"Who's that?"
"What's up?"
"What's the matter?"
"Ben Duggan! Jack Denver's dead! Killed ridin' home from the races!
Funeral's to-morrow. Roll up at Talbragar or the nearest point you
can get to on the government road. Tell the neighbours and folks."
"Good God! How did it happen?"
But the hoofs of Ben's horse would be clattering or thudding away
into the distance.
He struck through to Dunne's selection--his brother-in-law, who had
not been to the races; then to Ross's farm--Old Ross was against
racing, but struck a match at once and said something to his auld wife
about them black trousers that belonged to the black coat and vest.
Then Ben swung to the left and round behind the spurs to the school at
Old Pipeclay, where he told the schoolmaster. Then west again to
Morris's and Schneider's lonely farms in the deep estuary of Long
Gully, and through the gully to the Mudgee-Gulgong road at New
Pipeclay. The long, dark, sullenly-brooding gully through which he
had gone to school in the glorious bush sunshine with Jack Denver, and
his sweetheart--now but three hours his hopelessly-stricken widow;
Bertha Lambert, Ben's sweetheart--married now, and newly a
grandmother; Harry Dale--drowned in the Lachlan; Lucy Brown--Harry's
school-day and boy-and-girl sweetheart--dead; and--and all the rest of
them. Far away, far away--and near away: up in Queensland and out on
the wastes of the Never-Never. Riding and camping, hardship and
comfort, monotony and adventure, drought, flood, blacks, and fire;
sprees and--the rest of it.
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