Read Online The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald - Free Book Online

dogs’ disagreeable yodelling cries taunted Rankine, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand up; but the dogs hardly warned of their approach when they began to mean business. Their golden coats and slit orange eyes were for their own appreciation alone, as were their small, sharp teeth bared in grinning refinements of hunger, and their musty, excitable smells.
    In the morning the warregals’ footprints were visible in the sand under trees where the last putrid meat was hung. They found that a ewe was taken. Surveying the torn, dead ewe Kale blamed Moreno for dozing on watch, which Moreno denied, and so Rankine stood between two men only sullenly tolerant of each other. Their mutual dislike troubled Rankine who was devoted to both equally and for opposite reasons. It was the superb dedication of the one and the independent scorn and ridiculous royal elegance of the other that kept them balanced in his affections, but not to each other face to face.
    The head of the valley where the sheep liked to gather in a preferred sheep camp was decided as a place for a better sort of camp for all. Frost and morning mists flowed downhill and they were sheltered from the worst of the cold southerly winds, but notthe north-westerlies. Throughout that day and the next they built stone sleeping shelters from the wind, raised a wattle-stick palisade against dogs and thatched the shelters with boughs. Rankine had five days before he was expected at barracks. They constructed a sheepfold from rocks, gated it with hurdles, and years from now the stones would be discovered in the shape they gave them, and beyond their cooking fire would be unearthed the green broken necks and pebbled bottoms of the French brandy bottles they smashed when they emptied them. It would be wildly imagined how they must have roistered there for a good long time, but any walk up a joining ridge, and along to a jumbled peak, would have shown another sort of answer.
    â€˜It is a whole province for us to get around,’ said Kale, pulling his cloak tightly around him, as he pointed out features to Rankine in the knifing cold wind. The satiny blue sky was clean of cloud. The winter sun was brilliant. Fold after fold of ranges spread south and east. Only to the west was there a flattening effect, as of a plain, but so far away it was surely a mirage in the blown haze. ‘Here, it is greater than Kilkenny by a long straw, though not so green and plush, with duck mole reach on the northern limit making a depot, like you suggest, if a waggon is brought up. Each of them rocky ridges hides a valley, of which there are between six and twenty. A river goes through like a snake.’
    â€˜Something like a paradise all up,’ suggested Rankine. ‘Including the snake?’
    â€˜A very steep paradise with wild dogs too, and though we have not sighted any natives, we have seen their fires.’
    Looking down, they watched Moreno moving sheep over a low ridge for their day’s grazing, leading them down into a valley bottom where meagre watercourses trickled through prickly undergrowth but where the sheep would soon fan out, settle, and feed till their bellies dragged and spoiled the untouched kangaroo grasses for their own uses. Where it was precipitous going they never lost footing, although some bolted and rode down on their backsides tearing their rumps.
    â€˜Not yet a full paradise,’ said Kale, looking back over his shoulder as if Moreno might be listening, though he was at least half a mile away. ‘Attend to me, Rankine — if you get me the ram I want, Young Matchless, and the man I want, Clumpsy M’Carty, and bring me the girleen I want, Croppy Biddy Magee, it will be paradise enough until our shearing. He is a great man with the blades, your Moreno, and then I shall be happy to see the backside of his greasy arse.’
    Rankine disliked giving Kale all his consideration without getting much more than some grumbles back.