Tom Gerrard Part 12

"See!" he said, pointing to a sandal-wood scrub, "that is one of the mustering camps on the Kaburie boundary, and there are some of Mrs Tallis's cattle down there in the creek. Crack your whip, Kate."

Uncoiling the long stock-whip, the girl cracked it once only, but loudly, and in a few seconds hundreds of cattle appeared from the creek, and through the fringe of she-oaks that lined its banks; they clambered up the steep side and stared at the disturbers, and then at a second loud crack of the whip, trotted off quietly to the camp--bullocks, steers, cows and calves, the latter performing the usual calf antics, curving their bodies, hoisting their tails, and kicking their heels in the air. Once under the cool, grateful shade of the dark green foliage of the sandalwoods, they quietly awaited to be inspected, and Fraser and Gerrard slowly walked their horses about among them. .

"What do you think of them?" asked the mine-owner, who was himself a good judge of cattle.

"Very fair lot indeed, and all as fat as pigs," replied the squatter, scanning them closely. "Now then, Bully boy, what are you staring at?"

he said to a st.u.r.dy twelve months' old bull calf, who had advanced to him. "Ah! you want to be branded, do you? Quite so! Well, I think it very likely you soon will be."

"There has been no branding at Kaburie for six months, Mr Gerrard," said Kate, who added that there were now only Mrs Tallis's overseer, and one black boy stockman on the station, who did nothing more than muster the cattle occasionally on the various camps.

Gerrard nodded. "Ladies are bad business people as a rule. There will be a terrible amount of branding to be done now."

Kate, unaware of the twinkle in Gerrard's eyes, was indignant. "Indeed, Mrs Tallis was considered a very good business woman, and knew how to manage things as well as Mr Tallis. What are you laughing at, Mr Gerrard?"

"At Mrs Tallis's smartness. She has saved herself some hundreds of pounds by dismissing her stockmen, and leaving the calves un-branded.

All the work and expense will fall on whoever buys the station."

"Oh, I see!" and Kate smiled. "But, after all, I suppose----"

"That all is fair in love and war. And buying a cattle or sheep station is war in a sense between seller and buyer. I should have done the same thing myself, I suppose."

"I don't believe you would," said the girl frankly. "Mr Aulain told father and me that you were very Quixotic."

"Aulain doesn't know what a hard nail I am in money matters sometimes, Miss Fraser. I'm a perfect Shylock, and will have my pound o'

flesh--especially bullock flesh."

"I know better, and so do you, father, don't you," and her eyes smiled into Gerrard's. "Mr Aulain told us all about your selling a hundred bullocks to the French authorities at New Caledonia, and then, because half of them died on the stormy voyage to Noumea, you returned half the money. Was it your fault that the steamer was nearly wrecked, and the cattle died?"

"Aulain did not think that it might have only been a matter of my setting a sprat to catch a mackerel. You see I was anxious to establish a big cattle trade with the French people."

Kate shook her head decisively, but there was an expressive look in her eyes that gave Gerrard great content.

Towards the afternoon the travellers saw a horseman coming towards them, and Kate recognised him as Tom Knowles, the overseer of Kaburie, for whom Gerrard had a letter from Mrs Tallis. He was a lithe, wiry little man of fifty, and Kate and her father exchanged smiles as, when he drew near, they saw that he was arrayed in his best riding "togs," was riding his best horse, and that his long grey moustache was carefully waxed.

He had long been one of Kate's most ardent admirers, and had a strong belief that he was "well placed in the running with Aulain and the parson" for the young lady's affections--and hand.

"Well, this is a pleasure," he cried, as he rode up and shook hands with Fraser and his daughter; "I was coming over to Gully to spend an hour or two with you, Fraser, but, of course, you are coming to me?"

"Yes!" said the mineowner. "This is Mr Gerrard, Knowles. He has come to see you on business, and we came with him."

The overseer, who had at first looked at Gerrard's handsome face with some disapproval, at once became at ease, and in a few minutes, after Gerrard had explained the object of his visit, the party put their horses into a smart canter, and half-an-hour later came to a wide, sandy-bottomed creek, fringed with huge ti-trees. On one of these, which was on the margin of the crossing, was nailed a large black painted board with an ominous inscription in white.

"LOOK OUT FOR ALLIGATORS."

"Mr Tallis had it put up," explained the overseer to Gerrard; "as two men were collared by 'gaters here. But when the water is clear, and the creek low, as it is now, there is no danger. It is when the creek is high after rain, and the water muddy, that the crossing is risky. I suppose you have any amount of the brutes up your way?"

"Thousands! The rivers, creeks, and swamps are full of them, and I have lost a lot of cattle and horses at Ocho Rios by them."

