CHAPTER 6

The loafers at the bar all came out to see the start. The family on the top of the bullock-dray peered forth from under the tilt. The barkeeper shouted, 'Good luck to you and your lady, Mr McKeith.' The drunken reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, 'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, 'Thank ye—Good day, mates,' a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies—the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in the train from Leuraville.

Three of these men lurched on to the bar veranda, and, so to speak, took the stage. In front was a stumpily-built bullock driver with a red, truculent face, a ragged carrotty beard and inflamed narrow-ridded eyes. A little to the rear stood a lanky, muscular bushman in very dirty moleskins, with a smooth loose-lipped face, no eyelashes, and a scowling forehead, who was evidently the worse for drink; next to him, a shorter man of the drover type, older, eagle-beaked and with sinister, foxy eyes. This one hailed McKeith.

'Yah! Look at him and his spanking team! What price honest labour, you blamed scab of a squatter? Just you wait a bit. It'll be our turn soon to burn all you blanked capitalists off the Leura.'

The lanky bushman took up the jeering note.

'Pretty flash turn-out, ain't it! My word, you think yourself a bloated fine gentleman now you've married into the British hairystocracy, don't you, Mister Colin McKeith? You can take it from us, boys, he's the meanest cuss that ever downed a harmless nigger.... Ask him what the twenty-five notches on his gun stand for?'

'And I tell YOU what it is, Steve Baines. There'll be another notch on my gun, and it won't be for a nigger, if you give me any more of your insolence,' said McKeith coolly. 'Get out of the way, men. Let the horses go, Cudgee. Ready, Biddy?'

But Cudgee, out of malice or stupidity, did not let the roans go or else someone else put a restraining hand on the reins. The man with the ragged beard roared out.

'Ho, you think you're going to ride over us!—you and your fine ladyship! Wot do we care about the British hairystocracy. What we're asking for is the rights of labour, and we mean to have 'em. Do you want to know what he's done to us boys? Fired us out straight away cos we was 'avin' a bit of a spell and a drink to keep the life in us after we'd close up killed ourselves lifting that there ladyship's blanked hundred-ton weight of pianner on to the dray....'

Moongarr Bill's chivalrous instinct flamed to a counter attack. He had just mounted, but swung down from his saddle and made a rush at the speaker. McKeith's stern voice stopped him.

'Don't be a fool, Bill. Let the brutes alone and push on with the pack. This is not the time for a row. As for you, Jim Steadbolt—you know me, and you know that if this was any other sort of occasion, you'd pay on the nail for your infernal cheek.... Leave go of those reins. D'ye hear'; for the man of the ragged beard was jerking the near leader's bit and putting the mettlesome animal on its haunches.

'Damn you! Let go.'

He leaned forward to strike at Steadbolt with his riding whip, but the lash had caught round the pole-bar of the buggy, and he could not extricate it. Bridget tried to help him. He turned to her for an instant, a soft gleam of tenderness shining through the steely anger on his face.

'No. Keep still, my dear. Don't be frightened.'

'I frightened!' She gave a little laugh. Her form stiffened. The small pale face poked forward between the folds of her motor veil, and all the O'Hara spirit flashed as she spoke to the group of malcontents.

'How dare you! Stand back. I thought Australian men were men, and that they didn't insult women.'

There was an uproar in the veranda, and more cries of 'Shame, Steadbolt, you! ... You just git, Gumsucker Steve. We ain't got no use for you, Micky Phayle.... Can't you see a lady as is a lady?' sounded from the bar and parlour. It was the landlady who asked the last question. The two reprobates who had been asleep, lunged off the veranda, and made a feeble assault on Steadbolt, who still clung to the reins. The man, lashed to fury by the scorn ringing in Lady Bridget's voice, made a last envenomed attack.

'It ain't us GENUINE Australians that insults you.... Takes a mongrel Scotchy for that.... Say, Ladyship, just you ask your husband what a sort of an insult he's got ready for YOU up at his Bachelor's Quarters at Moongarr.'

The words had not left his mouth when McKeith's driving whip whizzed in the air and raised blood on the speaker's cheek. Steadbolt dropped his hold of the roan leader's bridle and fell back screaming imprecations. At a touch, the buggy-horses bounded forward.

