THE TOWNSFOLK NEVER KNOW -

“Yes, I got the picture. Months of exposure to the naked sky. Months without shelter and therefore without shade except for the occasional sparsely foliaged tree. You can get into or under a car or wagon. You cannot get under a saddle horse or a pack mule. Only when the sun goes down can you draw a little comfort from the night sky and the firelight and the shadows thrown. But with cattle, even the nights have to be ridden through, the watches to be kept, the songs to be sung to keep the beasts calm. You don’t want the horror of a ‘rush’ out there.

And the Canning is so long. The days of travel are so long. And the days become weeks, and the weeks become months until it seems that there is never anything ahead but the same desolate emptiness of the months that have passed. Until you are moving in a half dream, and you arrive in a half dream; not really believing that you have got there at last, that it is all over, really over, an end to the perpetual saddle, the perpetual empty sky, the damper and the meat, the dead screaming monotony of the sun-scortched landscape, the perpetual dust and lowing. An end to it all. You have made it down the Canning without going mad. You’re there. But you don’t believe it; not yet; you can’t…

‘For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.’…”

From Gold in the Blood by James Doughetty.

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