Now and again a brother or son--mostly a brother--riding close to the
wheel, would suddenly throw out his arm on the mud splasher, of buggy
or cart, and, laying his head on it, sob as he rode, careless of tyre
and spokes, till a woman pushed him off gently:
"Take care of the wheel, Jim--mind the wheel."
The eldest son held the most painful position, by his mother's side in
the first buggy, supported by an aunt on the other side, while
somebody led his horse. In the next buggy, between two daughters, sat
a young fellow who was engaged to one of them--they were to be married
after the holidays. The poor girls were white and worn out; he had an
arm round each, and now and again they rested their heads on his
shoulders. The younger girl would sleep by fits and starts, the sleep
of exhaustion, and start up half laughing and happy, to be stricken
wild-eyed the next moment by terrible reality. Some couldn't realize
it at all--and to most of them all things were very dreamy, unreal and
far away on that lonely, silent road in the moonlight--silent save for
the slow, stumbling hoofs of tired horses, and the deliberate,
half-hesitating clack-clack of wheel-boxes on the axles.
Ben Duggan rode hard, as grief-stricken men ride--and walk. At Cooyal
he woke up the solitary storekeeper and told him the news; then along
that little-used old road for some miles both ways, and back again,
rousing prospectors and fossickers, the butcher of the neighbourhood,
clearers, fencers, and timber-getters, in hut and tent.
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