Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/123

 himself wasn't unlike a kangaroo, thought Somers: a long-faced, smooth-faced, strangely watchful kangaroo with powerful hindquarters.

"Perhaps not as me and Fred Wilmot was. In a way you're higher up than I am. But that's what I like, you know—a mate that's better than I am, a mate who I feel is better than I am. That's what I feel about you: and that's what makes me feel, if we was mates, I'd stick to you through hell fire and back, and we'd clear some land between us. I know if you and me was mates, we could put any blooming thing through. There'd be nothing to stop us."

"Not even Kangaroo?"

"Oh, he'd be our way, and we'd be his. He's a sensible chap."

Somers was tempted to give Jack his hand there and then, and pledge himself to a friendship, or a comradeship, that nothing should ever alter. He wanted to do it. Yet something withheld him as if an invisible hand were upon him, preventing him.

"I'm not sure that I'm a mating man, either," he said slowly.

"You?" Jack eyed him. "You are and you aren't. If you'd once come over—why man, do you think I wouldn't lay my life down for you!"

Somers went pale. He didn't want anybody laying down their lives for him. "Greater love than this—" But he didn't want this great love. He didn't believe in it: in that way of love.

"Let's leave it, Jack," he replied, laughing slowly and rising, giving his hand to the other man. "Don't let us make any pledges yet. We're friends, whatever else we are. As for being mates—wait till I feel sure. Wait till I've seen Kangaroo. Wait till I see my way clear. I feel I'm only six strides down the way yet, and you ask me to be at the end."

"At the start you mean," said Jack, gripping the other man's hand, and rising too. "But take your time, old man." He laid his hand on Somers' shoulder. "If you're slow and backward like a woman, it's because it's your nature. Not like me, I go at it in jumps like a kangaroo. I feel I could jump clean through the blooming tent-canvas sometimes." As he spoke he was pale and