“Certainly not; we have no earthly right to prevent you from taking fish in the creek, and even if we had we should not use it. We are not brutes.”
“Thank you very much,” said Ah San—and then, addressing himself to the landlord, he asked him if he had a bullock to sell.
Jansen was an alert business man at once. He had a small herd of cattle running wild about the creek! and was only too glad to sell a beast.
“You can have any bullock you like—the biggest in the lot—for a fiver—but, cash down.”
The Chinaman pulled out his purse, handed him a five-pound note, and asked when he could have the beast.
“In about an hour, if you want to kill right off; but you ought not to kill till sundown in such weather as this. But, anyway, I'll saddle up and get a man to help me run the mob into the stockyard. Then you can pick one out for yourself—-there's half a dozen bullocks, and some fine young fat cows, so you can have your choice.”
In a few minutes the landlord had caught and saddled two horses, and riding one, and leading the other, he went off to the new shaft, where the spare horse was mounted by one of the men working there.
Then Ah San turned to the sick man, and said interrogatively—
“You have fever?”
“Yes, I caught it up Normanton way in the Gulf Country six months ago, and thought I was getting clear of it, but a month back it came on again, and I have been pretty bad ever since.”