Fate, however, interfered to keep the missus at the homestead, to persuade Cheon that, after all, the Maluka was a fit and proper person to have the care of a woman, and to find a very present use for the house; an influenza sore-throat breaking out in the camp, the missus developed it, and Dan went out alone to find the Quiet Stockman and the "killers" for Happy Dick.



CHAPTER XV

Before a week was out the Maluka and Cheon had won each other's undying regard because of their treatment of the missus.

With the nearest doctor three hundred miles away in Darwin, and held there by hospital routine, the Maluka decided on bed and feeding-up as the safest course, and Cheon came out in a new character.

As medical adviser and reader-aloud to the patient, the Maluka was supposed to have his hands full, and Cheon, usurping the position of sick-nurse, sent everything, excepting the nursing, to the wall. Rice-water, chicken-jelly, barley-water, egg-flips, beef-tea junket, and every invalid food he had ever heard of, were prepared, and, with the Maluka to back him up, forced on the missus; and when food was not being administered, the pillow was being shaken or the bedclothes straightened. (The mattress being still on the ends of cows' tails, a folded rug served in its place). There was very little wrong with the patient, but the wonder was she did not become really ill through over-eating and want of rest.

I pleaded with the Maluka, but the Maluka pleading for just a little more rest and feeding-up, while Cheon gulped and choked in the background, I gave in, and eating everything as it was offered, snatched what rest I could, getting as much entertainment as possible out of Cheon and the staff in between times.

For three days I lay obediently patient, and each day Cheon grew more affectionate, patting my hands at times, as he confided to the Maluka that although he admired big, moon-faced women as a feast for the eyes, he liked them small and docile when he had to deal personally with them. Until I met Cheon I thought the Chinese incapable of affection; but many lessons are learned out bush.

Travellers—house-visitors—coming in on the fourth day, I hoped for a speedy release, but visitors were considered fatiguing, and release was promised as soon as they were gone.

Fortunately the walls had many cracks in them—not being as much on the plumb as Johnny had predicted, and for a couple of days, watching the visitors through these cracks and listening to their conversation provided additional amusement. I could see them quite distinctly as, no doubt, they could see me; but we kept a decorous silence until the Fizzer came in, then at the Fizzer's shout the walls of Jericho toppled down.

"The missus sick!" I heard him shout. "Thought she looked in prime condition at the Springs." (Bush language frequently has a strong twang of cattle in it.)

"So I am now," I called; and then the Fizzer and I held an animated conversation through the walls. "I'm imprisoned for life," I moaned, after hearing the news of the outside world; and laughing and chuckling outside, the Fizzer vowed he would "do a rescue next trip if they've still got you down." Then, after appreciating fervent thanks, he shouted in farewell: "The boss is bringing something along that'll help to pass some of the time—the finest mail you ever clapped eyes on," and presently patient and bed were under a litter of mail-matter.

The Fizzer having brought down the walls of conventionality, the traveller-guests proffered greetings and sympathy through the material walls, after which we exchanged mail-news and general gossip for a day or two; then just as these travellers were preparing to exchange farewells, others came in and postponed the promised release. As there seemed little hope of a lull in visitors, I was wondering if ever I should be considered well enough to entertain guests, when Fate once more interfered.

"Whatever's this coming in from the East?" I heard the Maluka call in consternation, and in equal consternation his traveller-guest called back: "Looks like a whole village settlement." Then Cheon burst into the room in a frenzy of excitement: "Big mob traveller, missus. Two-fellow-missus, sit down," he began; but the Maluka was at his heels.

"Here's two women and a mob of youngsters," he gasped. "I'm afraid you'll have to get up, little 'un, and lend a hand with them."

Afraid! By the time the village settlement had "turned out" and found its way to the house, I was out in the open air welcoming its members with a heartiness that must have surprised them. Little did they guess that they were angels unaware. Homely enough angels, though, they proved, as angels unaware should prove: one man and two women from "Queensland way," who had been "inside" for fifteen years, and with them two fine young lads and a wee, toddling baby—all three children born in the bush and leaving it for the first time.

Never before had Cheon had such a company to provide for; but as we moved towards the house in a body—ourselves, the village settlement, and the Maluka's traveller-guests, with a stockman traveller and the Dandy looking on from the quarters, his hospitable soul rejoiced at the sight; and by the time seats had been found for all comers, he appeared laden with tea and biscuits, and within half an hour had conjured up a plentiful dinner for all comers.

Fortunately the chairs were all "up" to the weight of the ladies, and the remainder of the company easily accommodated itself to circumstances, in the shape of sawn stumps, rough stools, and sundry boxes; and although the company was large and the dining-table small, and although, at times, we feared the table was about to fulfil its oft-repeated threat and fall over, yet the dinner was there to be enjoyed, and, being bush-folk, and hungry, our guests enjoyed it, passing over all incongruities with simple merriment—a light-hearted, bubbling merriment, in no way comparable to that "laughter of fools," that crackling of thorns under a pot, provoked by the incongruities of the world's freak dinners. The one is the heritage of the simple-hearted, and the other—all the world has to give in exchange for this birthright.

The elder lads, one fourteen and one ten years of age, found Cheon by far the most entertaining incongruity at the dinner, and when dinner was over—after we had settled down on the various chairs and stumps that had been carried out to the verandah again—they shadowed him wherever he went.

They were strangely self-possessed children; but knowing little more of the world than the black children their playmates, Cheon, in his turn, found them vastly amusing, and instructing them in the ways of the world—from his point of view—found them also eager pupils.

But their education came to a standstill after they had mastered the mysteries of the Dandy's gramophone, and Cheon was no longer entertaining.

All afternoon brass-band selections, comic songs, and variety items, blared out with ceaseless reiteration; and as the men-folk smoked and talked cattle, and the wee baby—a bonnie fair child—toddled about, smiling and contented, the women-folk spoke of their life "out-back," and listening, I knew that neither I nor the telegraph lady had even guessed what roughness means.

For fifteen years things had been improving, and now everyone was to have a well-earned holiday. The children were to be christened and then shown the delights of a large town! Darwin of necessity (Palmerston, by the way, on the map, but Darwin to Territorians). Darwin with its one train, its telegraph offices, two or three stores, banks and public buildings, its Residency, its Chinatown, its lovers' walk, its two or three empty, wide, grass-grown streets bordered with deep-verandahed, iron-built bungalow-houses, with their gardens planted in painted tins—a development of the white-ant pest—and lastly, its great sea, where ships wander without tracks or made ways! Hardly a typical town, but the best in the Territory.

The women, naturally, were looking forward to doing a bit of shopping, and as we slipped into fashions the traveller guests became interested. "Haven't seen so many women together for years," one of them said. "Reminds me of when I was a nipper," and the other traveller "reckoned" he had struck it lucky for once. "Three on 'em at once," he chuckled with indescribable relish. "They reckon it never rains but it pours." And so it would seem with three women guests within three weeks at a homestead where women had been almost unknown for years.

But these women guests only stayed one night, the children being all impatience to get on to the telegraph line, to those wires that talked, and to the railway, where the iron monster ran.

Early in the morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair toddling baby was sitting on its mother's pommel-knee, smiling out on the world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had ridden a couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and before it reached home again another five hundred would be added to the two hundred. Seven hundred miles on horse back in a few weeks, at one year old, compares favourably with one of the Fizzer's trips. But it is thus the bush develops her Fizzers.

After so much excitement Cheon feared a relapse, and was for prompt, preventive measures; but even the Maluka felt there was a limit to the Rest Cure, and the musterers coming in with Happy Dick's bullocks and a great mob of mixed cattle for the yards, Dan proved a strong ally; and besides, as the musterers were in and Happy Dick due to arrive by midday, Cheon's hands were full with other matters.

There was a roly-poly pudding to make for Dan, baked custard for the Dandy, jam-tarts for Happy Dick, cake and biscuits for all comers, in addition to a dinner and supper waiting to be cooked for fifteen black boys, several lubras, and half-a-dozen hungry white folk. Cheon had his own peculiar form of welcome for his many favourites, regaling each one of them with delicacies to their particular liking, each and every time they came in.

Happy Dick, also, had his own peculiar form of welcome. "Good-day! Real glad to see you!" was his usual greeting. Sure of his own welcome wherever he went, he never waited to hear it, but hastened to welcome all men into his fellowship. "Real glad to see you," he would say, with a ready smile of comradeship; and it always seemed as though he had added: "I hope you'll make yourself at home while with me." In some mysterious way, Happy Dick was at all times the host giving liberally of the best he had to his fellow-men.

He was one of the pillars of the Line Party. "Born in it, I think," he would say. "Don't quite remember," adding with his ever-varying smile, "Remember when it was born, anyway."

When the "Overland Telegraph" was built across the Australian continent from sea to sea, a clear broad avenue two chains wide, was cut for it through bush and scrub and dense forests, along the backbone of Australia, and in this avenue the line party was "born" and bred—a party of axemen and mechanics under the orders of a foreman, whose duty it is to keep the "Territory section" of the line in repair, and this avenue free from the scrub and timber that spring up unceasingly in its length.

