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The six Mexicans, who were nominally cattle-drivers, but really Coronado's minor bravos, were never suffered to ride off in a body, and were expected to keep on both sides of the train, some in advance and some in rear. The drivers and muleteers remained steadily with their wagons and animals.
Birrell promised to introduce a Land Bill by which the cattle-drivers hoped to get all they wanted. Hence their leaders advised them to "give Birrell a chance," but Mr. Redmond warned the Government that if they did not carry out their pledge, they would speedily find Ireland ungovernable.
"Every cañon ought to be explored before we enter it," continued the Mexican. "It is a good hint," said Ralph. "Suppose I keep two of your cattle-drivers constantly in advance. You had better instruct them yourself. Tell them to fire the moment they discover an ambush. I don't suppose they will hit anybody, but we want the warning."
In an instant he had cocked and fired his piece, giving the alarm, when the garrison ran to their places ready to cover the coming in of the cattle-drivers and their herd, Bart, seeing that Joses had taken the alarm, and with his men was trying to drive the feeding animals back. But the Doctor had not calculated upon hunger and bovine obstinacy.
Meyer detailed Shubert and two of the Mexican cattle-drivers to report to Smith for duty. The Texan mounted his men on horses, separated one-third of the mules from the others, drove them out of the enclosure, and left them on the green hillside, while he pushed on a quarter of a mile into the plain and formed his line of four skirmishers.
He therefore plodded patiently on through a waste and savage wilderness, treading paths which were only known to the shepherds and cattle-drivers, and passing with much more of discomfort than satisfaction many of those sublime combinations of mountainous scenery which now draw visitors from every corner of England, to feast their eyes upon Highland grandeur, and mortify their palates upon Highland fare.
Bush life Out Back a jumble of odd characters and situations. Fencers' camps, cattle-drivers' camps, bullock-dray camps.
Thurstane reached the rear of the train unhurt, and found the six Mexican cattle-drivers there in a group, pointing their rifles at such Indians as made a show of charging, but otherwise doing nothing which resembled fighting. They were obviously panic-stricken, one or two of them being of an ashy-yellow, their nearest possible approach to pallor.
He assisted the woman and children to get down from the wagon, and one of the cattle-drivers coming up, drove the team into the woods a short distance, and the tired oxen were soon lying down among the underbrush. "Well, yes, we have had a pretty hard time getting here. We are the last free-State men allowed over the ferry at Parkville. Where be you from?"
Doubtless, the coming of such a man among them to lecture on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Ars Parva of Galen, not from the Latin translations then in use, but from original Greek texts, with comments and corrections of his own, must have had a great influence on the minds of the Montpellier students; and still more influence and that not altogether a good one must Rabelais's lighter talk have had, as he lounged so the story goes in his dressing-gown upon the public place, picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day.
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