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And she would say no more, but going to several agencies in Pitt Street put down their names. She told them she came from a farm in Scotland, and they seemed very pleased to see her. But when she added that she was married to an Englishman who had a public-school education they became sceptical. "What can he do?" they asked. She hesitated. "Rouseabout?" asked the clerk.
At daybreak, Marshall and I and the rouseabout started on good horses, each going at different angles, but agreeing to meet at the Debil debil Waterhole, and to wait there for each other. If any one of us did not come after a certain time, we were to conclude that he had found the adventurers and was making his way back with them.
If a shearer or rouseabout was good at argument, and a bit of a politician, he hadn't to slave much at Thompson's shed, for Baldy would argue with him all day and pay for it. "I can't put on any more men," he'd say to travellers. "I can't put on a lot of men to make big cheques when there's no money in the bank to pay 'em and I've got all I can do to get tucker for the family.
He must have had money, or else he got remittances from home, for he paid his way and helped many a poor devil. They said that he gave away most of his money. Sometimes he worked for a while himself as bookkeeper at a shearing-shed, wool-sorter, shearer, even rouseabout; he'd work at anything a bushman could get to do.
I couldn't see any distance, though I was not far from the house. But when I got into the garden I saw that others had just arrived. It was the rouseabout with my wife's lovers. He had found Billy nursing Eversofar in the shade of a stunted brigalow, while Bingong was away hunting for water.
A rouseabout rose late, and, while the others were at breakfast, got an idea into his head that a good "sloosh" would freshen him up; so he mooched round until he found a big wooden bucket with a rope to it. He carried the bucket aft of the wheel. The boat was butting up stream for all she was worth, and the stream was running the other way, of course, and about a hundred times as fast as a train.
After a day of painful travel and little water, Marshall and I arrived, almost within an hour of each other. We could see no sign of anybody having been at the lagoon. We waited twelve hours, and were about to go, leaving a mark behind us to show we had been there, when we saw the rouseabout and his exhausted horse coming slowly through the bluebush to us. He had suffered much for want of water.
Old Eversofar, being weak and old, gave in, and Billy became a little delirious he has denied it, but Bingong says it is so; yet he pulled himself together as became the leader of an expedition, and did what he could for Eversofar until the rouseabout came with food and water. Then he broke down and cried he denies this also.
So they had dropped in to see old George, the rouseabout, and have a yarn with him, or, if there were no signs of the weather clearing, to consider the question of work in the wool-shed. "Hullo, boys!" mumbled George. "I reckon as thar' ain't no use us gittin' art jist now. I thinks the fire's the best place ter day. Squat yerself in that thar cheer, Mac, me boy.
"Oh, oh!" blurted Mulholland, "I am better out of this; for I little care to be called as a witness in divorce." He rose from his chair, but I pushed him back, and he did not leave till "the cool of the evening." The next morning, at breakfast-time, a rouseabout brought us a piece of paper which had been nailed to the sandal-tree. On it was written: "We have gone for the Bunyip. We travel on foot!
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