A hot wind came through the clearing, with
terrifying scents frominland.
Cabell demanded through a crack inthe mud
wall.
Voices wailing tunelesssong stirred the
night-birds.
He dropped the lambs and tried to tear off the
burning sheets ofbark, but they roasted his hands.
He wanted tothrow himself on the bunk and sleep,
sleep for hours, days, weeks.
Sambo threw up his head and sniffed the air,
too.
His voicetrailed off and the silence closed over
them again, like the shellof an unborn world.
The old man sat down on the doorstep and shook his
head.
A droning noise started, a solitary bullroarer that
stoppedabruptly, started again, stopped.
Nothing moved but a column of white smoke
risingfrom a grassfire at the foot of the ranges. Little spurts of anger kept
drawing his heavy black browstogether. And the next thing you know, he said, theres
adrought or a flood come to kill them off.
In the vapour-packed sunlight he gasped for air.
Something must be wrong with the pasture.
I guessed Id find you some day,lad, he
said.
Ducks and solitary jabiru passed across the moon
and geesehastening to a rendezvous at the lagoons. In the next breath he complained:
One good season in four.
All the time there was the rainor else the sun was
grilling them.
Drought would never come over the ranges
then.
Minutes went by andthere were no other sounds.
Aone-eye giant of a fellow made a long speech, waved his spear, andthey
withdrew.
Sambo sucked his black eye-tooth for five
minutes.
Down atthe camp a semicircle of bent figures was
forming round the fire.
A few old women sat down by the fire andstretched
out their legs towards it.
Paralysed by the dramatic appearance of
anarch-fiend, the dancers stopped dead.
He made a discouragedgesture towards the sky as a
crow flew by. It isnt enoughfor you to waste what belongs to US by
rights.
It came to a head that very night,and by morning
not a black was left in the valley. By the time they reached thebrow of the hill she
was letting out whinnies of alarm. A hot wind came through the clearing, with
terrifying scents frominland. When the smoke cleared McGovern was still standing in
the doorway,laughing. He was fully awake and out of the door in an instant. He was
fully awake and out of the door in an instant.
Sambo was standing in the yard peering through the
twilight.
As thedawn came Gursey fell asleep and Cabell went
out to help with thefoot-rotting sheep. Youre ruining yourself, Cabell said, with
your hatred.
The moon was a golden plate in the middle of a
blue-black sky.
But on moonlight nights they sang and danced. No
terrible thing waited to rush out onthem.
To forget that theres anything in the world
exceptsheep.