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Updated: May 7, 2025
Thereafter I made it my business to pass the lady on the bridle path day after day. I pride myself on few things, but my horsemanship is one of them. Many a hard tussle and bleeding nose I got riding Brumbies across the wild tracks of Australia. I also learned a trick or two among my Tuareg friends which I exhibited for the lady's benefit on various occasions.
Such a capture had not fallen to our lot for many a day, and the fame of White-when-he's-wanted was speedily noised abroad. He was always fit for work, always hungry, always ready to lie down and roll, and always lazy. But when he heard the rush of the brumbies' feet in the scrub he became frantic with excitement.
How they'd scurry off through the scrub and up the range, where it was like the side of a house, and that full of slate-bars all upon edge that you could smell the hoofs of the brumbies as the sharp stones rasped and tore and struck sparks out of them like you do the parings in a blacksmith's shop.
But before Jack could "get properly going" with the brumbies, two travellers rode into the homestead, supporting between them a third rider, a man picked up off the track delirious with fever, and foodless; and at the sight of his ghastly face our hearts stood still with fear.
We rioted and careered like hunted brumbies through the trees, till warned by Dad to "keep our eyes about;" then we settled down, and Joe found the first bear. It was on an ironbark tree, around the base of which we soon were clamouring. "Up y' go!" Dad said, cheerfully helping Dave and the tomahawk into the first fork.
As galloping after brumbies when there is no trap to run them into is about as wise as galloping after a flight of swallows, we followed at a distance when they galloped, and stalked them against the wind when they drew up to reconnoitre: beautiful, clean-limbed, graceful creatures, with long flowing manes and tails floating about them, galloping freely and swiftly as they drove the mares before them, or stepping with light, dancing tread as they drew up and faced about, with the mares now huddled together behind them.
Then the surveyor's assistant turned up again, after a trip to the interior. He told us the usual string of back-block lies, and wound up by saying that out on the very fringe of settlement he had met an old acquaintance. "Who was that?" "Why, that little bay horse that I rode after the brumbies that time. The one you called White-when-he's-wanted." "The deuce you did! Are you sure? Who had him?"
Every now and again we formed parties to run in some of these animals, and, after nearly galloping to death half-a-dozen good horses, we would capture three or four brumbies, and bring them in triumph to the homestead to be broken in. Yet there is no sport in the world to be mentioned in the same volume as "running horses", and we were very keen on it.
"There's writing and spelling yet," he said, and Dan, with his interest in booklearning reviving, watched the square chin setting squarer, and was bewildered. "Seems to have struck a mob of brumbies," he commented.
But long before we had done with brumbies Cheon was announcing dinner in his own peculiar way. "Din-ner! Mis-sus! Boss! All about!" he chanted, standing in the open doorway nearest to us; and as we responded to his call, he held the door of the dining-net and glided into the details of his menu: "Veg-e-table Soooup!" he sang: "Ro-oast Bee-ef! Pee-es! Bee-ens! Too-mar-toos!
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