Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/360

 have the chance of 'skewering' him, and keeps, with the defiance of despair, turning his horns instead of his heels towards Mr. Jones' person.

However, by patience and strategy, these difficulties are disposed of and the camp is reached, in the darkest and most gloomy of forests. No more easy days, no more 'lazy-ally' for us. We have entered the 'big timber,' crede Monaro Jim, and it will be all hard work and 'slogging' till we sight the parks and meadows of Gippsland. So we fare on, gradually ascending the forest hills which are to bring us to the celebrated pass by which we shall surmount the grand alpine chain. Sometimes we pass through darksome forests, where the scanty vegetation tantalises the hungry drove; now we stand upon the brow of rocky pinnacles and see stretching before us a cloud-world of mountain peaks and glaciers, rosy in the flush of dawn. We dine by the side of clear, cold, alpine streams, which ripple and gurgle through long summer days, full-fed as now. By such a brook, it chances one day, as we round a rugged promontory, that the unwonted appearance of a settler's hut startles us; an inhabited dwelling too, with smoke issuing from the chimney, a real woman, and (ever so many) children. Shy and wondering, they stand gazing at us as if we were Red Indians, while their mother civilly offers milk and potatoes—luxuries both.

'Her husband was away,' she explained in answer to our inquiries. 'He was nearly always out on the run, and sometimes away for weeks at a time, mustering.'

'Was she not afraid?'

'Oh no; who would harm her? And there was not much to steal.'

'Wasn't she awfully dull?' (This from Mr. Jones.)

'Well, it was rather quiet, but there—the children, and the cows, and the garden,—she always had something to do.'

'Her husband was handy if he made that water-wheel, eh?'

'Oh no. Yankee Jack, the digger, made that one summer he was prospecting about here.'

'However did they manage to get the dray here?'

'Well' (rather proudly), 'it was the only dray for many a mile round; her father gave it to them—and Joe, he packed it on the old horse, up the range, bit by bit.'