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The last year or two a hot rivalry had existed between the ranchmen and "townies" over the outcome of the running race, for in this event everybody, no matter what his daily occupation, could be interested. The last year one of the men from the Bar X Ranch had taken the prize money, and the ranchers had all been jubilant.
They had both served their time in the island, and were, moreover, "townies," natives of the same town at home. Nosey began the conversation by saying to his old friend, "I've been a bad boy since I saw you last I done a man in Victoria"; and then he gave the full particulars of his crime, as already related. But the old chum could not believe the narrative, any more than did the squatter.
Nine out of ten of the questions were to the same purpose, and the gunner answered them with some sharpness. He turned angrily at last on one man who put the query in broad Scots accent. 'No, he said tartly, 'we ain't tryin' to silence their guns. An' if you partickler wants to know why we ain't well, p'raps them Glasgow townies o' yours can tell you.
"I wonder if these farmers aren't bigger than we are? So simple and hard-working. The town lives on them. We townies are parasites, and yet we feel superior to them. Last night I heard Mr. Haydock talking about 'hicks. Apparently he despises the farmers because they haven't reached the social heights of selling thread and buttons." "Parasites? Us? Where'd the farmers be without the town?
The sailmaker took vigorous draws at his pipe and mumbled: "When I... West India Station... In the Blanche frigate... Yellow Jack... sewed in twenty men a week... Portsmouth-Devon-port men townies knew their fathers, mothers, sisters the whole boiling of 'em. Thought nothing of it. And these niggers like this one you don't know where it comes from. Got nobody. No use to nobody. Who will miss him?"
The lid would then be screwed on, the troop would form a double line, facing inward, the firing-party would "present arms," and six of the dead man's more particular pals, or of his "townies," would bear the coffin out and place it upon the gun-carriage.
From that time on, the regard in which the three comrades were held by the rough Westerners never wavered, and the cowboys never wearied of discussing again and again the details of the great race that clipped the wings of the "townies." The Wolf Pack
But the townies won't wager any money on us this year, eh?" "The Annapolis people have put up some, but not much," replied Waite. "We're going to win, just the same," announced Dan Dalzell. "Sure?" questioned several voices. "Oh, yes! It's all settled now," laughed Midshipman Waite. "I've been waiting for Danny boy to tell us. Now, we know we've heard from the hot-air meter."
Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying, rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the faint-hearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when there was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good cheer for their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his dun pony round the outskirts of the camp, and heading back men who, with the innate perversity of British soldiers, were always wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from rain-flooded marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once tending the dying who had no friends the men without 'townies'; organising, with banjos and burnt cork, Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the Regiment full play; and generally, as he explained, 'playing the giddy garden-goat all round.
They kept Doherty indures f 'r a day, but by an' by me cousin Mike lost inthrest in th' gredge, havin' others that was newer, an' he wint over to th' ya-ards; an' Doherty an' Sullivan begin to bow to each other, an' afther a while they found that they were blood relations, an', what's closer thin that whin ye're away fr'm home, townies.
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