In unbroken continuity this great avenue runs for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, carpeted with feathery grasses and shooting scrubs, and walled in on either side with dense, towering forest or lighter and more scattered timber. On and on it stretches in utter loneliness, zigzagging from horizon to horizons beyond, and guarding those two sensitive wires at its centre, as they run along their single line of slender galvanised posts, from the great bush that never ceases in its efforts to close in on them and engulf them. A great broad highway, waiting in its loneliness for the generations to come, with somewhere in its length the line party camp, and here and there within its thousand miles, a chance traveller or two here and there a horseman with pack-horse ambling and grazing along behind him; here and there a trudging speck with a swag across its shoulders, and between them one, two, or three hundred miles of solitude, here and there a horseman riding, and here and there a footman trudging on, each unconscious of the others.

From day to day they travel on, often losing the count of the days, with those lines always above them, and those beckoning posts ever running on before them and as they travel, now and then they touch a post for company—shaking hands with Outside: touching now and then a post for company, and daily realising the company and comfort those posts and wires can be. Here at least is something in touch with the world something vibrating with the lives and actions of men, and an ever-present friend in dire necessity. With those wires above him, any day a traveller can cry for help to the Territory, if he call while he yet has strength to climb one of those friendly posts and cut that quivering wire—for help that will come speedily, for the cutting of the telegraph wire is as the ringing of an alarm-bell throughout the Territory. In all haste the break is located, and food, water, and every human help that suggests itself sent out from the nearest telegraph station. There is no official delay—there rarely is in the Territory—for by some marvellous good fortune, there everything belongs to the Department in which it finds itself.

Just as Happy Dick is one of the pillars of the line party, so the line party is one of the pillars of the line itself. Up and down this great avenue, year in year out it creeps along, cutting scrub and repairing as it goes, and moving cumbrous main camps from time to time, with its waggon loads of stores, tents, furnishings, flocks of milking goats, its fowls, its gramophone, and Chinese cook. Month after month it creeps on, until, reaching the end of the section, it turns round to creep out again.

Year in, year out, it had crept in and out, and for twenty years Happy Dick had seen to its peace and comfort. Nothing ever ruffled him. "All in the game" was his nearest approach to a complaint, as he pegged away at his work, in between whiles going to the nearest station for killers, carting water in tanks out to "dry stage camps," and doing any other work that found itself undone. Dick's position was as elastic as his smile.

He considered himself an authority on three things only: the line party, dog-fights, and cribbage. All else, including his dog Peter and his cheque-book, he left to the discretion of his fellow-men.

Peter—a speckled, drab-coloured, prick-eared creation, a few sizes larger than a fox-terrier—could be kept in order with a little discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy Dick; but all the discretion in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping off of hands, failed to keep order in the cheque-book.

The personal payment of salaries to men scattered through hundreds of miles of bush country being impracticable, the department pays all salaries due to its servants into their bank accounts at Darwin, and therefore when Happy Dick found himself the backbone of the line party, he also found himself the possessor of a cheque-book. At first he was inclined to look upon it as a poor substitute for hard cash; but after the foreman had explained its mysteries, and taught him to sign his name in magic tracery, he became more than reconciled to it and drew cheques blithely, until one for five pounds was returned to a creditor: no funds—and in due course returned to Happy Dick.

"No good?" he said to the creditor, looking critically at the piece of paper in his hands. "Must have been writ wrong. Well, you've only yourself to blame, seeing you wrote it"; then added magnanimously, mistaking the creditor's scorn: "Never mind, write yourself out another. I don't mind signing 'em."

The foreman and the creditor spent several hours trying to explain banking principles, but Dick "couldn't see it." "There's stacks of 'em left!" he persisted, showing his book of fluttering bank cheques. Finally, in despair, the foreman took the cheque-book into custody, and Dick found himself poor once more.

But it was only for a little while. In an evil hour he discovered that a cheque from another man's book answered all purposes if it bore that magic tracery, and Happy Dick was never solvent again. Gaily he signed cheques, and the foreman did all he could to keep pace with him on the cheque-book block; but as no one, excepting the accountant in the Darwin bank, knew the state of his account from day to day, it was like taking a ticket in a lottery to accept a cheque from Happy Dick.

"Real glad to see you," Happy Dick said in hearty greeting to us all as he dismounted, and we waited to be entertained. Happy Dick had his favourite places and people, and the Elsey community stood high in his favour. "Can't beat the Elsey for a good dog-fight and a good game of cribbage," he said, every time he came in or left us, and that from Happy Dick was high praise. At times he added: "Nor for a square meal neither," thereby inciting Cheon to further triumphs for his approval.

As usual, Happy Dick "played" the Quarters cribbage and related a good dog-fight—"Peter's latest "—and, as usual before he left us, his pockets were bulging with tobacco—the highest stakes used in the Quarters—and Peter and Brown had furnished him with materials for a still newer dog-fight recital. As usual, he rode off with his killers, assuring all that he would "be along again soon," and, as usual, Peter and Brown were tattered and hors-de-combat, but both still aggressive. Peter's death lunge was the death lunge of Brown, and both dogs knew that lunge too well to let the other "get in."

As usual, Happy Dick had hunted through the store, and taken anything he "really needed," paying, of course, by cheque; but when he came to sign that cheque, after the Maluka had written it, he entered the dining-room for the first time since its completion.

With calm scrutiny he took in every detail, including the serviettes as they lay folded in their rings on the waiting dinner-table, and before he left the homestead he expressed his approval in the Quarters:

"Got everything up to the knocker, haven't they ?" he said. "Often heard toffs decorated their tables with rags in hobble rings, but never believed it before."

Happy Dick gone, Cheon turned his attention to the health of the missus; but Dan, persuading the Maluka that "all she needed was a breath of fresh air," we went bush on a tour of inspection.



CHAPTER XVI

Within a week we returned to the homestead, and for twenty-four hours Cheon gloated over us, preparing every delicacy that appealed to him as an antidote to an outbush course of beef and damper. Then a man rode into our lives who was to teach us the depth and breadth of the meaning of the word mate—a sturdy, thick-set man with haggard, tired eyes and deep lines about his firm strong mouth that told of recent and prolonged tension.

"Me mate's sick; got a touch of fever," he said simply dismounting near the verandah. "I've left him camped back there at the Warlochs"; and as the Maluka prepared remedies—making up the famous Gulf mixture—the man with grateful thanks, found room in his pockets and saddle-pouch for eggs, milk, and brandy, confident that "these'll soon put him right," adding, with the tense lines deepening about his mouth as he touched on what had brought them there: "He's been real bad, ma'am. I've had a bit of a job to get him as far as this." In the days to come we were to learn, little by little, that the "bit of a job" had meant keeping a sick man in his saddle for the greater part of the fifty-mile dry stage, with forty miles of "bad going" on top of that, and fighting for him every inch of the way that terrible symptom of malaria—that longing to "chuck it," and lie down and die.

Bad water after that fifty-mile dry made men with a touch of fever only too common at the homestead, and knowing how much the comforts of the homestead could do, when the Maluka came out with the medicines he advised bringing the sick man on as soon as he had rested sufficiently. "You've only to ask for it and we'll send the old station buck-board across," he said, and the man began fumbling uneasily at his saddle-girths, and said something evasive about "giving trouble"; but when the Maluka—afraid that a man's life might be the forfeit of another man's shrinking fear of causing trouble—added that on second thoughts we would ride across as soon as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly and stammered: "If you please, ma'am. If the boss'll excuse me, me mate's dead-set against a woman doing things for him. If you wouldn't mind not coming. He'd rather have me. Me and him's been mates this seven years. The boss 'll understand."

The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone, to find a man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full of dread lest the woman at the homestead would insist on visiting him. "You see, that's why he wouldn't come on," the mate said. "He couldn't bear the thought of a woman doing things for him "; and the Maluka explained that the missus understood all that. That lesson had been easily learned; for again and again men had come in "down with a touch of fever," whose temperatures went up at the very thought of a woman doing things for them, and always the actual nursing was left to the Maluka or the Dandy, the woman seeing to egg-flips and such things, exchanging at first perhaps only an occasional greeting, and listening at times to strange life-histories later on.

But in vain the Maluka explained and entreated: the sick man was "all right where he was." His mate was worth "ten women fussing round," he insisted, ignoring the Maluka's explanations. "Had he not lugged him through the worst pinch already?" and then he played his trump card: "He'll stick to me till I peg out," he said—"nothing's too tough for him"; and as he lay back, the mate deciding "arguing'll only do for him," dismissed the Maluka with many thanks, refusing all offers of nursing help with a quiet "He'd rather have me," but accepting gratefully broths and milk and anything of that sort the homestead could furnish. "Nothing ever knocks me out," he reiterated, and dragged on through sleepless days and nights, as the days dragged by finding ample reward in the knowledge that "he'd rather have me", and when there came that deep word of praise from his stricken comrade: "A good mate's harder to find than a good wife," his gentle, protecting devotion increased tenfold.

