“He showed it to me, and seemed as proud of it as could be.”
“Well, what then?”
“Why, it would be very nasty if they quarrelled and came to a fight. What chance would Mr Staches have, only armed with a small pair of scissors?”
The days wore on, one strongly resembling another, and though the black guide stalked about like a superintendent and was rather given to scowl at the forelopers, he every now and then unbent from his savage dignity, and was always the best of friends with the boys. In fact, upon occasions when he was marching along with them beside the bullocks, or by them when they were mounted on a couple of ponies, he would even unbend so far as to allow one of them to carry his spear, evidently as a great favour and a mark of honour.
“Treats it,” said Mark merrily, “as if it were his sceptre.”
But there was no suggestion of quarrelling, and the man was seen at his best and full of smiles when, as the bullocks plodded sluggishly along, hunting excursions were made off to the right or left of the trail—a trail which the party formed for themselves, for the old ones soon died out—the new one being formed as to direction by their guide himself. He selected the most open country, and pointed out with his spear some distant object for which Buck Denham was to make, and when it was reached in the evening it was invariably found to be a spot where there was a good supply of water and food for the cattle.
So far from there being any quarrelling on the side of Brown—Dunn Brown, as to their great amusement he told the boys was his full name, Dunn from his mother, and Brown from his father—the long, thin, peculiar looking fellow settled down as calmly as if he had been in Sir James’s service half his life.
He was a kind and careful tender of the ponies, and after a few displays of awkwardness which Buck Denham corrected in the most friendly way, he was soon quite at home with the bullocks.
“Why, the great lumbering, fat, stupid brutes are beginning quite to know him, gentlemen, and I should not be at all surprised if one of these days we find him whistling to them and making them come to him like the ponies.”
As the party journeyed on day after day farther and farther from civilisation, the expedition was all that could be desired. Game was plentiful and the two keepers were quite in their element, so that the larder was well stocked, and they took care that there was plenty of sport for the two lads whenever the waggons’ course was marked down and the little party, trusting to the drivers to make their way to the given point, struck off in a different direction so as to make a détour and meet at their appointed centre before night.