“Go and lay ‘em egg, silly fellow you. Go and lay ‘em egg, silly fellow you,” shouted Bett-Bett in a singsong voice, as she and Sue dodged between an old broody hen and the tool-house.
Bett-Bett had no patience with broody hens; she seemed to think they were wasting their time; particularly when, like this one, they would try to hatch chickens out of nails. “Come for a walk-about, Bett-Bett,” I called; “I am going to the Long Reach for some water-lilies.”
“You eye, Missus,” she shrieked in answer, still dodging and dancing after old broody.
As I went for my hat and revolver, I heard her shrill little voice up at its highest pitch inviting every one within hearing to come with us. By the time I reached the slip-rails, there were six or eight lubras, a few piccaninnies, and about twenty dogs at my heels, and I felt like a Pied Piper of Hamelin.
We had a very merry walk-about that afternoon. Everything that could, seemed to happen. Just as we crossed the creek outside the slip-rails the fun began, and Sue got into trouble. She picked up the scent of a bandicoot, and was darting off to run its tracks, when her black legs were seized by Bett-Bett, and she got a ringing box on the ears.
She deserved it, for she was actually going to run tracks away from the direction in which the animal’s toes were pointing. She should have noticed at once that the scent grew stronger the other way. Good little nigger dogs always do. Bett-Bett quickly put her right, and off every one scampered after her, till she stopped at a hollow log. Bett-Bett and Sue arrived first, and everybody else immediately after, only to find that the bandicoot was not at home, for there were newer tracks leading out again. Sue simply couldn’t believe it, and scratched wildly till stopped by another box on the ears. I was last to arrive, but came up just as the dogs scented the new tracks, and very soon afterwards the unfortunate bandicoot was hanging from one of the lubras’ belts.
The Long Reach is a beautiful twelve-mile-long waterhole, full of crocodiles and water-lilies. It begins about three-quarters of a mile from the homestead, but we took nearly two hours to get there, for we zigzagged through the scrub, and had ever so many exciting hunts, several natural history lessons, and a peep into every nook and cranny we passed, to see how birds, beasts and insects made their nests.
Do you think if any one had seen me—a white woman with a revolver and cartridges at her belt, hunting with a mob of lubras—that they would have imagined that I was at school?
We had a strange lubra with us—one I had not seen before. I noticed that she dragged a leafy branch after her wherever she went. I asked her why she did this, and she told me that she had run away from her husband, and didn’t want him to find her.
“Me knock up longa me boy,” she said, “him all day krowl-krowl,”—she meant growl.