Station Amusements in New Zealand, Lady Mary Anne Barker [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

manger, and breaking tackle, and not unfrequently a hospital report of maimed and wounded stablemen. Amateur horsemen of celebrity arrived at the station to look at the beautiful fiend, and departed, saying they would rather not have anything to say to her. At last, she was given over in despair, to lead her own free life, never having endured the indignity of bit or bridle for more than two minutes.

Months passed away, and Star and her tantrums had been nearly forgotten, when one mild winter evening the stockman came in to report that,--wonder of wonders,--Star was standing meekly outside, whinnying, and as "quiet as a dog." Her master went out to find the man's report exact: Star walked straight up to him, and rubbed her soft nose confidingly against his sleeve. The mystery explained itself at a glance: she was on the point of having her first foal, and, with some strange and pathetic instinct, she bethought herself of the kind hands whose caresses she had so often rejected, and came straight to them for help and succour. Her shy and touching advances were warmly responded to, and in a few minutes the poor beast was safely housed in the warm shed which then represented the present row of neat stables long since on that very spot. A warm mash was eagerly swallowed, and the good-hearted stockman volunteered to remain up until all should be happily over; but his courage failed him at the sight of her horrible sufferings, and in the early dawn he came to rouse up his master, and beg him to come and see if anything more could be done. There lay Star, all her fierce spirit quenched, with an appealing look in her large black eyes, which seemed positively human in their capacity for expressing suffering. It was many hours before a dead foal was born, and there is no doubt that if she had been out on the bleak hills, the poor exhausted young mother must have perished from weakness. She appeared to understand thoroughly the motive of all that was being done for her, and submitted with patience to all the remedies. Gradually, but slowly, her strength returned; and, alas, her evil nature, tamed by anguish, returned also! Day by day she became shyer of even the hand which had fed and succoured her; and, as this is a true chronicle, it must be stated that the very first use Mrs. Star made of her convalescence was, to kick her nurse on the leg, break her halter into fragments, and gallop off to the hills with a loud neigh of defiance. Whenever the topic of feminine ingratitude came on the carpet at that station, this, which Star had done, used always to be told as an instance in point.

Two years later, exactly the same thing happened again. The dreaded hour of suffering found the wayward beauty once more under the roof which had sheltered her in her former time of trial, and once more she rested her head in penitence and appeal against her owner's shoulder. Who could bear malice in the presence of such dreadful pain? Not Star's owner, certainly. Besides the home resources, a man on horseback was sent off to fetch a famous veterinary who chanced to be staying at a neighbouring station, and they both returned before Star's worst sufferings began. All that skill and experience could do was done that night; but the morning light found the poor little grey mare dying from exhaustion, with another dead foal lying by her side. She only lived a few hours later, in spite of stimulants and the utmost care, and died gently and peacefully, with those human hands whose lightest touch she had so flouted, ministering tenderly to her great needs. The stockman had become so fond of the wayward beauty, in spite of her ingratitude, that the only solace he could find for his regret at her early death, lay in digging a deep grave for her, and carving the emblem of her pretty name on the rude stake which still marks the spot.

No account of station pets would be complete without a brief allusion to my numerous and unsuccessful attempts to rear merino lambs in the house. It never was of any use advising me to leave the poor little creatures out on the bleak hill-side, if, in the course of my rambles after ferns or creepers, I came upon a dead ewe with her half-starved baby running round and round her. How could I turn my back on the little orphan, who, instead of bounding off up the steep hill, used to run confidingly up to me, and poke its black muzzle into my hand, as if it would say, "Here is a friend at last"? And then merino lambs are so much prettier than any I have seen in England. Their snow-white wool is as tightly screwed up in small curls as any Astracan fleece, and from being of so much more active a race, they are smaller and more compact than English lambs, and not so awkward and leggy. A merino lamb of a couple of hours old is far better fitted to take care of itself up a mountain than a civilized and helpless lamb of a month old, besides these latter being so weak about the knees always. I only mention this, not out of any desire to "blow" about our sheep, but because I want to account for my tender-heartedness on the subject of desolate orphans. The ewes scarcely ever died of disease, unless by a rare chance it happened to be a very old lady whose constitution gave way at last before a severe winter. We oftenest found that the dead mother was a fine fat young ewe; who had slipped up on a hill-side and could not recover herself, but had died of exhaustion and fatigue from her violent efforts to kick herself up again. If we chanced to be in time to rescue her by the simple process of setting her on her legs again, it would be all right, but sometimes the poor creature had been cold and stiff for hours before we found her, and her lamb had bleated itself hoarse and hungry, and was as tame as a pet dog. Now _who_ could turn away from a little helpless thing like that, who positively leaped into your arms and cuddled itself up in delight, sucking vigorously away at your glove, or anything handy? Not I, for one,--though I might as well have left it alone, so far as its ultimate fate was concerned; but I always hoped for better luck next time, and carried it off in my arms.

