Page:Such Is Life.djvu/193

Rh "My idear's Blue Blazes," put in Saunders bluntly.

"Tank you, yentlemen," replied the genial Mynheer. "Mineself, I enyoy der yoke. Bot I am brout of my name. Mit mine forefadders, it have strock der yolly goot fear of Gott into der Spaniar' und der English."

"No wonder," sighed Thompson, purposely misconstruing the honest vindication. "And it'll have the same effect on anybody that considers it properly. But for that very reason, it's not a decent name."

"It is ein olt name, Domson," argued the Dutchman.

"Old enough," rejoined Thompson gloomily. "It was to the fore when Satan was slung out of heaven; and it'll be going as strong as ever when we're trying to give an account of ourselves. It won't be a joking matter then."

Nor was it any longer a joking-matter for our assembly. Soon, however, the billies were taken off the fires, and spiritual apprehension forthwith gave place to physical indulgence.

After supper, we adjourned to the open plain. The night was delicious; and for half-an-hour the congress was governed by that dignified silence which back-country men appreciate so highly, yet so unconsciously. Then the contemplative quiet of our synod was broken by the vigorous barking of Saunders' dog, at a solitary box tree, indicating a possum tree'd in full sight.

"Gostruth, that 'on't do!" muttered the fencer, hastily starting toward the dog. "That's visible to the naked eye about three mile on a night like now."

"Recalls the most perfect pun within my knowledge," remarked Stevenson. "A lady, travelling by coach, had a pet dog, which annoyed her fellow-passengers till one of them remonstrated. 'I'm surprised that you don't like my dog,' says the lady; 'he's a real Peruvian.' 'We don't object to your Peruvian dog,' says the passenger, 'but we wish he would give us less of his Peruvian bark'."

Before our company had recovered from the painful constraint induced by this unfathomable joke, Saunders resumed his place, holding the dog by a saddle-strap taken from his own equator.

"Dead spit of my poor old Monkey," remarked Thompson sadly, as he caressed the dog. "Never felt the thing that's on me more distinctly than when I lost poor Monkey."

"Well, I offered you a fiver for him," rejoined Donovan. "Never know'd a man to have luck with a thing that he'd refused a good bid for. Picked up a bait, I s'pose?"

"Monkey would never have stayed with you," replied Thompson. "That dog would have broke his heart if he'd been parted from me. Tell you how I lost him. Last winter, when I was loaded-out for Kenilworth—where I met Cooper—you might remember it was dry, and frosty, and miserable, and the country as bare as a stockyard; and mostly everybody loafing on Kooltopa. Well, I dodged round by Yoongoolee, stealing a bite of grass here, and a bite there; and travelling by myself, so as not to be worth ordering-off the runs; and staying with the bullocks every night, and keeping them in decent fettle, considering.