Bushmen are instinctively protective. There is no other word that so exactly defines their tender helpfulness to all weakness and helplessness. Knowing how hard the fight is out-bush for even the strong and enduring all their magnificent strength and courage stand ready for those who would go to the wall without it. A lame dog, a man down in his luck, an old soaker, little women any woman in need or sickness—each and all call forth this protectiveness; but nothing calls it forth in all its self-sacrificing tenderness like the helplessness of a strong man stricken down in his strength.

Understanding this also, we stood aside, and rejoicing as the sick man, benefiting by the comparative comfort and satisfied to have his own way, seemed to improve. For three days he improved steadily, and then, after standing still for another day slipped back inch by inch to weakness and prostration, until the homestead, without coercion, was the only chance for his life.

But there was a woman there; and as the mate went back to his pleading the woman did what the world may consider a strange thing—but a man's life depended on it—she sent a message out to the sick man, to say that if he would come to the homestead she would not go to him until he asked her.

He pondered over the message for a day, sceptical of a woman's word— surely some woman had left that legacy in his heart—but eventually decided he wouldn't risk it. Then the chief of the telegraph coming in—a man widely experienced in fever—and urging one more attempt, the Dandy volunteered to help us in our extremity, and, driving across to the Warlochs in the chief's buggy worked one of his miracles; he spent only a few minutes alone with the man (and the Dandy alone knows now what passed), but within an hour the sick traveller was resting quietly between clean sheets in the Dandy's bed. There were times when the links in the chain seemed all blessing.

Waking warm and refreshed, the sick man faced the battle of life once more, and the chief taking command, and the man quietly and hopefully obeying orders, the woman found her promise easy to keep; but the mate's hardest task had come, the task of waiting with folded hands. With the same quiet steadfastness he braced himself for this task and when, after weary hours, the chief pronounced "all well" and turned to him with an encouraging "I think he'll pull through now, my man," the sturdy shoulders that had borne so much drooped and quivered beneath the kindly words, and with dimming eyes he gave in at last to the Maluka's persuasions, and lay down and slept, sure of the Dandy's promise to wake him at dawn.

At midnight the Maluka left the Quarters, and going back just before the dawn to relieve the Dandy, found the sick man lying quietly-restful, with one arm thrown lightly across his brow. He had spoken in his sleep a short while before the Dandy said as the Maluka bent over him with a cup of warm milk, but the cup was returned to the table untasted. Many travellers had come into our lies and passed on with a bright nod of farewell; but at the first stirring of the dawn, without one word of farewell, this traveller had passed on and left us; left us, and the faithful mate of those seven strong young years and those last few days of weariness. "Unexpected heart failure," our chief said, as the Dandy went to fulfil his promise to the sleeping mate. He promised to waken him at the dawn, and leaving that awakening in the Dandy's hands, as we thought of that lonely Warloch camp our one great thankfulness was that when the awakening came the man was not to be alone there with his dead comrade. The bush can be cruel at times, and yet, although she may leave us alone with our beloved dead, her very cruelty bungs with it a fierce, consoling pain; for out-bush our dead are all our own.

Beyond those seven faithful years the mate could tell us but little of his comrade's life. He was William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with a mother living somewhere there. That was all he knew. "He was always a reticent chap," he reiterated. "He never wanted any one but me about him," and the unspoken request was understood. He was his mate, and no one but himself must render the last services.

Dry-eyed and worn, the man moved about, doing all that should be done, the bushmen only helping where they dared; then shouldering a pick and shovel, he went to the tattle rise beyond the slip rails, and set doggedly to work at a little distance from two lonely graves already there. Doggedly he worked on; but, as he worked, gradually his burden lost its overwhelming weight, for the greater part of it had somehow skipped on to the Dandy's shoulders—those brave, unflinching shoulders, that carried other men's burdens so naturally and so willingly that their burdens always seemed the Dandy's own. The Dandy may have had that power of finding "something decent" in every one he met, but in the Dandy all men found the help they needed most.

Quietly and unassumingly, the Dandy put all in order and then, soon after midday, with brilliant sunshine all about us, we stood by an open grave in the shade of the drooping glory of a crimson flowering bauhenia. Some scenes live undimmed in our memories for a lifetime—scenes where we have seemed onlookers rather than actors seeing every detail with minute exactness—and that scene with its mingling of glorious beauty, human pathos, and soft, subdued sound, will bye, I think, in the memory of most of us for many years to come:

"In the midst of life we are in death," the Maluka read, standing among that drooping crimson splendour and at his feet lay the open grave, preaching silently its great lesson of Life and Death, with, beside it, the still quiet form of the traveller whose last weary journey had ended; around it, bareheaded and all in white, a little band of bush-folk, silent and reverent and awed; above it, that crimson glory, and all around and about it, soft sun-flecked bush, murmuring sounds, flooding sunshine, and deep azure blue distances. Beyond the bush, deep azure blue, within it and throughout it, flooding sunshine and golden ladders of light; and at its sun-flecked heart, under that drooping crimson-starred canopy of soft greygreen, that little company of bush-folk, standing beside that open grave, as Mother Nature, strewing with flowers the last resting place of one of her children, scattered gently falling scarlet blossoms into it and about it. Here and there a dog lay, stretched out in the shade, sniffing in idle curiosity at the blossoms as they fell, well satisfied with what life had to give just then; while at their master's feet lay the traveller who was to leave such haunting memories behind him: William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with somewhere there a mother going quietly about her work, wondering vaguely perhaps where her laddie was that day.

Poor mother! Yet, when even that knowledge came to her, it comforted her in her sorrow to know that a woman had stood beside that grave mourning for her boy in her name.

Quietly the Maluka read on to the end; and then in the hush that followed the mate stooped, and, with deep lines hardening rigidly, picked up a spade. There was no mistaking his purpose; but as he straightened himself the Dandy's hand was on the spade and the Maluka was speaking. "Perhaps you'll be good enough to drive the missus back to the house right away," he was saying, "I think she has had almost more than she can stand."

The man looked hesitatingly at him. "If you'll be good enough," the Maluka added, "I should not leave here myself till all is completed."

Unerringly the Maluka had read his man: no hint of his strength failing, but a favour asked, and with it a service for a woman.

The stern set lines about the man's mouth quivered for a moment, then set again as he sacrificed his wishes to a woman's need, and relinquishing the spade, turned away; and as we drove down to the house in the chief's buggy—the buggy that a few minutes before had borne our sick traveller along that last stage of his earthly journey—he said gently, almost apologetically: "I should have reckoned on this knocking you out a bit, missus." Always others, never self, with the bush-folk.

Then, this service rendered for the man who had done what he could for his comrade, his strong, unflinching heart turned back to its labour of love, and, all else being done, found relief for itself in softening and smoothing the rough outline of the newly piled mound, and as the man toiled, Mother Nature went on with her work, silently and sweetly healing the scar on her bosom, hiding her pain from the world, as she shrouded in starry crimson the burial place of her brave, enduring son—a service to be renewed from day to day until the mosses and grasses grew again.

But there were still other services for the mate to render and as the bush-folk stood aside, none daring to trespass here, a rough wooden railing rose about the grave. Then the man packed his comrade's swag for the last time, and that done, came to the Maluka, as we stood under the house verandah, and held out two sovereigns in his open palm. The man was yet a stranger to the ways of the Never-Never.

"I'll have to ask for tick for meself for awhile," he said "But if that won't pay for all me mate's had there's another where they came from. He was always independent and would never take charity."

The hard lines about his mouth were very marked just then, and the outstretched hand seemed fiercely defiant but the Maluka reading in it only a man's proud care for a comrade's honour, put it gently aside, saying: "We give no charity here; only hospitality to our guests. Surely no man would refuse that."

They speak of a woman's delicate tact. But daily the bushman put the woman to shame, while she stood dumb or stammering. The Maluka had touched the one chord in the man's heart that was not strained to breaking point, and instantly the fingers closed over the sovereigns, and the defiant hand fell to his side, as with a husky "Not from your sort, boss," he turned sharply on his heel; and as he walked away a hand was brushed hastily across the weary eyes.

With that brushing of the hand the inevitable reaction began, and for a little while we feared we would have another sick traveller on our hand. But only for a little while. After a day or two of rest and care his strength came back, but his thoughts were ever of those seven years of steadfast comradeship. Simply and earnestly he spoke of them and of that mother, all unconscious of the heartbreak that was speeding only too surely to her. Poor mother! And yet those other two nameless graves on that little rise deep in the heart of the bush bear witness that other mothers have even deeper sorrows to bear. Their sons are gone from them, and they, knowing nothing of it, wait patiently through the long silent years for the word that can never come to them.

