These wondrous waterways have little part in that
mystical holding power of the Never-Never. They are only pleasant places
to ride through and leave behind; for their purring slumberous beauty is
vaguely suggestive of the beauty of a sleeping tiger: a sleeping tiger
with deadly fangs and talons hidden under a wonder of soft allurement;
and when exiles in the towns sit and dream their dreams are all of
stretches of scorched grass and quivering sun-flecked shade.
In the honest sunlight Dan's spirits rose, and as I investigated various
byways he asked "where the sense came in tying-up a dog that was doing no
harm running loose." "It weren't as though she'd taken to chivying
cattle," he added, as, a mob of inquisitive steers trotting after us, I
hurried Roper in among the riders; and then he wondered "how she'll shape
at her first muster."
The rest of the morning he filled in with tales of cattle-musters tales
of stampedes and of cattle rushing over camps and "mincing chaps into
saw-dust" until I was secretly pleased that the coming muster was for
horses.
But Jack's reprieve was to last a little longer. When all was ready for
the muster, word came in that outside blacks were in all along the river,
and the Maluka deciding that the risks were too great for the missus in
long-grass country, the plans were altered, and I was left at the
homestead in the Dandy's care.