'Sit tight, Biddy,' said her husband. 'Up you get, Cudgee,' he shouted. The black boy leaped to the back-seat, and in a moment the buggy swerved by the bullock-dray that was drawn up a little further down the road, and the excited horses galloped past the nineteen public houses and the zinc-roofed shanties, past the new quarter of tents and whirring machinery, past the deserted shafts and desolate mullock heaps, then way out along the sandy wheel-track into the unpopulated Bush.

For the first mile scarcely a word was exchanged between husband and wife. The horses were fresh and McKeith had enough to do to keep them from bolting. Moreover, even in emotional phases, he was always silent while chewing the cud of his reflections. Bridget was thinking, too. She had an uneasy sense of startlement, without exactly knowing why she felt startled in that inward way. It was as though some great obscene bird of flight had brushed her with its wings, and brought vaguely to her consciousness unpleasant possibilities. But presently she became interested in watching Colin's handling of the team. She had often sat behind such a team, but never beside such a splendid whip. Impulsively she made some such remark, and he looked down at her, the hard face breaking into a smile.

'That's good.... Wait a bit, my dear, until they've steadied down again.... Y'see they take a lot of driving, and I don't want to lay an accident on top of that unholy shindy....' He spoke in jerks. The roans were inclined to 'show nasty' as Moongarr Bill came abreast of them, and Wombo's pack jingled behind. McKeith gave Moongarr Bill directions about the camp in Bush lingo, which again turned Bridget's thoughts. The black boy and the stockman spurred on as the roans slackened pace. McKeith was able to relax the strain.

'My word! we scooted pretty quick out of that piece of scenery,' he said. 'I felt downright mad at your being let in for such a disgraceful bit of business. I hadn't time to tell you that I'd sacked those men half an hour before. Found them in the lowest of the grog shanties, their horses not looked after, dray only half loaded, and the three of them—Gumsucker Steve was to have come and taken off our leaders when we got into broken country—thick with the Union delegates and sticking for higher wages. I paid them off and filled their places on the spot with two chaps off a wool-drive.... So I left the brutes vowing vengeance, and I suppose they thought they'd lose no time in giving me a taste of it.... Well, they're no loss.' He had been explaining things in jerks while he brought the team to an harmonious jog-trot along a piece of uneven road. 'That fellow Steadbolt is a wrong 'un—not good even at his own job of wood and water joey—which means, my dear, the odd cart-driving on a place—and not to be trusted within ten miles of a public house.'

Lady Bridget asked suddenly:

'I want to know, Colin—what did that man mean by saying you had an insult ready for me at your Bachelor's Quarters? What insult?'

It seemed as though blue fire leaped from McKeith's eyes.

'Insult! Good God! Biddy you can't hold me responsible for the foul insinuations of a beast like that. Insult YOU! my wife!'

The passionate tenderness thrilling his voice, the honest wrath and bewilderment in his face must have silenced any doubt, had doubt existed in Lady Bridget's mind.

'I don't know, Colin. I don't even know what Bachelors' Quarters mean. Have you an army of Bachelors at Moongarr, and what do they do when they're at home?'

He laughed. 'It's a shanty I put up for the new-chums when I've got any—and for the gentlemen-sun-downers that come along, and visitors that I don't want to be bothered with at the House. There's a woman up there....' He stopped suddenly and his face grew grim again. 'That's it, I suppose—I'm sorry I didn't sling the whip harder and cut the fellow's cheek open. I would if I'd thought....!'

He stopped again.

'What woman? Have I a rival? This is becoming dramatic!' Lady Bridget's voice was amusedly ironic, but she carried her head erect. 'Tell me about the woman at the Bachelors' Quarters, Colin.'

'There's nothing to tell, except that's she's the widow of a man who went up with me on my last Big Bight expedition, and was killed—partly through his own, and partly through my, fault. That's why I've made a point of looking after her, and I built my Bachelor's Quarters chiefly to give her a job. I thought she was too young and too good looking to be drawing grog for diggers at Fig Tree Mount—which was what she set out doing.'

'I see.... So she's young—and handsome.'

'Oh, in a coarse sort of way.... No, I wouldn't say that; she's rather refined for her upbringing. Anyway, Steadbolt as well as a lot of other men fell in love with her—Steadbolt was pretty well off his head over it. She wouldn't have him at any price—naturally—and I had to give the fellow work outside the head-station to keep him away from her. That was before I went south. Very likely he's been trying it on again, and knew I should have to get rid of him as soon as I came back.'

