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Updated: June 22, 2025
The chaps in the bar of Stiffner's shanty were talking about Macquarie, an absent shearer who seemed, from their conversation, to be better known than liked by them. "I ain't seen Macquarie for ever so long," remarked Box-o'-Tricks, after a pause. "Wonder where he could 'a' got to?" "Jail, p'r'aps or hell," growled Barcoo. "He ain't much loss, any road."
Six ponies in a line against the stable yard fence Bobs, with an eye looking round hopefully for Norah and sugar; Mick, most feather-headed of chestnuts, and Jim's especial delight; Topsy and Barcoo, good useful station ponies, with plenty of fun, yet warranted not to break the necks of boy-visitors; Bung Eye, a lean piebald, that no one but black Billy ever thought of riding; next to him old Polly, packed securely with the day's provisions.
In the basin he traversed, in which these creeks lost their character, he was riding over the united beds of the Barcoo, the Thomson, the Diamentina, and the Herbert, west of whose waters nothing in the shape of a defined system of drainage exists, until the rivers of the western coast are reached.
Stiffner and Box-o'-Tricks were down, two others were holding Barcoo back, and someone had pinned Awful Example by the shoulders from behind. "Let me go!" he yelled, too blind with passion to notice the movements of surprise among the men before him. "Let me go! I'll smash any man that that says a word again' a mate of mine behind his back. Barcoo, I'll have your blood! Let me go!
I owe you a hiding, but I don't see how I'm going to pay you. `Never mind that, Bogan, old man, says Barcoo. `I'll take it from anyone yer likes to appoint, if that worries yer; and, look here, Bogan, if I can't fight you I can fight for you and don't you forget it! And Barcoo used to lead Bogan round about town in his spare time and tell him all that was going on; and I believe he always had an ear cocked in case someone said a word against Bogan as if any of the chaps would say a word against a blind man.
He reeled back from the bar, dashed his glass and hat to the boards, gave his pants, a hitch by the waistband that almost lifted him off his feet, and tore at his shirt-sleeves. "Make a ring, boys," he shouted. "His mate's alive! Put up your hands, Barcoo! By God, his mate's alive!" Someone had turned his horse loose at the rear and had been standing by the back door for the last five minutes.
"Some of you chaps," he said huskily; "one of you chaps, in this bar to-day, called Macquarie a scoundrel, and a loafer, and a blackguard, and and a sneak and a liar." "Well, what if we did?" said Barcoo, defiantly. "He's all that, and a cheat into the bargain. And now, what are you going to do about it?" The old man swung sideways to the bar, rested his elbow on it, and his head on his hand.
He never saw anything again except `a sort of dull white blur, as he called it or his past life sometimes, I suppose. Perhaps he saw that for the first time. Ah, well! "Bogan's old enemy, Barcoo-Rot, went to see him in the hospital, and Bogan said, `Well, Barcoo, I reckon we've had our last fight.
Victoria sent a relief expedition under Walker, with several Queensland black troopers. Walker, crossing the lower Barcoo, found a tree of Leichhardt's marked L, being the most westerly known.
"My oath, yer right, Barcoo!" interposed "Sally" Thompson. "But, now I come to think of it, Old Awful Example there was a mate of his one time. Bless'd if the old soaker ain't comin' to life again!"
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