Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/23

 a station and share and share alike with all the other chaps, why don't some of you Union chaps put your money together?—lots of you could raise a hundred or more if you didn't drink it. Then you could shear your own sheep, sell your own wool, and raise your own bread, meat, vegetables—everything. You could divide the profits at the end of the year, and if running a squatting station's such a thundering good thing, why you'd all make fortunes in no time. What do you say to that now?'

'Well, of course, it sounds right enough,' answered Stoate, with less than his usual readiness. 'There's a lot of things to be considered about afore you put your money into a big thing like that. You've got to get the proper sort of partners—men as you know something about, and that can be depended on for to work steady, and do what they're told.'

'Do what they're told? Why, ain't that the one thing you Union chaps are fighting the squatters about? They're not to be masters in their own woolsheds! The shearers and rouseabouts are not to obey the squatters' overseer, they must work as the Union's delegate tells 'em. What sort of fake d'ye call that? Suppose I'm harvestin'—my crop's not much now, but it may be, some day—d'ye mean to say I'm not to talk sharp to my own men, and say "do this" or "do that"? And a delegate walkin' up and down, makin' believe to be boss, while I'm payin' for the wages and rations, and horses and thrashing-machine, and the whole boiling, would I stand that? No! I'd kick him out of the place, and that dashed soon, I can tell you!' And here Bill's eyes began to sparkle and his fists to tighten on the reins as if he itched to 'stand up to his man,' with steady eye and watchful 'left,' ready for the first chance to 'land' his adversary.

The sun was scarcely an hour high when the wayfarers came in sight of the village-appearing group of edifices familiarly known as a 'sheep station.' The 'men's hut' came first into view—a substantial dwelling, with horizontal sawn slabs and shingled roof, a stone chimney and a dining-room. Boasting a cook, moreover, of far from ordinary rank. A superior building, in fact, to the one which the owner of the station thought good enough for himself for the first few years of his occupation of North Yalla-doora.