Best Australian Short Stories Read Free Page A

the liveliest interest and appreciation depicted on his intelligent countenance.
    Dinner proceeded very quietly, except when the carver paused to ask the dog how some tasty morsel went with him, and Five Bob’s tail declared that it went very well indeed.
    “Here y’are, try this,” cried the old man, tossing him a large piece of doughboy. A click of Five Bob’s jaws and the dough was gone. “Clean into his liver!” said the old man with a faint smile.
    He washed up the tinware in the water the duff had been boiled in, and then, with the assistance of the dog, yarded the sheep. This accomplished, he took a pick and shovel and an old sack, and started out over the ridge, followed, of course, by his four–legged mate. After tramping some three miles he reached a spur, running out from the main ridge. At the extreme end of this, under some gum-trees, was a little mound of earth, barely defined in the grass, and indented in the centre as all blackfellows’ graves were.
    He set to work to dig it up, and sure enough, in about half an hour he bottomed on payable dirt.
    When he had raked up all the bones, he amused himself by putting them together on the grass and by speculating as to whether they had belonged to black or white, male or female. Failing, however, to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, he dusted them with great care, put them in the bag and started for home.
    He took a short cut this time over the ridge and down a gully which was full of ring barked trees and long white grass. He had nearly reached its mouth when a great greasy black goanna clambered up a sapling from under his feet and looked fightable.
    “Dang the jumpt-up thing!” cried the old man. “It gin me a start!”
    At the foot of the sapling he espied an object which he at first thought was the blackened carcass of a sheep, but on closer examination discovered to be the body of a man; it lay with its forehead resting on its hands, dried to a mummy by the intense heat of the western summer.
    “Me luck’s in for the day and no mistake!” said the shepherd, scratching the back of his head, while he took stock of the remains. He picked up a stick and tapped the body on the shoulder; the flesh sounded like leather. He turned it over on its side; it fell flat on its back like a board, and the shrivelled eyes seemed to peer up at him from under the blackened wrists.
    He stepped back involuntarily, but, recovering himself, leant on his stick and took in all the ghastly details.
    There was nothing in the blackened features to tell aught of name or face, but the dress proclaimed the remains to be those of a European. The old man caught sight of a black bottle in the grass, close beside the corpse. This set him thinking. Presently he knelt down and examined the soles of the dead man’s blucher boots, and then, rising with an air of conviction, exclaimed: “Brummy! —by gosh!—busted up at last!
    “I tole yer so, Brummy,” he said impressively, addressing the corpse. “I allers told yer as how it ’ud be—an’ here y’are, you thundering jumpt-up cuss-o’-God fool. Yer cud earn more’n any man in the colony, but yer’d lush it all away. I allers sed as how it ’ud end, an’ now yer kin see fur y’self.
    “I s’pect yer was a-comin’ t’ me t’ get fiitt up an’ set straight agin; then yer was a-goin’ to swear, off, same as yer alleys did; an’ here y’are, an’ now I expect I’ll have t’ fix yer up for the last time an’ make yer decent, for ’twon’t do t’ leave yer a-lyin’ out here like a dead sheep.”
    He picked up the corked bottle and examined it. To his great surprise it was nearly full of rum.
    “Well, this gits me,” exclaimed the old man; “me luck’s in, this Christmas, an no mistake. He must ‘a’ got the jams early in his spree, or he wouldn’t be a-making for me with near a bottleful left. Howsomenever, here goes.”
    Looking around, his eyes lit up with satisfaction as he saw some bits of bark