“Well, I’ve broken my duck, anyhow, and that’s more than any of you others can say!” Wally laughed. “Time enough for you to grin when you’ve caught something yourselves—even if it’s only an old boot! It’s a real old stager and no mistake. I wonder how it came in here.”
“Some poor old beggar of a swaggie, I expect,” Jim said. “He didn’t chuck it away until it was pretty well done, did he? Look at the holes in the uppers—and there’s no sole left to speak of.”
“Do you see many tramps here?” Harry asked.
“Not many—we’re too far from a road,” Jim replied. “Of course there are a certain number who know of the station, and are sure of getting tucker there—and a job if they want one—not that many of them do, the lazy beggars. Most of them would be injured if you asked them to chop a bit of wood in return for a meal, and some of them threaten to set the place on fire if they don’t get all they want.”
“My word!” said Wally. “Did they ever do it?”
“Once—two years ago,” Jim answered. “A fellow came one hot evening in January. We’d had a long spell of heat, and all our meat had gone bad that day; there was hardly a bit in the place, and of course they couldn’t kill a beast till evening. About the middle of the day this chap turned up and asked for tucker.
“Mrs. Brown gave him bread and flour and tea and some cake—a real good haul for any swaggie. It was too good for this fellow, for he immediately turned up his proud nose and said he wanted meat. Mrs. Brown explained that she hadn’t any to give him; but he evidently didn’t believe her, said it was our darned meanness and, seeing no men about, got pretty insulting. At last he tried to force his way past Mrs. Brown into the kitchen.”
“Did he get in?” asked Wally.
“Nearly—not quite, though. Dad and Norah and I had been out riding, and we came home, past the back yard, in the nick of time. We couldn’t hear what the fellow was saying to Mrs. Brown, but his attitude was enough to make us pull up, and as we did so we saw him try to shove her aside. She was plucky enough and banged the door in his face, but he got his foot in the crack, so that it couldn’t shut, and began to push it open.
“Dad slipped off his horse gently. He made a sign to us to keep quiet and went across the yard, and we saw him shake the lash of his stockwhip loose. You can just fancy how Norah and I were dancing with joy!