“Ah, that’s right! Who’s on guard at the camp?”
“Sambo and Dick, Marmie.”
“Run ring round camp. Report to me if you see a track directly. That’ll do. Dismiss.”
The boy salutes and disappears silently.
We pause here to explain that on the vast majority of up-country runs the native station-hands reside in villages of huts, built by themselves in close proximity to the head and out stations. No other aborigines are allowed even to cross the run, far less to live on it. On the arrival of a “rounding-up” party or a police troop at a station, a guard is generally placed over the station black camp, to prevent any of its inhabitants giving the alarm to such runaway blacks, or Myalls, who may be camped—in contravention of the squatter’s decrees—in the vicinity. The police officer has just commanded Yegerie to walk round the camp and see if there are any signs of such a messenger having escaped the sentries and set out during the night.
Half an hour passes, and then the musical clatter of cups and plates is heard in the dining-room, as the breakfast things are laid—or, to speak more accurately, flung—upon the long table, in serried rows, by a laughing, chattering bevy of dark-skinned damsels belonging to Mr. Manager Browne’s harem.
There are few up-country bachelor squatters but solace themselves for the absence of white ladies by indulging their leisure moments in the society of a private, selected circle of native girls—popularly known as the “stud gins.” Many of these dark-eyed houris are remarkably handsome, and after a year or two at “Government House” they are relegated to the black camp for the use of the black and white station-hands.
But to return to Inspector Puttis. With his usual abstemiousness he drank but little last evening, and his nerves are in perfect order for the day’s, or rather night’s, work before him. He is, of the whole “rounding-up” party collected beneath the hospitable roof of Borbong head-station house, the only one that feels much inclined for breakfast that morning.
So when Charlie, the clean, yellow-faced Chinese cook, informs him that the morning meal is “all lie” (Anglicé, all right, or ready), he turns immediately towards the glass-door of the dining-room. But just then the rattle of a buggy coming at a furious pace towards the station arrests his attention, and he waits to see who is so rash as to drive so fast over the rough ground.
“Giles, for a tenner!” he mutters half out loud; “no other fool would drive like that.”