'Why doesn't the woman marry again?'

McKeith shrugged. 'Too jolly comfortable perhaps—or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up. Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though—and before you! The man must have been downright mad from drink and fury and bitterness. It—it's all funny—isn't it? One of the queer sides of the Bush. Good old Bush! I am glad to be back in it again, Biddy.'

He lifted his head and seemed to draw in the strong odour of the gum trees and the pure vitality of the weltering sun. His anger appeared to have left only compunction behind it. And again he begged her to forgive him for having subjected her to an experience so disagreeable. They were on a stretch of clear road now, and the roans trotted pleasantly along. Lady Bridget took up his words.

'Yes, it's all funny—that kind of thing—in this setting.... I never supposed that I should be howled at by a revolutionary mob in the Australian Bush.... A BAS LES ARISTOCRATS. It's quite exciting. I think I should have enjoyed the Reign of Terror.'

'Eh! You're only frightened of four-footed beasts. If you'd lived then, you'd have gone up to the block with that smile on your lips, and the proud turn of your little head—just as I used to dream of you...'

'Of ME!'

'You don't know—I'll tell you some day. I remember talking to Joan Gildea once.... It's queer.... But never mind now. D'ye like this, Biddy?'

'I love it. I wish we could drive on through the forest all day and all night—a dream drive. I think I might be able to place myself at the end of it.'

'To place yourself!'

'I've never been able to find my true pivot inside. All my life I've been howling in my soul and haven't known what I was howling for. I thought to-day that you might teach me.'

'Is it only to-day that you have thought that?' he said wistfully. 'Well, anyway, I'm glad of it.'

'Colin,' she said abruptly, 'wasn't it funking a little bit, don't you think—running away?'

'No—not with YOU beside me. You'll have other opportunities for seeing whether I've got much of the funker in me. No doubt those brutes will give trouble some time.'

'What can they do?'

'Fire my run—spoil my cattle sales—get hold of my stockmen....But I'm not so badly off as my "sheep" neighbours at Breeza Downs. They've got to have their shearing done.... Though I've had a lot of bother to-day,' his face became gloomy, 'and I foresee more ahead.'

She asked what other sort of trouble.

'Why! there's been no rain at Moongarr since I left it five months ago. And Pleuro means innoculation and short sales.... Ah well! ...'

He flicked the wheelers gently. 'Shake it up, Alexander! Look alive, Roxalana.... I named 'em when I was reading ROLLIN'S ANCIENT HISTORY, my dear ... my dear!' He looked down at the little woman by his side with deep tenderness in his blue eyes and a smile that banished the shade from his face. 'Oh, my dear, there ain't going to be any bush worries for us this blessed afternoon and evening. It's the poetry and romance'—he pronounced it romance—'of the bush that's got hold of me now. I'm just longing for us to strike the camping place—and then—just you and me together—just man and woman—alone with Nature!'

He put his hand on hers and she pressed it in return. The Woman in her thrilled to the Man in him.

Cudgee, on the hind seat with his back to them, broke the spell.

'My word, Massa! You look out, Mithsis—big feller goanner sit down along a tree.' And for the first time in her existence, Lady Bridget beheld a monster iguana dragging its huge lizard tail and turning its stately, brown crocodile head round at her from the safe vantage place of a thick gum branch.

After that, the way led off the main road, on by a less used track through wilder country. Here Wombo, the black boy, was waiting—Moongarr Bill having gone on with the pack horse to the camping place—and helped to unharness the two leaders which he drove before him ahead. The trees thickened, the buggy wheels caught on stumps. Cudgee had to get down at intervals and, with his axe, lop and clear fallen timber. Every mile the progress grew slower and the forest more lonely. No sign now of a selector's clearing, or of any human occupation.... But there was a pack of emus hustling and shaking their big bunches of feathers like startled ballet girls.

'I feel as if part of the Zoo had been let loose,' said Lady Bridget when again there bounded along in the near distance a pair of kangaroos with a little Joey kangaroo taking a lesson in locomotion behind its parents.

