The Fizzer was due at sundown, and at sundown a puff of dust rose on the track, and as a cry of “Mail oh!” went up all round the homestead, the Fizzer rode out of the dust.
“Hullo! What ho! boys,” he shouted in welcome, and the next moment we were in the midst of his clattering team of pack-horses.
For five minutes everything was in confusion; horse bells and hobbles jingling and clanging, harness rattling, as horses shook themselves free, and pack-bags, swags, and saddles came to the ground with loud, creaking flops. Every one was lending a hand, and the Fizzer, moving in and out among the horses, shouted a medley of news and instructions and welcome.
“News? Stacks of it!” he shouted. The Fizzer always shouted. “The gay time we had at the Katherine! Here, steady with that pack-bag. It’s breakables! How’s the raisin market? Eh, lads!” with many chuckles. “Sore back here, fetch along the balsam. What ho, Cheon!” as Cheon appeared and greeted him as an old friend. “Heard you were here. You’re the boy for my money. You bally ass! Keep ’em back from the water there.” This last was for the black boy. It took discrimination to fit the Fizzer’s remarks on to the right person. Then, as a pack-bag dropped at the Măluka’s feet, he added: “That’s the station lot, boss. Full bags, missus! Two on ’em. You’ll be doing the disappearing trick in half a mo’.”
In “half a mo’” the seals were broken, and the mail-matter shaken out on the ground. A cascade of papers, magazines, and books, with a fat, firm little packet of letters among them: forty letters in all—thirty of them falling to my lot—thirty fat, bursting envelopes, and in another “half mo’” we had all slipped away in different directions—each with our precious mail matter—doing the “disappearing trick” even to the Fizzer’s satisfaction.
The Fizzer smiled amiably after the retreating figures, and then went to be entertained by Cheon. He expected nothing else. He provided feasts all along his route, and was prepared to stand aside while the bush-folk feasted. Perhaps in the silence that fell over the bush homes, after his mail-bags were opened, his own heart slipped away to dear ones, who were waiting somewhere for news of our Fizzer.
Eight mails only in a year is not all disadvantage. Townsfolk who have eight hundred tiny doses of mail-matter doled out to them, like men on sick diet can form little idea of the pleasure of that feast of “full bags and two on ’em,” for like thirsty camels we drank it all in—every drop of it—in long, deep, satisfying draughts. It may have been a disadvantage, perhaps, to have been so thirsty; but then only the thirsty soul knows the sweetness of slaking that thirst.
After a full hour’s silence the last written sheet was laid down, and I found the Măluka watching and smiling.