“I know you have, Swampy,” said Brummy, affectionately—as if he considered that Swampy had done his best in the interests of mateship.
“I knowed yer knowed!” exclaimed Swampy, triumphantly. “But where the blazes did yer put it?”
“Under your head, Swampy, old man,” said Brummy, cheerfully.
Swampy was hurt now. He commented in the language that used to be used by the bullock-punchers of the good days as they pranced up and down by their teams and lammed into the bullocks with saplings and crow-bars, and called on them to lift a heavy load out of a bog in the bed of a muddy creek.
“Never mind, Swampy!” said Brummy, soothingly, as his mate paused and tried to remember worse oaths. “It wasn’t your fault.”
But they parted at Bourke. Swampy had allers acted straight ter Brummy—share ’n’ share alike. He’d do as much for a mate as any other man, an’ put up with as much from a mate. He had put up with a lot from Brummy: he’d picked him up on the track and learned him all he knowed; Brummy would have starved many a time if it hadn’t been for Swampy; Swampy had learned him how to “battle.” He’d stick to Brummy yet, but he couldn’t stand ingratitude. He hated low cunnin’ an’ suspicion, and when a gory mate got suspicious of his own old mate and wouldn’t trust him, an’ took to plantin’ his crimson money—it was time to leave him.
A SKETCH OF MATESHIP
Bill and Jim, professional shearers, were coming into Bourke from the Queensland side. They were horsemen and had two packhorses. At the last camp before Bourke Jim’s packhorse got disgusted and home-sick during the night and started back for the place where he was foaled. Jim was little more than a new-chum jackaroo; he was no bushman and generally got lost when he went down the next gully. Bill was a bushman, so it was decided that he should go back to look for the horse.
Now Bill was going to sell his packhorse, a well-bred mare, in Bourke, and he was anxious to get her into the yards before the horse sales were over; this was to be the last day of the sales. Jim was the best “barracker” of the two; he had great imagination; he was a very entertaining story-teller and conversationalist in social life, and a glib and a most impressive liar in business, so it was decided that he should hurry on into Bourke with the mare and sell her for Bill. Seven pounds, reserve.
Next day Bill turned up with the missing horse and saw Jim standing against a veranda-post of the Carriers’ Arms, with his hat down over his eyes, and thoughtfully spitting in the dust. Bill rode over to him.