HARD TIMES 141 



again" At dusk, no doubt, with every indignity they were again hurried 

 from the premises. Their triumph came with dark. Each bullock bears 

 a bell suspended by a leathern neck-strap, so that when feeding in high 

 scrub or flax his whereabouts can be readily determined. In the hours 

 of light when searching the hills for a lost animal the tinkle of a 

 bullock-bell is a pleasurable sound ; at night it is not. Just as the camp 

 is dropping off to sleep the far-distant faint jangle of the grazing beasts 

 is heard. With aggravating slowness the sound approaches, until at last 

 a man leaps up in drawers and shirt, and muttering in the gloom pulls 

 on his boots, snatches his stock-whip and lets loose the dogs, who know 

 the game well and have been yelping and howling in anticipation of the 

 treat. The bullocks are hounded off, their bells performing mad music, 

 momentarily half -choked when swept round to horn a heeling dog, 

 clanging dull as the beasts swing away in an elephantine gallop, or 

 merrily and clear as they file out in a rolling trot. With a final 

 hounding on of the collies and a pistol practice of stock-whip, 

 the sweating, dew-drenched rescuer of the crop returns. In early 

 diaries there are very many entries regarding the bullocks. They 

 were a necessary nuisance, whether about the homestead or away 

 from it. 



These were evils, but a still greater misfortune to a growing run like 

 Tutira was lack of sufficient credit and lack of sufficient time, either of 

 which would have saved our pioneers. Stuart and Kiernan had by hard 

 labour and energy managed somehow or other to make the station carry 

 8000 sheep, or at any rate begin the winter with 8000 sheep. They had 

 cut tracks, they had drained swamps, they had sawn timber but none 

 of these improvements had yet had time to produce any beneficial result 

 on the station bank account. The repayment to the station of a line of 

 fencing may fairly be spread over a score of years, whereas a cheque has 

 to be given then and there for the wire. Reimbursement to the station 

 for grass seed sown might also be reasonably spread over decades ; the 

 merchant, however, has to be paid at once. The same may be said of 

 track-cutting, swamp-draining, the sawing of timber for house and shed ; 

 nay, the very increase of stock, surely an improvement of the first im- 

 portance, spelled at first a large overdraft ; it also had to be paid for with 

 borrowed money. The benefits were to be perennial, the payments, how- 

 ever, for these perennial benefits had to be paid instantly in coin of the 



