There is a special saddle made for buckjumpers, provided with heavy pads to prop the knee against, and so prevent the rider from being chucked forward, and this is sometimes assisted by securely fastening an iron bar with a roll of blanket around it across the pommel of the saddle. This presses across the thighs just above the knees, and affords great additional security, and a surcingle is strapped over the seat of the saddle as a further assistance to the girths.
There is also another plan adopted with a really bad brute—namely, a crutch of wood or iron fastened to a martingale below, with two rings above, through which the reins are led. This contrivance is to prevent the animal lowering his head, which is a necessary movement on his part for accomplished bucking.
CHAPTER X.
I Undertake Employment with a Bush Contractor—Get Seriously Ill—Start for the South and the Gold Diggings.
I had now been more than a month on the Ashburton, but as I could not expect home letters yet for some weeks, and was getting tired of mere amusement, I accepted an offer made me to join in a new line of work.
A man named Metcalfe, a relative of a neighbouring squatter, had lately started work as a bush contractor, and had just then undertaken to construct a number of station buildings for a run holder on the Ashburton. Metcalfe was an experienced bushman and a good rough carpenter. He asked me to join him and I at once accepted.
We would have to fell and cut up our own timber in the forest, cart it down some forty miles, and construct all the works without other assistance.
Our first business was to provide a habitation for ourselves in the forest, as we required to stay there a month or two while cutting the necessary timber. We laid out a space 10 feet by 12 feet, drove in posts at the corners, and nailed a strong rail on top, then we felled and split up into slabs a number of white pine trees, and set them upwards all round with their edges overlapping and nailed them at the top to the rail, or, more properly, wall plate, the feet of the slabs being set a few inches in the ground. Over this enclosure we made a sloping framework of wickers (fine saplings) and covered it with an old tent which Metcalfe possessed. At one end of the hut we constructed a wide fireplace and chimney in the same manner, and hung up an old blanket over the space left for a doorway. The inside of the slab walls and chimney we wattled with mud and laths, which we split up, and plastered over with mud and chopped grass. We made rough cots with wickers and slabs, raised a foot above the ground, so as to form seats as well as beds, and covered them with a thick layer of minuka branches, which made capital springy mattresses, and over all we laid our blankets. For a table we split and dressed fairly smooth a pine slab a foot wide in which we bored four holes and inserted therein wicker legs. Our mansion was now complete and it had not occupied two days to build.