paddock about two miles farther still; whilst a perisher on the plain is seldom hard to find in a bad season, when the country is stocked for good seasons. Runnymede home station—Mooney and Montgomery, owners; J. G. Montgomery, managing partner—was a mile or so beyond the further corner of the ram-paddock, and was the central source of danger.
Presently the tea leaves were thrown out of the billies; the tucker-boxes were packed on the pole-fetchels; and the teams got under way. Thompson pressed me to camp with him and Cooper for the night, and I readily consented; thus temporarily eluding a fatality which was in the habit of driving me from any given direction to Runnymede homestead—a fatality which, I trust, I shall have no farther occasion to notice in these pages.
We therefore tied Fancy beside Thompson’s horse at the rear of his wagon, and disposed Bunyip’s pack-saddle and load on the top of the wool; the horse, of course, following Fancy according to his daily habit.
A quarter of a mile of stiff pulling through the sand of the pine-ridge, and the plain opened out again. A short, dark, irregular line, cleanly separated from the horizon by the wavy glassiness of the lower air, indicated the clump of box on the selection, four miles ahead; and this comprised the landscape.
Soon we became aware of two teams coming to meet us; then three horsemen behind, emerging from the pine-ridge we had left. As the horsemen gradually decreased their distance, the teams met and passed us without salutation; sullenly drawing off the track, in the deference always conceded to wool. Victorian poverty spoke in every detail of the working plant; Victorian energy and greed in the unmerciful loads of salt and wire, for the scrub country out back. The Victorian carrier, formidable by his lack of professional etiquette and his extreme thrift, is neither admired nor caressed by the somewhat select practitioners of Riverina.
Then the three horsemen overtook Cooper, pausing a little, after the custom of the country, to gossip with him as they passed. According to another custom of the country, Thompson, Willoughby and I began to criticise them.
“I know the bloke with the linen coat,” remarked Thompson. “His name’s M’Nab; he’s a contractor. That half-caste has been with him for years, tailing horses and so forth, for his tucker and rags. Mac’s no great chop.”
“He lets his man Friday have the best horse, at all events,” said I. “Grand-looking beast, that black one the half-caste is riding.”
“By Jove, yes,” replied Willoughby. “Now, Thompson—referring to the discussion we had this morning—that is the class of horse we mount in our light cavalry.”
“And that strapping red-headed galoot, riding the bag of bones beside him, is what you would call excellent war-material?” I suggested.
“Precisely, Mr. Collins,” replied the whaler. “Nature produces such men expressly for rank and file; and I should imagine that their existence furnishes sufficient rejoinder to the levelling theory.”
