“Making myself useful, you see, uncle,” she called gaily, and Scottie Mackellar looked at her dubiously.
“So I see, lass,” he said, “but I doubt if it’s wise for you to be workin’ in that sun.”
“It’s all right,” she assured him. “Blazes rigged a sort of shelter with the tent, and I’ve kept under that mostly, and helped manufacture chops. But now I’m coming to have some tea with you, if Blazes will let me spell off.”
They sat round the cook cart, from the top of which Blazes had rigged the tent as an awning, and ate their meal in the roughest sort of picnic fashion. Ess had a box to sit on, but the two men simply squatted tailor-wise with a plate between their knees.
“Lord, but that’s good,” said Steve Knight, sipping at the hot tea, and blowing it impatiently. “Worst of hot tea is it’s so tantalising. A man wants to lift the billy to his head and swallow a quart of it right down, instead of taking dainty little sips at it like a lady at an afternoon tea party.”
“I’m sure the ladies would feel flattered at the comparison,” laughed Ess, “if they could see you holding a black tin billy-can with both hands, and gulping out of it, and blowing on the tea like a grampus between gulps.”
“If the ladies had been bucketing about in a red-hot sun on a red-hot saddle, over red-hot sand all day, I’m thinking they’d gulp too,” retorted Steve.
“And the poor sheep have the same sun and sand, and nothing to drink,” said Ess, pityingly.
“Poor sheep!” snorted Steve. “Silly staggering blighters. Here we’re working ourselves to death just to persuade them to hurry up to their chance of salvation in the hills, and they go crawling along, and standing up to look at you, and trying to run the wrong way, while we sling whip-cracks and cusses at ’em till our arms, lips, and language are stiff.”
Scottie Mackellar had been munching at his bread and meat, and swallowing his hot tea in silence. “How are they making out, uncle?” she asked him.