A Fright at Night
“There he is, there he is!”
squealed Ducky in the shrillest of trebles as Rumple
started to run along the dusty track up which the wagon
was advancing.
“Oh, you blessed boy, how could
you have the heart to give us such a fright?”
cried Sylvia, who had been walking at the side of the
wagon and now rushed forward to fling her arms round
Rumple and hug him until he was nearly smothered.
“I’m awfully sorry, truly
I am, but I didn’t know anything about it; and
I tell you I just felt bad when I woke up in Mrs. Warner’s
parlour and she told me that she had picked me up
in the road and thought at first that I was dead,”
explained Rumple, with an air of gloomy importance;
for in spite of the sorrow he felt at having given
the others so much anxiety there was a thrill of satisfaction
at having figured in such a fashion. To be picked
up for dead had a good sound with it, and might serve
as quite a big incident when he wrote the story of
his life.
“Oh, my dear, I will never let
you sit upon the rack out of sight again unless you
are tied fast to the seat!” cried Nealie, who
by this time had jumped down from the wagon and was
hugging him in place of Sylvia, who had been pushed
aside.
“Or we might tie the frying
pan and the tin billy round his neck, and then there
would be such a rattle when he fell that we should
be sure to hear and could pick him up at our leisure,”
said Rupert. There was a quiet drawl in his tone
which meant that his foot was more painful than usual;
but Nealie had been so occupied with her anxiety on
Rumple’s account that she had little time for
watching her eldest brother, who never said a word
about himself, however bad he might feel.
“I shall not do such a stupid
thing again of course, but it might have been worse,”
said Rumple. “This is a jolly place:
no end of cows, and a real separator; you put them
in at the top, the milk I mean, not the cows, and
they come out cream one side and milk the other.
Mrs. Warner is jolly too, and oh! what do you think,
she is cousin to that Mr. Melrose who left the ship
at Cape Town, and sent the cable to Mr. Wallis.”
By the time Rumple had managed so
much of explanation the horse and wagon had halted
outside the cowyard, and Mrs. Warner came rushing out
to greet the arrivals.
“I am really glad to see you;
we don’t get many visitors in these lonely places,
you know, and so company is always a treat. I
am afraid that you must have been rather scared when
you found your brother was missing, but when he was
able to tell us how it all happened we sent off a notice
to be stuck up at the side of the road as soon as possible.”
“It was most kind of you to
be so thoughtful,” said Nealie. “Only
the trouble was that we had found out Rumple was missing,
and we had come back on our tracks, right past the
place where the notice was posted, and we had nearly
reached the cutting where they are going to make the
railway. We halted there, because we knew that
when we passed that place before Rumple was with us,
and after we had been there about half an hour a man
came riding up from the way we had come, and he asked
what was the matter that we were so down on our luck;
so we told him that one of our brothers was missing,
and then he said that he had seen a notice up at the
Four-Mile Corner, that stated a boy had been found
lying in the road, and had been taken to Warner’s
Farm, in the Holderness Valley, but he was not hurt.”
“I had that bit put to keep
you from being scared,” said Mrs. Warner, nodding
her head in a vigorous fashion. “I guessed
that you would be feeling pretty bad, and so I just
told Tom to put it in big black letters that the boy
wasn’t hurt.”
“It was most kind of you!”
said Nealie, flushing and paling. “I do
not know how I should have had the courage to find
my way up here but for those last words, and I am
so very, very grateful to you for being so kind to
Rumple.”
“Tcha!” cried Mrs. Warner,
making a funny clicking noise with her tongue.
“Come in and have some supper, all of you; though
where we can put seven of you to sleep is more than
I can say, for we are pretty full with our own lot;
but we will manage somehow, don’t you fret.”
“Oh, but, please, we have our
own supper things, and we always sleep in the wagon;
that is, we girls sleep in the wagon, and the boys
have two mattresses underneath, so we never have to
trouble anyone,” said Nealie hastily.
“What a fine idea!” cried
Mrs. Warner, holding up her hands in astonishment.
“It makes you so independent of hotels and that
sort of thing; besides, these wayside houses are not
many of them suitable places for young people to stay
at. But you are not going to eat your own supper
when you come to see me, not if I know it. Come
along into the kitchen, all of you, there is plenty
to eat, only you have caught us all in the rough.”
