Page:Over the Sliprails - 1900.djvu/48



“boss-over-the-board” was leaning with his back to the wall between two shoots, reading a reference handed to him by a green-hand applying for work as picker-up or woolroller—a shed rouseabout. It was terribly hot. I was slipping past to the rolling-tables, carrying three fleeces to save a journey; we were only supposed to carry two. The boss stopped me:

“You’ve got three fleeces there, young man?”

“Yes.”

Notwithstanding the fact that I had just slipped a light ragged fleece into the belly-wool and “bits” basket, I felt deeply injured, and righteously and fiercely indignant at being pulled up. It was a fearfully hot day.

“If I catch you carrying three fleeces again,” said the boss quietly, “I’ll give you the sack.”

“I’ll take it now if you like,” I said.

He nodded. “You can go on picking-up in this man’s place,” he said to the jackeroo, whose reference showed him to be a non-union man—a “free-labourer”, as the pastoralists had it, or, in plain shed terms, “a blanky scab”. He was now in the comfortable