Part 13 (1/2)

'You've sos like that How you ever got hied to keep hi of troopers all round you from every side of the district'

'We had friends,' father said 'Me and Warrigal done all the travelling by night No one but hione afoot, I believe, es he showed us But the devil hih country'

'I believe you,' I said, thinking of our ride yesterday 'It's quite bad enough to follow hiround But don't you think our tracks will be easy to folloith a thousand head of cattle before us? Any fool could do that'

'It ain't that as I' at,' said father; 'of course an old wos all the time; but our dart is to be off and have a month's start before anybody knows they are off the run They won't think ofbefore fat cattle takes a bit of a turn That won't be for a couple of months yet Then theytalk with Starlight, and what he said came to much the same One stockot two or three flash chaps to help ht ere dealers, and had bought cattle all right One or two et the cattle together and clear off before anything was suspected the rest was easy The yard was nearly up, and Jirand work putting into it as long as it would last our ti, with pine saplings

The drawing in was the worst, for we had to 'hu out laughing fro,' he said 'Driving off a mob of cattle on the quiet I've known happen once or twice; but I' i off with a thousand drafted cattle, all quiet and regular, and hi” to it no ht to look after their stock closer than they do,' I said

'It is their fault almost as much as ours But they are too lazy to look after their oork, and too et a half-and-half sort of fellow that'll take loages and , and of course he's not likely to look very sharp after the back country'

'You're not far away,' says Jim; 'but don't you think they'd have to look precious sharp and get up very early in the ht, let alone Warrigal, who's as good by night as day? Then there's you and me Don't try and make us out better than we are, dick; we're all d----scoundrels, that's the truth of it, and honestrun--except in the long run That's where they'll have us, dick Marston'

'That's quite a long speech for you, Jim,' I said; 'but it don't matter much that I knohose fault it is that we're in this duffing racket

It seems to be our fate, as the chap says in the book We'll have a jolly spree in Adelaide if this journey co off To- to yard the first mob'

After that we didn't talk al were out every day and all day The three new hands were so that did h they never showed up The way theyor second-class racehorse that they fell across, and took them to a certain place There they met another lot of felloho took the horses from them and cleared out to another colony; at the saht

So each lot travelled different ways, and were sold in places where they were quite strange and no one was likely to claim them

After a ood, or rather bad, for anything These young chaps, like us, had done pretty well at these gaht, had proposed to him to put up a couple of hundred head of cattle on Outer Back Momberah, as the run was called; then father and he had seen that a thousand were as easy to get as a hundred Of course there was a risky feeling, but it wasn't such bad fun while it lasted We were out all day running in the cattle The horses were in good wind and condition noe had plenty of rations--flour, tea, and sugar There was no cart, but soular station party on our own run Father had worked all that before we came We had the best of fresh beef and veal too--you may be sure of that--there was no stint in that line; and at night ere always sure of a yarn froood humour Sometimes he wasn't, and then nobody dared speak to hi man, certainly Jim and I used to wonder, by the hour, what he'd been in the old country He'd been all over the world--in the Islands and New Zealand; in Ae people that we'd hardly ever heard of Such stories as he'd tell us, too, about slaves and wild chiefs that he'd lived with and gone out to fight with against their enereat deal of a dead man now and then in this innocent country,' he said once when the grog was uppermost; 'why, I've seen fifty men killed before breakfast, and in cold blood, too, chopped up alive, or next thing to it; and a drove of slaves-- nearly as our mob, handed over to a slave-dealer, and driven off in chains just as you'd start a lot of station cattle They didn't like it, going off their run either, poor devils The women would try and run back after their pickaninnies when they dropped, just like that heifer when Warrigal knocked her calf on the head to-day' What a ht When we'd sold the cattle, if we got 'ee to sohts too What a paltry thing working for a pound a week see and short of it is that weanext or anigh us anyby contract You wouldn't have thought there was anybody nearer than Bathurst Everything seemed to be in our favour So it was, just at the start We drafted out all the worst and weediest of the cattle, besides all the old cows, and e counted the mob out we had nearly eleven hundred first-rate store cattle; lots of fine young bullocks and heifers, ether a prime well-bred mob that no squatter or dealer could fault in any way if the price was right We could afford to sell them for a shade under market price for cash Ready money, of course, ere bound to have

Just as ere starting there was a fine roan bull ca up with a small mob

'Cut him out, and beat him back,' says father; 'we don't want to be bothered with the likes of him'

'Why, I'm dashed if that ain't Hood's imported bull,' says Billy the Boy, a Monaro native that we had with us 'I know hiave two hundred and fifty notes for hi hiht, who came up just then 'In for a penny, in for a pound They'll never think of looking for hi, and we'll be there before theyabout'

So we took 'Fifteenth Duke of Ca with us; a red roan he ith a little white about the flank He wasn't land as a yearling How he'd worked his way out to this back part of the run, where a bull of his quality ain't often seen, nobody could say But he was a lively active beast, and he'd got into fine hard fettle with living on saltbush, dry grass, and scrub for the last few months, so he could travel as well as the others I took particular notice of hi square quarters And so I'd need to--but that came after He had only a little bit of a private brand on the shoulder That was easily faked, and would coo straight ahead along any main track to the Lower Murray and Adelaide exactly That would have been a little too open and barefaced

No; we divided the ht Three al took one lot; they had the dog, old Crib, to help theht, Jier chaps another We'd had a couple of knockabouts to help with the cooking and stockyard work They were paid by the job They were to stay at the caunyahs, knock down the yard, and blind the track as much as they could

Some of the cattle we'd left behind they drove back and forward across the track every day for a week If rain cae by another road If they heard about the job being blown or the police set on our track, they were to wire to one of the border townshi+ps we had to pass Weren't we afraid of their selling us? No, not iven father and Starlight inforh they took care never to show out in the cattle or horse-stealing way the as chaps in our line have ood infors, too It is when the er co was ever done in New South Wales before on such a large scale, or whether it will ever be done again Perhaps not These wire fences stop a deal of cross-work; but it was done then, you taketo live that it's worth while to lie--and it all ca the cattle, and having theby all sorts of outside tracks on the ht, too--for the first two or three hundred miles After we crossed the Adelaide border we followed the Darling down to the Murray We thought ere all right, and got bolder Starlight had changed his clothes, and was dressed like a swell--away on a roughish trip, but still like a swell

'They were his cattle; he had brought the to take up country in the Northern Territory