The first thing to be do be on arrival at home, was to give the starving little creature a good meal out of a tea-pot, and the next, to put it to sleep in a box of hay in a warm corner of the kitchen. What always seemed to me so extraordinary, was that the lambs, one and all, preserved the most cheerful demeanour, ate and drank and slept well,--and yet died within a month. Some lingered until quite four weeks had passed, others succumbed to my treatment in a week. I varied their food, mixing oatmeal with the milk; some I fed often, others seldom; to some I gave sugar in the milk, others had new milk. There was abundance of grass just outside the house for them to eat, if they could. Some did mumble feebly at it, I remember, but the mortality continued uninterrupted. It must have been very ridiculous to a visitor, to see my dear little snowy pets going down on their front knees before me, and wagging their long tails furiously the moment the tea-pot was brought out. They were far too sensible to do this if my hands were empty. Gentle, affectionate little creatures, they used to be wonderfully well-behaved, though now and then they would wander through the verandah, and so into my bedroom, where the drapery of my dressing-table afforded them endless amusement and occupation. They gnawed and sucked all my "daisy" fringe, until the first thing that had to be done when a lamb arrived at the house, was to take off muslins and fringes from that, the only trimmed table in the house.

Often and often, of a cold night (for we must remember that New Zealand lambing used always to come off in winter), we would all become suddenly aware of a strong smell of burning pervading the whole house; which, on being traced to its source, was often found to proceed from the rosette of wool on the forehead of a chilly lamb. The creature drew nearer and nearer to the genial warmth of the kitchen fire, until at last it used to lean its brow pensively against the red hot bars. Hence arose the powerful odour gradually filling the whole of the little wooden house. Of course I used to rush to the rescue, and draw my bewildered pet away from the fatal warmth, but not until it had usually singed the wool off down to the bone, and there was often a bad burn on its forehead as well. But still, in spite of stupidity and an insatiable appetite, I always grieved very sincerely for each of my orphan lambs as it in turn sank into its early grave. I used to be well laughed at for attaching any sentiment to an animal which had sunk so disgracefully low in the money-market as a New Zealand lamb, but the abundant supply of my little pets never made it easier for me to lose the particular one which I had set my heart on rearing. It certainly did afford me some comfort to hear that merino lambs had always been difficult, if not impossible to bring up, like so many "pups," by hand; and among all the statistics I carefully collected, I could only find one well-authenticated instance of a foundling having been reared indoors. My informant tried to comfort me by tales of the tyranny that stout and tame sheep exercised over the household which had sheltered it, but I fear that the stories of its delightful impudence only made me more anxious to succeed in my own baby-farming experiments among the lambs.


Chapter XV: A feathered pet.

No record of those dear, distant days would be complete without a short memoir of "Kitty." She was only a grey Dorking hen, but no heroine in fact or fiction, no Lady Rachel Russell or _Fleurange,_ ever exceeded Kitty in unswerving devotion to a beloved object, or rather objects.

To see Kitty was to admire her, at least as I saw her one beautiful spring evening in a grassy paddock on the banks of the Horarata. We had ridden over there to visit our kind and friendly neighbours, the C----'s; we had enjoyed a delicious cup of tea in the passion-flower-covered verandah, which looked on the whole range, from East to West, of the glorious Southern Alps, their shining white summits sharply cut against our own peculiarly beautiful sky; we had strolled round the charming, unformal garden, on either sloping side of a wide creek, and had admired, with just a tinge of envy, the fruits and flowers, the standard apple and rose trees, the tangle of fern and creepers, the wealth of the old and new worlds heaped together in floral profusion; we had done all this, I say, and very pleasant we had found it. Now we were trying to say goodbye: not so easy a task, let me tell you, when there are so many temptations to linger, and when you are greatly pressed to stay. The last device of our hospitable hostess to keep us consisted in offering to show me her poultry-yard. Now I was a young