If Mac Was A "Bit Of A Jehu," He Certainly Was A "Dead Homer," For After
Miles Of Scrub And Grass And Timber, We Came Out At Our Evening Camp At
The Bitter Springs, To Find The Head Stockman There, With His Faithful,
Tawny-Coloured Shadow, "Old Sool Em," Beside Him.
Dog and man greeted us sedately, and soon Dan had a billy boiling for us,
and a blazing fire, and accepted an invitation to join us at supper and
"bring something in the way of bread along with him."
With a commonplace remark about the trip out, he placed a crisp, newly
baked damper on the tea-towel that acted as supper cloth; but when we all
agreed that he was "real slap-up at damper making," he scented a joke and
shot a quick, questioning glance around; then deciding that it was wiser
not to laugh at all than to laugh in the wrong place, he only said, he
was "not a bad hand at the damper trick." Dan liked his jokes well
labelled when dealing with the unknown Woman.
He was a bushman of the old type, one of the men of the droving days;
full of old theories, old faiths, and old prejudices, and clinging always
to old habits and methods. Year by year as the bush had receded and
shrunk before the railways, he had receded with it, keeping always just
behind the Back of Beyond, droving, bullock-punching, stock-keeping, and
unconsciously opening up the way for that very civilisation that was
driving him farther and farther back. In the forty years since his
boyhood railways had driven him out of Victoria, New South Wales and
Queensland, and were now threatening even the Never-Never, and Dan was
beginning to fear that they would not leave "enough bush to bury a man
in."
Enough bush to bury a man in! That's all these men of the droving days
have ever asked of their nation and yet without them the pioneers would
have been tied hand and foot, and because of them Australia is what it
is.
"Had a good trip out?" Dan asked, feeling safe on that subject, and
appeared to listen to the details of the road with interest; but all the
time the shrewd hazel eyes were upon me, drawing rapid conclusions, and I
began to feel absurdly anxious to know their verdict. That was not to
come before bedtime; and only those who knew the life of the stations in
the Never-Never know how much was depending on the stockmen's verdict.
Dan had his own methods of dealing with the Unknown Woman. Forty years
out-bush had convinced him that "most of 'em were the right sort," but it
had also convinced him that "you had to take 'em all differently," and he
always felt his way carefully, watching and waiting, ready to open out at
the first touch of fellowship and understanding, but just as ready to
withdraw into himself at the faintest approach to a snub.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 25 of 162
Words from 12662 to 13169
of 84691
