Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/249

, God-forgotten 'timber,' black in the distance; dull, grey sky and misty rain over all. A small, dark-looking flock of sheep was crawling slowly in across the flat from the unknown, with three men on horseback zig-zagging patiently behind. The horses just moved―that was all. One man wore an oilskin, one an old tweed overcoat, and the third had a three-bushel bag over his head and shoulders.

Had we returned an hour later, we should have seen the sheep huddled together in a corner of the yards, and the three horses hanging up outside the local shanty.

We stayed at Nyngan―which place we refrain from sketching―for a few hours, because the five trucks of cattle of which we were in charge were shunted there, to be taken on by a very subsequent goods train. The Government allows one man to every five trucks in a cattle-train. We shall pay our fare next time, even if we have not a shilling left over and above. We had haunted local influence at Comanavadrink, for two long, anxious, heart-breaking weeks ere we got the pass; and we had put up with all the indignities, the humiliation―in short, had suffered all that poor devils suffer whilst besieging Local Influence. We only thought of escaping from the bush.

The pass said that we were John Smith, drover, and that we were available for return by ordinary passenger-train within two days, we think―or words in that direction. Which didn't interest us. We might have given the pass away to an unemployed in Orange, who wanted to go Out Back, and who begged