Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/111

 bit of tucker to take him on. 'For they'll give tucker to a sick man sooner than to a chap what's all right.'

The Exception is rooting about in the rubbish for the other blucher boot.

The men get a little more sociable, and 'feel' each other to find out who's 'union,' and talk about water, and exchange hints as to good tucker-tracks, and discuss the strike, and curse the squatter (which is all they have got to curse), and growl about union leaders, and tell lies against each other sociably. There are tally lies; and lies about getting tucker by trickery; and long-tramp-with-heavy-swag-and-no-water lies; and lies about getting the best of squatters and bosses-over-the-board; and droving, fighting, racing, gambling and drinking lies. Lies ad libitum; and every true Australian bushman must try his best to tell a bigger out-back lie than the last bush-liar.

Pat is not quite easy in his mind. He found an old pair of pants in the scrub this morning, and cannot decide whether they are better than his own, or, rather, whether his own are worse―if that's possible. He does not want to increase the weight of his swag unnecessarily by taking both pairs. He reckons that the pants were thrown away when the shed cut-out last, but then they might have been lying out exposed to the weather for a longer period. It is rather an important question, for it is very annoying, after you've mended and patched an old pair of pants, to find, when a day or two further on the track, that they are more rotten than the pair you left behind.

There is some growling about the water here, and one of the men makes a billy of tea. The water is