‘Ike, this is a gentleman going up the country; he ain’t been out long’ (Ike nodded expressively), ‘and he wants your advice about buying a cattle station. He’d rather them nor sheep.’
‘Sheep be blanked,’ said the old man savagely. ‘I should think not. Who the blank would walk at the tails of a lot of blank crawling sheep, when he could ride a good horse after a mob of thousand-weight bullocks, like I’ve got here to-night?’
‘Mr. Landlord,’ said Ernest, ‘I should like a glass of grog. Won’t Mr.—a—Ike, here, and yourself join me?’
The refreshment was not declined, and having been produced, Ike abandoned his pipe and proceeded to expound the law as regarded cattle—wild, tame, fat, store, branded and unbranded, broken-in, or ‘all over the country’—in an oracular tone, suggestive of experiences and adventure far beyond the reach of ordinary men.
‘Travelled this line? ah! You remember me a fairish time, Joe; but I’ve been along these ranges and gullies with stock long before the old road was finished, when you were sure to meet more than one bushranger, and had to carry your grub and camp for weeks together. Many a queer drive I’ve had on this very track. They had no steamers fizzin’ up and down the rocks then, takin’ sheep and cattle behind ‘em, all mashed up together in boxes like so many herrin’s. It took a man to bring a mob of fat bullocks from the Lower Castlereagh or the Macquarie, let alone the Narran, in them days.’
‘I suppose you had some roughish trips them days,’ suggested the host.
‘You may swear that, Joe,’ affirmed the war-worn stockman, with a grim contortion of his facial muscles; ‘take the book in your right hand, as they say, when you are in the “jump-up.” Here,‘ added he, as he swallowed his brandy at a gulp, and made a sign to the landlord, ‘fetch in another round, if this gentleman here ain’t too proud, and I’ll tell you a yarn about drivin’ cattle—one you don’t hear every day.’
The replenished glasses reappeared, and the veteran of the ‘spur, the bridle, and the well-worn brand,’ having filled his pipe and partly emptied his glass, made a commencement.
‘It was a matter of thirty years ago, or more; I was a young chap then and pretty flash, knowed my work, and wasn’t afraid of man, beast, or devil. Well, I’d got a biggish mob of fat stock for them days—there was no ten thousand head on any man’s run then—and a rough time we’d had of it. It had rained every day since we started. We’d had to swim every river and every creek as we come to, and watch for the first fortnight, all night long, with the horses’ bridles in our hands.’
‘I suppose they were rather wild cattle?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp, sipping his brandy and water distrustfully.