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.
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