The Boy in the Bush

By the late RICHARD ROWE, AUTHOR OF “ROUGHING IT,” “THE DESERTED SHIP,” “A HAVEN OF REST,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY ZWEEKER, FRASER, MAHONEY, AND DALZIEL.
London: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXXV. ( All rights reserved. )
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Limited, London and Aylesbury.
“The impudent scoundrel! Just look at this, mamma. I should like to see him at it,” exclaimed Sydney Lawson in great wrath, as he handed his mother a very dirty note which a shepherd had brought home. On coarse, crumpled grocer’s paper these words were written in pencil: “Master sidney i Want your Mare the chesnit with the white starr soe You Send her to 3 Mile flat first thing Tomorrer Or i Shall Have to cum an Fetch Her.—Warrigal.”
“Sam says,” Sydney went on in rising rage, “that the fellow had the cheek to give it him just down by the slip-panels. He rode up to Sam and Paddy Fury as coolly as if he was coming up to spend the night at the house. If the great hulking fellows had a mite of pluck, they’d have knocked him off his horse, instead of taking orders from a chap like that. Paddy is fond enough of bragging about his foightin’ when there’s nobody to fight. But they’re like all the people about here; three parts of them funk the bushrangers, and the rest are in league with them. He may well call himself Warrigal, the sneaking dingo! He wouldn’t have been game to talk about sticking us up, if he hadn’t known father was away. Send him my Venus! Mr. Warrigal must have gone cranky.”
Sydney Lawson, who made this indignant speech at the tea-table of the Wonga-Wonga station (and almost made the hot potato-cake jump off the table with the thumps he gave it), was a tall, slim lad of fourteen. He and his mother had been left in charge of the station, whilst his father took a mob of cattle overland to Port Phillip. Sydney was very proud of having the key of the store, counting in the sheep, peppering mangled calves with strychnine to poison the native dogs that had mangled them, and riding about all day cracking his stock-whip, heading back store-bullocks that seemed inclined to make a rush at him, looking after the men, and when meat was wanted, driving the beast into the stock-yard himself, and shooting it with his own gun. Sydney thought himself a man now, and was very angry that Warrigal should think he could be frightened “like a baby.”