Such Is Life Read Free Page A

and load on the top of the Wool; the horse, of course, following Fancy according to his daily habit.
    A quarter of a mile of stiff pulling through the sand of the pine-ridge, and the plain opened out again. A short, dark, irregular line, cleanly separated from the horizon by the wavy glassiness of the lower air, indicated the clump of box on the selection, four miles ahead; and this comprised the landscape.
    Soon we became aware of two teams coming to meet us; then three horsemen behind, emerging from the pine-ridge we had left. As the horsemen gradually decreased their distance, the teams met and passed us without salutation; sullenly drawing off the track, in the deference always conceded to wool. Victorian poverty spoke in every detail of the working plant; Victorian energy and greed in the unmerciful loads of salt and wire, for the scrub country out back. The Victorian carrier, formidable by his lack of professional etiquette and his extreme thrift, is neither admired nor caressed by the somewhat select practitioners of Riverina.
    Then the three horsemen overtook Cooper, pausing a little, afterthe custom of the country, to gossip with him as they passed. According to another custom of the country, Thompson, Willoughby and I began to criticise them.
    â€œI know the bloke with the linen coat,” remarked Thompson. “His name’s M’Nab; he’s a contractor. That half-caste has been with him for years, tailing horses and so forth, for his tucker and rags. Mac’s no great chop.”
    â€œHe lets his man Friday have the best horse, at all events,” said I. “Grand-looking beast, that black one the half-caste is riding.”
    â€œBy Jove, yes,” replied Willoughby. “Now, Thompson—referring to the discussion we had this morning—that is the class of horse we mount in our light cavalry.”
    â€œAnd that strapping red-headed galoot, riding the bag of bones beside him, is what you would call excellent war-material?” I suggested.
    â€œPrecisely, Mr. Collins,” replied the whaler. “Nature produces such men expressly for rank and file; and I should imagine that their existence furnishes sufficient rejoinder to the levelling theory.”
    â€œQuite possible the chap’s as good as either of you,” remarked Thompson, seizing the opportunity for reproof. “Do you know anything against him?”
    â€œWell, to quote Madame de Staël,” replied Willoughby, “he abuses a man’s privilege of being ugly.”
    â€œMoreover, he has left undone a thing that he ought to have done,” I rejoined. “He ought to be taking a spell of carrying that mare. And pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy”…
    â€œâ€™Day, chaps,” said Rufus, as he joined us. “Keep on your pins, you beggar”—and he drove both spurs into his mare’s shrinking flanks. “Grey mare belongs to you, boss—don’t she?—an’ the black moke with the Roman nose follerin’? I was thinkin’ we might manage to knock up some sort o’ swap. Now this mare’s a Patriarch, she is; and you mightn’t think it. I won this here saddle with her at a bit of a meetin’ las’ week, an’ rode her my own self—an’ that’s oc’lar demonster. I tell you, if this here mare had a week spell, you couldn’t hold her; an’ she’d go a hundred mile between sunrise an’ sunset, at the same bat. Yes, boss; it’s the breed does it. I seen some good horses about the King, but swelp me Gawd I never seen a patch on this mare; an’ you mightn’t think it to look at her jist now. Fact is, boss, she wants a week or a fortnit spell. Couldnn’t we work up some sort o’ swap for that ole black moke o’ yours, with the big head? If I got a trifle o’ cash to boot, I wouldn’tmind slingin’ in this saddle, an’ takin’ yours. Now, boss,