“But, please, we must look after
Rocky, that is our horse, before we have our own supper;
we always do,” said Nealie, feeling as if the
stormy day was going to have a peaceful ending, seeing
that they were to find a supper all ready for them,
instead of having to cook it for themselves.
“Tom will see to your horse,
and a fine creature it is too. But Peek & Wallis
always do supply good cattle; we often have their horses
out here. Tom is my eldest, and he is downright
smart with horses. Tom, Tom, come and lend a
hand, will you?”
At the sound of his mother’s
shout Tom came hurrying out from the back door; but
he was so dreadfully shy, when he saw Nealie and Sylvia
standing by the horse, that he was just going to make
a bolt for it, and pretend that he had business in
another direction, only just then Nealie began to
unharness the animal, setting about her task with such
an air of being accustomed to it that he suddenly
forgot to be awkward and nervous, walking up to the
wagon and saying, in a matter-of-fact tone: “Here,
Miss, I’ll look to your animal, and give him
his supper and a rub down, while you go in with Mother
and get a feed for yourself.”
“You are very kind,” said
Nealie, “but I will just get his supper corn
from the bottom of the wagon, because you will not
know where to find it, and Mr. Wallis said that a
horse could not do heavy draught work on grass feed.”
“I should think not,”
replied Tom, with such an air of knowing all about
it as made his mother glow with pleasure, for Tom’s
shyness was a real trouble to her, she never having
been afflicted in that way herself. “The
horse shall have a corn feed, Miss, but it will be
our corn and not yours; that will do for to-morrow
or the next day.”
“Of course we don’t let
people feed themselves or their beasts when they come
here!” echoed Mrs. Warner, taking hold of Nealie
and forcibly leading her into the house, while the
others trouped after them.
What a crowd they made in the canvas-walled
kitchen. And what a supper they ate, sitting
round the table eating scones and butter, with delicious
raspberry jam. Amy, the stylish sister, made a
fresh batch of scones, and cooked them in the oven,
while the rosy-cheeked Bella went walking with her
friend, who proved to be a good-looking young farmer,
living farther up the valley.
The girls slept in the wagon that
night, but the boys carried their mattresses into
the big hay barn, because it threatened rain, and,
as Mrs. Warner said, it was much easier to keep dry
than to dry up after getting wet.
About midnight the rain came down
at a pour; it rained until morning, when it came down
faster than ever, and Mrs. Warner would not hear of
their moving on. She said that Rockefeller certainly
could not drag the wagon through the loose mud of
the track, and if they got out to walk they would
all catch bad colds, entailing no end of misery and
discomfort on them all, and the only sensible thing
to do was to stay in the Holderness Valley for another
day, and the weather would be sure to be better to-morrow.
This was such common-sense advice
that Nealie was very glad to take it, although she
felt rather embarrassed, because it looked so much
like sponging on the generosity of their kind hostess.
The younger ones were all delighted
to stay, and Sylvia entered herself at once as an
apprentice to the dairy business by taking a lesson
in milking, and Mrs. Warner declared that when Bella
was married to her friend who lived higher up the
valley, Sylvia could come to the farm and fill the
vacant place, earning her keep, and a good deal more
besides.
The boys turned the handle of the
separator, and made themselves generally useful.
But Nealie went off in the rain with Mrs. Warner and
Tom for a ride to the butter factory with the cream
from the night before and that of the morning.
Mrs. Warner had guessed shrewdly enough
that Nealie had so much responsibility in an ordinary
way as to make the little trip to the factory quite
a holiday jaunt.
Wrapped in a big mackintosh belonging
to Amy, Nealie sat on the front seat of the wagon,
between Tom and his mother, and very much enjoying
the novelty of seeing someone else in charge of the
horse and wagon.
The factory was a series of surprises,
and she came away with her head in a whirl between
cream testers, butter machinery, freezing chambers,
and the final processes of packing for market.
It seemed to her that the world was such a wonderful
place, and the things done in it were so much more
wonderful still, that she must belong to the very bottom
class of ignoramuses, because she did not know how
to do anything save mother her sisters and brothers,
and she did not realize that this might be the grandest
and cleverest work of all.
