The Sands of Windee. Arthur W. Upfield
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attention was drawn to the ants’ nest at his side. From the corner of his eye he had seen a sparkle of blue light, but when he looked directly at the nest it had vanished. The large circular hole within the rampart was alive with the black ants. Watching them, he observed that they were bringing up out of the nest small stones about half the size of a field pea. These they deposited on the inside slope of the rampart. The man observed that each ant laid down its tiny load on the west side of the hole, where the surrounding rampart cast a shade, thence to hurry round to the east side, which was in full sunlight, and from there pick up another small stone and with it hurry below.
The lesser problem immediately absorbed Bony. Why did the ants bring up out of the nest one stone and take another down? And whence had they collected the small smooth stones in all that great expanse of sand, fine almost as a speck of whirling dust in a sunbeam?
The ants worked on, unheeding him. They all appeared possessed of but one idea. There came to Bony memory of reading of the punishments meted out to prisoners in the old convict days, when a man was compelled to carry a heavy shot up an incline, there to let it roll back, then to return and again carry it up.
But that was all insensate stupidity and cruelty. There is certainly no stupidity of that order among ants. They were not carrying stones up and down for mere exercise, and they were not so developed as to impose such work as a punishment.
“Bony, you read too much,” he said aloud. “You read so much that you forget ninety per cent of what you have read. Somewhere, some time, you’ve read about ants carrying stones.” For many minutes he sat, leaning back on his elbow, his mind’s eye so active that his physical eyes were without vision. Almost fifteen minutes expired before he sighed with satisfaction. He had remembered. The ants were taking down sun-heated stones to keep the eggs warm, and were bringing up cold stones to be heated by the early rays of the sun when next it rose. “That’s it!” he murmured. “They do nothing without a logical cause. Ah! Why, here comes one with a piece of blue glass. Evidently glass does not retain heat as rock will. I must inquire into that.”
Up out of the hole an ant carried a piece of blue glass, which reflected the light strongly whilst it was still deep in the shadow. The insect brought it up to the west slope of the rampart and laid it there before hurrying round for a sun-warmed stone. Bony picked it up with the point of his knife and examined it closely on the palm of his hand.
It was flattened on one side, and faceted accurately on the other. It was not glass. It was a cut sapphire.
Chapter Five
An Inspection
Windee Station had grown from quite a small beginning. Many years before the Great War Jeffrey Stanton had bought out a selector holding a Government lease of a hundred thousand acres, of which most was wild hill-country. On that block he ran cattle because his predecessor had run sheep and the dingoes killed most of them. They paid ten shillings a scalp for wild dogs in those days, and Stanton made more money out of the pest than he did from his stock.
The range of hills on which his small property was situated ran almost north and south. The great plain to the west was leased by two brothers and the plain to the east was held chiefly by a pastoral company with offices in Adelaide. Drought and overstocking ruined the brothers on the west of him, and Stanton bought them out with borrowed money. The season changed. He struck several good cattle-markets, and eventually repaid the borrowed money and found himself sole owner of six hundred thousand acres. When the Adelaide company went into liquidation, Stanton again borrowed money and acquired the eastern property, adding a further seven hundred thousand acres to his holding.
At the time of Bony’s introduction to Windee, Stanton possessed thirteen hundred thousand acres of land, seventy thousand sheep, and no cattle. He owned, too, a sheep stud-farm in Victoria, an enormous amount of property in Adelaide, and most of the shares in an important shipping line.
Despite his wealth, however, he had never been to any Australian city other than Adelaide, and had taken but one short trip to England, which had occurred after the death of his wife in the Year of the Peace. During this trip he had decided to inaugurate a custom he had practised ever since. On the liner he had been struck by the scrupulous cleanliness enforced by the captain’s bi-weekly inspections. It came to him that the captain of a ship must know every little cabin and corner in it, whereas he, Stanton, could not remember how many horse saddles, or how many drays, buggies and buckboards he had on Windee.
Home once more, he placed a man in sole charge of all the plant at the homestead, at the out-station called Nullawil, and in use at the several boundary-riders’ huts. The holder of this position, which was anything but a sinecure, had to possess a fair knowledge of the saddlery and carpentering trades. The name of the present holder was Bates.
Every Saturday morning Bates called at the office at about ten o’clock. Jeffrey Stanton, accompanied by his bookkeeper and Bates, then made a round of inspection. This was why Bates entered the office at ten in the morning of the Saturday following Bony’s examination of the blackfellows’ sign.
“Ready for inspection, Jeff?” he asked casually, leaning back against the open door. Stanton, who had just finished talking over the telephone with his overseer at Nullawil, rose from his private desk and was followed by the bookkeeper, who snatched up notebook and pencil.
A casual examination of these three men would have decided one that Mr Roberts, the bookkeeper, was the owner, Bates a station tradesman, as indeed he was, and Stanton anything. The bookkeeper had been at Windee four years, and immediately Stanton learned that he had held a commission during the war he began the custom he had kept up ever afterwards of invariably addressing him as “Mister” Roberts. Roberts had insisted on returning the courtesy although Stanton had fumed and fussed. However, since Roberts knew all about the office work of a great sheep-station, and Stanton knew nothing of clerical work but all about sheep, they compromised; and, as a battalion well run by a temperamentally balanced commanding officer and adjutant, the work on Windee went ahead smoothly.
The first place to be inspected was the men’s kitchen. On their entrance they found the cook examining very carefully a whole carcass of mutton, killed the previous evening. He was a small man, the cook, pale of face, the paleness accentuated by a full black moustache. Taking no notice of the inspecting party, he dragged the carcass along the table nearer the window, where he continued his examination even more carefully.
“What’s the matter, Alf?” inquired Jeffrey Stanton.
Alf looked up as though for the first time noticing his employer. He spoke with a trace of the Cockney.
“Oh, nothing much,” he said acidly. “I was just wondering whether that there was a dead Goanna or a skinned cat.”
“Looks like a sheep to me,” Stanton stated.
“A sheep! Not it. That ain’t no sheep,” Alf snarled. “Think I can’t tell a sheep when I see one? A sheep! If them’s the sort of sheep we’re breeding nowadays, Gawd ’elp Orstralia!”
“It’s a sheep all right. But on the poor side,” Stanton admitted.
“I should say hit is!” Alf danced with rage, but he went on coolly enough: “Now you don’t expect me to cook that for real men with guts, do you?”
“No, damme, I don’t!” Stanton suddenly roared. To Mr Roberts he snapped: “Note—inquire into supply of killing-sheep.” Then to Alf:
“Heave that out to the dogs. Draw tinned meat from the store. Anything else?”
“Nope. But I ain’t chuckin’ this art to the dawgs. I’ll make stew of it. But it’s the second carcass I’ve ’ad like that this week.”
“Yes, yes,” Stanton said more softly. “I suppose it’s because young Jeff is away. I’ll see what I can do.”
In the men’s quarters they found one of the hands reading a novel on his bunk, his set task for the day having been already accomplished. Stanton gave him a good-natured nod, and glanced over the building before leaving for the cart and