That was where I had come in. My water-bag was nearly full; his had sprung a leak and was empty. To give the dog a drink out of his wide-awake was the boundary-rider's first act when I handed him my bag; then he took a pull himself. The suggestion that we should off-saddle and do a spell together came from me. The dog had found its voice and rounded up the mob before Jim finished drinking; we set him to watch the sheep in the shade, tethered our horses, and carried our saddles to a tree apart, leaving marks like inkstains on the animals' backs. The place was a sandy gully thickly timbered with pines. We chose the tree with the closest warp and woof of shadow underneath, and there made short work of such provisions as we carried, with further reductions in the bulk of my water-bag.
It was the very hottest day I can remember in the bush; in the shade of the homestead verandah the thermometer touched 116°; and I recollect my companion showing me a tear in his moleskins, done that morning by a pine-branch, and the little triangle of exposed skin on which an hour's sun had left the mark of a mustard leaf. The fellow was near to physical perfection, a sterling specimen of the Saxon type, with the fair skin which naturally burns red; but his blue eyes were sunken, and had the strange rickety look of one who has drunk both deep and long at some period of his life. Jim still knocked down his cheque, but not oftener or with worse effects than another. We regarded him, however, as our biggest blackguard, and as such he interested me, so that my eye was on him as we ate: I afterwards remembered his way of eating.
Our snack over, Jim had his cutty in his mouth and was paring a plug of black tobacco before I thought of my cigars. He laughed and swore as I produced the case, but when I opened it, and the silver cones stuck out under his nose, he helped himself without a word. His easy method of slipping off the silver paper (which had visibly embarrassed the manager of our station), and the way the boundary-rider held out his hand for my knife, are two more things which struck one later. The shape of that sun-chapped hand is a third. Heaven knows I was not consciously observant at the time. I rolled over on my back, my saddle for a pillow, and took to sending up soft, chastening clouds into the garish blue overhead. The subtle fragrance of the smoke mingled with the pungent smell of the pines, the hot still air grew rich with both; a vertical sun stabbed the fronds above us with pins and needles of dazzling light that struck to the ground like golden rain; and, but for my cigar, I had yielded to these sensuous influences and thrown it aside to close my eyes. Thus was I the slave of my luxury, but consoled myself with the thought that Jim's enjoyment would at least be heart-whole. Yet he never said so, and as we lay I could see no more of him than a single sidespring boot, a long spur, and three inches of shiny brown legging.
"You don't say how it strikes you, Jim."
"The cigar?"
"To be sure."
"Oh, it's not a bad smoke."
"No?" I raised myself on one elbow to look at the fellow. He had the cigar between his forefinger and thumb, and was blowing the most perfect rings of tobacco-smoke I ever saw.
"Yes, it's a good cigar," our boundary-rider went so far as to concede; then he replaced it between his teeth, after a moment's scrutiny with his unkempt head on one side.
"Quite sure?" I smiled.