Harrington, wrought up and excited to the last pitch, flung himself upon his knees, and placed his cheek against that of the dying steer, and a sob burst from his bosom.
“O God, if there is a God! have mercy upon these Thy dumb creatures who suffer such agony.”
He stepped up to his horse, took his revolver out of the pouch, and then a merciful bullet ended the sufferings of the thirst-stricken animal at his feet.
“Steady, Bob, old man! Steady there!” he said brokenly, “I may have to do the same to you before long.” And then, tearing off a long piece of dried ti-tree bark from one of the trees, he thrust it into the fire. Then, with the blazing torch in his left hand, and his pistol in his right, he tramped over the sand to the remaining cattle, and shot them dead one by one.
Then back to his digging again. A drink of thick, muddy water for his horse, and then with a dull sense of misery in his heart he led Bob up the bank and began the last stage of his ride home—home to his anaemic, complaining, shallow-brained wife and the weakly children who, instead of being the consolation of his life in his misfortunes, were an added and ever-present source of misery and despair.
II
A few years before, Harrington had bought Tinandra Downs, and had stocked the run with three thousand head of store cattle; for half of which number he had paid, the remainder he had bought on long terms from a neighbouring squatter—a man who knew his sterling merits, and was confident that he (Harrington) would make Tinandra one of the best cattle stations in the far north. Fortune had smiled upon him from the first; for within two years came the discovery of the famous Palmer River goldfields, only a few hundred miles distant, and cattle and station properties doubled in value, for in less than half a year there were six thousand diggers on the field, and more came pouring in from the southern colonies by every steamer to Cooktown. New townships sprang suddenly into existence, provisions of all kinds brought an enormous price, and Harrington cleared off his debt to his squatter friend almost ere he could realise having done so, and that he had several thousands of pounds to the good as well. And his good luck stuck to him, for it was attended by careful management, and every mob of fat cattle he despatched to the goldfield instead of sending them on a three-hundred league journey to Brisbane, meant another couple of thousand sovereigns.
Then he began to improve the head station—and to think of Myra, a girl whom he had once met in Sydney, and who sent him newspapers, and, once or twice, at long intervals, had written him letters. He had answered these letters with a secret hope that, if all went well with him, he would take another trip to Sydney, and then—well, he could at least ask her. If she said no, why, who was there to chaff him? He was not a communicative man, had very few intimate men friends, and the few women whom he knew were not the sort he could possibly talk to about a lady. Both his parents had died before he was ten years of age, leaving him utterly alone in the world. Born in a bush town, in the interior of New South Wales, he had turned to the bush and to the wide, open, grassy plains, as an infant would have turned to its mother in its distress; and the bush and the plains and the grey mountain ranges had taken him to their bosoms; and the silent, reserved boy became the resolute, hardy bushman, stock-rider, and then miner—a man fit and ready to meet the emergencies of his rough life. Of the outside world he was as ignorant as a child, as indeed were most of the men with whom for many years he had associated. But there was nothing despicable in his ignorance; and when as time went on, and his improved circumstances threw him in contact with men and women of refinement and culture, he was quick to take advantage of such opportunities; but the honest, simple nature of the man always remained the same.
Before he was thirty, Harrington was known as one of the most experienced and fortunate over-lander drovers in Australia, and he became as familiar with the long and lonely stock-route from the stations on the Gulf of Carpentaria to Sydney and Melbourne, in his many journeys, as if it were a main road in an English county.
At the conclusion of one of these tedious drives of seven months’ duration, the brown-faced, quiet drover was asked by an acquaintance with whom he had business transactions, to spend the evening with him at his house. He went, and there met Myra Lyndon. He was attracted by her bright manner and smiling face, and when she questioned him about his life in the Far North, his adventures among the blacks, and the many perils of a drover’s existence, he thought her the fairest and sweetest woman in the world. And Miss Myra Lyndon encouraged him in his admiration. Not that she cared for him in the least She had not reached eight-and-twenty years of age to throw herself away on a man who had no other ambition than to become a squatter and live amongst a lot of “horrid bellowing cattle.” But he was nice to talk to, though terribly stupid about some things, and so she did not mind writing to him once or twice—it would reward him for the horse he had one day sent to her father with a lamely worded note, saying that it was one of a mob he had just bought at the saleyards, and as he had no use for a lady’s hack, he thought that perhaps Miss Lyndon would be so kind as to accept it Mr. Lyndon smiled as he read the note, he knew that drovers did not usually buy ladies’ hacks; but being a man harassed to death with an expensive family, he was not disposed to discourage Harrington’s attentions to Myra; though, having a conscience, he felt that Jack Harrington was too good a man for such a useless, empty-brained, and selfish creature as his eldest daughter.
So Harrington went back to his “bellowing bullocks,” and then, having saved enough money, bought the very run he had so often wished he could buy; and “Jack” Harrington, the overlander, became “Mr.” John Harrington, the pastoralist and owner of Tinandra Downs, and then the vision of Myra Lyndon’s face came to him very often—now that he was so prosperous.
One day he told his overseer that he was going to Sydney for a trip, and being a man of action, packed his valise, mounted his horse, and rode off on his journey of five hundred miles to the nearest seaport where he could take passage for Sydney.
For the first week or so after his arrival in the city, he “mooned” about doing nothing, and trying to pluck up courage enough to go to Myra Lyndon to ask her to be his wife. He had called several times upon her father and discussed business matters with him; but beyond inquiring after “Mrs. Lyndon and the Misses Lyndon,” had said nothing further, and in a nervous, shamefaced manner had each time accepted Mr. Lyndon’s invitation to “come and see the girls before he went back to the North,” but had not had the courage to go. Next week, or the week after that, would do, he thought. If she said “No,” he wouldn’t feel it so much—once he was on his way North again in the old Florence Irving; he would put it off till just as he was ready to start. Then if she said “Yes,” he would stay in Sydney as long as his love wished—a month—aye, six months, so long as she came back with him to Tinandra Downs. And Myra Lyndon, who knew from her father that her “bullock-driver admirer,” as she had mockingly called him to her friends, was in Sydney, waited for him impatiently. A systematic course of jilting and being jilted had made her feel anxious as to her future, and gall and wormwood had come to her now that her two younger sisters had married before her, and left her, as her somewhat acidulous-tongued mother said, “the Lyndon family wallflower.” She meant to marry him, spend a year or so among the “beastly bellowing cattle,” and then return to Sydney, where as Mrs. Harrington, the wealthy squatter’s wife, she could enjoy herself thoroughly, snub some of the women she hated, and flirt with some of the men she liked.