They were still in the gum forest, but now and then came a belt of gidia scrub—mournful trees with stiff black trunks and grey green foliage and a pale sort of wattle flower smelling like dead cattle when rain is about, as McKeith explained. But there was no rain about now, and, in truth, he would have welcomed the unpleasant odour. Perhaps it was that which made the ground so stark and bare beneath these trees where no grass will grow. The sun was lowering when they left the gidia. Out in the gum forest again, the birds were chattering before retiring to rest. All life is still in the bush at mid-day, but now there were curious scutterings among the grass tussocks, and the whirr of its insect population sounded all round. The country got prettier—swelling pastures and stony pinches and a distant outline of hills. They could see the green line of a water course.

'Plenty water sit down along a creek?' McKeith asked the black boy. But Cudgee shook his woolly head.

'Ba'al* mine think it, Massa. No rain plenty long time.'

[*ba'al—the Aboriginal negative.]

McKeith sighed. The dark shadow of coming drought is a fearsome spectre on the Never-Never Land.

CHAPTER 7

A COO-EE sounded long, clear, vibrant. Moongarr Bill and Wombo, who had gone on ahead, were fixing camp. Lady Bridget's musical voice caught up the note. She answered it with another COO-EE, to Cudgee's delight.

'My word! Ba'al newchum, that feller white Mary,' said he.

They had rounded a knoll abutting on the green line of ti-trees and swamp oak. It was a barren hump; upon its crest, and alone in barbaric majesty, stood a row of grass trees silhouetted against the sunset sky. Weird sentinels of the bridal camp they seemed—tall, thick black trunks like palm-stems, from each of which spread an enormous tuft of gigantic grass blades green and upright in the middle, grey and jaggled and drooping where they hung over at the bottom. Out of each green heart sprang a great black spear many feet in height.

The stony knoll dropped sheer like a wall. On the other side of it was a space the size of an amphitheatre, a large part of it spread with soft green grass, like a carpet, and the rest of the floor scattered with low shrubs and big tussocks. Amongst them was a herb giving out a fragrance, when the feet crushed it, like that of wild thyme. The whole air seemed filled with a blend of aromatic perfumes.

Here was a roofless room, open on one side where a break in the ti-trees showed the sandy bed of the creek, which, at first, to Lady Bridget's fancy, had the appearance of a broad shallow stream. On this side, low rocks with ferns growing in their crannies, edged the stream. On the opposite shore, one giant eucalyptus stood by itself and cast its shadow across. Beyond, lay the gum-peopled immensity of the bush. The stony walls of the knoll, curving inward and sheltering a thick growth of ferns and scrubby vegetation, closed in the bridal chamber. Creepers festooned the rocky ledges and crevices. Here and there, a young sapling slanted forward to greet the morning sun when it should rise behind the hummock.

Moongarr Bill had undone the pack-bags and was building a fire between two large stones. The flames leaped up, the dead twigs crackled. Long years after, Lady Bridget could recall vividly the smell of the dry burning gum leaves—her first experience of a bush campfire.

Close to the fire, under the flank of the rocky knoll the tent was pitched, a roll of blankets and oilskin thrown just within it.

Presently, from the hummock above came the sound of Cudgee's axe. He had felled the youngest of the grass-trees, and was now chopping off its green tuft. Soon he appeared, carrying a huge bunch of the coarse blades of foliage, which he brought to the tent. With an odd mixture of emotions, Lady Bridget watched her husband take the grass tops from the black boy and spread them carefully on the floor of the tent, heaping up and smoothing the mass into a bed, upon which he laid the oilskin and then one of the blankets—they were new white blankets, fresh from the store. After that, he set the cushions from the buggy, covering them with the rug, at the head of the couch, making a bolster, and, over that, the one she had had at her back.

'No down pillows or linen sheets allowed in a bush camp-out, my lady Biddy,' he said with a laugh, a half timorous glance at his wife, but her answering smile reassured him.

'You'll never sleep on a sweeter bed,' he said, sniffing the resinous fragrance of the grass-tree tops. He would not let her help him with the upper blankets when she wished to lend a hand.

'No, this camp is my own show. Go and look at the scenery until I've got our wigwam in order.'

And she submissively obeyed.

Against the other side of the rock wall, the black boys had built a second fire. The horses were hobbled and grazing along the green border of the creek. The buggy propped up, was covered with a tarpaulin. The pack-bags had disgorged their contents. A miscellaneous heap of camp properties lay on the ground. And now, Cudgee's axe was at work again, stripping a section of bark from a gum tree, for what purpose Lady Bridget did not divine.

