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Updated: June 26, 2025
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.
At last he said deprecatingly: "We're about a mile aff the house now, Tammas. A must go roun' be a tank thonder, an' that manes lavin' ye yer lone. Jist go sthraight on an' ye'll come till the horse-paddock fence, wi' a wee gate in the corner, an' the house furnent ye. An' ye might tell hurself A'll be home atoast sundown."
"By the way," said I; "did n't you blame Thompson and Cunningham for duffing in your horse-paddock, ten or twelve months ago?" "I didn't make any song about it," replied the boundary rider half-resentfully. "Of course not. Still you owe them an apology which I shall be happy to convey, if you wish it. Alf Morris was the depredator.
She bent her neck and went as delicately as ever Agag went, and then bounded lightly over a hole in the rotten ground of the great horse-paddock. She and I were partners in the morning as the dawn came up. And now, indeed, the morning tide broke over the eastern bar, and was like a pale grey flood moving over level earth.
"Ah! the treacherous beggar! I'll tell you how that came. Day before yesterday let's see that was Saturday Montgomery and Martin met Alf just at the station, coming along behind some other teams. Montgomery was sorry in his own mind for a blaggarding he gave Alf last winter, for letting his bullocks get into our horse-paddock.
Why, the cultivation was n't large enough to hold the melon and pumpkin vines they travelled into the horse-paddock and climbed up trees and over logs and stumps, and they would have fastened on the horses only the horses were fat and fresh and often galloped about. And the stock!
The Bralgah birds have a Boorah ground at the back of our old horse-paddock, a smooth, well-beaten circle, where they dance the grotesque dances peculiar to them, which are really most amusing to watch, somewhat like a set of kitchen lancers into which some dignified dames have got by mistake, and a curious mixture is the dance of dignity and romping.
Then Martin mounted his horse, and rode away; and presently the tribesman, Jerry, brought a buggy and pair to the front door. Montgomery and Folkestone the latter in knickerbockers took their seats in the buggy, and whirled away down the horse-paddock fence. Then all was still, save for the faint pling-plong of a piano in the Holy of Holies. Whom have we here? Moriarty to disturb me. Let him come.
He was a non-smoker, a life-abstainer, and in a word, was distinguished in almost every branch of those gambol faculties which show a weak mind and an able body. It gave me quite a turn. Sic transit, thought I, with a sigh. Such is life. The cranky boundary rider's little weatherboard hut, standing just inside his horse-paddock fence, was neater than the average.
This bred feuds, and bad language, and personal combats between us and the drovers, whom we looked upon as natural enemies. The men who came through with mobs of cattle used to pull down the paddock fences at night, and slip the cattle in for refreshments, but old Sandy often turned out at 2 or 3 a.m. to catch a mob of bullocks in the horse-paddock, and then off they went to Buckalong pound.
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