FullReads

I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn’t time to get a shed or anything ready–along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to truck the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that was going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool) offered James as much for them as he reckoned I’d get in Sydney, after paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.

I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks–one in James’s name, to encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an angle between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody thought belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went to the local land office and found out that it was ‘unoccupied Crown land’, and so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more sheep–I’d saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot.

One evening–I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for myself–Mary said,–

‘Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?’

The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and I didn’t think much of them. The sons were all ‘bad-eggs’, though the old woman and girls were right enough.

‘Well, what of that?’ I said. ‘They’re up to their neck in debt, and camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go flashing round in a double buggy.’

‘But that isn’t what I was going to say,’ said Mary. ‘They want to sell their old single buggy, James says. I’m sure you could get it for six or seven pounds; and you could have it done up.’

‘I wish James to the devil!’ I said. ‘Can’t he find anything better to do than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?’

‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘it was James who got the steers and the sheep.’

Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn’t mean–but couldn’t forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her, and she spoke of the ‘homes’ she’d had since she was married. And that cut me deep.

It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything that looked like injustice–I was so sensitive about it that it made me unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn’t–it wouldn’t have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got thinking of Mary’s first year on the selection and the life she’d had since we were married.

When I went in she’d cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, ‘Mary,’ I whispered.

She seemed to wake up.

‘Joe–Joe!’ she said.

‘What is it Mary?’ I said.

‘I’m pretty well sure that old Spot’s calf isn’t in the pen. Make James go at once!’

Old Spot’s last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year.