dawn. In
the east the pale ghost of the day's forerunner stood waiting. The wind
in that hot season came from the north; it had no intoxicating quality
save that of comparative coolness after the furnace of yesterday. Yet
how sweet it was, when I remembered the burning noon, the hot labours of
the stock-yard and its dust as the ten thousand of that day's driving
entered reluctantly. And in the darkness the plain stretched before me
without a break for a thousand miles save for the Barrier Ranges. With
no map on the whole station I knew not even of them, and as far as eye
could reach not a rolling sand-dune marred the calm oceanic level of
that brown sea of land.

And now upon this morning, that yet was night, I was adrift upon a horse
with a definite task in the great circle of immensity. The rest of the
world was nothing, and I rode delicately over the rotten grey ground
till the starshine dwindled and the day came up like a slow diver
through dark waters. The pallid air was odorous as I rode with rolled-up
sleeves and open breast, and I sang a little, for the night was out of
me and my throat was sweet. And Beeswing warmed, and under me grew
nimble, with the swing and easy spring of the dancer, and she reached
out to feel the bit lightly with an unspoiled mouth and to feel my
hands, and she raised her lean head and sniffed the air for her own kind
that we were after. Were we not horse-hunting? She bent her neck and
went as delicately as ever Agag went, and then bounded lightly over a
hole in the rotten ground of the great horse-paddock. She and I were
partners in the morning as the dawn came up. And now, indeed, the
morning tide broke over the eastern bar, and was like a pale grey flood
moving over level earth. Then she whinnied low as though she spoke to me
in a whisper, and I saw one dark, moving shadow, and another, as she
broke into a gallop. Oh, but out of seven alarmed shadows, fearful of
work, I needed three, and neither Beeswing nor her rider could endure in
their pride to drive in seven when a special chosen three were enough.
The dawn's game began, and though it was yet dawn's dusk we went at a
gallop. For Beeswing and I together were the swiftest two, or the
swiftest one, on that great station by the Willandra. But though the
night was not gone there was enough light to see which horses I needed
and which horses I had to discard, and to note how they broke apart
cunningly. For two went this way, and one tha