y. I
suppose you have any amount of the brutes up your way?"

"Thousands! The rivers, creeks, and swamps are full of them, and I have
lost a lot of cattle and horses at Ocho Rios by them."

An hour later they arrived at Kaburie, and Kate was, at the request of
the admiring Knowles, acting as hostess and preparing supper.

CHAPTER XIII

Two days had passed, and Gerrard was still at Kaburie, though Kate and
her father had left the previous day; they were, however, to return,
bringing with them three or four stockmen to assist Knowles and Gerrard
to muster the cattle, for he had decided to buy the station and leave
Knowles there as his manager. Although there were but four thousand head
of cattle on the run, they were widely separated in small mobs of a
few hundreds each--some high up in the ranges, and some haunting the
low-lying littoral, and frequenting the flat marshy land about the
mouths of the numerous creeks debouching into the sea, where they
eagerly ate the lush, saline grasses and creepers that lined the coast
above high-water mark--and to "round up" all these scattered mobs on
their various camps, and count every beast, meant very hard work. Then
too, Gerrard intended to have a general branding at the same time, and
he felt a thrill of pleasure in his veins, when Kate had said to her
father: "Father, why cannot we help, too? You can safely leave the
battery and claim to Sam Young for a few days. And as you and I know the
country so well, I am sure we should be of some use to Mr Gerrard."

Douglas Fraser had never said "No" in his life to any request of Kate's
since she was fifteen, and he smiled assent. And then in addition to
that he had taken such a strong liking to Gerrard that it gave him
pleasure to afford him all the assistance in his power.

"All right, Gerrard!" (men in the Australian bush do not "Mister" each
other after a few hour's acquaintance) "we shall be here. And I'll send
over to Boorala for three or four good men to help in the mustering."

So Kate and her father had ridden away and left Gerrard and Knowles to
themselves for a few days; and Gerrard and the dapper little overseer
planned all sorts of improvements that were to be effected in the way of
making Kaburie a crack breeding station.

As father and daughter rode side by side along the track back to their
home, through the darkening shadows of the coming night, they talked
about Forde and Aulain, Fraser resting his big brow