The Pioneers
Page 16
CHAPTER XVI
For months after the fires every settler in the hills was felling andcarting timber. New homes were built on the debris of the old. Scarcelya house in the district had escaped the hunger of the flames. Aburnt-out family lived in a tent, in a lean-to of bagging and bark, orin what was left of the walls, roofs and doors of houses, jammedtogether to form some sort of shelter against the weather.
Every pair of hands were busy trying to get the new homes up before theautumn rains; and money was scarce. Most of the settlers had lost cattleand horses as well as their homesteads, sheds and crops.
The wind that had driven the smoke and flames billowing before itbrought a downpour which quenched the fire the morning after it hadswept the southern slopes of the hills. For days it rained steadily.Light vertical showers soaked into the blackened earth. There was everyprospect of a good season to make up for the damage done by the fires.Rain on fired earth makes for fertility, good grain, fat stock and anabundant harvest. The settlers worked like beavers to be ready for it,the prospect of a good season heartening their labours and leaveningtheir disappointment at having again to do all the building and fencingthat had been done only a few years before.
The only places in the district that remained a charred monument to thefires were the school and the school-master's cottage.
The Schoolmaster and Deirdre were living at Steve's again. By a miraclethe shanty had escaped the fires; it remained standing when scarcelyanother house in the countryside did. Steve and two teamsters who hadbeen hung-up on the roads had spent the night watching that flyingsparks did not catch its splintery grey shingles. A corrugated iron roofhad saved it, they said, although there was a good clearing on eitherside of the shanty.
For the first few days after the fires, while the rain lasted, Steve'shad been stretched to the limit of its capacity to shelter homeless men,women and children. The men camped as best they might in the bar, in thekitchen, and on the verandahs. Mrs. Ross, Jess, Deirdre, and Mrs.Mackay, her baby, and three small boys, slept in one room. And whenSteve heard that Mrs. Morrison and Kitty, who had wrapped themselves inwet blankets and crept into a corrugated iron tank while the fires wereraging around them, had no shelter but the tank during the rain, theSchoolmaster went to bring them into the shanty, and Steve and the Rossboys rigged a wind and rain screen of boughs and bagging round theverandah to make another room for them.
Deirdre took charge of the domestic arrangements, though everybody lenta hand. Notwithstanding the terrible experiences every member of thehouse party had passed through, there was much more laughing thansighing, much more finding of humour in every phase of awkwardpredicaments than dilating on dangers and difficulties. Losses werediscussed as the women helped Deirdre to make big, savoury stews and putbumper loaves on the ashes of Steve's hearth, but it was always withconcluding exclamations of gratitude that "things were no worse." AtDale, only a few miles on the other side of the ranges, three motherswere weeping for little ones caught in the flames and burnt to death ontheir way home from school. No lives had been lost on the southern slopeof the hills.
All day the men were out riding in the rain, trying to get a better ideaof the damage done. They ran up fences, mustered stray cattle, and inthe evening brought back pitiful accounts of beasts burned to death inthe gullies and dry creek-beds. When they sat with the women round thefire in Steve's kitchen, their great, green-hide boots steaming beforeit, breathless stories of fights with the fires were told. Most of themen had been away taking cattle to water when the homesteads wereattacked. The flames had leapt the crest of the range and circled theclearings with incredible speed. The women had to do the best they couldto save the children, the animals left on the farms, and the buildings,and many a good fight had been waged before they sought safetythemselves.
It rained steadily for three days; then the sunshine gleamed and Steve'shouse-party broke up.
The men, restless and eager to repair the damage that had been done,were off at dawn; the women and children followed a few hours later, inlumbering carts and carry-alls. Some of them were going to make alean-to of boughs and bagging, or of oilskins before night, and somewere going for stores to the Port, or to the new township that wasspringing up about the Wirree river. There was bound to be plenty ofwork for every pair of hands for months to come.
While everybody was busy, felling, fencing, splitting, and running upnew buildings, it was rumoured that the Schoolmaster and Deirdre weregoing to leave the hills.