Rolf Boldrewood

“ It's only some other cross cattle or horse racket. We're bound to be nobbled some day. Why not cut it now, and stick to the square thing? We couldn't do better than we're doing now. It's rather slow, but we'll have a good cheque by Christmas.'
`I'm half a mind to tell Warrigal to go back and say we're not on,' I said. `Lots of other chaps would join without making any bones about it.'
`Hoo—hoo—hoo—hoo,' sounded once more the night-bird from the black tree outside.
`D—— the bird! I believe he's the devil in the shape of a mopoke! And yet I don't like Starlight to think we're afraid. ”

“ Hungry as Warrigal was—and when he began to eat I thought he never would stop—he went and looked after his horse first, and got him a couple of buckets of water out of the cask they used to send us out every week. There was no surface water near the hut. Then he hobbled him out of a bit of old sheep-yard, and came in.
The more I know of men the more I see what curious lumps of good and bad they're made up of. People that won't stick at anything in some ways will be that soft and good-feeling in others—ten times more so than your regular good people. ”

“ But they are too lazy to look after their own work, and too miserable to pay a good man to do it for them. They just get a half-and-half sort of fellow that'll take low wages and make it up with duffing, and of course he's not likely to look very sharp after the back country.'
`You're not far away,' says Jim; `but don't you think they'd have to look precious sharp and get up very early in the morning to be level with chaps like father and Starlight, let alone Warrigal, who's as good by night as day? Then there's you and me. Don't try and make us out better than we are, Dick ”

“ Any one that thinks all mankind's divided into good, bad, and middlin', and that they can draft 'em like a lot of cattle—some to one yard, some to another—don't know much. There's a mob in most towns though, I think, that wants boilin' down bad. Some day they'll do it, maybe; they'll have to when all the good country's stocked up. After Warrigal had his supper he went out again to see his horse,and then coiled himself up before the fire and wouldn't hardly say another word. ”

“ We drafted out all the worst and weediest of the cattle, besides all the old cows, and when we counted the mob out we had nearly eleven hundred first-rate store cattle; lots of fine young bullocks and heifers, more than half fat—altogether a prime well-bred mob that no squatter or dealer could fault in any way if the price was right. ”

“ When they find it, it'll be an old nest, and the birds flown.'
`Well, if that ain't the cheekiest thing I ever heard tell of,' says I laughingly. `To put up a yard at the back of a man's run, and muster his cattle for him! I never heard the like before, nor any one else. But suppose the cove or his men come across it?'
`'Tain't no ways likely,' says father. `They're the sleepiest lot of chaps in this frontage I ever saw. It's hardly worth while "touching" them. There's no fun in it. It's like shooting pheasants when they ain't preserved. ”

“ They didn't like it, going off their run either, poor devils. The women would try and run back after their pickaninnies when they dropped, just like that heifer when Warrigal knocked her calf on the head to-day.' What a man he was! This was something like life, Jim and I thought. When we'd sold the cattle, if we got 'em down to Adelaide all right, we'd take a voyage to some foreign country, perhaps, and see sights too. ”

“ That's where they'll have us, Dick Marston.'
`That's quite a long speech for you, Jim,' I said; `but it don't matter much that I know of whose fault it is that we're in this duffing racket. It seems to be our fate, as the chap says in the book. We'll have a jolly spree in Adelaide if this journey comes out right. ”

“ After a man had had a year or two at this kind of work, he was good, or rather bad, for anything. These young chaps, like us, had done pretty well at these games, and one of them, falling in with Starlight, had proposed to him to put up a couple of hundred head of cattle on Outer Back Momberah, as the run was called ”

“ But he was a lively active beast, and he'd got into fine hard fettle with living on saltbush, dry grass, and scrub for the last few months, so he could travel as well as the others. I took particular notice of him, from his little waxy horns to his straight locks and long square quarters. ”