It was queer the way he hankered after his own real mother. Jack, for his part, didn't care a straw who was his mother's relation and who wasn't. But you would have thought Tom lived under a Matriarchy, and derived everything from a lost mother.
It was not wet enough yet to be really boggy, though camping out was damp. However, they mostly got a roof. If it wasn't a relation's, it was a barn, or the "Bull and Horns" by Gingin. And to the boys, all that mattered was whether they were on the right road: often a very puzzling question; or if the heavy rain would hold off; if there was plenty of grub; if the horses seemed tired or not quite fit; if they were going to get through a boggy place all right; if the packs were fast; if they made good going. The inns were "low" in every sense of the word, including the low-pitched roof. And full of bugs, however new the country. With red-nosed, grassy-whiskered landlords who thumbed the glasses when there were any glasses to thumb. And there were always men at these inns, almost always the same kind of brutal, empty roughs.
"Look here," said Jack, "wherever we go there are these roughs, and more roughs, and more. Where the devil do they come from, and how do they make a living? Apart from farm labourers, I mean."
"A lot of them are shearers," said Tom, "drifting from job to job, according to climate. When shearing season's over here, they work on to the south-west, where it's cooler. And then there are kangaroo and 'possum snarers. That young fellow we saw rooked of all his sugar last night was a skin-hunter. They get half-a-crown apiece for good 'roo skins, and it's quite a trade. The others last night were mostly sandalwood getters. There's quite a lot of men make money collecting bark for export, and manna-gum. That rowdy lot playing fifty-three were a gang of well-sinkers. Then what with timber-workers, haulers, teamsters, junkers—oh, there's all sorts. But they're mostly one sort, swabs, rough and rowdy, an' can't keep their pants hitched up enough to be decent. You've seen 'em. They're mostly like the dirty old braces they wear. All the snap gone out of 'em, all the elastic perished. They just work and booze and loaf, and work and booze. I hope I'll never get so that I don't keep myself spruce. I hope I never will. But that's the worst o' the life out here. Nobody hardly keeps spruce."
Jack kept this well in mind. He too hated a man slouching along with a discoloured face, and trousers slopping down his insignificant legs. He loathed that look which tramps and ne'er-do-wells usually have, as if their legs weren't there, inside their beastly bags. Despicable about the rear and the legs. The best of the farmers, on the contrary, had strong, sinewy legs, full of life. Easu was like that, his powerful legs holding his horse. And Tom had good, live legs. But poor Dad had not been very alive, inside his pants.
"Whatever I do, I'll never go despicable and humiliated about the legs and seat," said Jack to himself, as he pressed the stirrups with his toes and felt the powerful elasticity of his thighs, holding the live body of the horse between his muscles in permanent grip. And it seemed as if the powerful animal life of the horse entered into him, through his legs and seat, and made him strong.
"What's a junker, Tom?"
"A low, four-wheeled log hauler, with a long pole."
"I thought it was a man. A swab is a man?"
"Yes. He's any old drunk."