She walked down to the creek and stood among the rocks at its edge. She had expected a rippling stream, and, to her disappointment, saw only a broad strip of dry sand, along which Moongarr Bill was mooching, a spade in his hand.

'What are we going to do for water?' she exclaimed.

'Dig for it, my ladyship,' answered Moongarr Bill. 'That's one of the upside-down things in 'Stralia. Here's two of them—mighty queer, come to think of it—the rivers that run underground and the cherries that grow with their stones outside.'

Lady Bridget observed that she was already acquainted with that oft-quoted botanical phenomenon. In her rides around Leichardt's Town she had been shown and had tasted the disagreeable little orange berry which has a hard green knob at the end of it and is, for some ironical reason, called a cherry. She also told Moongarr Bill that in England she had seen a dowser searching for hidden springs by means of a forked hazel twig carried in front of him which pointed downwards where there was water and asked why Australians didn't adopt a similar method. At which Moongarr Bill laughed derisively, and said he did not hold with any such hanky-panky.

'Bad luck, Biddy,' McKeith said behind her. 'If there had been the proper amount of rain in these last three or four months, we'd have had the one thing that's wanting now to make this the ideal camp I've had on the top of my fancy—a running creek of pure water. But never mind—the water's there, though you can't see it.... That's got it, Bill!'

For already the sand was darkening and moisture was oozing in the hole Moongarr Bill had been digging, and which he widened gradually into a respectable pool of water. When it had settled down, all the billies were filled and the horses driven to it, whinnying for a drink.

Lady Bridget watched the evening meal being prepared between the two fires—only watched, for she was sternly forbidden to set hand to it.

'No canned goods, nor cooked food,' McKeith said, were allowed at this lay-out. Moongarr Bill was first-class at frying steak. He himself was going to boil the quart-pot tea and would give Biddy a demonstration in johnny-cakes, made bush fashion at their own camp fire. The sheet of bark had been cut into sections—one sub-divided into small squares to serve as plates. The inside looked clean as paint, and smelled of Mother Nature's still-room. Colin mixed the flour and water upon the larger sheet and worked up a stiff dough. He kneaded it, slapped it between his broad palms, cut it and baked the cakes in the ashes; then, butter being the only luxury permitted, he split them and buttered them; and Lady Bridget found in due time that not even the lightest Scotch scones taste better than bush johnny-cakes.

Quart pot tea, likewise—made also in true bush fashion. First the boiling of the billy—Colin's own particular billy, battered and blackened from much usage—half the battle, he explained, in brewing bush tea. Then, regulation handfuls of tea and brown store sugar thrown in at the precise boiling moment. Now the stirring of the frothing liquid with a fresh gum-twig. Then the blending and the cooling of it—pouring the beverage from one quart pot into another, and finally into the pannikins ready for the drinking.

Proudly, round the rock-flank of the hummock, Moongarr Bill brought fried steak and potatoes steaming in a clean tin dish and done to a turn, then went to cook more for himself at his own camp. They ate off the bark plates. Salt, sugar and mustard came out of small ration bags. McKeith produced black-handled knives and forks—the last a concession. And good to taste were the fizzling johnny-cakes and the strong, sweet, milkless tea.

Such was Lady Bridget's real marriage feast.

They were hungry, yet they dallied over the repast. It was the most delicious food she had ever tasted, Bridget said. They made little jokes. He was entranced by her happiness. Joyously she compared this banquet with others she had eaten in great houses and European restaurants, which were the last word in luxury. Oh! how she loved the dramatic contrast of it. Nature was supreme, glorious.... Oh no, no! never could she hanker after that which she had left behind—for ever. Because, if ever she were to go back again to the old life, she would be an ugly dried-up old woman for whom the smart world would have no further use....

Then suddenly she became quiet, and busied herself in the tent, while McKeith took out his pipe and smoked in ruminative bliss. When she came back she had no more talk of contrasts or of her old life, no more fantastic outbursts. Indeed, there seemed to have come over her a mood of sweet sobriety, of blushing, womanly shyness.

'Mayn't I be your squaw and help you to wash up?' she said, when he collected the tin pots and pannikins and proceeded to get the camp shipshape. No, she was not to stir a finger towards the dirty work. It was HIS job to-night. Another camping-out time she might play the squaw if she liked. She was not on in this act.

