On Our Selection | Page 9

without the
mare.
Dad cleared his throat, but did n't answer. Mother asked him.
"Yes, I FOUND her," he said slowly, "DEAD."
The crows had got her at last.
He wrapped the deeds in a piece of rag and walked.

There was nothing, scarcely, that he did n't send out from town, and
Jimmy Mulcahy and old Anderson many and many times after that
borrowed our dray.
Now Dad regularly curses the deeds every mail-day, and wishes to
Heaven he had never got them.
Chapter IV.

When the Wolf was at the Door.
There had been a long stretch of dry weather, and we were cleaning out
the waterhole. Dad was down the hole shovelling up the dirt; Joe
squatted on the brink catching flies and letting them go again without
their wings--a favourite amusement of his; while Dan and Dave cut a
drain to turn the water that ran off the ridge into the hole--when it
rained. Dad was feeling dry, and told Joe to fetch him a drink.
Joe said: "See first if this cove can fly with only one wing." Then he
went, but returned and said: "There's no water in the bucket--Mother
used the last drop to boil th' punkins," and renewed the fly-catching.
Dad tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother,
half-way between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass
paddock was all on fire. "So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely
dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb.
Dad scrambled out of the hole and looked. "Good God!" was all he said.
How he ran! All of us rushed after him except Joe--he could n't run
very well, because the day before he had ridden fifteen miles on a poor
horse, bare-back. When near the fire Dad stopped running to break a
green bush. He hit upon a tough one. Dad was in a hurry. The bush was
n't. Dad swore and tugged with all his might. Then the bush broke and
Dad fell heavily upon his back and swore again.
To save the cockatoo fence that was round the cultivation was what
was troubling Dad. Right and left we fought the fire with boughs. Hot!

It was hellish hot! Whenever there was a lull in the wind we worked.
Like a wind-mill Dad's bough moved--and how he rushed for another
when one was used up! Once we had the fire almost under control; but
the wind rose again, and away went the flames higher and faster than
ever.
"It's no use," said Dad at last, placing his hand on his head, and
throwing down his bough. We did the same, then stood and watched
the fence go. After supper we went out again and saw it still burning.
Joe asked Dad if he did n't think it was a splendid sight? Dad did n't
answer him--he did n't seem conversational that night.
We decided to put the fence up again. Dan had sharpened the axe with
a broken file, and he and Dad were about to start when Mother asked
them what was to be done about flour? She said she had shaken the bag
to get enough to make scones for that morning's breakfast, and unless
some was got somewhere there would be no bread for dinner.
Dad reflected, while Dan felt the edge on the axe with his thumb.
Dad said, "Won't Missus Dwyer let you have a dishful until we get
some?"
"No," Mother answered; "I can't ask her until we send back what we
owe them."
Dad reflected again. "The Andersons, then?" he said.
Mother shook her head and asked what good there was it sending to
them when they, only that morning, had sent to her for some?
"Well, we must do the best we can at present," Dad answered, "and I'll
go to the store this evening and see what is to be done."
Putting the fence up again in the hurry that Dad was in was the very
devil! He felled the saplings--and such saplings!--TREES many of
them were--while we, "all of a muck of sweat," dragged them into line.
Dad worked like a horse himself, and expected us to do the same.

"Never mind staring about you," he'd say, if he caught us looking at the
sun to see if it were coming dinner-time--"there's no time to lose if we
want to get the fence up and a crop in."
Dan worked nearly as hard as Dad until he dropped the butt-end of a
heavy sapling on his foot, which made him hop about on one leg and
say that he was sick and tired of the dashed fence. Then he argued with
Dad, and declared that it would be far better to put a