I never struck
such a place! Is it a circus or a Wild West Show?"
Gravely the Maluka accepted the bottle, and with the same mock gravity
answered Brown of the Bulls. "It is neither, my man," he said; "neither
a circus, nor a Wild West Show. This is the land the poets sing about,
the land where dull despair is king."
Brown of the Bulls naturally wished "some of the poets were about now,"
and Dan, having joined the house party, found a fitting opportunity to
air one of his pet grievances.
"I've never done wishing some of them town chaps that write bush yarns
'ud come along and learn a thing or two," he said. "Most of 'em seem to
think that when we're not on the drink we're whipping the cat or
committing suicide." Rarely had Dan any excuse to offer for those "town
chaps," who, without troubling to learn "a thing or two," first, depict
the bush as a pandemonium of drunken orgies, painted women, low revenge,
remorse, and suicide; but being in a more magnanimous mood than usual, as
the men-folk flocked towards the Quarters he waited behind to add,
unconscious of any irony: "Of course, seeing it's what they're used to in
town, you can't expect 'em to know any better."
Then in the Quarters "Luck to our neighbour" was the toast - "luck," and
the hope that all his ventures might be as successfully carried through
as his practical joke. After that the Maluka gravely proposed "Cheon,"
and Cheon instantly became statuesque and dignified, to the further
diversion of Brown of the Bulls - gravely accepting a thimbleful for
himself, and, as gravely, drinking his own health, the Maluka just as
gravely "clinking glasses" with him. And from that day to this when
Cheon wishes to place the Maluka on a fitting pedestal, he ends his long,
long tale with a triumphant: "Boss bin knock glass longa me one time."
Happy Dick and Peter filled in time for the Quarters until sundown, when
Cheon announced supper there with an inspired call of "Cognac!" And then,
as if to prove that we are not always on the drink, or "whipping the cat,
or committing suicide," that we can love and live for others besides
self, Neaves' mate came down from the little rise beyond the slip-rails,
where he had spent his day carving a headstone out of a rough slab of
wood that now stood at the head of our sick traveller's grave.
Not always on the drink, or whipping the cat, or committing suicide, but
too often at the Parting of the Ways, for within another twelve hours the
travellers, Happy Dick, the Line Party, Neaves' mate, Brown of the Bulls,
and Mac, had all gone or were going their ways, leaving us to go
ours - Brown back to hold his bulls at the Red Lilies until further
showers should open up all roads, and Mac to "pick up Tam." But in the
meantime Dan had become Showman of the Showers.
