A Little Matter of Law

by G. B. Lancaster

A Little Matter of Law

 

By G. B. LANCASTER

 

“Might rules the world, and right rules might—
So in our youth we learn it;
But craft rules both, you'll find, if you
"Have wit that can discern it.”

—The Drover’s Creed.

 

THE sun sat up in a flat, brassy sky, and flayed the bare hills where the dried tussock rubbed off in dust. There was a road at the hill-foot, flint-white, and so long that it tapped all Nelson and Marlborough—yea, and the very heart of North Canterbury also. The sea flanked it to the near side, bringing slow waves—sick with the heat—to fall on an empty shore of shingle that burned to the touch.

A mob of sheep some two thousand weak crawled on the road, and gave up to the cruel day that weary, toneless crying that goes to the heart of a drover; for it means starvation, and drought, and endless deaths; and pity which troubles a man by day and by night, and is of no avail.

Condy’s nerves were raw with the sound of it, and—this being the tenth noon of unutterable heat—he was possessed by soul and body ache in addition.

But, without any doubt whatsoever, this was a terrible thing that had caught them between the bone-dry earth and the sky. It was Lane who had sent Condy and Harry Morel into the north for merinos that his flock upon the Southland hills should get increase. And it was the drought that fought with Lane’s desire, laying this burden of suffering on man and animal by long, gray road, and naked river bed, and barren, dusty hills.

Condy pulled across the track to Harry Morel. He was hating Harry just then because that Harry could whistle through all the hours with unbroken cheerfulness, and sing when his lips grew too parched to make sound.

“What are we going to do, Harry? What are we going to do? It fair gets me down, to see the poor brutes dying like flies this way. I’m blest if we’ll land Lane one out of the whole bally lot. Must have lost about twenty already to-day.”

“More. Twenty since we passed Sefton.” Harry kept careful tally of the many that had fallen by the roadway. “Yes, this is a corker, right enough. Don’t fancy the priests could teach us much about Purgatory now—” His horse pitched on its knees over a struggling body that made complaint in the dust and was dead on the instant

“Twenty-six.” Harry came to his feet, and felt round for his sheath-knife. “We’re getting on. Lane’ll make a pile out of the skins.”

He fell to work, ripping off the hide with rapid, skilful hands, and Condy rode back for the tip-dray and the old lagging horse that slept through the empty hours as it followed the trail mechanically.

“They’re mighty tough now.” Harry jerked the body over and attacked the other side. “No flesh to pull against. Don’t believe they had a square meal for a month before we took delivery. I’ll rag Lane for buying on the blind this way.”

The cart was brimming with panting, piteous-eyed wethers that, possibly, might pull round by rest. Condy’s mouth tightened as he looked on them.

“It’s—devilish,” he said. “We’re simply driving them till they lie down and die.”

Harry straightened, and drew his shirt-sleeve across his face. It was streaked with dust and sweat, and drawn about the eyes from the road-glare. But there was a quick contraction of the pupils that made Condy sit up with a grunt of vague satisfaction.

Harry did not speak as he flung the raw skin over the tail-board of the cart. And it was in a continued silence that he hooked his arm across the saddle-bow, and walked by his horse with the slow, easy step of the athlete.

Condy followed in reverence and some hope. For if it lay to the hand of man to wrench this thing from final disaster, it was Harry Morel would provide that hand.

The round hills changed to clay faces, shorn flat to the road, and the incoming sea wallowed in little rock-pools. There were times when dogs and men worked like demons to guard the mob from the salt wetness that would mean a maddened death. But they had filled themselves at a half-dried river some two miles back, and it was food that they cried for amid the eternal dust.

Then Harry swerved alongside Condy, and his face was as a boy’s for mischief.

“’Member that low swampy land o’ Marshall’s, this side the Mason, Condy? Yes, of course you would. It was green as a leek when we came up. Sutton has got a nice little grazing gully past Porirua, but Marshall’s is nearer. I’m going to put ’em in there, and give ’em a skinful. Marshall has made two fortunes already this year—got the only fat stock in Marlborough. He can afford to give us a bite.”

“But he won’t. It’s worth its weight in gold to him, that block.”

“Then I guess we won’t ask him. Confound it, there’s another one down—dyin’, too. Fetch along the cart, will you?”

