crib a cruel beating the night before, when he was put out for some trifling matter, and the dog had left him and run home.But now he had thought better of it, and seen our tracks and come to work and slave, with his bleeding feet -- for they were cut all to pieces --and got the whip across his back now and then for his pains.

It's a queer world!

When we got right to the top of this confounded gully, nearly dead-beat all of us, and only for the dog heeling them up every now and then, and making his teeth nearly meet in them, without a whimper, I believe the cattle would have charged back and beat us.

There was a sort of rough table-land -- scrubby and stony and thick it was, but still the grass wasn't bad in summer, when the country below was all dried up.There were wild horses in troops there, and a few wild cattle, so Jim and I knew the place well;but it was too far and too much of a journey for our own horses to go often.

`Do you see that sugar-loaf hill with the bald top, across the range?'

said father, riding up just then, as we were taking it easy a little.

`Don't let the cattle straggle, and make straight for that.'

`Why, it's miles away,' said Jim, looking rather dismal.

`We could never get 'em there.'

`We're not going there, stupid,' says father; `that's only the line to keep.

I'll show you something about dinner-time that'll open your eyes a bit.'

Poor Jim brightened up at the mention of dinner-time, for, boylike, he was getting very hungry, and as he wasn't done growing he had no end of an appetite.I was hungry enough for the matter of that, but I wouldn't own to it.

`Well, we shall come to somewhere, I suppose,' says Jim, when father was gone.

`Blest if I didn't think he was going to keep us wandering in this blessed Nulla Mountain all day.I wish I'd never seen the blessed cattle.I was only waiting for you to hook it when we first seen the brands by daylight, and I'd ha' been off like a brindle "Mickey" down a range.'

`Better for us if we had,' I said; `but it's too late now.

We must stick to it, I suppose.'

We had kept the cattle going for three or four miles through the thickest of the country, every now and then steering our course by the clear round top of Sugarloaf, that could be seen for miles round, but never seemed to get any nearer, when we came on a rough sort of log-fence, which ran the way we were going.

`I didn't think there were any farms up here,' I said to Jim.

`It's a "break",' he said, almost in a whisper.`There's a "duffing-yard"somewhere handy; that's what's the matter.'

`Keep the cattle along it, anyway.We'll soon see what it leads to.'

The cattle ran along the fence, as if they expected to get to the end of their troubles soon.The scrub was terribly thick in places, and every now and then there was a break in the fence, when one of us had to go outside and hunt them until we came to the next bit.

At last we came to a little open kind of flat, with the scrub that thick round it as you couldn't hardly ride through it, and, just as Jim said, there was the yard.

It was a `duffing-yard' sure enough.No one but people who had cattle to hide and young stock they didn't want other people to see branded would have made a place there.

Just on the south side of the yard, which was built of great heavy stringy-bark trees cut down in the line of the fence, and made up with limbs and logs, the range went up as steep as the side of a house.

The cattle were that tired and footsore -- half their feet were bleeding, poor devils -- that they ran in through the sliprails and began to lay down.

`Light a fire, one of you boys,' says father, putting up the heavy sliprails and fastening them.`We must brand these calves before dark.One of you can go to that gunyah, just under the range where that big white rock is, and you'll find tea and sugar and something to eat.'

Jim rushed off at once, while I sulkily began to put some bark and twigs together and build a fire.

`What's the use of all this cross work?' I said to father; `we're bound to be caught some day if we keep on at it.Then there'll be no one left to take care of mother and Aileen.'