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Steadbolt dropped his hold of the roan leader's bridle and fell back screaming imprecations. At a touch, the buggy-horses bounded forward. 'Sit tight, Biddy, said her husband. 'Up you get, Cudgee, he shouted.
He said he'd had it as a fact from a man who was a long time in your husband's employ a man called Steadbolt. Again the scene in front of Fig Tree Mount Hotel flashed before Lady Bridget, and Demon Doubt rose up clothed now in more material substance. Her voice shook as she answered, though she tried to be loyal: 'Steadbolt was discharged from my husband's employment.
Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though and before you! The man must have been downright mad from drink and fury and bitterness. It it's all funny isn't it? One of the queer sides of the Bush.
'That fellow Steadbolt is a wrong 'un not good even at his own job of wood and water joey which means, my dear, the odd cart-driving on a place and not to be trusted within ten miles of a public house. Lady Bridget asked suddenly: 'I want to know, Colin what did that man mean by saying you had an insult ready for me at your Bachelor's Quarters? What insult?
D'ye hear'; for the man of the ragged beard was jerking the near leader's bit and putting the mettlesome animal on its haunches. 'Damn you! Let go. He leaned forward to strike at Steadbolt with his riding whip, but the lash had caught round the pole-bar of the buggy, and he could not extricate it. Bridget tried to help him.
He had just mounted, but swung down from his saddle and made a rush at the speaker. McKeith's stern voice stopped him. 'Don't be a fool, Bill. Let the brutes alone and push on with the pack. This is not the time for a row. As for you, Jim Steadbolt you know me, and you know that if this was any other sort of occasion, you'd pay on the nail for your infernal cheek.... Leave go of those reins.
The two reprobates who had been asleep, lunged off the veranda, and made a feeble assault on Steadbolt, who still clung to the reins. The man, lashed to fury by the scorn ringing in Lady Bridget's voice, made a last envenomed attack.
I thought she was too young and too good looking to be drawing grog for diggers at Fig Tree Mount which was what she set out doing. 'I see.... So she's young and handsome. 'Oh, in a coarse sort of way.... No, I wouldn't say that; she's rather refined for her upbringing. Anyway, Steadbolt as well as a lot of other men fell in love with her Steadbolt was pretty well off his head over it.
But time came when all the romance of barbarism seemed to have fizzled out and only cruel realities remained when work and worry turned McKeith from the worshipping lover into the rough-tongued, irritable bushman when his 'hands' deserted him, his cattle died and things generally went wrong, and when he showed himself something of the hard-headed, parsimonious, ill-conditioned Scotch mongrel that Steadbolt had called him.
Windeatt up at Breeza Downs is in a mortal funk, and sending word everywhere for a squad of Specials to protect his woolshed. 'It seems, said Lady Biddy to her husband, when the mailman had gone, 'that there might be some use after all for Luke Tallant's Maxims. 'It seems that Jim Steadbolt has been taking his revenge, he answered, 'and that I must be in the saddle in an hour's time.
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