They acted on Cheon like a red rag on a bull. Flinging them from him, he sent them spinning across the stony ground with two furious kicks, following them up with further furious kicks as we looked on in speechless amazement. “What’s ’er matter?” he growled, as, abandoning the chase with a final lunge, he stalked indignantly back to us; and as the unfortunate cabbages turned over and lay still on their tattered backs, he began to explain his wrath. Was he not paid to grow cabbages, he asked, and where had he failed that we should accept cabbages from neighbours? Cabbages for ourselves, but insults for him! Then, the comical side of his nature coming to the surface as unexpectedly as his wrath, he was overcome with laughter, and clung to a verandah post for support, while still speechless, we looked on in consternation, for laughing was a serious matter with Cheon.
“My word, me plenty cross fellow,” he gasped at intervals and finally led the way to the vegetable garden, where he cut an enormous cabbage and carried it to the store to weigh it. The scale turned at twelve pounds, and, sure of our ground now, we compared its mighty heart to the stout heart of Cheon—a compliment fully appreciated by his Chinese mind; then, having disparaged the tattered results to his satisfaction, we went to the house and wrote a letter of thanks to our neighbour, giving him so vivid a word-picture of the reception of his cabbages that he felt inspired to play a practical joke on Cheon later on. One thing is very certain—everyone enjoyed those cabbages including even Cheon and the goats.
Of course we had cabbage for dinner that day, and the day following, and the next day again, and were just fearing that cabbage was becoming a confirmed habit when Dan coming in with reports we all went bush again, and the spell was broken. “A pity the man from Beyanst wasn’t about,” Dan said when he heard of the daily menu.
It was late in September when Dan came in, and four weeks slipped away with the concerns of cattle and cattle-buyers and cattle-duffers, and as we moved hither and thither the water-melons leafed and blossomed and fruited to Billy’s delight, and Cheon’s undisguised amazement and the line party, creeping on, crept first into our borders and then into camp at the Warlochs, and Happy Dick’s visits, dog-fights, and cribbage became part of the station routine. Now and then a traveller from “inside” passed out, but as the roads “inside” were rapidly closing in, none came from the Outside going in, and because of that there were no extra mails, and towards the end of October we were wondering how we were “going to get through the days until the Fizzer was due again,” when Dan and Jack came in unexpectedly for a consultation.
“Run clean out of flour,” Dan announced, with a wink and a mysterious look towards the black world, as he dismounted at the head of the homestead thoroughfare then, after inquiring for the “education of the missus” he added, with further winks and mystery, that it only needed a nigger hunt to round off her education properly but it was after supper before he found a fitting opportunity to explain his winks and mystery. Then, joining us as we lounged in the open starry space between the billabong and the house, he chuckled: “Yes, it just needs a nigger hunt to make her education a credit to us.”
Dan never joined us in the evenings without an invitation, although he was not above putting himself in the way of one. Whenever he felt inclined for what he called “a pitch with the boss and missus” he would saunter past at a little distance, apparently bound for the billabong, but in reality ready to respond to the Măluka’s “Is that you, Dan?” although just as ready to saunter on if that invitation was not forthcoming—a happy little arrangement born of that tact and delicacy of the bush-folk that never intrudes on another man’s privacy.
Dan being just Dan rarely had need to saunter on; and as he settled down on the grass in acceptance of this usual form of invitation, he wagged his head wisely, declaring “she had got on so well with her education that it ’ud be a pity not to finish her off properly.” Then dropping his bantering tone, he reported a scatter-on among the river cattle.
“I wasn’t going to say anything about it before the ‘boys,’” he said, “but it’s time some one gave a surprise party down the river;” and a “scatter-on” meaning “niggers in,” Măluka readily agreed to a surprise patrol of the river country, that being forbidden ground for blacks’ camps.
“It’s no good going unless it’s going to be a surprise party,” Dan reiterated; and when the Quiet Stockman was called across from the Quarters, he was told that “there wasn’t going to be no talking before the boys.”
Further consultations being necessary, Dan feared arousing suspicion, and to ensure his surprise party, and to guard against any word of the coming patrol being sent out-bush by the station “boys,” he indulged in a little dust-throwing, and there was much talking in public about going “out to the north-west for the boss to have another look round there,” and much laying of deep plans in private.