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I was brooding over Mary and the Jackaroo. 'I've heard of men getting down over their horse's head, said Dave presently, in a reflective sort of way 'in fact I've done it myself but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse's rump. But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him to play the fiddle next night, so they dropped it. Mary was singing an old song.
At the last camp before Bourke Jim's packhorse got disgusted and home-sick during the night and started back for the place where he was foaled. Jim was little more than a new-chum jackaroo; he was no bushman and generally got lost when he went down the next gully. Bill was a bushman, so it was decided that he should go back to look for the horse.
The Paris Meeting was the next big event; and Ikey Aaronsohnn's horse Jackaroo the waler Chukkers had just brought back with him from the other side was to make his first appearance at it. There was only one English horse of which the Dewhurst stable had not the measure, and that was the Putnam mare Make-Way-There.
I seen him lift her on, an' he took her right up an' lifted her right inter the saddle, 'stead of holdin' his hand for her to tread on like that new-chum jackaroo we had. An', what's more, I seen him hug her an' give her a kiss before he lifted her on. He told her he was as good as her brother." "What did he mean by that, Tommy?" asked Mrs Porter, to break an awkward pause.
Mary Wall was twenty-five. She was an Australian bush girl, every inch of her five-foot-nine; she had a pink-and-white complexion, dark blue eyes, blue-black hair, and "the finest figure in the district," on horseback or afoot. She said she was going to be an old maid. There came a jackaroo on a visit to the station. He was related to the bank with which Wall had relations.
There is something sad and pathetic about that old practical joke as indeed there is with all bush jokes. There seems a quiet sort of sadness always running through outback humour whether alleged or otherwise. There's the usual yarn about a jackaroo mistaking Thompson for a brother rouser, and asking him whether old Baldy was about anywhere, and Baldy said: "Why, are you looking for a job?"
I noticed that some of the girls, that I could see sitting on a stool along the opposite wall, whispered, and gave Mary black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past. It struck me pretty forcibly that I should have taken fighting lessons from him instead of from poor Romany.
There was a lot of jackaroo swells, that had been on a visit to the squatter, or something, and they were sittin' down at dinner; and they seemed to think by their looks that we ought to have stayed outside and waited till they were done we was only two rough shearers, you know.
He was staring intently at nothing, and seemed to be thinking very hard. We dozed off again, and woke suddenly to find our eyes wide open, and the young Swiss still studying, and the jackaroo still sitting in the same position, but with a kind of waiting expression on his face a sort of expectant light in his eyes.
But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a big puff at his pipe and spoke 'I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany? 'Oh, she tried it on, but it didn't go, said Romany. 'I've met her sort before. She's setting her cap at that Jackaroo now. Some girls will run after anything with trousers on, and he stood up.
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