Chapter VII
The dust was bone-white on the road that boot, hoof and wheel had scored over. The hot day held a taint of Nor’west, and the new-clothed poplars along the sale-yard fence propped a sky blue and vivid as sapphire. The yards were without shade; breathless, clogged by panting sheep and restless-eyed cattle, and broken and unbroken horses. The air was rank with the smell of them, and with the smell of cheap tobacco and beer and moleskins and leather: for the township lay just round the corner, and the drovers sat along the rails with the give-and-take talk of a month in their mouths, and the high-pitched clatter of the auctioneers to deaden it.
Danny detached himself from a knot of women by the poultry-crates and climbed the rail beside Hynes, the Behar cook who had come down from the hills to get a tooth pulled. With Lou, Danny had brought over a draught of steers at daybreak, and the stockwhip round his arm showed wet hairs on it yet.
“Pic-nics they was ter land, too,” explained Danny, ramming twist into his half-bitten
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