For a few days the man rested, and then, just when work—hard work—was the one thing needful, Dan came in for a consultation, and with him a traveller, the bearer of a message from our kind, great-hearted chief to say that work was waiting for the mate at the line party. Our chief was the personification of all that is best in the bush-folk (as all bushmen will testify to his memory)—men's lives crossed his by chance just here and there, but at those crossing places life have been happier and better. For one long weary day the mate's life had run parallel with our chief's, and because of that, when he left us his heart was lighter than ever we had dared to hope for. But this man was not to fade quite out of our lives, for deep in that loyal heart the Maluka had been enshrined as "one in ten thousand."



CHAPTER XVII

The bearer of the chief's message had also carried out all extra mail for us, and, opening it, we found the usual questions of the South folk.

"Whatever do you do with your time?" they all asked. "The monotony would kill me," some declared. "Every day must seem the same," said others: every one agreeing that life out-bush was stagnation, and all marvelling that we did not die of ennui.

"Whatever do you do with your time?" The day Neaves's mate left was devoted to housekeeping duties—"spring-cleaning," the Maluka called it, while Dan drew vivid word-pictures of dogs cleaning their own chains. The day after that was filled in with preparations for a walk-about, and the next again found us camped at Bitter Springs. Monotony! when of the thirty days that followed these three every day was alike only in being different from any other, excepting in their almost unvarying menu: beef and damper and tea for a first course, and tea and damper and jam for a second. They also resembled each other, and all other days out-bush, in the necessity of dressing in a camp mosquito net. "Stagnation!" they called it, when no day was long enough for its work, and almost every night found us camped a day's journey from our breakfast camp.

It was August, well on in the Dry, and on a cattle station in the Never-Never "things hum" in August. All the surface waters are drying up by then, and the outside cattle—those scattered away beyond the borders—are obliged to come in to the permanent waters, and must be gathered in and branded before the showers scatter them again.

We were altogether at the Springs: Dan, the Dandy, the Quiet Stockman, ourselves, every horse-"boy" that could be mustered, a numerous staff of camp "boys" for the Dandy's work, and an almost complete complement of dogs, Little Tiddle'ums only being absent, detained at the homestead this time with the cares of a nursery. A goodly company all told as we sat among the camp fires, with our horses clanking through the timber in their hobbles: forty horses and more, pack teams and relays for the whole company and riding hacks, in addition to both stock and camp horses for active mustering; for it requires over two hundred horses to get through successfully a year's work on a "little place like the Elsey."

Every one of the company had his special work to attend to; but every one's work was concerned with cattle, and cattle only. The musterers were to work every area of country again and again, and the Dandy's work began in the building of the much-needed yard to the north-west.

We breakfasted at the Springs all together, had dinner miles apart, and all met again at the Stirling for supper. Dan and ourselves dined also at the Stirling on damper and "push" and vile-smelling blue-black tea. The damper had been carried in company with some beef and tea, in Dan's saddle-pouch; the tea was made with the thick, muddy, almost putrid water of the fast-drying water hole, and the "push" was provided by force of circumstances, the pack teams being miles away with the plates, knives, and forks.

Out-bush we take the good with the bad as we find it; so we sat among towering white-ant hills, drinking as little of the tea as possible and enjoying the damper and "push" with hungry relish.

Around the Stirling are acres of red-coloured, queer-shaped uncanny white ant hills, and camped among these we sat, each served with a slice of damper that carried a smaller slice of beef upon it, providing the "push" by cutting off small pieces of the beef with a pen-knife, and "pushing" them along the damper to the edge of the slice, to be bitten off from there in hearty mouthfuls.

No butter, of course. In Darwin, eight months before we had tasted our last butter on ship-board, for tinned butter, out-bush, in the tropics, is as palatable as castor oil. The tea had been made in the Maluka's quart-pot, our cups having been carried dangling from our saddles, in the approved manner of the bush-folk.

We breakfasted at the Springs, surrounded by the soft forest beauty; ate our dinner in the midst of grotesque ant-hill scenery, and spent the afternoon looking for a lost water-hole.

The Dandy was to build his yard at this hole when it was found, but the difficulty was to find it. The Sanguine Scot had "dropped on it once," by chance, but lost his bearing later on. All we knew was that it was there to be found somewhere in that corner of the run—a deep permanent hole, "back in the scrub somewhere," according to the directions of the Sanguine Scot.

Of course the black boys could have found it; but it is the habit of black boys to be quite ignorant of the whereabouts of all lost or unknown waters, for when a black fellow is "wanted" he is looked for at water, and in his wisdom keeps any "water" he can a secret from the white folk, an unknown "water" making a safe hiding-place when it suits a black fellow to obliterate himself for a while.

Eventually we found our hole, after long wanderings and futile excursions up gullies and by-ways, riding always in single file, with the men in front to break down a track through scrub and grass, and the missus behind on old Roper.

"Like a cow's tail," Dan said, mentally reviewing the order of the procession, as, after dismounting, we walked round our find—a wide-spreading sheet of deep, clay—coloured water, snugly hidden behind scrubby banks.

As we clambered on, two bushmen all in white, a dog or two, and a woman in a holland riding-dress, the Maluka pointed out the inaptness of the simile.

"A cow's tail," he said, "is wanting in expression and takes no interest in its owner's hopes and fears," and suggested a dog's tail as a more happy comparison. "Has she not wagged along behind her owner all afternoon?" he asked, "drooping in sympathy whenever his hopes came to nothing; stiffening expectantly at other times, and is even now vibrating with pleasure in this his hour of triumph."

Bush-folk being old fashioned, no one raised any objection to the term "owner," as Dan chuckled over the amendment.

After thinking the matter well out, Dan decided he was "what you might call a tail-less tyke." "We've had to manage without any wagging, haven't we, Brown, old chap?" he said, unconscious of the note in his voice that told of lonely years and vague longings.

As Brown acknowledged this reference to himself, by stirring the circle of hairs that expressed his sentiments to the world, Dan further proved the expansiveness of the Maluka's simile.

"You might have noticed," he went on, "that when a dog does own a tail he generally manages to keep it out of the fight somehow." (In marriage as Dan had known it, strong men had stood between their women and the sharp cuffs and blows of life; "keeping her out of the fight somehow.") Then the procession preparing to re-form, as the Maluka, catching Roper, mounted me again, Dan completely rounded off the simile. "Dogs seem able to wrestle through somehow without a tail," he said, "but I reckon a tail 'ud have a bit of a job getting along without a dog." As usual, Dan's whimsical fancy had burrowed deep into the heart of a great truth; for, in spite of what "tails" may say, how few there are of us who have any desire to "get along without the dog."

We left the water-hole about five o'clock, and riding into the Stirling camp at sundown, found the Dandy there, busy at the fire, with a dozen or so of large silver fish spread out on green leaves beside him.

"Good enough!" Dan cried at the first sight of them, and the Dandy explained that the boys had caught "shoals of 'em" at his dinner-camp at the Fish Hole, assuring us that the water there was "stiff with 'em." But the Dandy had been busy elsewhere. "Good enough!" Dan had said at the sight of the fish, and pointing to a billy full of clear, sweet water that was just thinking of boiling, the Maluka echoed the sentiment if not the words.

"Dug a soakage along the creek a bit and got it," the Dandy explained; and as we blessed him for his thoughtfulness, he lifted up a clean cloth and displayed a pile of crisp Johnny cakes. "Real slap up ones," he assured us, breaking open one of the crisp, spongy rolls. It was always a treat to be in camp with the Dandy: everything about the man was so crisp and clean and wholesome.

As we settled down to supper, the Fizzer came shouting through the ant-hills, and, soon after, the Quiet Stockman rode into camp. Our Fizzer was always the Fizzer. "Managed to escape without help?" he shouted in welcome as he came to the camp fire, alluding to his promise "to do a rescue"; and then he surveyed our supper. "Struck it lucky, as usual," he declared, helping himself to a couple of fish from the fire and breaking open one of the crisp Johnny cakes. "Can't beat grilled fish and hot rolls by much, to say nothin' of tea." The Fizzer was one of those happy, natural people who always find the supply exactly suited to the demand.

But if our Fizzer was just our Fizzer, the Quiet Stockman was changing every day. He was still the Quiet Stockman, and always would be, speaking only when he had something to say, but he was learning that he had much to say that was worth saying, or, rather, much that others found worth listening to; and that knowledge was squaring his shoulders and bringing a new ring into his voice.

Around the camp fires we touched on any subject that suggested itself, but at the Stirling that night, four of us being Scotch, we found Scotland and Scotchmen an inexhaustible topic, and before we turned in were all of Jack's opinion, that "you can't beat the Scots." Even the Dandy and the Fizzer were converted; and Jack having realised that there are such things as Scotchwomen—Scotch-hearted women—a new bond was established between us.

