“Hallo! Rooney, is that you, in this uncivilized part of the world? Rather different from the old place, isn’t it! Come in, and I’ll have your horse hobbled out. You mustn’t expect stables or paddock or any other luxuries on the Warroo.”
“Sure, I know it well—my heavy curse on the same river; there never was any dacency next or anigh it. Didn’t they lend me a buck-jumper at Morahgil to-day, and the first place I found myself was on the broad of my back.”
“What a shame! Did they give you another horse?”
“They did not. I rode the same devil right through. It’s little bucking he feels inclined for now.”
“So I should think, after an eighty-mile ride. When did you leave?”
“About twelve o’clock. I was riding all night, and got there to breakfast. The last time I took cattle from Morahgil I happened to knock down the superintendent with a roping pole, maybe that’s why he treated me so—the mane blayguard.”
“Well, he ought not to have let such a trifle dwell on his mind, perhaps. But take a glass of grog, Rooney, while the fellow gets your tea.”
“Faith, and I will, Masther John; and it’s sound I’ll sleep to-night, fleas or no fleas. A man can’t do without it for more than three nights at a time.”
In a few days the muster was duly concluded, and three hundred prime bullocks secured in the ancient but massive stockyard. One of Rooney’s drovers and a couple of road hands had arrived the evening before, to whom they were intrusted. Rooney was too great a man to be able to afford the time to travel with his own cattle, and had, indeed, a score of other mobs to meet, despatch, buy, or sell, to arrive in as many different and distant parts of the colony.
“Well, Masther John,” said he, “I won’t deny that I haven’t lifted a finer mob this season. Isn’t it a murthering fine run, when it puts the beef on them big-boned divils like that? If ye had some of those roan steers we used to get at the Lost Waterhole Camp, sure they wouldn’t be able to see out of their eyes with fat. I’ll be able to get the eight hundred out of these aisy enough. I’ll send Joe. Best for the cows and the rest of the bullocks the moment he’s shut of those circle-dot cattle. I must be off down the river. I’ve a long ride before me. But, Masther John, see here now, don’t be building too much on the saysons in these parts. It’s not like Marshmead; I’ve seen it all as bare as a brickfield, from the Warroo to the Oxley; and these very cattle with their ribs up to their backbones, and dyin’ by hundreds. D’ye hear me now? Don’t be spending all your money before ye see how prices are going. I’m thinking we’ll see a dale of changes in the next three or four years—all this racin’ and jostlin’ for breeding sheep can’t hould out. Good-bye, sir.”