carpenters, sawyers, dam-makers, well-sinkers, all in hand, going smoothly and without delay, hitch, or dissatisfaction. He provided for their rations being taken to them, kept all the accounts accurately, and if there was so much as a sheepskin not returned, as per agreement, the defaulter was regularly charged with it. Incidentally, and besides all this work, sufficient for two ordinary men, he administered the shepherds and their charge – now amounting to nearly 30,000 sheep. Jack’s admiration of his manager did not slacken or change. “By Jove!” he said to himself, occasionally, “that fellow M‘Nab is fit to be a general of division. He never leaves anything to chance, and he seems to foresee everything and to arrange the cure before the ailment is announced.”
The cottage being now finished, Jack began to find life not only endurable, but almost enjoyable. He had got up a remnant of his library, and with some English papers, and the excellent weeklies of the colonies, he found that he had quite as much mental pabulum as he had leisure to consume. The sheep were looking famously well. The lambs were nearly as big in appearance as their mothers. The store sheep had fattened, and would be fit for the butcher as soon as their fleeces were off. The shepherds, for a wonder, gave no trouble, the ground being open, and their flocks strong; all was going well. The wool-shed was progressing towards completion; the wash-pen would follow suit, and be ready for the spouts, with all the latest improvements, which were even now on the road. Unto Jack, as he smoked in the verandah at night, gazing on the bright blue starry sky, listening to the rippling river, came freshly once more the beatific vision of a completely-fenced and fully-stocked run, paying splendidly, and ultimately taken off his hands at a profit, which should satisfy pride and compensate privation.
He and Mr. M‘Nab had also become accustomed to the ways of the population. “I thought at first,” said Jack, “that I never set eyes on such a set of duffers and loafers as the men at the Warroo generally. But I have had to change my opinion. They only want management, and I have seen some of the best working men among them I ever saw anywhere. One requires a good deal of patience in a new country.”
“They want a dash of ill temper now and then,” rejoined M‘Nab. “It’s very hard, when work is waiting for want of men, to see a gang of stout, lazy fellows going on, refusing a pound and five-and-twenty shillings a week, because the work is not to their taste.”
“But do they?” inquired Jack.
“There were five men refused work from one of the fence contractors at that price yesterday,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “They wouldn’t do the bullocking and only get shepherds’ wages, was the answer. I had the travellers’ hut locked up, and not a bit of meat or flour will any traveller get till we get men.”
“That doesn’t seem unjust,” said Jack. “I don’t see that we are called upon to maintain a strike against our own rate of wages, which we do in effect by feeding all the idle fellows who elect to march on. But don’t be hard on them. They can do us harm enough if they try.”
“I don’t see that, sir. The salt-bush won’t burn, and they would never think of anything else. They must be taught in this part of the world that they will not be encouraged to refuse fair wages. Now we are talking about rates – seventeen and sixpence is quite enough to give a hundred for shearing. We must have an understanding with the other sheep-owners, and try and fix it this year.”
Whether intimidated by the determined attitude of Mr. M‘Nab, or because men differ in their aspirations, on the Warroo as in other places, the next party of travellers thankfully accepted the contractors’ work and wages, and buckled to at once. They were, in fact, a party of navvies just set free from a long piece of contract, and this putting up posts, pretty hard work, was just what they wanted.
M‘Nab fully believed it was owing to him, and mentally vowed to act with similar decision in the next case of mutiny. A steady enforcement of your own rules is what the people here look for, thought he.
The seasons glided on. Month after month of Jack’s life, and of all our lives, fleeted past, and once again shearing became imminent. The time did not hang heavily on his hands; he rose at daylight, and after a plunge in the river the various work of each day asserted its claims, and our merino-multiplier found himself wending his way home at eve as weary as Gray’s ploughman, only fit for the consumption of dinner and an early retreat to his bedroom. A more pretentious and certainly more neatly-arrayed artist – indeed, a cordon bleu, unable to withstand the temptations of town life – had succeeded Bob the cook. Now that the cottage was completed, and reasonable comfort and coolness were attainable, Jack told himself that it was not such a bad life after all. A decent neighbour or two had turned up within visiting distance – that is under fifty miles. The constant labour sweetened his mental health, while the “great expectations” of the flawless perfection of the new wool-shed, the highly improved wash-pen, and the generally triumphant success of the coming clip, lent ardour to his soul and exultation to his general bearing. M‘Nab, as usual, worked, and planned, and calculated, and organized with the tireless regularity of an engine. Chiefly by his exertions and a large emission of circulars, the Warroo sheep-holders had been roused to a determination to reduce the price of shearing per hundred from twenty shillings to seventeen and sixpence. This reduced rate, in spite of some grumbling, they were enabled to carry out, chiefly owing to an unusual abundance of the particular class of workmen concerned. The men, after a few partial strikes, capitulated. But they knew from whence the movement had emanated, and were not inclined altogether to forget the fact. Indeed, of late M‘Nab, from overwork and concentration of thought, had lost his originally imperturbable manner. He had got into a habit of “driving” his men, and bore himself more nearly akin to the demeanour of the second mate on board a Yankee merchantman than the superintendent of the somewhat free and independent workmen of an Australian colony.
“He’s going too fast, that new boss,” said one of the wash-pen hands one day, as Mr. M‘Nab, unusually chafed at the laziness of one of the men who were helping to fit a boiler, had, in requital of some insolent rejoinder, knocked him down, and discharged him on the spot. “He’ll get a rough turn yet, if he don’t look out – there’s some very queer characters on the Warroo.”
And now the last week of July had arrived. The season promised to be early. The grasses were unusually forward, while the burr-clover, matted and luxuriant, made it evident that rather less than the ordinary term of sunshine would suffice to harden its myriads of aggressively injurious seed-cylinders. The warning was not unnoticed by the ever-watchful eye of M‘Nab.
“There will be a bad time with any sheds that are unlucky enough to be late this year,” he said, as Jack and he were inspecting the dam and lately-placed spouts of the wash-pen; “that’s why I’ve been carrying a full head of steam lately, to get all in order this month. Thank goodness, the shed will be finished on Saturday, and I’m ready for a start on the first of August.”
Of a certainty, every one capable of being acted upon by the contagion of a very uncommon degree of energy had been working at high pressure for the last two months. Paddocks had been completed; huts were ready for the washers and shearers. The great plant, including a steam-engine, had been strongly and efficiently fitted at the wash-pen, where a dam sent back the water for a mile, to the great astonishment of Jingaree and his friends, who occasionally rode over, as a species of holiday, to inspect the work.
“My word,” said this representative of the Arcadian, or perhaps Saturnian, period. “I wonder what old Morgan would say to all this here tiddley-winkin’, with steam-engine, and wire-fences, and knock-about men at a pound a week, as plenty as the black fellows when he first came on the ground. They’ll have a Christy pallis yet, and minstrels too, I’ll be bound. They’ve fenced us off from our Long Camp, too, with that cussed wire. Said our cattle went over our boundary. Boundaries be blowed! I’ve seen every herd mixed from here to Bochara, after a dry season. Took men as knew their work to draft ’em again, I can tell you. If these here fences is to be run up all along the river, any Jackaroo can go stock-keeping. The country’s going
