Chapter 3

The clerk of the weather, too gracious even in these regions as far as the absence of rain is concerned, was steadily propitious. Cloudless skies and a gradually ascending thermometer alone were the signs that spring was changing into summer. The splendid herbage ripened and dried; patches of bare earth began to be discernible amid the late thick-swarded pastures, dust to rise and cloud-pillars of sand to float and eddy--the desert genii of the Arab. But the work went on at a high rate of speed, outpacing the fast-coming summer; and before any serious disasters arose, the last flock was "on the battens," and, amid ironical congratulations, the "cobbler," or last sheep was seized, and stripped of his rather dense and difficult fleece. In ten minutes the vast woolshed, lately echoing with the ceaseless click of the shears, the jests, the songs, the oaths of the rude congregation, was silent and deserted. The floors were swept, the pens closed, the sheep on their way to a distant paddock. Not a soul remains about the building but the pressers, who stay to work at the rapidly lessening piles of fleeces in the bins, or a meditative teamster who sits musing on a wool-bale, absorbed in a calculation as to when his load will be made up.

It is sundown, a rather later time of closing than usual, but rendered necessary by the possibility of the "grand finale." The younger men troop over to the hut, larking like schoolboys. Abraham Lawson throws a poncho over his broad shoulders, lights his pipe, and strides along, towering above the rest, erect and stately as a guardsman. Considerably more so than you or I, reader, would have been, had we shorn 130 sheep, as he has done to-day. Billy May has shorn 142, and he puts his hand on the five-foot paling fence of the yard and vaults over it like a deer, preparatory to a swim in the creek. At dinner you will see them all with fresh Crimeans and Jerseys, clean, comfortable, and in grand spirits. Next morning is settling-day. The book-keeping departments at Anabanco being severely correct, all is in readiness. Each man's tally or number of sheep shorn has been entered daily to his credit. His private and personal investments at the store have been as duly debited. The shearers, as a corporation, have been charged with the multifarious items of their rather copious mess-bill. This sum total is divided by the number of the shearers, the extract being the amount for which each man is liable. This sum varies in its weekly proportion at different sheds. With an extravagant cook, or cooks, the weekly bill is often alarming. When the men and their functionary study economy it may be kept very reasonably low.

The men have been sitting or standing about the office for half-an-hour when Mr Jack Bowles rushes out, and shouts "William May!" That young person, excessively clean, attired in a quiet tweed suit, with his hair cut very correctly short, advances with an air of calm intrepidity, and faces Mr Gordon. Gordon, now seated at a long table, wearing a judicial expression of countenance.

"Well, May, here's your account":--

So many sheep, at 1 pound per 100... xxxx pounds Cook, so many weeks................. xxxx pounds Shearing store account.............. xxxx pounds Private store account............... xxxx pounds ---- Total............................... xxxx pounds ----

"Is the tally of your sheep right?" "Oh! I daresay it's all right, Mr Gordon, I made it so and so; about ten less."

"Well, well! Ours is correct, no doubt. Now I want to make up a good subscription for the hospital this year. How much will you give? You've done pretty well, I think."

"Put me down a pound, sir."

"Very well, that's fair enough. If every one gives what they can afford, you men will always have a place to go to when you're hurt or laid up. So I put your name down, and you'll see it in the published list. Now about the shearing, May. I consider that you've done your work very well, and behaved very well all through. You're a fast shearer, but you shear closely, and don't knock your sheep about. I therefore do not charge you for any part of your meat bill, and I pay you at the rate of half-a-crown a hundred for all your sheep, over and above your agreement. Will that do?"

"Very well, indeed, and I'm much obliged to you, Mr Gordon."

"Well, good-bye May! Always call when you're passing, and if any work is going on you'll get your share. Here's your cheque. Send in Lawson!" Exit May, in high spirits, having cleared about three pounds per week, during the whole term of shearing, and having lived a far from unpleasant life, indeed akin to that of a fighting cock, from the commencement to the end of that period.

Lawson's interview may be described as having very similar results. He, also, was a first-class shearer, though not so artistic as the gifted Billy. Jack Windsor's saucy blue eyes twinkled merrily as he returned to his companions, and incontinently leaped on the back of his wild-eyed colt. After these three worthies came a shearer named Jackson; he belonged to quite a different class; he could shear very well if he pleased, but had a rooted disbelief that honesty was the best policy, and a fixed determination to shear as many sheep as he could get the manager to pass. By dint of close watching, constant reprimand, and occasional "raddling" (marking badly-shorn sheep and refusing to count them) Mr Gordon had managed to tone him down to average respectability of execution. Still he was always uneasily aware that whenever his eye was not upon him, Jackson was doing what he ought not to do with might and main. Gordon had, indeed, kept him on from sheer necessity, but he intended none the less to mark his opinion of him.

