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Jack and I had put in a good day's work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a yarn with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along by the fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and big Jim Bullock the fencer, and one or two others.
An' lars' rains Jimmy Nowlett, the bullick-driver, gets bogged over his axle-trees back there on the Blacksoil Plains between two flooded billerbongs, an' prays till the country steams an' his soul's busted, an' his throat like a lime-kiln. He taps a keg o' rum or beer ter keep his throat in workin' order.
Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped. 'I've done, he said. 'I've twisted my ankle. He'd caught his heel against a tuft of grass. 'Shake hands, yelled Jimmy Nowlett. I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse.
I felt as if I had been stung by a swarm of bees. 'You're a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe, said Jimmy Nowlett he was going to play the accordion that night. 'You ought to fetch the girls now, Joe. But never mind, your face'll go down in about three weeks.
It was common for a man to carry a butcher's knife in a sheath fastened to his belt. 'Why did you let your man fight with a butcher's knife in his belt? asked Jimmy Nowlett. But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell, and we decided it that way.
Never mind.... Talking of killing bushmen before their time reminds me of some cases I knew. They mostly happened among the western spurs of the ranges. There was a bullock-driver named Billy Nowlett. He had a small selection, where he kept his family, and used to carry from the railway terminus to the stations up-country.
'Well, said Jimmy Nowlett, 'if we'd put up a sign to beware of the line you couldn't have seen it in the dark. 'Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it, said Dave Regan. 'But why didn't you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along? It wouldn't have jolted yer so much. All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes. But I didn't take any interest in it.
An old digger used to drop in of evenings and sit by the widow's fire, and yarn, and sympathize, and smoke, and think; and just as he began to yarn a lot less, and smoke and think a lot more, Billy Nowlett himself turned up with a load of rations for a sheep station. He'd been down by the other road, and the letter he'd wrote to his missus had gone astray.
The old houses is pretty much the same, an' the old signs want touchin' up and paintin' jest as had as ever; an' there's that old palin' fence that me an' Ben Hake an' Jimmy Nowlett put up twenty year ago. I've tramped and travelled long ways since then. But things is changed at least, people is.... Well, I must be goin'. There's nothing to keep me here. I'll push on and get into my track again.
The Oracle had Uncle Bob, of course, and long Dave Regan, the drover a good-hearted, sawny kind of chap that'd break the devil's own buck-jumper, or smash him, or get smashed himself and little Jimmy Nowlett, the bullocky, and one or two of the old, better-class diggers that were left on the field.
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