He amused her greatly by his tidy bush methods. The billies were refilled, the ration-bags laid ready for the morning.

Now darkness had fallen. He put more logs on the fire, and the flames blazed up. Then he made up a little pile of johnny-cakes that he had not buttered, and covered it with the bark plates. 'We shall have to make an early start, and there'll be no time to bake fresh ones—and no more use for these things,' he said. The square of bark on which he had mixed the dough was in his hands and he was about the fling it among the bushes, but she stopped him.

'No—don't throw it away.... I—I want it for a keepsake, Colin.'

He stared at her in surprise. The red flames threw a strange glow on her face, and made her eyes look very bright.

'My dearest! A sheet of bark!' Then a great light broke on him. The strip of bark dropped from his hands. His arms went out and enfolded the small woman, lifting her almost from the ground as he crushed her against his breast and kissed her lips with the first passionate lover's kisses he had ever given her.... 'Oh, my dear—my sweetheart!' He gave a big, tremulous laugh.... 'There was never any woman in the world like you.... To think of your caring about just a sheet of bark!'

'You made me my first johnny-cakes upon it.... And to-night is the beginning of our married life—and oh, Colin, it is the first time I have felt really married to you, and I want a bit of the bush to remember it by.'

He kissed her again.... The miracle was accomplished. He seemed to have no words in which to say all that filled his heart.

The night sounds of the bush stirred the vast silence. For the first time, Lady Bridget heard the wail of the curlew—a long note, weirdly melancholy. It startled her out of her husband's arms. There were uncanny swishings of wings in the great gum tree on the other side of the creek. And now the clanking of the horses' hobbles which had been dilatory, intermittent, became sharply recurrent. A shout from Moongarr Bill cut short the monotonous corroboree tune which the two black boys had been singing at their camp some little distance away.

'My word, I believe YARRAMAN* break him hobble!'

[*Yarraman—horse.]

At which the boys scampered off through the grass, and presently came the cracking of a stock whip among the trees.

'It's all right, Moongarr Bill's after them,' said McKeith, as his bride released herself from his arms. 'But if you don't mind darling. I'd better just see if anything has started the beasts.'

Lady Bridget watched him disappear round the knoll. The curlews went on wailing, and as if in answer a night owl sent forth his portentous HOOT—HOOT!... Apparently nothing was much amiss with the horses; they had quieted down again. Lady Bridget picked up the strip of bark and carried it in her arms into the tent, laughing to herself as she did so.

'Only a sheet of bark! What a fool I am—But it's quite appropriate, anyway.'

She put it beside her dressing-bag, and then went out once more into the night. Through the interlacing gum branches she saw a great coppery disk, and the moon rose slowly to be a lamp in her bridal chamber. How wonderful the stars were!... There was the Southern Cross with its pointers, and the Pleiades. And that bright star above the tops of the trees, which seemed to throw a distinct ray of light, must be Venus.... The moon was high enough to cast shadows—black—distorted. The low clumps of shrubs beyond the carpet of grass looked like strange couched beasts....

As she stood by the rocks at the creek edge, she heard her husband speaking to Moongarr Bill, who seemed to be walking down along the sandy bed.

'Horses all right, Bill?'

'Oh, ay—just a possum up a tree gev Julius Caesar a start.... Been digging a decent bath-hole for the ladyship in the morning, boss. There's plenty there.'

'I wish it was as near the surface at Moongarr, Bill. We shall have our work cut out making new bores, if the dry weather lasts.'

'My word, it's no joke going down three thousand feet. Amazing queer the amount of water running underground on this dried-up old earth.'

'But we can always strike it, Bill; no matter how dried up the outside looks, there's the living spring waiting to be tapped. And how's that in human nature too, Bill. Same idea, eh?'

Moongarr Bill emitted a harsh grunt.

'My best girl chucked me a month back, boss, and as for your darned sentiment and poetry, and sech-like—well, I ain't takin' any just at present.'

'Bad luck, Bill! Struck a dead-head that time, eh?... Well, good-night.'

'Good-night, boss—and good luck to you. I reckon your spring ain't a dead-head, anyway.... Say, Mr McKeith, me and the boys are shifting our fire over to the other side of the creek.... Keep the 'osses from hevin' any more of their blessed starts.... Handier for gettin' them up in the morning.'

[* Yarraman—Horse.]