A few days later the jackaroo happened to be at Kelly’s, a wayside shanty, watching a fight between two bushmen, when Mary rode up. She knew the men. She whipped her horse in between them and struck at first one and then the other with her riding-whip.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” she said; “and both married men, too!”
It evidently struck them that way, for after a bit they shook hands and went home.
“And I wouldn’t have married that girl for a thousand pounds,” said the jackaroo, relating the incidents to some friends in Sydney.
Mary said she wanted a man, if she could get one.
There was no life at home nowadays, so Mary went to all the bush dances in the district. She thought nothing of riding twenty or thirty miles to a dance, dancing all night, and riding home again next morning. At one of these dances she met young Robert Ross, a clean-limbed, good-looking young fellow about her own age. She danced with him and liked him, and danced with him again, and he rode part of the way home with her. The subject of the quarrel between the two homes came up gradually.
“The boss,” said Robert, meaning his father, “the boss is always ready to let bygones be bygones. It’s a pity it couldn’t be fixed up.”
“Yes,” said Mary, looking at him (Bob looked very well on horseback), “it is a pity.”
They met several times, and next Prince of Wales’s birthday they rode home from the races together. Both had good horses, and they happened to be far ahead of the others on the wide, straight clear road that ran between the walls of the scrub. Along, about dusk, they became very confidential indeed—Mary had remarked what a sad and beautiful sunset it was. The horses got confidential, too, and shouldered together, and touched noses, and, after a long interval in the conversation, during which Robert, for one, began to breathe quickly, he suddenly leaned over, put his arm round her waist and made to kiss her. She jerked her body away, threw up her whiphand, and Robert ducked instinctively; but she brought her whip down on her horse’s flank instead, and raced ahead. Robert followed—or, rather, his horse did: he thought it was a race, and took the bit in his teeth. Robert kept calling, appealing:
“Wait a while, Mary! I want to explain! I want to apologize! For God’s sake listen to me, Mary!”