"Come in, Jackson! Your tally is so-and-so. Is that right?"

Jackson.--"I suppose so."

"Cook and store account, so much; shearing account so much."

Jackson.--"And a good deal too."

"That is your affair," said Mr Gordon, sternly enough. "Now look here! You're in my opinion a bad shearer and a bad man. You have given me a great deal of trouble, and I should have kicked you out of the shed weeks ago if I had not been short of men. I shall make a difference between you and men who have tried to do their best. I make you no allowance of any sort, I pay you by the strict agreement. There's your cheque. Go!"

Jackson goes out with a very black countenance. He mutters with a surly oath that if "he'd known how he was going to be served he'd ha' 'blocked' 'em a little more." He is pretty well believed to have been served right, and he secures no sympathy whatever. Working-men of all classes are shrewd and fair judges generally. If an employer does his best to mete out justice he is always appreciated and supported by the majority. These few instances will serve as a description of the whole process of settling with the shearers. The horses have all been got in. Great catching and saddling-up has taken place all the morning. By the afternoon the whole party are dispersed to the four winds; some, like Abraham Lawson and his friends, to sheds "higher up," in a colder climate, where shearing necessarily commences later. From these they will pass to others, until the last sheep in the mountain runs are shorn. Then those who have not farms of their own betake themselves to reaping. Billy May and Jack Windsor are quite as ready to back themselves against time in the wheat-field as on the shearing-floor. Harvest over, they find their pockets inconveniently full, so they commence to visit their friends and repay themselves for their toils by a tolerably liberal allowance of rest and recreation.

Old Ben and a few choice specimens of the olden time get no further than the nearest public house. Their cheques are handed to the landlord and a "stupendous and terrible spree" sets in. At the end of a week he informs them that they have received liquor to the amount of their cheques--something over a hundred pounds--save the mark! They meekly acquiesce, as is their custom. The landlord generously presents them with a glass of grog each, and they take the road for the next woolshed.

The shearers being despatched, the sheep-washers, a smaller and less regarded force, file up. They number some forty men. Nothing more than fair bodily strength, willingness and obedience being required in their case, they are more easy to get and to replace than shearers. They are a varied and motley lot. That powerful and rather handsome man is a New Yorker, of Irish parentage. Next to him is a slight, neat, quiet individual. He was a lieutenant in a line regiment. The lad in the rear was a Sandhurst cadet. Then came two navvies and a New Zealander, five Chinamen, a Frenchman, two Germans, Tin Pot, Jerry, and Wallaby--three aboriginal blacks. There are no invidious distinctions as to caste, colour, or nationality. Every one is a man and a brother at sheep-washing. Wage, one pound per week; wood, water, tents and food "A LA DISCRETION." Their accounts are simple: so many weeks, so many pounds; store account, so much; hospital? well, five shillings; cheque, good-morning.

The wool-pressers, the fleece-rollers, the fleece-pickers, the yardsmen, the washers' cooks, the hut cooks, the spare shepherds; all these and a few other supernumeraries inevitable at shearing-time, having been paid off, the snowstorm of cheques which has been fluttering all day comes to an end. Mr Gordon and the remaining "sous-officiers" go to rest that night with much of the mental strain removed which has been telling on every waking moment for the last two months.

The long train of drays and wagons, with loads varying from twenty to forty-five bales, has been moving off in detachments since the commencement. In a day or two the last of them will have rolled heavily away. The 1400 bales, averaging three and a half hundredweight, are distributed, slow journeying, along the road, which they mark from afar, standing huge and columnar like guide tumuli, from Anabanco to the waters of the Murray. Between the two points there is neither a hill nor a stone. All is the vast monotonous sea of plain--at this season a prairie-meadow exuberant with vegetation; in the late summer, or in the occasional and dreaded phenomenon of a DRY WINTER, dusty, and herbless as a brickfield, for hundreds of miles.

Silence falls on the plains and waters of Anabanco for the next six months. The woolshed, the washpen, and all the huts connected with them are lone and voiceless as caravanserais in a city of the plague.