Finally Cheon scrambled to his feet, and, perspiring and exhausted, presented the bottle to the Măluka. “My word, me cross fellow!” he said weakly, and then, bubbling over again at the recollection, he chuckled: “Close up smash him Cognac all right.” And at the sound of the chuckle Brown of the Bulls broke out afresh:
“Chase him away!” he yelled. “You’ll kill me between you! I never struck such a place! Is it a circus or a Wild West Show?”
Gravely the Măluka accepted the bottle, and with the same mock gravity answered Brown of the Bulls. “It is neither, my man,” he said; “neither a circus, nor a Wild West Show. This is the land the poets sing about, the land where dull despair is king.”
Brown of the Bulls naturally wished “some of the poets were about now,” and Dan, having joined the house party, found a fitting opportunity to air one of his pet grievances.
“I’ve never done wishing some of them town chaps that write bush yarns ’ud come along and learn a thing or two,” he said. “Most of ’em seem to think that when we’re not on the drink we’re whipping the cat or committing suicide.” Rarely had Dan any excuse to offer for those “town chaps,” who, without troubling to learn “a thing or two,” first, depict the bush as a pandemonium of drunken orgies, painted women, low revenge, remorse, and suicide; but being in a more magnanimous mood than usual, as the men-folk flocked towards the Quarters he waited behind to add, unconscious of any irony: “Of course, seeing it’s what they’re used to in town, you can’t expect ’em to know any better.”
Then in the Quarters “Luck to our neighbour” was the toast—“luck,” and the hope that all his ventures might be as successfully carried through as his practical joke. After that the Măluka gravely proposed “Cheon,” and Cheon instantly became statuesque and dignified, to the further diversion of Brown of the Bulls—gravely accepting a thimbleful for himself, and, as gravely, drinking his own health, the Măluka just as gravely “clinking glasses” with him. And from that day to this when Cheon wishes to place the Măluka on a fitting pedestal, he ends his long, long tale with a triumphant: “Boss bin knock glass longa me one time.”
Happy Dick and Peter filled in time for the Quarters until sundown, when Cheon announced supper there with an inspired call of “Cognac!” And then, as if to prove that we are not always on the drink, or “whipping the cat, or committing suicide,” that we can love and live for others besides self, Neaves’ mate came down from the little rise beyond the slip-rails, where he had spent his day carving a headstone out of a rough slab of wood that now stood at the head of our sick traveller’s grave.
Not always on the drink, or whipping the cat, or committing suicide, but too often at the Parting of the Ways, for within another twelve hours the travellers, Happy Dick, the Line Party, Neaves’ mate, Brown of the Bulls, and Mac, had all gone or were going their ways, leaving us to go ours—Brown back to hold his bulls at the Red Lilies until further showers should open up all roads, and Mac to “pick up Tam.” But in the meantime Dan had become Showman of the Showers.
“See anything?” he asked, soon after sun-up, waving his hands towards the northern slip-rails, as we stood at the head of the thoroughfare speeding our parting guests; and then he drew attention to the faintest greenish tinge throughout the homestead enclosure—such a clean-washed-looking enclosure now.
“That’s going to be grass soon,” he said, and, the sun coming out with renewed vigour after another shower, by midday he had gathered a handful of tiny blades half an inch in length with a chuckling “What did I tell you?”