Up the Country: A Saga of Pioneering Days

Mazere wrote to Labosseer the next day. Emily, knowing how long it took for a letter to reach Eueurunda, even barring delays like breakdowns or sprees on the part of the drivers, and having listened attentively to her elders as a modest young girl was enjoined to do, calculated how many days would pass before the cattle got through. Every evening, when the stars began to blaze their crystal glory in the frosty sky, she would steal up to the ridge behind the house where Mrs Mazere had awaited Piper's signal. There she'd strain her ears and eyes in the direction presided over by the constellation which the old hands called the Waggon Star, by reason of its pattern. For a number of nights there were only the familiar sounds which carried a mile in the miraculous air--Terence McHaffety admonishing his dogs, the bullock bells in the bend, or the curlews wailing in the hollow down from the back gate.

Then one night they were suddenly upon her. The dogs barked, there was the jingle of bitrings and stirrup irons, the clatter of swift hoofs on the stony ridge, the bang of sliprails thrown down and the shapes of horsemen pulling up at the Mazere gate. One of the horsemen flung off his horse and, with clicking spurs, went in. It was Bert! Though Emily had gone out night after night to watch for him, now that he was actually here she fled in a wild tumult of agitation from the ordeal of meeting him. Down past the stables and cow-yards and in by the vegetable gardens, past the Old House and the Big House, she took cover amongst the lauristinus shrubs, and listened.