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But already the Fizzer's shoulders were setting square, for the last trip of the "dry" was before him the trip that perished the last mailman and his horses were none too good. "Good luck!" we called after him.
It is men like the Fizzer who, "keeping the roads open," lay the foundation-stones of great cities; and yet when cities creep into the Never-Never along the Fizzer's mail route, in all probability they will be called after Members of Parliament and the Prime Ministers of that day, grandsons, perhaps, of the men who forgot to keep the old well in repair, while our Fizzer and the mail-man who perished will be forgotten; for townsfolk are apt to forget the beginnings of things.
What ho, Cheon!" as Cheon appeared and greeted him as an old friend. "Heard you were here. You're the boy for my money. You BALLY ass! Keep 'em back from the water there." This last was for the black boy. It took discrimination to fit the Fizzer's remarks on to the right person. Then, as a pack-bag dropped at the Maluka's feet, he added: "That's the station lot, boss. Full bags, missus!
But before the other could be claimed Cheon had opened the last eighty-pound chest of tea, and the homestead fearing the supply might not be equal to the demands of the Wet, the Dandy was dispatched in all haste for an extra loading of stores. And all through his absence, as before it, and before the Fizzer's visit, Dan and the elements "kept things humming."
A cascade of papers, magazines, and books, with a fat, firm little packet of letters among them: forty letters in all thirty of them falling to my lot thirty fat, bursting envelopes, and in another "half mo'" we had all slipped away in different directions each with our precious mail matter doing the "disappearing trick" even to the Fizzer's satisfaction.
"Early showers!" and there was a note in our voices brought there by the thought of that gaunt figure at the well rattling its dicebox as it waited for one more round with our Fizzer: a note that brought a bright look into the Fizzer's face, as with an answering shout of farewell he rode on into the forest.
Added to all this, there are eight or ten horses so eager for a drink that the poor brutes have to be tied up, and watered one at a time; and so parched with thirst that it takes three hours' drawing before they are satisfied three hours' steady drawing, on top of twenty-three hours out of twenty-seven spent in the saddle, and half that time "punching" jaded beasts along; and yet they speak of the "Fizzer's luck."
It is luck, perhaps but not in the sense they mean to have the keen judgment to know to an ounce what a horse has left in him, judgment to know when to stop and when to go on for that is left to the Fizzer's discretion; and with that judgment the dauntless courage to go on with, and win through, every task attempted.
But the man was one of the Scots another Mac of the race that loves a good fight, and his plucky heart stood by him so well that within twenty-four hours he was Iying contentedly in the shade of the Quarters, looking on, while the homestead shared the Fizzer's welcome with Mac and Tam and a traveller or two.
Fortunately, the Outsider always remained the only exception, and within a day or two of the Fizzer's visit a traveller passed through going east who happened to know that the "chap from Victoria Downs was just about due at Hodgson going back west," and one letter went forward in his pocket en route to its owner.
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