his run, and cropped the ground bare where even the poor grass
might have saved thousands of sheep--and the rabbits cost the squatter
hundreds of pounds in "rabbit-proof" fences, trappers' wages, etc., just
to keep them down. Then came arrangements with the bank. And then Wall's
wife died. Wall started to brood over other days, and the days that had
gone between, and developed a temper which drove his children from home
one by one, till only Mary was left. She managed the lonely home with
the help of a half-caste. Then in good seasons came the selectors.

Men remembered Wall as a grand boss and a good fellow, but that was in
the days before rabbits and banks, and syndicates and "pastoralists" or
pastoral companies instead of good squatters. Runs were mostly pastoral
leases for which the squatter paid the Government so much per square
mile (almost a nominal rent). Selections were small holdings taken up
by farmers under residential and other conditions and paid for by
instalments. If you were not ruined by the drought, and paid up long
enough, the land became freehold. The writer is heir to a dusty patch of
three hundred acres or so in the scrub which was taken up thirty years
ago and isn't freehold yet.

Selectors were allowed to take up land on runs or pastoral leases as
well as on unoccupied Crown lands, and as they secured the best bits
of land, and on water frontages if they could, and as, of course,
selections reduced the area of the run, the squatters loved selectors
like elder brothers. One man is allowed to select only a certain amount
of land, and required by law to live on it, so the squatters bought as
much freehold about the homestead as they could afford, selected as much
as they are allowed to by law, and sometimes employed "dummy" selectors
to take up choice bits about the runs and hold them for them. They
fought selectors in many various ways, and, in some cases, annoyed and
persecuted them with devilish ingenuity.

Ross was a selector, and a very hard man physically. He was a short,
nuggety man with black hair and frill beard (a little dusty), bushy
black eyebrows, piercing black eyes, horny knotted hands, and the
obstinacy or pluck of a dozen men to fight drought and the squatter.
Ross selected on Wall's run, in a bend of Sandy Creek, a nice bit of
land with a black soil, flat and red soil sidings from the ridges, which
no one had noticed before, and with the help of his boys he got the land
clear