[271]
]‘Bill had gone to tell the news; an’ in a very few minutes a whole crowd o’ Fritzes, an’ Hanses, an’ Hermans, an Gottliebs was turned out an’ ready for a start.
‘They didn’t want no coaxing. All they says was ‘Ach Gott!’ an’ they was fit for anythin’. By no manner o’ means a bad lot,’ here commented Ward, ‘when you comes to get in with ’em an’ know ’em like. Honest as the light, an’ as hard-workin’ as a bullock. Slow, maybe, but very sure. Full o’ pluck as a soger-ant. Clannish as the Scotties, an’ as savin’. I’ve got some real good friends among ’em now. An’ their women-folks, too, is amazin’ handy—make you up a square feed out o’ a head o’ cabbage an’ a bit o’ greenhide, I do believe, if they was put to it.
‘Cert’nly their lingo ’s the dead finish at first, till you gets used to it. I can Deutsch gesprechen, myself, now, more’n a little.
‘However, that’s neither here nor there.
‘Bill, my mate, as I told you, as much as me, havin’ got full o’ farmin’, we used to take a prospectin’ trip now and then among the ranges. But we never rose the colour. Never found a thing, ’cept scrub turkeys’ eggs. Anyhow, we knew the country better’n the Germans, an’ took the lead.
‘Pitch dark it were, with heavy squalls, an’ the river roarin’ along half a banker.
‘Fairleigh, after a stiff nip o’ rum, began to find his senses again sufficient to give us the right course.
‘Such scramblin’, an’ coo-eein’, an’ slippin’, an’ tearin’ about the Bush in the dark never, I should think, [272] ]happened before. But we managed to keep in some sort o’ line an’ cover a goodish track o’ country.
‘We must ha’ gone fully five miles into the ranges, an’ Bill an’ me was gettin’ to the end of our tether in that direction, when we found Mrs Fairleigh. Karl Itzig nearly falls over her, lyin’ stretched out on a big flat rock.
‘We thought she was dead; but, after a while, she comes to, light-headed, though, and not able to tell us anythin’. So we sends her home with a couple o’ the chaps carryin’ her.