Page:Such Is Life.djvu/59

Rh “Stuck in a gluepot, jist in front o’ the (adj.) hut,” replied Mosey, without pausing in his work. “I seen him there—Back, Snailey, or I’ll knock the (adj.) horn off o’ you—but I thought it was one o’ them station cattle till you minded me. Why the (sheol) didn’t you count yer lot properly?”

A deep oath broke from the lips of the man who never swore. But he controlled himself by a strong effort.

“How much of him’s above ground?” he asked.

“(Adv.) little on’y his horns; or else I’d ’a’ knowed him—Wub-back, Major,” replied Mosey reluctantly, as he chained his last pair.

Then, I grieve to say, Thompson let himself out. No puerile repetition; no slovenly, slipshod work. It was the performance of a born orator and poet, and one who, like Timothy, had known the Scriptures from a child—a long, involved litany of seething malediction, delivered, moreover, with a measured and effortless eloquence and a grammatical exactitude which left St. Ernulphus a bad second. The other fellows pursued their work in awe-stricken silence, till at length Cooper, glancing toward the ram-paddock, said deprecatingly:

“— —it, man, don’t swear; not, anyway. I’ll fetch these ten across, an’ they’ll (adv.) soon snake him out. Git that spare rope off o’ my wagon, an’ foller me quick.”

He brought his yoked bullocks through the gap, and drove them rapidly to the spot indicated by Mosey. Thompson mounted his horse and cantered after, with the heavy coil of rope across the front of his saddle. I accompanied him. At the very extremity of the clump, and not fifty yards from the house, was one of those bottomless quagmires too common in Riverina. It was about twenty yards across; and, in the very centre, Damper’s head and the line of his back appeared above the surface; the straight furrow behind him showing that he had been bogged at the edge, but being unable to turn, and being exceedingly strong and sound, had worked himself along to the middle, where he was slowly settling down.

In a couple of minutes, one end of the wool-rope—sixty feet long and an inch and a-half in diameter—was looped round the roots of the bullock’s horns, and the team was attached to the fall. Then a slow, steady strain drove Damper’s nose into the ground, and gently shifted him, first forward, then upward, then on to the surface, where he slid smoothly to the solid ground. We released him there, and he staggered to his feet, shook himself thoroughly, and followed the team to the camp, ravenously snatching mouthfuls of grass as he went along.

Price and Mosey had just got under way. Willoughby was trying to yoke Dixon’s leaders, while Dixon, owing to his screwmatics, could do nothing but sit on his horse, cursing with wearisome tautology, and casting glances of frantic apprehension toward the ram-paddock. His anxiety was not unreasonable, for there had just come into sight an upright speck, too small to be a horseman; and it was easy to guess who was the likeliest person to be coming on foot from that direction. There is a limit to the dignified sufficiency even of a bullock driver; and the unhappy conjecture of circumstances had driven Dixon past this point.