“It’ll be trespass, of course,” said Condy, hauling on the rein; and the buckle was hot in his hand.

“Undoubtedly. An’ a month hard, without the option of a fine if we get nabbed. Marshall’s a big-wig, and he hasn’t got a particularly chivalrous soul. Are you game to chance it?”

Condy laughed, shrugging his shoulders. He was clean-built, with a small head well set on his body, and eyes that looked the world straightly.

“There are only five wires and a barb round it,” he said hopefully. “Rotten sort o’ fence these times. A starving mob ’d just walk through it ’fore we could stop ’em.”

Harry grunted. There were occasions when he pitied Condy.

“Don’t you know that every blessed little settler in the district has fed this road to his sheep till they’ve swallowed all but the bones of the hills and the dust? And do you think that those same sheep ’d have walked past Marshall’s land with only a five-wire up? Go and cool your head in the sea, old man. Your brain’s gone pulpy.”

“It doesn’t cool it. I’ve tried six times already. What do you think, then?”

“If Marshall has got wire netting,” said Harry, “we’re flummoxed—unless we can root under it, or find a gate. If he has any other sort of a fence we’ll get ’em through it somehow. Well?”

“It’s illegal, to put it mildly. And we’ll get into a swingeing row.”

Harry waved the bitten-down stem of his pipe to the stumbling, crying things that filled the roadway, and Condy, accepting the mute argument, fell silent. And he did not marvel, although Harry was known on Mindoorie as a man hard as flint to his fellow men, and one without compassion and without fear. For—and this is purely a matter of birth and breeding—a colonial will very often do for animals that which he will deny his kind. Because, in seven cases out of nine, his life belongs to sheep, or cattle, or horses, and he serves them all his days.

Harry whistled “The Flowers o’ the Forest,” with a clear, birdy wistfulness that made Condy homesick for his south land; and slowly they followed the trail past silent tussock and gray manuka. Up a steep grade, where Condy thrice took his turn with the sheath-knife, along a cutting, and over a lifeless creek. Then, as the pulse quivers suddenly through the length of a boat when her engines are waked, so a quiver flickered through the mob; for it smelled the green English grass on Marshall’s flats round the corner.

The weaker ones fell out; but the bulk pushed forward with a new note in the rising wave of sound. They were pouring down-hill as milk pours from a cup when Harry rounded the point and saw the rich swamp-land where Marshall’s sheep moved. It looked like a billiard-table with the white balls in play; and Condy was swearing under his breath as they came to the boundary.

It was a viciously strained ten-wire, with close standards; and every other wire was a barb. Condy, who had prayed for slotted droppers, collapsed in the saddle.

“It’s no go,” he said. “We can’t push those aside, and we can’t grub ’em. The brutal things are tight as violin strings. Besides—well?”

Harry had descended, and loped some hundred yards along the line. He came back on the inside to escape the torrent of woolly bodies that would undoubtedly have laid flat any ordinary fence.

“Blest if I know,” he said, and bit on his thumb-nail.

The sheep strained, flinging themselves against the wires that stood like granite, and Condy slid from the saddle, attempting to shake them in his wrath.

“They’re as hard as the devil’s elbow. What is it now?”

Harry stooped at his side, lifted a struggling wether that—after the manner of a sheep—kicked him in the going, and cast it over into the green. Its frightened “ba-a” broke short as its teeth clenched in the grass, and Condy flung over another before he knew it. Then sense awoke, and he knocked up Harry’s hand.

“Don’t! Harry, you ass—how are we going to get them back?”

“We’ll get ’em back all right. Go in and demand ’em, perhaps—and pull Marshall if he refuses to fork them out. They’re carrying Hunt’s brand, and sheep-stealing is a punishable offense. You leave that to me. I’ll fix it.”

“Bub—but we can’t chuck over the whole bally two thousand.”

Harry giggled until Condy was entirely savage. And before he answered he tipped three more lean-ribbed bodies into paradise. Then he took breath, holding to the fence.

“No, I don’t reckon we can—and I’m not going to try. I think about fifty will be enough. Come on, and put your back into it. There’ll be developments presently.”

