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Updated: June 20, 2025
I went down to the Creek at once to carry out the Maluka's suggestion, and succeeded so well that I was soon the centre of a delighted dusky group, squatting on its haunches, and deep in fascinations of teaching an outsider its language.
Whenever he felt inclined for what he called "a pitch with the boss and missus" he would saunter past at a little distance, apparently bound for the billabong, but in reality ready to respond to the Maluka's "Is that you, Dan?" although just as ready to saunter on if that invitation was not forthcoming a happy little arrangement born of that tact and delicacy of the bush-folk that never intrudes on another man's privacy.
"That 'ud get anybody dodged," he declared; but it took more than that to "dodge" the Maluka's resourcefulness. He spent a little while in the sun with a compass and a few wooden pegs, and a sundial lay on the ground just outside the verandah. Dan declared it just "licked creation," and wondered if "that 'ud settle 'em," when I asked for some strong iron rings for a curtain.
But already the Maluka had decided on a plan of campaign and, echoing the drover's "Spot Cash," began negotiations for a sale; and within ten minutes the drovers retired to their camp, bound to take the mob when delivered, and inwardly marvelling at the Maluka's simple trust.
"Bluffed 'em this time all right," he assured us, little guessing that the blacks at the "Red Lilies," thirty miles away, and other little groups of blacks travelling down the river towards the lagoons were conjecturing on the object of the Maluka's visit "something having told them we were coming."
The Maluka agreed with him, and after some comical quizzing, they decided, to their own complete satisfaction, that although the bushman's "missus" was the "littlest of all little 'uns, straight up and down," the Maluka's "knocked spots off her sideways."
It was impossible to mistake his meaning, or the Maluka's exclamation of relief, or that neither man doubted for moment that the woman was willing to be flung across deep, swirling river on a swaying wire; and as many a man has appeared brave because he has lacked the courage to own to his cowardice, so I said airily that "anything better than going back," and found the men exchanging glances.
At every settlement we stopped and passed the time of day and, giving out mail-bags, moved on again into the forest. Now and again, stockmen rode out of the timber and received mail-bags, and once a great burly bushman, a staunch old friend of the Maluka's, boarded the train, and greeted him with a hearty hand-shake.
"You'll get him dodged for ideas one of these days," he said, alluding to the Maluka's ingenuity, and when, a day or two later, I broke the spring of my watch and asked helplessly, "However was I going to tell the time till the waggons came with the clock?" Dan felt sure I had set an unsolvable problem.
Soon after sun-up the head drover formally accepted the mob, and, still inwardly marvelling at the Maluka's trust, filled in his cheque, and, blandly smiling, watched while the Maluka made out receipts and cancelled the agreement.
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