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.
