There was an uproar in the veranda, and more cries of 'Shame, Steadbolt, you! ... You just git, Gumsucker Steve. We ain't got no use for you, Micky Phayle.... Can't you see a lady as is a lady?' sounded from the bar and parlour. It was the landlady who asked the last question. The two reprobates who had been asleep, lunged off the veranda, and made a feeble assault on Steadbolt, who still clung to the reins. The man, lashed to fury by the scorn ringing in Lady Bridget's voice, made a last envenomed attack.
'It ain't us GENUINE Australians that insults you.... Takes a mongrel Scotchy for that.... Say, Ladyship, just you ask your husband what a sort of an insult he's got ready for YOU up at his Bachelor's Quarters at Moongarr.'
The words had not left his mouth when McKeith's driving whip whizzed in the air and raised blood on the speaker's cheek. Steadbolt dropped his hold of the roan leader's bridle and fell back screaming imprecations. At a touch, the buggy-horses bounded forward.
'Sit tight, Biddy,' said her husband. 'Up you get, Cudgee,' he shouted. The black boy leaped to the back-seat, and in a moment the buggy swerved by the bullock-dray that was drawn up a little further down the road, and the excited horses galloped past the nineteen public houses and the zinc-roofed shanties, past the new quarter of tents and whirring machinery, past the deserted shafts and desolate mullock heaps, then way out along the sandy wheel-track into the unpopulated Bush.
For the first mile scarcely a word was exchanged between husband and wife. The horses were fresh and McKeith had enough to do to keep them from bolting. Moreover, even in emotional phases, he was always silent while chewing the cud of his reflections. Bridget was thinking, too. She had an uneasy sense of startlement, without exactly knowing why she felt startled in that inward way. It was as though some great obscene bird of flight had brushed her with its wings, and brought vaguely to her consciousness unpleasant possibilities. But presently she became interested in watching Colin's handling of the team. She had often sat behind such a team, but never beside such a splendid whip. Impulsively she made some such remark, and he looked down at her, the hard face breaking into a smile.
'That's good.... Wait a bit, my dear, until they've steadied down again.... Y'see they take a lot of driving, and I don't want to lay an accident on top of that unholy shindy....' He spoke in jerks. The roans were inclined to 'show nasty' as Moongarr Bill came abreast of them, and Wombo's pack jingled behind. McKeith gave Moongarr Bill directions about the camp in Bush lingo, which again turned Bridget's thoughts. The black boy and the stockman spurred on as the roans slackened pace. McKeith was able to relax the strain.
'My word! we scooted pretty quick out of that piece of scenery,' he said. 'I felt downright mad at your being let in for such a disgraceful bit of business. I hadn't time to tell you that I'd sacked those men half an hour before. Found them in the lowest of the grog shanties, their horses not looked after, dray only half loaded, and the three of them—Gumsucker Steve was to have come and taken off our leaders when we got into broken country—thick with the Union delegates and sticking for higher wages. I paid them off and filled their places on the spot with two chaps off a wool-drive.... So I left the brutes vowing vengeance, and I suppose they thought they'd lose no time in giving me a taste of it.... Well, they're no loss.' He had been explaining things in jerks while he brought the team to an harmonious jog-trot along a piece of uneven road. 'That fellow Steadbolt is a wrong 'un—not good even at his own job of wood and water joey—which means, my dear, the odd cart-driving on a place—and not to be trusted within ten miles of a public house.'
Lady Bridget asked suddenly:
'I want to know, Colin—what did that man mean by saying you had an insult ready for me at your Bachelor's Quarters? What insult?'
It seemed as though blue fire leaped from McKeith's eyes.