We Sleep Wherever We Are, For It Is Easy To Grow
Accustomed Even To Nigger Alarms, And Beside, The Bush-
Folk know that
when a man has clean hands and heart he has little to fear from even his
"bad
Fellow black fellows." But the Red Lilies were beyond our
boundaries, and Monkey was a notorious exception, and shrill cries
approaching the camp at dawn brought us all to our elbows, to find only
the flying foxes returning to the pine forest, fanning inwards this time.
After giving the horses another drink, and breakfasting on damper and
"Lot's wife," we moved on again, past the glory of the lagoons, to further
brumby encounters, carrying a water-bag on a pack-horse by way of
precaution against further "drouths." But such was the influence of
"Lot's wife" that long before mid-day the bag was empty, and Dan was
recommending bloater-paste as a "grand thing for breakfast during the Wet
seeing it keeps you dry all day long."
Further damper and "Lot's wife" for dinner, and an afternoon of thirst,
set us all dreading supper, and about sundown three very thirsty, forlorn
white folk were standing by the duck-under below "Knock-up camp," waiting
for the Quiet Stockman, and hoping against hope that his meat had not
"turned on him"; and when he and his "boys" came jangling down the
opposite bank, and splashing and plunging over the "duckunder" below,
driving a great mob of horses before them we assailed him with questions.
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