'Git the hosses, Mac. We'll go to the station.'

Mac., used to the doctor's eccentricities, went to see about the horses.

And then who should drive up but Mrs Spencer--Job's mother-in-law--on her way from the town to the station. She stayed to have a cup of tea and give her horses a feed. She was square-faced, and considered a rather hard and practical woman, but she had plenty of solid flesh, good sympathetic common-sense, and deep-set humorous blue eyes. She lived in the town comfortably on the interest of some money which her husband left in the bank. She drove an American waggonette with a good width and length of 'tray' behind, and on this occasion she had a pole and two horses. In the trap were a new flock mattress and pillows, a generous pair of new white blankets, and boxes containing necessaries, delicacies, and luxuries. All round she was an excellent mother-in-law for a man to have on hand at a critical time.

And, speaking of mother-in-law, I would like to put in a word for her right here. She is universally considered a nuisance in times of peace and comfort; but when illness or serious trouble comes home! Then it's 'Write to Mother! Wire for Mother! Send some one to fetch Mother! I'll go and bring Mother!' and if she is not near: 'Oh, I wish Mother were here! If Mother were only near!' And when she is on the spot, the anxious son-in-law: 'Don't YOU go, Mother! You'll stay, won't you, Mother?--till we're all right? I'll get some one to look after your house, Mother, while you're here.' But Job Falconer was fond of his mother-in-law, all times.

Mac. had some trouble in finding and catching one of the horses. Mrs Spencer drove on, and Mac. and the doctor caught up to her about a mile before she reached the homestead track, which turned in through the scrubs at the corner of the big ring-barked flat.

Doc. Wild and Mac. followed the cart-road, and as they jogged along in the edge of the scrub the doctor glanced once or twice across the flat through the dead, naked branches. Mac. looked that way. The crows were hopping about the branches of a tree way out in the middle of the flat, flopping down from branch to branch to the gra.s.s, then rising hurriedly and circling.

'Dead beast there!' said Mac. out of his Bushcraft.

'No--dying,' said Doc. Wild, with less Bush experience but more intellect.

'There's some steers of Job's out there somewhere,' muttered Mac. Then suddenly, 'It ain't drought--it's the ploorer at last! or I'm blanked!'

Mac. feared the advent of that cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia, which was raging on some other stations, but had been hitherto kept clear of Job's run.

'We'll go and see, if you like,' suggested Doc. Wild.

They turned out across the flat, the horses picking their way amongst the dried tufts and fallen branches.

'Theer ain't no sign o' cattle theer,' said the doctor; 'more likely a ewe in trouble about her lamb.'

'Oh, the blanky dingoes at the sheep,' said Mac. 'I wish we had a gun--might get a shot at them.'

Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore, free of a hip-pocket. He always carried a revolver. 'In case I feel obliged to shoot a first person singular one of these hot days,' he explained once, whereat Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly, without result.

'We'd never git near enough for a shot,' said the doctor; then he commenced to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost Bushman in the last stages of death by thirst,--

'"The crows kept flyin' up, boys!

The crows kept flyin' up!

The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys, Though he was but a pup."'

'It must be something or other,' muttered Mac. 'Look at them blanky crows!'

'"The lost was found, we brought him round, And took him from the place, While the ants was swarmin' on the ground, And the crows was sayin' grace!"'

'My G.o.d! what's that?' cried Mac., who was a little in advance and rode a tall horse.

It was Job's filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet (as they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest, and her head full of kangaroo-shot. She was feebly rocking her head against the ground, and marking the dust with her hoof, as if trying to write the reason of it there.

The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat pocket, and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner; then something--professional instinct or the something supernatural about the doctor--led him straight to the log, hidden in the gra.s.s, where Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly, which must have staggered off some little way after being shot. Mac.

followed the doctor, shaking violently.

'Oh, my G.o.d!' he cried, with the woman in his voice--and his face so pale that his freckles stood out like b.u.t.tons, as Doc. Wild said--'oh, my G.o.d! he's shot himself!'

'No, he hasn't,' said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier position with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air: then he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned. 'He's got a broken leg,' said the doctor. Even then he couldn't resist making a characteristic remark, half to himself: 'A man doesn't shoot himself when he's going to be made a lawful father for the first time, unless he can see a long way into the future.' Then he took out his whisky-flask and said briskly to Mac., 'Leave me your water-bag' (Mac. carried a canvas water-bag slung under his horse's neck), 'ride back to the track, stop Mrs Spencer, and bring the waggonette here. Tell her it's only a broken leg.'

Mac. mounted and rode off at a break-neck pace.

As he worked the doctor muttered: 'He shot his horse. That's what gits me. The fool might have lain there for a week. I'd never have suspected spite in that carca.s.s, and I ought to know men.'

But as Job came round a little Doc. Wild was enlightened.

'Where's the filly?' cried Job suddenly between groans.

'She's all right,' said the doctor.

'Stop her!' cried Job, struggling to rise--'stop her!--oh G.o.d! my leg.'

'Keep quiet, you fool!'

'Stop her!' yelled Job.

'Why stop her?' asked the doctor. 'She won't go fur,' he added.

'She'll go home to Gerty,' shouted Job. 'For G.o.d's sake stop her!'

'O--h!' drawled the doctor to himself. 'I might have guessed that. And I ought to know men.'

'Don't take me home!' demanded Job in a semi-sensible interval. 'Take me to Poisonous Jimmy's and tell Gerty I'm on the spree.'

When Mac. and Mrs Spencer arrived with the waggonette Doc. Wild was in his shirt-sleeves, his Chinese silk coat having gone for bandages. The lower half of Job's trouser-leg and his 'lastic-side boot lay on the ground, neatly cut off, and his bandaged leg was sandwiched between two strips of bark, with gra.s.s stuffed in the hollows, and bound by saddle-straps.

'That's all I kin do for him for the present.'

Mrs Spencer was a strong woman mentally, but she arrived rather pale and a little shaky: nevertheless she called out, as soon as she got within earshot of the doctor--

'What's Job been doing now?' (Job, by the way, had never been remarkable for doing anything.)

'He's got his leg broke and shot his horse,' replied the doctor. 'But,'

he added, 'whether he's been a hero or a fool I dunno. Anyway, it's a mess all round.'

They unrolled the bed, blankets, and pillows in the bottom of the trap, backed it against the log, to have a step, and got Job in. It was a ticklish job, but they had to manage it: Job, maddened by pain and heat, only kept from fainting by whisky, groaning and raving and yelling to them to stop his horse.

'Lucky we got him before the ants did,' muttered the doctor. Then he had an inspiration--

'You bring him on to the shepherd's hut this side the station. We must leave him there. Drive carefully, and pour brandy into him now and then; when the brandy's done pour whisky, then gin--keep the rum till the last' (the doctor had put a supply of spirits in the waggonette at Poisonous Jimmy's). 'I'll take Mac.'s horse and ride on and send Peter'

(the station hand) 'back to the hut to meet you. I'll be back myself if I can. THIS BUSINESS WILL HURRY UP THINGS AT THE STATION.'

Which last was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor's which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for--except in Doc. Wild's madness.

He rode off at a gallop. The burden of Job's raving, all the way, rested on the dead filly--

'Stop her! She must not go home to Gerty!... G.o.d help me shoot!...

Whoa!--whoa, there!... "Cope--cope--cope"--Steady, Jessie, old girl....

Aim straight--aim straight! Aim for me, G.o.d!--I've missed!... Stop her!'