E-text prepared by Amy Sisson & Marc D'Hooghe
(http://www.freeliterature.org)
A string of vehicles moved slowly out of the New Town, taking the roadover the long, low slope of the Ridge to the plains.
Nothing was moving on the wide stretch of the plains or under the fine,clear blue sky of early spring, except this train of shabby,dust-covered vehicles. The road, no more than a track of wheels onshingly earth, wound lazily through paper daisies growing in driftsbeside it, and throwing a white coverlet to the dim, circling horizon.The faint, dry fragrance of paper daisies was in the air; a nativecuckoo calling.
The little girl sitting beside Michael Brady in Newton's buggy glancedbehind her now and then. Michael was driving the old black horse fromthe coach stables and Newton's bay mare, and Sophie and her father weresitting beside him on the front seat. In the open back of the buggybehind them lay a long box with wreaths and bunches of paper daisies andbudda blossoms over it.
Sophie knew all the people on the road, and to whom the horses andbuggies they had borrowed belonged. Jun Johnson and Charley Heathfieldwere riding together in the Afghan storekeeper's sulky with his fatwhite pony before them. Anwah Kaked and Mrs. Kaked had the store cartthemselves. Watty and Mrs. Frost were on the coach. Ed. Ventry wasdriving them and had put up the second seat for George and Mrs. Woodsand Maggie Grant. Peter Newton and Cash Wilson followed in Newton'snewly varnished black sulky. Sam Nancarrow had given Martha M'Cready alift, and Pony-Fence Inglewood was driving Mrs. Archie and Mrs. TedCross in Robb's old heavy buggy, with the shaggy draught mare used forcarting water in the township during the summer, in the shafts. TheFlails' home-made jinker, whose body was painted a dull yellow, camelast of the vehicles on the road. Sophie could just see Arthur Henty andtwo or three stockmen from Warria riding through a thin haze of reddust. But she knew men were walking two abreast behind the vehicles andhorsemen—Bill Grant, Archie and Ted Cross, and a score of miners fromthe Three Mile and the Punti rush. At a curve of the road she had seenSnow-Shoes and Potch straggling along behind the others, the old manstooping to pick wild flowers by the roadside, and Potch plodding on,looking straight in front of him.
Buggies, horses, and people, they had come all the way from her home atthe Old Town. Almost everybody who lived on Fallen Star Ridge was there,driving, riding, or walking on the road across the plains behindMichael, her father, and herself. It was all so strange to Sophie; shefelt so strange in the black dress she had on and which Mrs. Grant hadcut down from one of her own. There was a black ribbon on her old yellowstraw hat too, and she had on a pair of black cotton gloves.
Sophie could not believe her mother was what they called "dead"; that itwas her mother in the box with flowers on just behind her. They hadwalked along this very road, singing and gathering wild flowers, and hadwaited to watch the sun set, or the moon rise, so often.
She glanced at her father. He was sitting beside her, a piece of blackstuff on his arm and a strip of the same material round his old felthat. The tears poured down his cheeks, and he shook out the large, new,white handkerchief he had bought at Chassy Robb's store that morning,