No one had much sleep that night, and before dawn there was no doubt left in our mind about the outside cattle coming in. It seemed as though every beast on the run must have come in to the Stirling that night for a drink. Every water-hole out-bush is as the axis of a great circle, cattle pads narrowing into it like the spokes of a wheel, from every point of the compass, and along these pads around the Stirling mob after mob of cattle came in in single file, treading carelessly, until each old bull leader, scenting the camp, gave its low, deep, drawn-out warning call that told of danger at hand. After that rang out, only an occasional snapping twig betrayed the presence of the cattle as they crept cautiously in for the drink that must be procured at all hazards. But after the drink the only point to be considered was safety, and in a crashing stampede they rushed out into the timber. Till long after midnight they were at it, and as Brown and I were convinced that every mob was coming straight over our net, we spent an uneasy night. To make matters worse, just as the camp was settling down to a deep sleep after the cattle had finally subsided, Dan's camp reveille rang out.

It was barely three o'clock, and the Fizzer raised an indignant protest of: "Moonrise, you bally ass."

"Not it," Dan persisted, unfortunately bent on argument; "not at this quarter of the moon, and besides it was moonlight all evening," and, that being a strong peg to hang his argument on, investigating heads appeared from various nets. "Seem to think I don't know dawn when I see it," Dan added, full of scorn for the camp's want of observation; but before we had time to wither before his scorn, Jack turned the tables for us with his usual quiet finality. "That's the west you're looking at," he said. "The moon's just set"; and the curtain of Dan's net dropped instantly.

"Told you he was a bally ass," the Fizzer shouted in his delight, and promising Dan something later on, he lay down to rest.

Dan, however, was hopelessly roused. "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise without further reveille.

After breakfast we all separated again: the Dandy to his yard-building at the Yellow Hole, and the rest of us, with the cattle boys, in various directions, to see where the cattle were, each party with its team of horses, and carrying in its packs a bluey, an oilskin, a mosquito net, a plate, knife, and fork apiece, as well as a "change of duds" and a bite of tucker for all: the bite of tucker to be replenished with a killer when necessary, the change of duds to be washed by the boys also when necessary, and the plate to serve for all courses, the fastidious turning it over for the damper and jam course.

The Maluka spent one day with Dan beyond the "frontgate"—his tail wagging along behind as a matter of course—another day passed boundary-riding, inspecting water-holes, and doubling back to the Dandy's camp to see his plans; then, picking up the Quiet Stockman, we struck out across country, riding four abreast through the open forest-lands, and were camped at sundown, in the thick of the cattle, miles from the Dandy's camp, and thirty miles due north from the homestead. "Whatever do you do with your time?" asked the South folk.

Dan was in high spirits: cattle were coming in everywhere, and another beautiful permanent "water" had been discovered in unsuspected ambush. To know all the waters of a run is important; for they take the part of fences, keeping the cattle in certain localities; and as cattle must stay within a day's journey or so of water, an unknown water is apt to upset a man's calculations.

As the honour of finding the hole was all Dan's, it was named DS. in his honour, and we had waited beside it while he cut his initials deep into the trunk of a tree, deploring the rustiness of his education as he carved. The upright stroke of the D was simplicity itself, but after that complications arose.

"It's always got me dodged which way to turn the darned thing," Dan said, scratching faint lines both ways, and standing off to decide the question. We advised turning to the right, and the D was satisfactorily completed, but S proved the "dead finish," and had to be wrestled with separately.

"Can't see why they don't name a chap with something that's easily wrote," Dan said, as we rode forward, with our united team of horses and boys swinging along behind us, and M and T and O were quoted as examples. "Reading's always had me dodged," he explained. "Left school before I had time to get it down and wrestle with it."

"There's nothing like reading and writing," the Quiet Stockman broke in, with an earnestness that was almost startling; and as he sat that evening in the firelight poring over the "Cardinal's Snuff-box," I watched him with a new interest.

Jack's reading was very puzzling. He always had the same book—that "Cardinal's Snuff-box"—and pored over it with a strange persistence, that could not have been inspired by the book. There was no expression on his face of lively interest or pleasure, just an intent, dogged persistence; the strong, firm chin set as though he were colt-breaking. Gradually, as I watched him that night, the truth dawned on me: the man was trying to teach himself to read. The "Cardinal's Snuff-box"! and the only clue to the mystery, a fair knowledge of the alphabet learned away in a childish past. In truth, it takes a deal to "beat the Scots," or, what is even better, to make them feel that they are beaten.

As I watched, full of admiration, for the proud, strong character of the man, he looked up suddenly, and, in a flash, knew that I knew. Flushing hotly, he rose, and "thought he would turn in "; and Dan, who had been discussing education most of the evening, decided to "bottle off a bit of sleep too for next day's use," and opened up his swag.

"There's one thing about not being too good at the reading trick," he said, surveying his permanent property: "a chap doesn't need to carry books round with him to put in the spare time."

"Exactly," the Maluka laughed. He was Iying on his back, with an open book face downwards on his chest, looking up at the stars. He always had a book with him, but, book-lover as he was, it rarely got farther than his chest when we were in camp. Life out-bush is more absorbing than books.

"Of course reading's handy enough for them as don't lay much stock on education," Dan owned, stringing his net between his mosquito-pegs, then, struck with a new idea, he "wondered why the missus never carries books round. Any one 'ud think she wasn't much at the reading trick herself," he said. "Never see you at it, missus, when I'm round."

"Lay too much stock on education," I answered, and, chuckling, Dan retired into his net, little guessing that when he was "round," his own self, his quaint outlook on life, and the underlying truth of his inexhaustible, whimsical philosophy, were infinitely more interesting than the best book ever written.

But the Quiet Stockman seemed perplexed at the answer. "I thought reading 'ud learn you most things," he said, hesitating beside his own net; and before we could speak, the corner of Dan's net was lifted and his head reappeared. "I've learned a deal of things in my time," he chuckled, "but READING never taught me none of 'em." Then his head once more disappeared, and we tried to explain matters to the Quiet Stockman. The time was not yet ready for the offer of a helping hand.

At four in the morning we were roused by a new camp reveille of Star-light. "Nothing like getting off early when mustering's the game," Dan announced. By sun-up the musterers were away, and by sundown we were coming in to Bitter Springs, driving a splendid mob of cattle before us.

The Maluka and I had had nothing to do with the actual gathering in of the mob, for the missus had not "shaped" too well at her first muster and preferred travelling with the pack teams when active mustering was in hand. Ignominious perhaps, but safe, and safety counts for something in this world; anyway, for the poor craven souls. Riding is one thing; but crashing through timber and undergrowth, dodging overhanging branches, leaping fallen logs, and stumbling and plunging over crab-holed and rat-burrowed areas, to say nothing of charging bulls turning up at unexpected corners, is quite another story.

"Not cut out for the job," was Dan's verdict, and the Maluka covered my retreat by saying that he had more than enough to do without taking part in the rounding up of cattle. Had mustering been one of a manager's duties, I'm afraid the house would have "come in handy" to pack the dog away in with its chain.

As the yard of the Springs came into view, we were making plans for the morrow, and admiring the fine mattress swinging before us on the tails of the cattle; but there were cattle buyers at the Springs who upset all our plans, and left no time for the bang-tailing of the mob in hand.

The buyers were Chinese drovers, authorised by their Chinese masters to buy a mob of bullocks. "Want big mob," they said. "Cash! Got money here," producing a signed cheque ready for filling in.

A Chinese buyer always pays "cash" for a mob—by cheque—generally taking care to withdraw all cash from the bank before the cheque can be presented, and, as a result, a dishonoured cheque is returned to the station, reaching the seller some six or eight weeks after the sale. Six or eight weeks more then pass in demanding explanations, and six or eight more obtaining them, and after that just as many more as Chinese slimness can arrange for before a settlement is finally made. "Cash," the drover repeated insinuatingly at the Maluka's unfathomable "Yes ?" Then, certain that he was inspired, added, "Spot Cash!"

But already the Maluka had decided on a plan of campaign and, echoing the drover's "Spot Cash," began negotiations for a sale; and within ten minutes the drovers retired to their camp, bound to take the mob when delivered, and inwardly marvelling at the Maluka's simple trust.

Dan was appalled at it; but, always deferential where the Maluka's business insight was concerned, only "hoped he knew that them chaps needed a bit of watching."

"Their cash does," the Maluka corrected, to Dan's huge delight; and, leaving the musterers to go on with their branding work, culling each mob of its prime bullocks as they mustered, he set about finding some one to "watch the cash," and four days later rode into the Katherine Settlement, with Brown and the missus, as usual, at his heels.

We had spent one week out-bush, visiting the four points of the compass, half a day at the homestead packing a fresh swag; three days riding into the Katherine, having found incidental entertainment on the road, and on the fourth day were entering into an argument by wire with Chinese slimness. "The monotony would kill me," declared the townsfolk.

On the road in we had met the Village Settlement homeward bound—the bonnie baby still riding on its mother's knee, and smiling out of the depths of its sunbonnet; but every one else was longing for the bush. Darwin had proved all unsatisfying bustle and fluster, and the trackless sea, a wonder that inspired strange sickness when travelled over.

