Part 47 (1/2)
Meanwhile, Stevenson had lingered to feel his pockets, sort his papers, exas, and so forth, while his draft spread out over the grass
”You were right, and I rong,” he remarked, aside to me
”Bob is trustworthy--ruthlessly so”
”Only in respect of conscience, which is norance or error,” I replied ”I would n't chance sixpence on his moral sense--nor on yours, either”
”Thank-you, both for the lesson and the coet to call round atKoolybooka Goodbye”
”Are your bullocks here, Bob?” demanded Smythe
”Horses too,” replied Bob ”Ain't you lookin' at 'em?” But Smythe did n't know half-a-dozen beasts on the station; and Bob (as he afterward told me) are of his boss's weakness in Individuality
”Take theet to work then,” retorted S?” he added, with sudden suspicion--his idea evidently being that Bob ood turn to some of the bullock drivers
”Well, I'm workin' ten, but”----
”'But!'----I'll have no 'but' about it!” snapped Sht,” drawled Bob, and he slowly strode toward one of his own horses
”And look-sharp, you fellows!” vociferated Smythe ”This paddock must be cleared within fifteen minutes, or I shall proceed to more extreme measures”
Whereupon Thompson withdrew his lot, deliberately followed by four other culprits, whose na out his ten--often slowly crossing and re-crossing the paths of Donovan and Baxter, in their still le-eye of the squatter counted Bob's ten, accompanied by his spare horse, as he tailed the lot toward his caate of thirty-six to Baxter and Donovan-- who, to e, had entered the paddock with thirty-four
This disposed of the whole muster
Months afterward, when the two Mondunbarra bullocks had been swapped-away into a teaht with Baxter and Donovan, who discussed, in the most matter-of-fact way, their own tranquil appropriation of the beasts Each of these useful scoundrels had the answer of a good conscience touching the transaction They maintained, with manifest sincerity, that Smythe's repudiation of the bullocks, and his subsequent levy of daave theative they had duly developed into a title containing nine points of the law Not equal to a pound-receipt, of course; but good enough for the track And throughout the discussion, Bob's name was never mentioned, nor his complicity hinted at Such is life
CHAPTER VI
SAT FEB 9 Runnymede To Alf Jones's
Not much in that bill of fare, you think? Perhaps not Nor was Count Federigo degli Alberighi's falcon re catering cost a considerable jar to the sensibilities of the impoverished aristocrat--accurately represented, in this instance, by the writer of these memoirs Of course, I am committed to any narration imposed by my random election of dates; but just notice that perversity, that untowardness, that cussedness in the affairs of s me back to Runnymede, above all places in the spacious south-western quarter of the Mother Province The unforeseen sequences of that original option are masters of the situation, till they run their course--and most tyrannical masters they are They have tied ht the course
Ay! your first-person-singular novelist delights in relating his love-story, si to pa makes the faithful chronicler squirh
Five days before the date of this entry, I had received orders to proceed at once to Runnymede, and there to complete an M-form, which would in the oht me to the station, but the docu for it but to wait till the nexta little too exalted for the reat deal too vile for the boss's house, I was quartered in the narangies' barracks
Social status, apart from all consideration of hed on a right-thinking Australian station than anywhere else in the world
The folk-lore of Riverina is rich in variations of ato the David-and-Goliath co squatter, in the brave days of old With one solitary exception, each station froend as its own
On Kooltopa alone, the tables are turned, and the amiable Stewart makes a holy show of the truculent rouse-about But on no station, not even on Kooltopa, has iination bodied forth, or tradition handed down, any such vagary as e-slave saw the inside of the house or the barracks And a narangy will always avoid your eye as he relates how, on some momentous occasion, the boss invited hiraded society of a proper station, you have a reproduction of the Teer's house is a Sanctuh priest enters; the barracks is an Inner Court, accessible to the priests only; the men's hut is an Outer Court, for the accoe, or perhaps one of the empty huts at the wool-shed, is the Court of the Gentiles And the restrictions of the Te station This usage, of course, bears fruit after its kind
It was more than a e part of the religion which guided his rascally life--to wolf his half-raw pork in fellowshi+p with his rouse-abouts; hence he could bash the latter about at pleasure; and they, in return, were prepared to die in his service
A good solid social systeressive way
The squatter, of course, cannot get back to the long table with the dogs underneath; but he ought to think-out some practicable equivalent to the baron's crude and lop-sided ca been a necessary condition of vassal loyalty in olden time Without vassal loyalty, or abject vassal fear, the monopolist's sleep can never be secure
Do force in reserve-- moral force, as in the feudal system, or physical force, as in our police systerity and capability, though (so to speak) ducally weedy, has moral force in reserve; and we all kno he controls the rity or capacity, but noticed as having a bullet-head, a square jaw, countersunk eyes, and the rest in proportion, is suspected of having the other kind of force in reserve; and we kno he escapes anything like wanton personal indignity in his intercourse with gentle or simple