"Half-past eleven four weeks."
But already the Fizzer's shoulders were setting square, for the last trip
of the "dry" was before him - the trip that perished the last mailman - and
his horses were none too good.
"Good luck!" we called after him. "Early showers!" and there was a note
in our voices brought there by the thought of that gaunt figure at the
well - rattling its dicebox as it waited for one more round with our
Fizzer: a note that brought a bright look into the Fizzer's face, as with
an answering shout of farewell he rode on into the forest. And watching
the sturdy figure, and knowing the luck of our Fizzer - that luck that
had given him his fearless judgment and steadfast, courageous spirit - we
felt his cheery "Half-past eleven four weeks" must be prophetic, in spite
of those long dry stages, with their beating heat and parching dust
eddies - stages eked out now at each end with other stages of "bad going."
"Half-past eleven four weeks," the Fizzer had said; and as we returned to
our mail-matter, knowing what it meant to our Fizzer, we looked anxiously
to the northwest, and "hoped the showers" would come before the "return
trip of the Downs."
In addition to the fifty letters for the house, the Fizzer had left two
others at the homestead to be called for - one being addressed to Victoria
Downs (over two hundred miles to our west), and the other to -
F. BROWN, Esq.,
IN CHARGE OF STUD BULLS GOING WEST
VIA NORTHERN TERRITORY.
The uninitiated may think that the first was sent out by mistake and that
the second was too vaguely addressed; but both letters went into the rack
to await delivery, for our faith in the wisdom of our Postal Department
was great; it makes no mistakes, and to it - in a land where everybody
knows everybody else, and all his business, and where it has taken
him - an address could never be too vague. The bush-folk love to say that
when it opened out its swag in the Territory it found red tape had been
forgotten, but having a surplus supply of common sense on hand, it
decided to use that in its place.
And so it would seem. "Down South" envelopes are laboriously addressed
with the names of stations and vias here and vias there; and throughout
the Territory men move hither and thither by compulsion or free-will
giving never a thought to an address; while the Department, knowing the
ways of its people, delivers its letters in spite of, not because of,
these addresses. It reads only the name of the man that heads the
address of his letters and sends the letters to where that man happens to
be.