For four days the Maluka argued with Chinese slimness before he felt satisfied that his cash was in safe keeping while the Wag and others did as they wished with our spare time. Then, four days later, again Cheon and Tiddle'ums were hailing us in welcome at the homestead.

But their joy was short-lived, for as soon as the homestead affairs had been seen to, and a fresh swag packed, we started out-bush again to look for Dan and his bullocks, and, coming on their tracks at our first night camp, by following them up next morning we rode into the Dandy's camp at the Yellow Hole well after midday, to find ourselves surrounded by the stir and bustle of a cattle camp.

"Whatever do you do with your time?" ask the townsfolk, sure that life out-bush is stagnation, but forgetting that life is life wherever it may be lived.



CHAPTER XVIII

Only three weeks before, as we hunted for it through scrub and bush and creek-bed, the Yellow Hole had been one of our Unknown Waters, tucked snugly away in an out-of-the-way elbow of creek country, and now we found it transformed into the life-giving heart of a bustling world of men and cattle and commerce. Beside it stood the simple camp of the stockman—a litter of pack-bags, mosquito-nets, and swags; here and there were scattered the even more simple camps of the black boys; and in the background, the cumbrous camp of the Chinese drovers reared itself up in strong contrast to the camps of the bushfolk—two fully equipped tents for the drovers themselves and a simpler one for their black boys. West of the Yellow Hole boys were tailing a fine mob of bullocks, and to the east other "boys" were "holding" a rumbling mob of mixed cattle, and while Jack and Dan rode here and there shouting orders for the "cutting out" of the cattle, the Dandy busied himself at the fire, making tea as a refresher, before getting going in earnest, the only restful, placid, unoccupied beings in the whole camp being the Chinese drovers. Not made of the stuff that "lends a hand" in other people's affairs, they sat in the shade of their tents and looked on, well pleased that men should bustle for their advantage. As we rode past the drovers they favoured us with a sweet smile of welcome, while Dan met us with a chuckle of delight at the sweetness of their smile, and as Jack took our horses—amused both at the drovers' sweetness and Dan's appreciation of it—the Dandy greeted us with the news that we had "struck it lucky, as usual," and that a cup of tea would be ready in "half a shake."

Dan also considered we had "struck it lucky," but from a different point of view, for he had only just come into camp with the mixed cattle, and as the bullocks among them more than completed the number required, he suggested the drovers should take delivery at once, assuring us, as we drank the tea, that he was just about dead sick of them "little Chinese darlings."

The "little Chinese darlings," inwardly delighted that the Maluka's simple trust seemed as guileless as ever, smugly professed themselves willing to fall in with any arrangement that was pleasing to the white folk, and as they mounted their horses Dan heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

But Dan's satisfaction was premature, for it took time and much galloping before the "little Chinese darlings" could satisfy themselves and each other that they had the very finest bullocks procurable in their mob. A hundred times they changed their minds: rejecting chosen bullocks, recalling rejected bullocks, and comparing every bullock accepted with every bullock rejected. Bulk was what they searched for—plenty for their money, as they judged it, and finally gathered together a mob of coarse, wide-horned, great-framed beasts, rolling in fat that would drip off on the road as they travelled in.

"You'd think they'd got 'em together for a boiling-down establishment, with a bone factory for a side line," Dan chuckled, secretly pleased that our best bullocks were left on the run, and, disbanding the rejected bullocks before "they" could "change their minds again," he gathered together the mixed cattle and shut them in the Dandy's new yard, to keep them in hand for later branding.

But the "little Chinese darlings" had counted on the use of that yard for themselves, and finding that their bullocks would have to be "watched" on camp that night, they stolidly refused to take delivery before morning, pointing out that should the cattle stampede during the night, the loss would be ours, not theirs.

"Well, I'm blowed!" Dan chuckled, but the Maluka cared little whether the papers were signed then or at sun-up; and the drovers, pleased with getting their way so easily, magnanimously offered to take charge of the first "watch"—the evening watch—provided that only our horses should be used, and that Big Jack and Jackeroo and others should lend a hand.

Dan wouldn't hear of refusing the offer. "Bit of exercise'll do 'em good," he said; and deciding the bullocks would be safe enough with Jack and Jackeroo, we white folk stretched ourselves in the warm firelight after supper, and, resting, watched the shadowy mob beyond the camp, listening to the shoutings and gallopings of the watchers as we chatted.

When a white man watches cattle, if he knows his business he quiets his mob down and then opens them out gradually, to give them room to lie down, or ruminate standing without rubbing shoulders with a restless neighbour, which leaves him little to do beyond riding round occasionally, to keep his "boys" at their posts, and himself alert and ready for emergencies. But a Chinaman's idea of watching cattle is to wedge them into a solid body, and hold them huddled together like a mob of frightened sheep, riding incessantly round them and forcing back every beast that looks as though it might extricate itself from the tangle, and galloping after any that do escape with screams of anxiety and impotency.

"Beck! beck!" (back), screamed our drovers, as they galloped after escaped beasts, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles like half-filled water-bags; galloping invariably after the beasts, and thereby inciting there to further galloping. And "Beck! beck!" shouted our boys on duty with perfect mimicry of tone and yells of delight at the impotency of the drovers, galloping always outside the runaways and bending them back into the mob, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles until, in the half light, it was difficult to tell drover from "boy." Not detecting the mimicry, the drovers in no way resented it; the more the boys screamed and galloped in their service the better pleased they were; while the "boys" were more than satisfied with their part of the entertainment, Jackeroo and Big Jack particularly enjoying themselves.

"They'll have 'em stampeding yet," Dan said at last growing uneasy, as more and more cattle escaped, and the mob shifted ground with a rumbling rattle of hoofs every few minutes. Finally, as the rumbling rattle threatened to become permanent, a long drawn-out cry of "Ring—ing" from Big Jack sent Dan and the Quiet Stockman to their saddles. In ten minutes the hubbub had ceased, Dan's master-hand having soothed the irritated beasts; then having opened them out he returned to the camp fire alone. Jack had gone on duty before his time and sent the "little Chinese darlings" to bed.

Naturally Dan's cattle-tussle reminded him of other tussles with ringing cattle; then the cattle-camp suggesting other cattle-camp yarns, he settled down to reminiscences until he had us all cold thrills and skin-creeps, although we were gathered around a blazing fire.

Tale after tale he told of stampedes and of weaners piling up against fences. Then followed a tale or two of cattle Iying quiet as mice one minute, and up on their feet crashing over camps the next, then tales of men being "treed" or "skied," and tales of scrub-bulls, maddened cow-mothers, and "pokers."

"Pokers," it appears, have a habit of poking out of mobs, grazing quietly as they edge off until "they're gone before you miss 'em." Camps seem to have some special attraction for pokers, but we learned they object to interference. Poke round peaceful as cats until "you rile them," Dan told us, and then glided into a tale of how a poker "had us all treed once."

"Poked in a bit too close for our fancy while we were at supper," he explained, "so we slung sticks at him to turn him back to the mob, and the next minute was making for trees, but as there was only saplings handy, it would have been a bit awkward for the heavy weights if there hadn't have been enough of us to divide his attentions up a bit." (Dan was a good six feet, and well set up at that.) "Climbing saplings to get away from a stag isn't much of a game," he added, with a reminiscent chuckle; "they're too good at the bending trick. The farther up the sapling you climb, the nearer you get to the ground."

Then he favoured us with one of his word-pictures: "There was the sapling bending like a weeping willow," he said, "and there was the stag underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he could do anything for me, taking a poke at me boot now and then, just to show nothing would be no bother, and there was me, hanging on to the sapling, and leaning lovingly over him, telling him not to go hanging round, tiring himself out on my account; and there was the other chaps—all light weights—laughing fit to split, safe in their saplings. 'Twasn't as funny as it looked, though," he assured us, finding us unsympathetic, "and nobody was exactly sorry when one of the lads on duty came along to hear the fun, and stock-whipped the old poker back to the mob."

The Maluka and the Dandy soon proved it was nothing to be "treed." "Happens every time a beast's hauled out of a bog, from all accounts, that being the only thanks you get for hauling 'em out of the mess." Then Dan varied the recital with an account of a chap getting skied once who forgot to choose a tree before beginning the hauling business, and immediately after froze us into horror again with the details of two chaps "lying against an old rotten log with a mob of a thousand going over 'em "; and we were not surprised to hear that when they felt well enough to sit up they hadn't enough arithmetic left between 'em to count their bruises.

After an evening of ghost stories, a creaking door is enough to set teeth chattering; and after an evening of cattle-yarns, told in a cattle camp, a snapping twig is enough to set hair lifting; and just as the most fitting place for ghost stories is an old ruined castle, full of eerie noises, so there is no place more suited to cattle-camp yarns than a cattle camp. They need the reality of the camp-fire, the litter of camp baggage, the rumbling mob of shadowy cattle near at hand, and the possibilities of the near future—possibilities brought home by the sight of tethered horses standing saddled and bridled ready "in case of accidents."

