And it was always so. Just as they had “beck-becked” and bumped in their saddles with the Chinese drovers, so they imitated every action that caught their fancy, and almost every human being that crossed their path—riding with feet outspread after meeting one traveller; with toes turned in, in imitation of another; flopping, or sitting rigidly in their saddles, imitating actions of hand and turns of the head; anything to amuse themselves, from riding side-saddle to climbing trees.
Jackeroo being “funny man” in the tribe, was first favourite in exhibitions; but we could get no further pantomime that night, although we heard later from Bett-Bett that “How the missus climbed a tree” had a long run.
The next day passed branding the cattle, and the following as we arrived within sight of the homestead, Dan was congratulating the Măluka on the “missus being without a house,” and then he suddenly interrupted himself “Well, I’m blest!” he said. “If we didn’t forget all about bangtailing that mob for her mattress.”
We undoubtedly had, but thirty-three nights, or thereabouts, with the warm, bare ground for a bed, had made me indifferent to mattresses, and hearing that Dan became most hopeful of “getting her properly educated” yet.
Cheon greeted us with his usual enthusiasm, and handed the Măluka a letter containing a request for a small mob of bullocks within three weeks.
“Nothing like keeping the ball rolling,”, Dan said, also waxing enthusiastic, while the South-folk remained convinced that life out-bush is stagnation.
Chapter 19
Dan and the Quiet Stockman went out to the north-west immediately, to “clean up there” before getting the bullocks together; but the Măluka, settling down to arrears of bookkeeping, with the Dandy at his right hand, Cheon once more took the missus under his wing feeding her up and scorning her gardening efforts.
“The idea of a white woman thinking she could grow water-melons,” he scoffed, when I planted seeds, having decided on a carpet of luxuriant green to fill up the garden beds until the shrubs grew. The Măluka advised “waiting,” and the seeds coming up within a few days, Cheon, after expressing surprise, prophesied an early death or a fruitless life.
Billy Muck, however, took a practical interest in the water-melons, and to incite him to water them in our absence, he was made a shareholder in the venture. As a natural result, the Staff, the Rejected, and the Shadows immediately applied for shares—pointing out that they too carried water to the plants—and the water-melon beds became the property of a Working Liability Company with the missus as Chairman of Directors.