"Nor for a square meal
neither," thereby inciting Cheon to further triumphs for his approval.
As usual, Happy Dick "played" the Quarters cribbage and related a good
dog-fight - "Peter's latest " - and, as usual before he left us, his
pockets were bulging with tobacco - the highest stakes used in the
Quarters - and Peter and Brown had furnished him with materials for a
still newer dog-fight recital. As usual, he rode off with his killers,
assuring all that he would "be along again soon," and, as usual, Peter
and Brown were tattered and hors-de-combat, but both still aggressive.
Peter's death lunge was the death lunge of Brown, and both dogs knew that
lunge too well to let the other "get in."
As usual, Happy Dick had hunted through the store, and taken anything he
"really needed," paying, of course, by cheque; but when he came to sign
that cheque, after the Maluka had written it, he entered the dining-room
for the first time since its completion.
With calm scrutiny he took in every detail, including the serviettes as
they lay folded in their rings on the waiting dinner-table, and before he
left the homestead he expressed his approval in the Quarters:
"Got everything up to the knocker, haven't they ?" he said. "Often heard
toffs decorated their tables with rags in hobble rings, but never
believed it before."
Happy Dick gone, Cheon turned his attention to the health of the missus;
but Dan, persuading the Maluka that "all she needed was a breath of fresh
air," we went bush on a tour of inspection.
CHAPTER XVI
Within a week we returned to the homestead, and for twenty-four hours
Cheon gloated over us, preparing every delicacy that appealed to him as
an antidote to an outbush course of beef and damper. Then a man rode
into our lives who was to teach us the depth and breadth of the meaning
of the word mate - a sturdy, thick-set man with haggard, tired eyes and
deep lines about his firm strong mouth that told of recent and prolonged
tension.
"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.