Fit surroundings add intensity to all tales, just as it added intensity to my feelings when Dan advised the Maluka to swing our net near a low-branched tree, pointing out that it would "come in handy for the missus if she needed it in a hurry."

I favoured climbing the tree at once, and spending the night in it, but the men-folk assuring me that I would be "bound to hear them coming," I turned in, sure only of one thing, that death may come to the bush-folk in any form but ennui. Yet so adaptable are we bush-folk to circumstances that most of that night was oblivion.

At sun-up, the drovers, still sweetly smiling, announced that two bullocks had strayed during some one's watch. Not in theirs, they hastened to assure us, when Dan sniffed scornfully in the background.

But Dan's scorn turned to blazing wrath, when—the drovers refusing to replace the "strays" with cows from the mixed cattle in hand, and refusing also to take delivery of the bullocks, two beasts short—the musterers had to turn out to gather in a fresh mob of cattle for the sake of two bullocks. "Just as I was settling down to celebrate Sunday, too," Dan growled, as he and Jack rode out of camp.

Forty years out-bush had not been enough to stamp generations of Sabbath-keeping out of Dan's blood, although he was not particular which day of the week was set apart for his Sabbath. "Two in a fortnight" was all he worried about.

Fortune favouring the musterers, by midday all was peace and order; the drovers, placid and contented, had retired to their tents once more, reprieved from taking delivery for another day and night, and after dinner, as the "boys" tailed the bullocks and mixed cattle on the outskirts of the camp, to graze them, we settled down to "celebrate our Sabbath" by resting in the warm, dry shade.

Here and there upon the grassy incline that stretched between the camp and the Yellow Hole, we settled down each according to his taste; Dan with his back against a tree trunk and far-reaching legs spread out before him; the Maluka, Jak [sic], and the Dandy flat upon their backs, with bent-back folded arms for pillows, and hats drawn over eyes to shade them from the too dazzling sunlight; dogs, relaxed and spread out, as near to their master as permitted, and the missus "fixed up" in an opened-out, bent-back grassy tussock, which had thus been formed into a luxurious armchair. At the foot of the incline lay the Yellow Hole, gleaming and glancing in the sunshine; all around and about us were the bush creatures, rustling in the scrub and grasses—flies were conspicuous by their absence, here and there shafts of sunlight lay across the gray-brown shade; in the distance the grazing cattle moved among the timber; away out in the glorious sunshine, beyond and above the tree-tops, brown-winged, slender Bromli kites wheeled and circled and hovered and swooped; and lounging in the sun-flecked shade, well satisfied with our lot, we looked out into the blue, sunny depths, each one of us the embodiment of lazy contentment, and agreeing with Dan that "Sunday wasn't a bad institution for them as had no objection to doing a loaf now and then."

That suggesting an appropriate topic of conversation to Dan, for a little while we spoke of the Sabbath-keeping of our Scottish forefathers; as we spoke, idly watching the circling, wheeling Bromli kites, that seemed then as at all times, an essential part of the sunshine. To the bush-folk of the Never-Never, sunshine without Bromli kites would be as a summer's day without the sun. All day and every day they hover throughout it, as they search and wait and watch for carrion, throwing dim, gliding shadows as they wheel and circle, or flashing sunshine from brown wings by quick, sudden swoops, hovering and swooping throughout the sunshine, or rising to melt into blue depths of the heavens, where other arching, floating specks tell of myriads there, ready to swoop, and fall and gather and feast wherever their lowest ranks drop earthwards with the crows.

Lazily we watched the floating movement, and as we watched, conversation became spasmodic—not worth the energy required to sustain it—until gradually we slipped into one of those sociable silences of the bushfolk—silences that draw away all active thought from the mind, leaving it a sensitive plate ready to absorb impressions and thoughts as they flit about it, silences where every one is so in harmony with his comrades and surroundings that the breaking of them rarely jars—spoken words so often defining the half-absorbed thoughts.

Dimly conscious of each other, of the grazing cattle the Bromli kites, the sweet scents and rustling sounds of the bush, of each other's thoughts and that the last spoken thought among us had been Sabbath-keeping, we rested, idly, NOT thinking, until Dan's voice crept into the silence.

"Never was much at religion meself," he said, lazily altering his position, "but Mrs. Bob was the one to make you see things right off." Lazily and without stirring we gave our awakened attention, and after a quiet pause the droning Scotch voice went on, too contented to raise itself above a drone: "Can't exactly remember how she put it; seemed as though you'd only got to hoe your own row the best you can, and lend others a hand with theirs, and just let God see after the rest."

Quietly, as the droning voice died away, we slipped back into our silence, lazily dreaming on, with Dan's words lingering in our minds, until, in a little while, it seemed as though the dancing tree-tops, the circling Bromli kites, every rustling sound and movement about us, had taken them up and were shouting them to the echo. "How much you will be able to teach the poor, dark souls of the stockmen," a well-meaning Southerner had said, with self-righteous arrogance; and in the brilliant glory of that bush Sabbath, one of the "poor, dark souls" had set the air vibrating with the grandest, noblest principles of Christianity summed up into one brief sentence resonant with its ringing commands: Hoe your own row the best you can. Lend others a hand with theirs. Let God see to the rest.

Men there are in plenty out-bush, "not much at religion," as they and the world judge it, who have solved the great problem of "hoeing their own rows" by the simple process of leaving them to give others a hand with theirs; men loving their neighbours as themselves, and with whom God does the rest, as of old. "Be still, and know that I am God," is still whispered out of the heart of Nature, and those bushmen, unconsciously obeying, as unconsciously belong to that great simple-hearted band of worshippers, the Quakers; men who, in the hoeing of their own rows have ever lived their lives in the ungrudging giving of a helping hand to all in need, content that God will see to the rest.

Surely the most scrupulous Quaker could find no fault with the "Divine Meeting" that God was holding that day: the long, restful preparation of silence; that emptying of all active thought from the mind; that droning Scotch voice, so perfectly tuned to our mood, delivering its message in a language that could pierce to the depths of a bushman's heart; and then silence again—a silence now vibrating with thought. As gradually and naturally as it had crept upon us, that silence slipped away, and we spoke of the multitude of sounds and creatures about us, until, seeing deeper and deeper into Dan's message every moment, we learned that each sound and creature was hoeing its own row as it alone knew how, and, in the hoeing, was lending all others a hand with theirs, as they toiled in the Mighty Row of the Universe, each obedient to the great law of the Creator that all else shall be left to Him, as through them He taught the world that no man liveth to himself alone.

"You will find that a woman alone in a camp of men is decidedly out of place," the Darwin ladies had said; and yet that day, as at all times, the woman felt strangely and sweetly in place in the bushmen's camp. "A God-forsaken country," others of the town have called the Never-Never, because the works of men have not yet penetrated into it. Let them look from their own dark alleys and hideous midnights into some or all of the cattle camps out-bush, or, better still, right into the "poor dark souls'" of the bush-folk themselves—if their vision is clear enough—before they judge.

Long before our midnight had come, the camp was sleeping a deep, sound sleep—those who were not on watch—a dreamless sleep, for the bullocks were peaceful and ruminating, the Chinese drovers having been "excused" from duty lest other beasts should stray during "some one's" watch.

Soon after sun-up the head drover formally accepted the mob, and, still inwardly marvelling at the Maluka's trust, filled in his cheque, and, blandly smiling, watched while the Maluka made out receipts and cancelled the agreement. Then, to show that he dealt little in simple trust, he carried the receipts and agreement in private and in turn, to Dan, and Jack, and the Dandy, asking each if all were honestly made out.

Dan looked at the papers critically ("might have been holding them upside down for all I knew," he said later), and assured the drover that all was right. "Which was true" he added also later, "seeing the boss made 'em out." Dan dealt largely in simple trust where the boss was concerned. Jack, having heard Dan's report, took his cue from it and passed the papers as "just the thing "; but the Dandy read out every word in them in a loud, clear voice, to his own amusement and the drovers' discomfiture.

The papers having been thus proved satisfactory, the drovers started their boys with the bullocks, before giving their attention to the packing up of their camp baggage, and we turned to our own affairs.

As the Dandy's new yard was not furnished yet with a draughting lane and branding pens, the mixed cattle were to be taken to the Bitter Springs yard; and by the time Jack had been seen off with them and our own camp packed up, the drovers had become so involved in baggage that Dan and the Dandy felt obliged to offer assistance. Finally every one was ready to mount, and then we and the drovers exchanged polite farewells and parted, seller and buyer each confident that he knew more about the cash for that cheque than the other. No doubt the day came when those drovers ceased to marvel at the Maluka's simple trust.

