At every settlement we stopped and passed the time of day and, giving out mail-bags, moved on again into the forest. Now and again, stockmen rode out of the timber and received mail-bags, and once a great burly bushman, a staunch old friend of the Măluka’s, boarded the train, and greeted him with a hearty hand-shake.
“Hullo! old chap!” he called in welcome, as he mounted the steps of the little platform, “I’ve come to inspect your latest investment”; but catching sight of the “latest investment” he broke into a deafening roar.
“Good Lord!” he shouted, looking down upon me from his great height, “is that all there is of her? They’re expecting one of the prize-fighting variety down there,” and he jerked his head towards the Never-Never. Then he congratulated the Măluka on the size of his missus.
“Gimme the little ’uns,” he said, nearly wringing my hand off in his approval. “You can’t beat ’em for pluck. My missus is one of ’em, and she went bush with me when I’d nothing but a skeeto net and a quart-pot to share with her.” Then, slapping the Măluka vigorously on the back, he told him he’d got some sense left. “You can’t beat the little ’uns,” he declared. “They’re just the very thing.”
The Măluka agreed with him, and after some comical quizzing, they decided, to their own complete satisfaction, that although the bushman’s “missus” was the “littlest of all little ’uns, straight up and down,” the Măluka’s “knocked spots off her sideways.”
But although the Territory train does not need to bend its neck to the galling yoke of a minute time-table, yet, like all bush-whackers, it prefers to strike its supper camp before night-fall, and after allowing us a good ten minutes’ chat, it blew a deferential “Ahem” from its engine, as a hint that it would like to be “getting along.” The bushman took the hint, and after a hearty “Good luck, missus!” and a “chin, chin, old man,” left us, with assurances that “her size ’ud do the trick.”
Until sundown we jogged quietly on, meandering through further pleasant places and meetings; drinking tea and chatting with the Man-in-Charge between whiles, extracting a maximum of pleasure from a minimum rate of speed: for travelling in the Territory has not yet passed that ideal stage where the travelling itself—the actual going—is all pleasantness.
As we approached Pine Creek I confided to the men-folk that I was feeling a little nervous. “Supposing that telegraphing bush-whacker decides to shoot me off-hand on my arrival,” I said; and the Man-in-Charge said amiably: “It’ll be brought in as justifiable homicide; that’s all.” Then reconnoitring the enemy from the platform, he “feared” we were “about to be boycotted.”
There certainly were very few men on the station, and the Man-in-Charge recognising one of them as the landlord of the Playford, assured us there was nothing to fear from that quarter. “You see, you represent business to him,” he explained.
Every one but the landlord seemed to have urgent business in the office or at the far end of the platform, but it was quickly evident that there was nothing to fear from him; for, finding himself left alone to do the honours of the Creek, he greeted us with an amused: “She doesn’t look up to sample sent by telegram”; and I felt every meeting would be, at least, unconventional. Then we heard that as Mac had “only just arrived from the Katherine, he couldn’t leave his horses until they were fixed up”; but the landlord’s eyes having wandered back to the “Goer,” he winked deliberately at the Măluka before inviting us to “step across to the Pub.”