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Jackeroo was riding ahead, and flashed one swift, sidelong glance after me but as the mob trotted by he trotted with them as impassive as a statue.
One horse began kicking up, so, to give him no time for further pranks, I drove at a good round gallop, which quickly left the lovable jackeroo a speck in the distance. The dust rose in thick clouds, the stones rattled from the whirling wheels, the chirr! chirr! of a myriad cicadas filled the air, and the white road glistened in the dazzling sunlight.
Dan chuckled, but the Maluka cared little whether the papers were signed then or at sun-up; and the drovers, pleased with getting their way so easily, magnanimously offered to take charge of the first "watch" the evening watch provided that only our horses should be used, and that Big Jack and Jackeroo and others should lend a hand. Dan wouldn't hear of refusing the offer.
"Really, Mr Beecham, Mr Archer and I have been so interested in ourselves that we quite forgot there was such a thing as a race at all," I returned. "You'd better see where old Boxer is. He might kick some of the other horses if you don't keep a sharp look-out," he said, turning to his jackeroo. "Ladies before gentlemen," I interposed.
Some shearers would roughly call her "a squatter's girl". But she "drew"; she was handsome where women are scarce very handsome, thought a tall, melancholy-looking jackeroo, whose evil spirit had drawn him to Stiffner's and the last shilling out of his pocket.
Then, with Jackeroo on one side of the river, and the Maluka and Mac on the other, swags, saddles, packbags, and camp baggage went over one by one; and it was well past mid-day before all was finished. Then my turn came. A surcingle one of the long thick straps that keep all firm on a pack-horse was buckled through the pulley, and the Maluka crossed first, just to test its safety.
Apart from the mystery of the side-saddle, and the joke of seeing her in an enormous mushroom hat, there was the interest of the mounting itself; Jackeroo having spread a report that the Maluka held out his hands, while the missus ran up them and sat herself upon the horse's back.
Jackeroo being "funny man" in the tribe, was first favourite in exhibitions; but we could get no further pantomime that night, although we heard later from Bett-Bett that "How the missus climbed a tree" had a long run.
Jackeroo, the unpoetical, was even then sound asleep in his net; and in ten minutes everything was "fixed up." In another ten minutes we had also "turned in," and soon after I was sound asleep, rolled up in a "bluey," and had to be wakened at dawn. "The river's still rising," Mac announced by way of good-morning.
It took nearly an hour's hustling and urging and galloping before the horses could be persuaded to attempt the swim, and then only after old Roper had been partly dragged and partly hauled through the back-wash by the amphibious Jackeroo. Another half-hour slipped by in sending the horses' hobbles across on the pulley that ran on the wire, and in the hobbling out of the horses.
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