"Me Mate's Sick; Got A Touch Of Fever," He Said Simply Dismounting Near
The Verandah.
"I've left him camped back there at the Warlochs"; and as
the Maluka prepared remedies - making up the famous
Gulf mixture - the man
with grateful thanks, found room in his pockets and saddle-pouch for
eggs, milk, and brandy, confident that "these'll soon put him right,"
adding, with the tense lines deepening about his mouth as he touched on
what had brought them there: "He's been real bad, ma'am. I've had a bit
of a job to get him as far as this." In the days to come we were to
learn, little by little, that the "bit of a job" had meant keeping a sick
man in his saddle for the greater part of the fifty-mile dry stage, with
forty miles of "bad going" on top of that, and fighting for him every
inch of the way that terrible symptom of malaria - that longing to "chuck
it," and lie down and die.
Bad water after that fifty-mile dry made men with a touch of fever only
too common at the homestead, and knowing how much the comforts of the
homestead could do, when the Maluka came out with the medicines he
advised bringing the sick man on as soon as he had rested sufficiently.
"You've only to ask for it and we'll send the old station buck-board
across," he said, and the man began fumbling uneasily at his
saddle-girths, and said something evasive about "giving trouble"; but
when the Maluka - afraid that a man's life might be the forfeit of another
man's shrinking fear of causing trouble - added that on second thoughts we
would ride across as soon as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly
and stammered:
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