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Updated: June 5, 2025
To such an extent did popular feeling rise at times, that farmers and drovers on the border, organized themselves into bands, and on the report of some fresh outrage hastened to the scene, pursued the perpetrators of the deed, and not unfrequently visited upon the Indians a vengeance ofttimes of a very sanguinary character.
"I have occasion for two suits of clothes, such as would be worn by cattle drovers," he said. "I am about to travel and, having money about me, can best do so safely in such a garment. I want one suit to fit me, and another for a companion, who is a big stout man, a good deal above the ordinary height." "'Tis a wise precaution, your honour, for the roads are by no means safe, at present.
When, resting in their daily walk, shortened till it became a toil to reach the shady seat under the elms at the garden's end, they watched the stalwart plowmen and drovers go striding by, without a trouble behind their tanned foreheads except the thought that wages might fall a shilling a week, was there no envy, I wonder, as they looked down on the wan hands lying so listless across their knees?
The drovers of course held themselves free of responsibility. Hood felt in his own pocket; but he was well aware that a shilling and three-halfpence was all he carried with him save the bank-note in his pocket-book. Yet it was impossible to go through Hebsworth with uncovered head, or to present himself hatless at the office of Legge Brothers.
I started to my feet, and seized my rifle, expecting to find that the camp was attacked, every one else also was aroused. The reports had come from the direction where the cattle we feeding, and presently Uncle Denis and I, who hurried out to ascertain the cause of the alarm, met them, urged on by the voices of their drovers, moving leisurely towards the camp.
My allowance for the spring of 1870 was again seven horses to the man, with two extra for the foreman, which at that early day in trailing cattle was considered the maximum where Kansas was the destination. Many drovers allowed only five horses to the man, but their men were frequently seen walking with the herd, their mounts mingling with the cattle, unable to carry their riders longer.
Their money was the greatest trouble, as the mere fact of so large a sum being carried by two drovers would in itself have given rise to suspicions, although had they been on their return towards Scotland the possession of such an amount would have been easily explained as the proceeds of the sale of the cattle they had brought down.
Cart-horses furbished up for sale, with straw-bound tails and glistening skins; 'baaing' flocks of sheep; squeaking pigs; bullocks with their heads held ominously low, some going, some returning, from the auction yard; shouting drovers; lads rushing hither and thither; dogs barking; everything and everybody crushing, jostling, pushing through the narrow street.
Besides having a particular aversion to drovers, old M'Gregor had a general "down" on the young Australians whom he comprehensively described as a "feckless, horrse-dealin', horrse-stealin', crawlin' lot o' wretches." According to him, a native-born would sooner work a horse to death than work for a living any day. He hated any man who wanted to sell him a horse.
His horse, a fine upstanding bay, stood saddled and bridled under McMahon's shed at the Drovers' Arms by day and night. His behaviour in drink was original and erratic.
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