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: "If you please, ma'am. If the boss'll excuse me, me mate's dead-set against a woman doing things for him. If you wouldn't mind not coming. He'd rather have me. Me and him's been mates this seven years. The boss 'll understand."

The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone, to find a man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full of dread lest the woman at the homestead would insist on visiting him. "You see, that's why he wouldn't come on," the mate said. "He couldn't bear the thought of a woman doing things for him "; and the Maluka explained that the missus understood all that. That lesson had been easily learned; for again and again men had come in "down with a touch of fever," whose temperatures went up at the very thought of a woman doing things for them, and always the actual nursing was left to the Maluka or the Dandy, the woman seeing to egg-flips and such things, exchanging at first perhaps only an occasional greeting, and listening at times to strange life-histories later on.

But in vain the Maluka explained and entreated: the sick man was "all right where he was." His mate was worth "ten women fussing round," he insisted, ignoring the Maluka's explanations. "Had he not lugged him through the worst pinch already?" and then he played his trump card: "He'll stick to me till I peg out," he said - "nothing's too tough for him"; and as he lay back, the mate deciding "arguing'll only do for him," dismissed the Maluka with many thanks, refusing all offers of nursing help with a quiet "He'd rather have me," but accepting gratefully broths and milk and anything of that sort the homestead could furnish. "Nothing ever knocks me out," he reiterated, and dragged on through sleepless days and nights, as the days dragged by finding ample reward in the knowledge that "he'd rather have me", and when there came that deep word of praise from his stricken comrade: "A good mate's harder to find than a good wife," his gentle, protecting devotion increased tenfold.

Bushmen are instinctively protective. There is no other word that so exactly defines their tender helpfulness to all weakness and helplessness.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 99 of 162
Words from 51414 to 51923 of 84691