The drovers rode away to the north-west, and as we set out to the south-east, Dan turned his back on "them little darlings" with a sigh of relief. "Reckon that money's been earned, anyway," he said. Then, as Jackeroo was the only available "boy," the others all being on before with the cattle, we gathered together our immense team of horses and drove them out of camp. In open order we jogged along across country, with Jackeroo riding ahead as pilot, followed by the jangling, straggling team of pack- and loose horses, while behind the team rode the white folk all abreast, with six or eight dogs trotting along behind again. For a couple of hours we jogged along in the tracks of Jack's cattle, without coming up with them, then, just as we sighted the great rumbling mob, a smaller mob appeared on our right.

"Run 'em into the mob," Dan shouted; and at his shout every man and horse leapt forward—pack-horses and all—and went after them in pell-mell disorder.

"Scrub bulls! Keep behind them!" Dan yelled giving directions as we stampeded at his heels (it is not all advantage for musterers to ride with the pack-team) then as we and they galloped straight for Jack's mob every one yelled in warning: "Hi! look out there! Bulls! Look out," until Dan's revolver rang out above the din.

Jack turned at the shot and saw the bulls, but too late. Right through his mob they galloped, splitting it up into fragments, and in a moment pack-horses, cattle, riders, bulls, were part of a surging, galloping mass—boys galloping after bulls, and bulls after boys, and the white folk after anything and everything, peppering bulls with revolver-shots (stock-whip having no effect), shouting orders, and striving their utmost to hold the mob; pack and loose horses galloping and kicking as they freed themselves from the hubbub; and the missus scurrying here and there on the outskirts of the melee, dodging behind bushes and scrub in her anxiety to avoid both bulls and revolver-shots. Ennui forsooth! Never was a woman farther from death by ennui.

Finally the horses gathered themselves together in the friendly shelter of some scrub, and as the woman sought safety among them, the Maluka's rifle rang out, and a charging bull went down before it. Then out of the thick of the uproar Sambo came full gallop, with a bull at his horse's heels, and Dan full gallop behind the bull, bringing his rifle to his shoulder as he galloped, and as all three galloped madly on Dan fired, and the bull pitching blindly forward, Sambo wheeled, and he and Dan galloped back to the mob to meet another charging outlaw and deal with it.

Then in quick succession from all sides of the mob bulls darted out with riders at THEIR heels, or riders shot forward with bulls at their heels, until the mob looked like a great spoked wheel revolving on its own axis. Bull after bull went down before the rifles, old Roper, with the Maluka riding him, standing like a rock under fire; and then, just as the mob was quieting down, a wild scrub cow with a half-grown calf at her heels shot out of the mob and headed straight for the pack team, Dan galloping beside her and cracking thunderclaps out of a stock-whip. Flash and I scuttled to shelter, and Dan, bending the cow back to the mob, shouted as he passed by, at full gallop: "Here you are, missus; thought you might like a drop of milk."

For another five minutes the mob was "held" to steady them a bit before starting, and then, just as all seemed in order, one of the prostrate bulls staggered to its feet—anything but dead; and as a yell went up "Look out, boss! look out!" Roper sprang forward in obedience to the spurs, just too late to miss a sudden, mad lunge from the wounded outlaw, and the next moment the bull was down with a few more shots in him, and Roper was receiving a tribute that only he could command.

With that surging mob of cattle beside them, the Maluka and Dan had dismounted, and were trying to staunch the flow of blood, while black boys gathered round, and Jack and the Dandy, satisfied that the injuries were not "too serious," were leaning over from their saddles congratulating the old horse on having "got off so easy." The wound fortunately, was in the thigh, and just a clean deep punch for, as by a miracle, the bull's horn had missed all tendons and as the old campaigner was led away for treatmen he disdained even to limp, and was well within a fortnight.

"Passing the time of day with Jack," Dan called the scrimmage; as we left the field of battle and looking back we found that already the Bromli kites were closing in and sinking and settling earthwards towards the crows who were impatiently waiting our departure—waiting to convert the erst raging scrub bulls into white, bleaching bones.

Travelling quicker than the cattle, we were camped and at dinner at "Abraham's"—another lily-strewn billabong—when the mob came in, the thirsty brutes travelling with down-drooping heads and lowing deeply and incessantly. Their direction showing that they would pass within a few yards of our camp fire, on their way to the water, as a matter of course I stood up, and Dan, with a chuckle, assured me that they had "something else more important on than chivying the missus."

But the recollection of that raging mob was too vividly in mind, and the cattle beginning to trot at the sight of the water, decided against them, and the next moment I was three feet from the ground, among the low-spreading branches of a giant Paper-bark. Jackeroo was riding ahead, and flashed one swift, sidelong glance after me but as the mob trotted by he trotted with them as impassive as a statue.

But we had by no means done with Jackeroo; for as we sat in camp that night at the Springs, with the cattle safe in the yard, shouts of laughter from the "boys'" camp attracted our attention, and we found Jackeroo the centre-piece of the camp, preparing to repeat some performance. For a second or so he stood irresolute; then, clutching wildly at an imaginary something that appeared to encumber his feet, with a swift, darting run and a scrambling clamber, he was into the midst of a sapling; then, our silence attracting attention, the black world collapsed in speechless convulsions.

"How the missus climbed a tree, little 'un," the Maluka chuckled; and the mimicry of action had been so perfect that we knew it could only be that. Every detail was there: the moment of indecision, the wild clutch at the habit, the quick, feminine lift of the running feet, and the indescribably feminine scrambling climb at the finish.

In that one swift, sidelong glance every movement had been photographed on Jackeroo's mind, to be reproduced later on for the entertainment of the camp with that perfect mimicry characteristic of the black folk.

And it was always so. Just as they had "beck-becked" and bumped in their saddles with the Chinese drovers, so they imitated every action that caught their fancy, and almost every human being that crossed their path—riding with feet outspread after meeting one traveller; with toes turned in, in imitation of another; flopping, or sitting rigidly in their saddles, imitating actions of hand and turns of the head; anything to amuse themselves, from riding side-saddle to climbing trees.

Jackeroo being "funny man" in the tribe, was first favourite in exhibitions; but we could get no further pantomime that night, although we heard later from Bett-Bett that "How the missus climbed a tree" had a long run.

The next day passed branding the cattle, and the following as we arrived within sight of the homestead, Dan was congratulating the Maluka on the "missus being without a house," and then he suddenly interrupted himself "Well, I'm blest!" he said. "If we didn't forget all about bangtailing that mob for her mattress."

We undoubtedly had, but thirty-three nights, or thereabouts, with the warm, bare ground for a bed, had made me indifferent to mattresses, and hearing that Dan became most hopeful of "getting her properly educated" yet.

Cheon greeted us with his usual enthusiasm, and handed the Maluka a letter containing a request for a small mob of bullocks within three weeks.

"Nothing like keeping the ball rolling,", Dan said, also waxing enthusiastic, while the South-folk remained convinced that life out-bush is stagnation.



CHAPTER XIX

Dan and the Quiet Stockman went out to the north-west immediately, to "clean up there" before getting the bullocks together; but the Maluka, settling down to arrears of bookkeeping, with the Dandy at his right hand, Cheon once more took the missus under his wing feeding her up and scorning her gardening efforts.

"The idea of a white woman thinking she could grow water-melons," he scoffed, when I planted seeds, having decided on a carpet of luxuriant green to fill up the garden beds until the shrubs grew. The Maluka advised "waiting," and the seeds coming up within a few days, Cheon, after expressing surprise, prophesied an early death or a fruitless life.

Billy Muck, however, took a practical interest in the water-melons, and to incite him to water them in our absence, he was made a shareholder in the venture. As a natural result, the Staff, the Rejected, and the Shadows immediately applied for shares—pointing out that they too carried water to the plants—and the water-melon beds became the property of a Working Liability Company with the missus as Chairman of Directors.

The shadows were as numerous as ever, the rejected on the increase, but the staff was, fortunately, reduced to three for the time being; or, rather, reduced to two, and increased again to three: Judy had been called "bush" on business, and the Macs having got out in good time.

Bertie's Nellie and Biddie had been obliged to resign and go with the waggons, under protest, of course, leaving Rosy and Jimmy's Nellie augmented by one of the most persistent of all the shadows—a tiny child lubra, Bett-Bett.

Most of us still considered Bett-Bett one of the shadows but she persisted that she was the mainstay of the staff. "Me all day dust 'im paper, me round 'im up goat" she would say. "Me sit down all right".

She certainly excelled in "rounding-up goat," riding the old Billy like a race-horse; and with Rosy filling the position of housemaid to perfection, Jimmy's Nellie proving invaluable in her vigorous treatment of the rejected and the wood-heap gossip filling in odd times, life so far as it was dependent on black folk—was running on oiled wheels: the house was clean and orderly, the garden flourished; and as the melons grew apace, throwing out secondary leaves in defiance of Cheon's prophecies, Billy Muck grew more and more enthusiastic, and, usurping the position of Chairman of the Directors, he inspired the shareholders with so much zeal that the prophecies were almost fulfilled through a surfeit of watering. But Cheon's attitude towards the water-melons did not change, although he had begun to look with favour upon mail-matter and station books, finding in them a power that could keep the Maluka at the homestead.