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Apart from sterling worth of character, the Dandy was all contrast to the Quiet Stockman: quick, alert, and sociable, and brimming over with quiet tact and thoughtfulness, and the Maluka knew I was in good hands. But the Dandy had his work to attend to; and after watching till the bush had swallowed up the last of the pack-team, I went to the wood-heap for company and consolation.
Fortunately for themselves, Billy Muck and Jimmy had been absent from the wood-heap, and, therefore, not having committed themselves on the subject of wild blacks, bragged excessively. Had they been present, knowing the old fellows well, I venture to think there would have been no intimidation scheme floated.
Ring got the two axes, and each went his own way; but when the Prince had got out into the wood Snati took one of the axes and began to hew along with him. In the evening the King came to look over their day's work, as Red had proposed, and found that Ring's wood-heap was more than twice as big. 'I suspected, said the King, 'that Ring was not quite useless; never have I seen such a day's work.
Sometimes I'd sit and wonder what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he talked, he'd make me uneasy. When he was two he wanted a pipe above all things, and I'd get him a clean new clay and he'd sit by my side, on the edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap, in the cool of the evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit when he saw me do it.
No one stirred about the place; the fowls still fluttered in the dust, and a dissipated looking pet cockatoo, perched on the wood-heap repeated several times in a drowsy tone, "Good-bye, Cockie! Good-bye, Cockie!" Then the door opened, and Red Mick stepped out.
The cook's quarters, kitchens, men's quarters, store, meat-house, and waggon-house, facing each other on either side of this oblong space, formed a short avenue-the main thoroughfare of the homestead the centre of which was occupied by an immense wood-heap, the favourite gossiping place of some of the old black fellows, while across the western end of it, and looking down it, but a little aloof from the rest of the buildings, stood the house, or, rather, as much of it as had been rebuilt after the cyclone of 1897.
But how was it they talked low, and their eyes brightened up, and they didn't look at each other, but away over sunset, and had to get up and walk about, and take a stroll in the cool of the evening when they talked about Eureka? And, again they'd talk lower and more mysterious like, and perhaps mother would be passing the wood-heap and catch a word, and asked: "Who was she, Tom?"
'Sure it's a buggy? 'Yes, missus. 'How many horses? 'One two. We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could. Mary went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes though the sun had gone and peered through between the eternal grey trunks of the stunted trees on the flat across the creek. Presently she jumped down and came running in.
And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the edge of the veranda that is, in warm weather and yarn about Ballarat and Bendigo of the days when we spoke of being on a place oftener than at it: on Ballarat, on Gulgong, on Lambing Flat, on Creswick and they would use the definite article before the names, as: "on The Turon; The Lachlan; The Home Rule; The Canadian Lead."
My first impulse was to hail him with a friendly greeting, but a scruple of punctilio made me pause. The clearing of Rory's horse-paddock was visible here and there through gaps in the scrub; even the hut was in sight from my own point of view; the sun was still a couple of hours above the horizon; and the repose of the wilga shade was more to be desired than the activity of the wood-heap.
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