Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/26

 ourselves under obligation to the squatters for their "miserable dole," as our Head Centre calls it. It's only our due when all's said and done.'

'Miserable dole,' growled Bill, now engaged in taking off his pack. 'That's a dashed fine name to give free rations, to the tune of half-a-dozen sheep a night, and a couple of bags of flour a week, which I know Tambo did last shearing. A lot of chaps going about the country askin' for work, and prayin' to God they mayn't find it—and abusin' the people that feed 'em on top of it all. I wonder the squatters don't stop feedin' travellers, and that's all about it. I would if I was boss, I know, except the old men.'

'How about the sheds and the grass when the weather gets dry?' asked Stoate, with a side-long glance of spite.

'That's easy enough, if a chap's a d—d scoundrel; but suppose he's caught and gets five years in Berrima Gaol, he'd wish he'd acted more like a white man and less like a myall blackfellow. But stoush all this yabber. You boil the billy, while I get out the grub and hobble the horses. I feel up to a good square feed.'

So did Mr. Stoate, apparently, as he consumed slice after slice of the cold corned beef and damper which Jenny had put up neatly in Bill's 'tucker bag,' not disdaining divers hunks of 'brownie,' washed down with a couple of pints of 'billy tea,' after which he professed that he felt better, and proceeded to fill and light his pipe with deliberation.

By this time the hobbled horses had betaken themselves through the abundant pasture of the river flat, and their bells sounding faint and distant, Bill declared his intention of heading them back, in case they should try to make off towards the home they had left. He returned in half an hour, stating that they were in a bend and blocked by a horse-shoe lagoon.

Both men addressed themselves to the task of putting up the small tent which Bill carried, and bestowed their swags therein, after which Mr. Stoate proposed that they should go over to the men's hut, and have a bit of a yarn before they turned in.

Bill remarked that they had to be up at daylight, but supposed that an hour wouldn't matter. So the wayfarers strolled over to a long building, not far from the creek bank,