All day it rained without a single
stop, and far into the second night as well.
But the morning broke without a cloud, the sun shone
out bright and glorious, and all nature rejoiced because
of the rain.
A start was made directly after breakfast,
all the family of Warners crowding to the cowyard
gate, to see the travellers start.
Putting Rupert and Ducky up in the
wagon to ride, the other five walked the two miles
and more to the Four-Mile Corner, because the Holderness
Valley track was so soft from the rain. Even with
this lightening of the load it was an anxious progress
in places, and when they got stuck in a hollow they
had to put their shoulders to the wheel and assist
strength of collar by strength of arm.
But Rockefeller had been well fed
at the farm, and he had had a good rest also, and,
being in prime condition, made short work of the heavy
track, landing them safe and sound on the main road.
Rumple’s misadventure had let
them in for quite a long delay, but it had also secured
them a shelter when they most needed it, and so, as
Nealie said, the balance was about even.
That day’s journey was without
incident, and so was the next. Then came Sunday,
when they did not travel at all, but remained in camp
all day, giving themselves and the horse a rest, and
singing hymns as they sat under the trees in the shade.
So far there had mostly been trees dotted here and
there by the wayside, but on Monday morning the way
grew wilder and rougher, they were getting out in
the back country, and all round there was nothing
to be seen save rolling downs and broad sheep paddocks,
while the road stretched shadeless and glaring for
miles on miles before them, and every step stirred
blinding clouds of dust.
“This rather takes the gilt
off the gingerbread,” said Rupert, as he sat
under the wagon tilt fanning himself with his hat and
choking with dust.
Vast herds of cattle, being driven
down to the coast to be turned into chilled beef for
exportation, had been passing them all day, and these
droves materially added to their sufferings because
of the amount of dust that was raised. There
was danger for Rocky, too, from the long, sharp horns
of the cattle, as they pressed closely round the wagon
in passing, and as a measure of precaution Nealie
turned the wagon right round every time she saw a
great drove approaching, by which means the back of
the wagon had the chief impact.
Camping that night was not a very
cheerful business. There was only a scanty supply
of water available, food supplies were also running
short, and there was a cold wind blowing, which one
of the drovers had told them was going to be a “southerly
buster”, only, luckily for their present peace
of mind, the seven did not as yet understand the true
significance of the term.
The shortness of food was owing to
their having expected to reach a certain point of
the journey where fresh supplies could be procured.
But they had been held up so many times that afternoon
by the passing of cattle that they were five or six
miles from the place where they had intended to stop
when sundown came.
“Never mind being short to-night;
we will have a good feed when we reach Ford to-morrow
to make up for it,” said Nealie cheerfully.
Her money was holding out so much better than she
had expected, thanks to the kindness of Mrs. Warner,
that she was feeling quite easy in her mind about food
supplies just at present.
“We will turn in directly we
have eaten all there is for supper, before it has
time to evaporate and leave us hungry again,”
said Rumple, who could always forget his woes in sleep.
“That is a downright jolly idea!”
cried Sylvia, stretching her arms above her head in
a sleepy fashion. The long days in the open air
made her most fearfully hungry and tired, while to-day
had certainly been the most fatiguing that they had
had since leaving Sydney.
They were sitting round a fire made
mainly of grass, to eat their supper, for no wood
was procurable in the district in which that night’s
camp was made. There were, indeed, a few stunted
sandalwood bushes and some odd clumps of spinifex;
but these were so difficult to cut that they had preferred
to manage with a bundle of wood which had been gathered
some days ago and slung on to the back of the wagon
for use in an emergency like this, and when the wood
had dwindled to a bank of red-hot embers they had
piled grass upon it, and so kept the fire going while
supper was in progress, because the wind was so cold.
For the first time since they had
started on their travels they were glad to go to their
rest wrapped up in rugs and coats. Even then the
boys under the wagon were so cold that Don suggested
they should all lie very close together on one mattress,
while the other was used as a top covering; and this
arrangement made them so comfortable and warm that
they were all fast asleep until they were suddenly
aroused by a terrific screaming from the wagon.
Then, when they started up, still drowsy with their
heavy slumber, they were promptly knocked down and
trampled in the dust.