"Gone clean dilly, I believe," he declared, after thinking that he had
"better be making a move for the last train."
Then, mounting his waiting horse, he splashed through the creek again,
and disappeared into the moonlit grove of pandanus palms beyond it.
The waggons spelled for two days at the Warlochs, and we saw much of the
"Macs." Then they decided to "push on"; for not only were others farther
"in" waiting for the waggons, but daily the dry stages were getting
longer and drier; and the shorter his dry stages are, the better a
bullock-puncher likes them.
With well-nursed bullocks, and a full complement of them - the "Macs" had
twenty-two per waggon for their dry stages - a "thirty-five-mile dry" can
be "rushed," the waggoners getting under way by three o'clock one
afternoon, travelling all night with a spell or two for the bullocks by
the way, and "punching" them into water within twenty-four hours.
"Getting over a fifty-mile dry" is, however, a more complicated business,
and suggests a treadmill. The waggons are "pulled out" ten miles in the
late afternoon, the bullocks unyoked and brought back to the water,
spelled most of the next day, given a last drink and travelled back to
the waiting waggons by sundown; yoked up and travelled on all that night
and part of the next day; once more unyoked at the end of the forty miles
of the stage; taken forward to the next water, and spelled and nursed up
again at this water for a day or two; travelled back again to the
waggons, and again yoked up, and finally brought forward in the night
with the loads to the water.
