‘That’s the talk!’ said the highwayman cautiously, ‘but we’re hard up, and that makes the difference; we go on till we pick up something better. What will you take for that dog of yours? I suppose he can hunt ’em along.’
‘Best dog from here to Bourke. I’ll take two pounds for him.’
‘No you won’t. I’ll chance a note for him, and that’s about our last shilling, isn’t it?’ added he, looking at Ernest.
‘Well, the dog’s worth a couple of notes, young feller,’ said the shepherd reflectively, ‘but as you’re a-goin’ to take the sheep, and down on your luck, why, you can have him.’
Ernest nodded assent as purse-bearer.
‘Will you give us chain and collar in the camp to-night? I’ll pay you there,’ said the negotiator. ‘I suppose you won’t clear out till to-morrow?’
‘No fear—it’s a good way to Nubba, and Bill and I are going back to the timber country; we’ve had enough of these blasted plains, ha’n’t we, Bill? Enough to burn a blessed man’s blessed eyes out. Five-and-twenty bob a week don’t pay a cove for that. I mean to stick to the green grass country for a spell now.’
At nightfall the fifteen flocks of sheep were all brought in, and ‘boxed,’ or mixed together, to Ernest’s astonishment. ‘How in the world do they ever get them into the same flocks again?’ he asked.
‘They don’t try,’ it was explained. ‘They just cut them up into fifteen equal lots in the morning, as near as they can, a hundred or two more or less makes no great difference, and away they go along the road stealing as much grass as the squatters are soft enough to let them.’
‘And will they stay quietly here all night?’