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Rh “Not when I left,” replied the Encyclopedia Australiensis. “They’re offering eighty, and I’ve no doubt they’ll spring to a hundred. Extra-hazardous tack; and there’s not a blade of grass once you pass the Merowie. Good day, boys.” And, nodding to us collectively, he departed.

“Steve,” said I; “are  a man to go fooling with high explosives,—considering the thing that’s on you?”

“Well,” replied Thompson doggedly, “it’s come to this with me, that I must make a spoon or spoil a horn; and if that infernal thing would only keep off till I got the stuff delivered, I’d be right. My bullocks are fit for any track in Australia.”

“Let’s git down to Hay fust,” interposed Cooper; “then you can do as you like; but I’ll be wantin’ a way-bill that’ll take me safe out o’ Port Phillip. Say, Collins; I’ll buy that new saddle off o’ you. Mine’s all in splinters, for my horse he’s a beggar to roll.”

“I’d hardly feel justified in selling it,” I replied. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll sell you my own saddle cheap—say, three notes—and give you Bum’s bridle in.”

Cooper agreed to the proposal. Then, as Pup had been eating about ten pounds of salt mutton, stolen from the bullock drivers’ stores, I enticed him to take a good drink of water, knowing he would need it before the day was over. It was absolutely imperative that I should go thirty miles, and then, if possible, camp alone. So I shook hands with the outlaws, and started; leading Bunyip till he should become accustomed to his new companion.

If the unmannerly reader wishes to know why I was bound to a stage of exactly thirty miles, I have no objection to state that, knowing the geography of Riverina as well as if I had laid out the whole territory myself, I was aware of a sandhill composed of material unstable as water; an unfavourable place for a bucking horse, and a favourable place for a man to dismount head foremost, if the worst came; and that sand-hill was my destination.