Condy did not doubt this in the least. But he worked up to the collar without comment, until the sweat dropped off him and his legs shook with exhaustion.

Condy flung over twenty-three, that lay in the grass and apparently took it in through their skins. But the pauses between efforts were longer, and suddenly he sat in the dust, with the earth galloping past in red whirligigs.

“Done, are you?” said Harry. “So am I, pretty near. This brute’ll have to be the last.”

He grunted as it caught him in the chest with a hind leg. But he jumped the fence and ran among the fifty-odd that fattened on Marshall’s feed, working them with cunning across to Marshall’s sheep, that lay in the high cocksfoot and flax. Then. he came back, comparatively undistressed.

“That’s pretty well boxed ’em. And they’re doing their little best to improve matters. Developments are beginning. Lick along back over the hill.”

“Can’t.” Condy lay flat and battled with that particular kind of seasickness which overtakes a man who has exerted himself beyond his strength. And the barking of dogs on the far side of the marshes did not interest him at all.

But Harry brought his own dogs to heel sternly, dragged Condy across his saddle, and towed horse and man over the dip and round the corner. The tip-dray stood in the blocked tail of the mob, and far below, the forefront surged back and forth, and wept without ceasing.

Presently Condy sat up, and said, “What ratty idea have you got now, Harry?”

Harry had his ears cocked, and on his face was an absolute content.

“Ever laid poisoned carcasses to catch gulls?”

“Of course; often. But I don’t see——”

“You will directly—wait till I get my breath. That last sprint has blown me properly. Well, we’ve laid our carcasses, and—there was a man working that dog, you know—and I think we’ll land our gull very presently. If it doesn’t happen to be a gull, perhaps we’ll get had. But there are eighteen chances to three that it will be a gull.”

“You mean that a shepherd will come over and walk into us for letting our sheep in?”

“Exactly. I fancy he’s coming now. Sounds eager, too, doesn’t he?”

Up through the motionless air came the raving of a man, mixed with bark of dogs and fretful complaint of sheep.

“Ye-es,” said Condy dubiously. “That’s not very funny for us, is it?”

“Don’t know yet. We’re going to find out. Will you get into the saddle, man?”

They rode down with the sleepy, stooping sway of body that is peculiar to the drover, and a man in the paddock wheeled his horse to them and came up headlong. This man was a town cadet. Harry knew, when he saw him handle his stock-whip (which is not the correct thing for sheep-country, in any case). Also, the expressions that he used to his dogs were uncanonical.

“It’s going to be better than I hoped. Now, Condy, you see me talk to him. And dress by—no; I think you’d best let me do the gassing. You just look all the kinds of fool you can. I might want you to be one, soon.”

It was a very raw cadet, and young enough to trip on his own pride.

“What the deuce are your sheep doin’ in our grass? It’s trespass, I tell you! Take them out! Take them out, instantly!”

Harry roused sleepily as the cadet sawed his horse’s head high in the air, bringing it alongside with a jangle of wire.

“What? Who’s trespassing? No, no, young feller; this is a public road. You don’t come over me that way.”

The cadet foamed.

“Your sheep are in here,” he explained loudly—“in this private property—eating our grass—lots of them. Take them away. Confound you! will you take them away?”

Harry swung in a breath into the keen, hard man of biting tongue that half his mates feared and hated.

“Our sheep in your grass? What the devil d’you mean? Our sheep? Who’s your boss?”

“Marshall. He——”

“And what the devil does Marshall mean by stealing our sheep? Because we can’t keep a man in front, and a man behind, and a troop of men on each side, are our sheep not to be safe on the public highway? How many has Marshall got? Look here; you ante them up at once. At once, d’you hear!”

“Blast your cheek! Do you think we want your confounded sheep? They’re eating our——”

“How many has he got? Don’t swear at me like that, for I won’t stand it. How many has he got?”

“I—don’t—know.” The cadet was becoming explosive. “Come an’ take ’em away.”

“What did Marshall steal them for? Hasn’t he got enough of his own?”

Condy cast one eye-blink at the man beyond the fence, put his head down, and sniggered. But Harry sat erect on the old brown mare, and not a muscle of his dark face quivered.

“Will you give me my sheep?” he said; for the other fought helplessly for words. “You’ve delayed me half an hour already, and I’m in a hurry. What did Marshall steal them for?”

