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Their place was called Boolabong, and was a cattle-run, as distinguished from a sheep-run; but it was a poor place, was sometimes altogether unstocked, and was supposed to be not unfrequently used as a receptable for stolen cattle. The tricks which the Brownbies played with cattle were notorious throughout Queensland and New South Wales, and by a certain class of men were much admired.
There are people whom I find it very comfortable to quarrel with. I shouldn't at all like not to quarrel with the Brownbies, and I'm not at all sure it mayn't come to be the same with Mr. Giles Medlicot." "The Brownbies live by sheep-stealing and horse-stealing." "And Medlicot means to live by employing sheep-stealers and horse- stealers. You can go if you like it.
To his thinking, the Colonial Government was grossly at fault, because it did not weed out and extirpate not only the identical Brownbies, but all Brownbieism wherever it might be found. A dishonest workman was a great evil, but, to his thinking, a dishonest man in the position of master was the incarnation of evil.
"I am very glad I went into Maryborough," he said to his wife, rising up from his pillow. "I've sworn an information against Nokes and two of the Brownbies, and the police will be after them this afternoon. They won't catch Nokes, and they can't convict the other fellows.
"The Brownbies are a bad lot, but I don't think they'd do any thing of this kind," said Harry, whose mind was still dwelling on the dangers of fire. "They likes muttons, Mr. 'Eathcote." "I suppose they do take a sheep or two now and then. They wouldn't do worse than that, would they?" "Not'ing too 'ot for 'em; not'ing too 'eavy," said Karl, smoking his pipe.
As to the difficulties of evidence, and obstacles of that nature, Harry Heathcote knew nothing. The Brownbies were rascals, and should therefore be exterminated. And the Brownbies knew well the estimation in which their neighbour held them. Harry had made himself altogether disagreeable to them.
Now Jacko had been introduced to Gangoil under German auspices, and had soon come to a decision that it would be a good thing and a just to lock up all the Brownbies in the great jail of the colony at Brisbane. He probably knew nothing of law or justice in the abstract, but he greatly valued law when exercised against those he hated.
Old squatters whom he knew, respectable men who had been in the colony before he was born, had advised him to be on good terms with the Brownbies. "You needn't ask them to your house, or go to them, but just soft-sawder them when yon meet," an old gentleman had said to him.
He certainly hadn't taken the old gentleman's advice, thinking that to "soft-sawder" so great a reprobate as Jerry Brownbie would be holding a candle to the devil. But his own plan had hardly answered. Well, he was sure, at any rate, of this that he could do no good now by endeavoring to be civil to the Brownbies.
The Brownbies were wise enough to have learned that it was necessary for their very existence that they should have friends in the land. On the Sunday the father and Jerry Brownbie were sitting out in the veranda at about noon, and the other two sons, Jack and Joe, were lying asleep on the beds within. The heat of the day was intense.
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