Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/244

 shanty; besides, they're all drunk there, from the boss down, and the missus has got her hands full. Best camp and boil the billy, anyhow, and see how he gets on; and then one of us can go back and see what can be done. Some horsemen might come along in the meantime."

The tank was just off the dry weather track, with a little track of its own, and the jackeroos had struck it more by new chum luck (which is akin to the drunk's luck) than by directions. We kept an ear out for the sound of wheels or of horses' feet, and now and then one of us would go out of the lignum on to the track, and look up and down it; and, at last, just as Mitchell and I were deciding that one of us should leave his swag and walk right back to the shanty, we suddenly heard the click-clack of wheel-hubs quite close, and saw two horses' heads and the head and shoulders of the driver over a corner of the dry lignum. I started forward, and was about to call out when Mitchell said: "Never mind, Harry, he's coming into the tank." As the turn-out came round I saw it was a four-wheeled trap, with a spring stretcher on the load, and a mattress rolled up in sackcloth on top of it. I glanced at Mitchell, and saw one of his strange, faint grins on his face.

"What is it, Jack?" I asked.

"It's Jimmy Noland," he said, "and without a stranger. Jimmy's in luck to-day" (and with a cluck, as if it were a mild sort of joke), "and he don't know it yet."

It was Jimmy, and he'd been into the "township" for a temporary supply of necessaries for the station.