An hour later they arrived at Kaburie, and Kate was, at the request of the admiring Knowles, acting as hostess and preparing supper.

CHAPTER XIII

Two days had pa.s.sed, and Gerrard was still at Kaburie, though Kate and her father had left the previous day; they were, however, to return, bringing with them three or four stockmen to a.s.sist Knowles and Gerrard to muster the cattle, for he had decided to buy the station and leave Knowles there as his manager. Although there were but four thousand head of cattle on the run, they were widely separated in small mobs of a few hundreds each--some high up in the ranges, and some haunting the low-lying littoral, and frequenting the flat marshy land about the mouths of the numerous creeks debouching into the sea, where they eagerly ate the lush, saline gra.s.ses and creepers that lined the coast above high-water mark--and to "round up" all these scattered mobs on their various camps, and count every beast, meant very hard work. Then too, Gerrard intended to have a general branding at the same time, and he felt a thrill of pleasure in his veins, when Kate had said to her father: "Father, why cannot we help, too? You can safely leave the battery and claim to Sam Young for a few days. And as you and I know the country so well, I am sure we should be of some use to Mr Gerrard."

Douglas Fraser had never said "No" in his life to any request of Kate's since she was fifteen, and he smiled a.s.sent. And then in addition to that he had taken such a strong liking to Gerrard that it gave him pleasure to afford him all the a.s.sistance in his power.

"All right, Gerrard!" (men in the Australian bush do not "Mister" each other after a few hour's acquaintance) "we shall be here. And I'll send over to Boorala for three or four good men to help in the mustering."

So Kate and her father had ridden away and left Gerrard and Knowles to themselves for a few days; and Gerrard and the dapper little overseer planned all sorts of improvements that were to be effected in the way of making Kaburie a crack breeding station.

As father and daughter rode side by side along the track back to their home, through the darkening shadows of the coming night, they talked about Forde and Aulain, Fraser resting his big brown hand on her knee, and looking wistfully into her face.

"And you see, my child, that I well know that there will come a time when you and I must part Some man----"

"Never, father, never! I liked Mr Forde very much, but not well enough to marry him, and part from you. And I kissed him, dad, when we said good-bye. Do you mind much? I couldn't help it. I felt that I _must_ kiss him." (Then tears.) "I thought I had better tell you, for I feel so horribly ashamed of myself."

"There is nothing for you to be ashamed of, child," said her father tenderly; "Forde is a _man_, and, as I told you, he would take your refusal like a white man and a gentleman."

"He did. And I could not help crying over it."

For some minutes they rode on in silence, then Fraser said:

"When is Aulain coming?"

"As soon as he is able to sit a horse, he said," and then her face flushed. "I wish he would not come, father, and yet I do not like the idea of writing to him and telling him so--especially when he is ill."

Fraser nodded. "I understand. Still I think it would be the better course to take. I had imagined, however, Kate, that you thought more of Aulain than you cared to admit, even to me."

"So I did; and so I do now, but I would never marry him, father, no matter how much I cared for him."

Her father looked at her inquiringly.

"I think I am afraid of him, dad, sometimes. He is so dreadfully jealous, and he has no right whatever to be jealous of me, for we were never engaged. And then there is another thing that is an absolute bar to my marrying him, though I fear I am too much of a coward to tell him so; he is a Roman Catholic. And whenever I think of that I remember the awful tragedy of the Wallington family."

"I think you are quite right, Kate," said the mine-owner gravely.

"Frankly, whilst I think Aulain is a fine fellow, and would make you a good husband, I must confess that the thought of your marrying a Roman Catholic has often filled me with uneasiness."

"Don't be afraid, dad," she said decisively. "In the first place, I am not going to marry anyone, and shall grow into a pretty old maid; in the second, if I was dying of love, nothing in the world would induce me to marry a Roman Catholic. Whenever I think of poor Mr Wallington as we saw him lying on the gra.s.s with the bullet hole through his forehead, I shudder. I loathe the very name of Mrs Wallington, and consider her and Father Corregio the actual murderers of that good old man."

She spoke of an incident that had occurred when she was sixteen.

Wallington, a wealthy Brisbane solicitor, had gone to England on a six months' visit When he returned, he found that his wife and only daughter, a girl of five and twenty, had fallen under the influence of a Father Corregio, and had entered the Roman Catholic Church, and his long and happy married life was at an end. A week later he shot himself in his garden.

"I am afraid that poor Aulain will cut up pretty roughly over this, Kate," said her father presently.

"I can't help it, father. And I think, after all, I had better write to him to-morrow. I really do not want him to come to the Gully."