“He—didn’t—steal—them. They—they must have got in.” The cadet was losing his head before this steady persistence.

“Oh, gaps! That’s an old game. Gaps in the fence to decoy sheep. Marshall’s a downy bird. How many different brands has he got on that flock? Better not try that game too often, or you’ll get into trouble. Where are your gaps?”

The cadet had helped in the construction of this fence, and he knew it to be absolutely perfect and sheep-proof. Besides, Harry’s speech was direct insult.

“There isn’t a gap in the whole of it, you fool. What’d we want to feed every starving mob that comes along for? They can’t have got in that way.”

“How did they get in, then? You say Marshall didn’t steal them. Of course there are gaps. But if you don’t know your fence well enough to find them, I’m not going to help you. You’ve got gates, I suppose? I want to get my sheep.”

“Gates are locked,” said the other sulkily.

“Oh. And you’re not allowed a key, of course. Why does Marshall put little boys in these positions? They only mess things up!”

The cadet had a key; it opened all the padlocks on the run. But nothing under heaven was supposed to open the road-gates this season.

“I have a key,” he said savagely, and fished it out of his trousers pocket.

“Key of your money-box?” suggested Harry blandly.

“Come and get your bally sheep,” said the boy in his throat, and he was dead-white with rage. “There’s a gate up here.”

“Why couldn’t you say so, then? I suppose they walked in through that. Condy, bring the mob along, and I’ll catch up afterward. Can’t afford to waste the whole day over this foolery.”

It was just for an instant that Harry’s left eyelid quivered, but that instant was enough. Condy understood, and gasped with the immensity of the idea. He got the weak, desperate brutes under way with difficulty, and drove them gateward, the while Harry tickled his victim into a blind anger that made him fumble over the double locks and chains, and finally drop his key in the dust. While he sought it, Harry noted that the hinges were faced, and the gate of iron. Without doubt Marshall was a careful man. And—equally without doubt—Marshall’s cadet never learned his language from books.

It was by special direction of Providence that the gate—opening outward—should swing from the sheep that swept down to it. The situation had developed of itself, and when the last lock and twist of chain were down, Harry had no more to do but back his mare clumsily into the way, and jam the loose-hung gate on to the ridge of the road.

“Look out, you——!” The boy pitched from his saddle and dashed through to wrench the grating iron free. But as his back turned, the first little dribble flowed up and over the tread of the gate. Before Harry could take breath twice, the dribble was a resistless stream that pressed, and lifted, and went in, wave upon rising wave, with sound like the rushing of a mighty sea. Condy had timed his attack to a nicety.

The cadet was nearly knocked off his feet by the flux, and it would have been piteous, if it had not been so funny, to see his puny muscles trying to close the gate against two thousand famished sheep that smelled food.

He was a very young cadet, and for an instant Harry felt sorry for him. Then he struck at Harry with the butt of his whip, and there was a foul word on his mouth. Harry’s left arm shot out before he reached the ground. But there was no force behind the blow, for swifter than thought came the knowledge that the termination of this act was now simplicity itself.

The cadet knew more about boxing, but he was too desirous to kill Harry. This upset the science, and he sobbed with wrath, and pain, and trouble when Harry heaved him out of the dust among the ebbing dregs of the army that had spread to the right and the left and the full center across Marshall’s flats.

“You’d better hunt up your men, young ’un,” he said, “and begin to think about drafting. My brand is two diamonds in a square.”

Condy explained later, on Mindoorie, that Harry was clearly without bowels of compassion, and that the cadet’s face when the matter was presented to Marshall troubled his dreams yet. Harry grinned slowly, beating a soft tattoo on the table-cloth with a teaspoon.

“If that kid hadn’t lost his temper he might have blocked us even then. If Marshall hadn’t had the bulk of his flock on those marshes we mightn’t have drafted our little lot with four days’ good feed sticking to their ribs, and the heart to carry them into better country. And if either of ’em ever find out how our sheep got into their grass before the gates were opened. I’ll eat my oilskins. Bet they’re still hunting for that gap.”

“It saved the mob,” said Condy reflectively. “But—it was illegal.” And this time there was derision in Harry’s grin.