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It was a delightful train just a simple-hearted, chivalrous, weather-beaten old bush-whacker, at the service of the entire Territory. "There's nothing the least bit officious or standoffish about it," I was saying, when the Man-in-Charge came in with the first billy of tea. "Of course not!" he said, unhooking cups from various crooked-up fingers. "It's a Territorian, you see."
It was out of town just then, up-country somewhere, billabonging in true bush-whacker style, but was expected to return in a day or two, when it would be at our service. Jack, the Quiet Stockman, was out at the homestead, "seeing to things" there.
There was probably a large dose of fatigue in store, and a few hours would see the rise of the sun over the sand-hills to the east, the dawn of another day of heat, dust, flies, and work. But they had given play to their spirits; and so, with the philosophy of the average bush-whacker and stockman, they went contentedly to sleep.
As we approached Pine Creek I confided to the men-folk that I was feeling a little nervous. "Supposing that telegraphing bush-whacker decides to shoot me off-hand on my arrival," I said; and the Man-in-Charge said amiably: "It'll be brought in as justifiable homicide; that's all." Then reconnoitring the enemy from the platform, he "feared" we were "about to be boycotted."
He is fit to meet the bar-room wits and bullies; he is a wit and a bully himself, and something more; he is a graduate of the plough, and the stub-hoe, and the bush-whacker; knows all the secrets of swamp and snow-bank, and has nothing to learn of labor or poverty or the rough of farming.
There set that cold-blooded bush-whacker on the same log, looking down the road the way I had kited, with his gun kinder restin' on his knees. I rested on a stump and took him square in the middle of the back. He gave a yell and jumped erbout five feet, but it was too late to jump. 'Taint nothing to it, a plain case of self-defense and 'parent necessity.
"So I did," the Maluka laughed back. "But before I had time to dazzle the bushies with her the Wizard of the Never-Never charmed her into a bush-whacker." "Into a CHARMING bush-whacker, he MEANS!" the traveller said, bowing before his introduction; and I wondered how the Maluka could have thought for one moment that "mere men" would prove unsatisfying.
There I remained as bush-whacker correspondent for my paper until its managing editor notified me that an eight-hundred-word cablegram describing the grief of a pet carabao over the death of an infant Moro was not considered by the office to be war news. So I resigned, and came home.
Before the tea appeared, an angry Scotch voice crept to us through thin partitions, saying: "It's not a fit place for a woman, and, besides, nobody wants her!" And in a little while we heard the same voice inquiring for "the Boss." "The telegraphing bush-whacker," I said, and invited the Maluka to come and see me defy him.
Jack said I'd disillusioned her and hurt her dignity which was a thousand times worse. He said I'd spoilt the thing altogether. He said that she'd got an idea that I was shy and poetic, and I'd only shown myself the usual sort of Bush-whacker. I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice, and it made me miserable.
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