The sheep themselves, to begin with, seem always in league against
their owners. Merinos, though apparently estimable animals, are
in reality dangerous monomaniacs, whose sole desire is to ruin the
man that owns them. Their object is to die, and to do so with as
much trouble to their owners as they possibly can. They die in the
droughts when the grass, roasted to a dull white by the sun, comes
out by the roots and blows about the bare paddocks; they die in
the wet, when the long grass in the sodden gullies breeds "fluke"
and "bottle" and all sorts of hideous complaints. They get burnt
in bush fires from sheer malice, refusing to run in any given
direction, but charging round and round in a ring till they are
calcined. They get drowned by refusing to leave flooded country,
though hunted with frenzied earnestness.
It was not the sheep so much as the neighbours whose depredations
were drawing lines on Hugh Gordon's face. "I wouldn't care," he
confided to Miss Grant, "if they only took a beast or two. But the
sheep are going by hundreds. We mustered five hundred short in one
paddock this month. And there isn't a Doyle or a Donohoe cow but
has three calves at least, and two of each three belong to us."
He dared not prosecute them. No local jury would convict in face
of the hostility that would be aroused. They had made "alibis" a
special study; the very judges were staggered by the calmness and
plausibility with which they got themselves out of difficulties.
A big station with a lot of hostile neighbours is like a whale
with the killers round it; it is open to attack on all sides, and
cannot retaliate. A match dropped carelessly in a patch of grass
sets miles of country in a blaze. Hugh, as he missed the stock,
and saw fences cut and grass burnt, could only grind his teeth and
hope that a lucky chance would put some of the enemy in his power.
To Mary it seemed incredible that in the nineteenth century people
should be able to steal sheep without suffering for it; and Hugh
soon saw that she was a true daughter of William Grant, as far as
fighting was concerned. She listened with set teeth to all stories
of depredation and trespass, and they talked over many a plan
together. But though they became quite friendly their intimacy
seemed to make no progress. To her he was rather the employee than
the friend. In fact he did not get on half so far as did Gavan
Blake, who came up to Kuryong occasionally, and made himself so
agreeable that already his name was being coupled with that of the
heiress. Ellen Harriott always spoke to Blake when he came to the
station, and gave no sign of jealousy at his attentions to Mary
Grant; but she was waiting and watching, as one who has been a nurse
learns to do. And things were in this state when an unexpected
event put an altogether different complexion on affairs.