'Put your blankets down there, boys, and turn in. You'll see how the land lies in the morning.' We didn't want asking twice, Jim's eyes were nigh shut as it was. The sun was up when we woke.
Outside the first thing we saw was father and Starlight talking. Both of these seemed a bit cranky. 'It's a d——shame,' we heard Starlight say, as he turned and walked off. 'We could have done it well enough by ourselves.'
'I know what I'm about,' says father, 'it's all or none. What's the use of crying after being in it up to our neck?'
'Some day you'll think different,' says Starlight, looking back at him.
I often remembered it afterwards.
'Well, lads,' says father, looking straight at us, 'I wasn't sure as you'd come. Starlight has been barneying with me about sending for you. But we've got a big thing on now, and I thought you'd like to be in it.'
'We have come,' says I, pretty short. 'Now we're here what's the play called, and when does the curtain rise? We're on.' I was riled, vexed at Starlight talking as if we were children, and thought I'd show as we were men, like a young fool as I was.
'All right,' says father, and he sat down on a log, and began to tell us how there was any quantity of cattle running at the back where they were camped—a good lot strayed and mixed up, from the last dry season, and had never been mustered for years. The stockmen hardly ever came out till the autumn musters. One of the chaps that was in it knew all this side and had told them. They were going to muster for a month or so, and drive the mob right through to Adelaide. Store cattle were dear then, and we could get them off easy there and come back by sea. No one was to know we were not regular overlanders; and when we'd got the notes in our pockets it would be a hard matter to trace the cattle or prove that we were the men that sold 'em.
'How many head do you expect to get?' says Jim.
'A thousand or twelve hundred; half of 'em fat, and two-thirds of them young cattle.'