The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1873-06-26

custom to our next neighbor. between
! whom and ns there was war and much
chaff, so that chance of getting q
really prime lot for Christmas was not
| to be despised. And if, after we had
got them, they were found to be too
wild to drive to market, that was the
| butchers lookout-nay, might even put
pound or two into some of the very
empty pockets of my mates and myself,
for seeing them safe over the range
which was the particular bane of all
drovers, with its precipitous track, and
the prickly scrub which ran right into
| the road. At least it was something to
relieve the eternal monotouy of count
ing two fiocks of sheep, morning and
evening, and We were equal to the
occasion.
Springing off the bed and putting a
spur on the right boot, while my mate
| put the other on his left-an ingenious
and wholly Australion way of dividing
our forces--and rolling up the sleeves
of our, to say the truth, not very clean
clean flannel shirts, we dispatched
Quondong, our black friend, for the
working horses, and making the court
yard re-echo to the sound of our stock
whips, gave the signal for the stock. men
to turn out, put their blankets on their
saddles, and, with many growls and
much lighting of pipes, swagger down
to pick out something that had still
Il little flesh on its bones, to carry them
| to the camp we proposed making that
light at Hungry Jacks Gully, some
eight or ten miles away.
The only water-hole accessible to the
! wild cattle was separated from the
scrub by mile of level plain, cut and
| gashed by the sun heat into thousand
| holes and assures; and the cattle, as
| soon as darkness concealed their move
ments, used to steal across this, follow
| ing stealthily in one another's wake,
like Indians on the war-path and,
| having drank enough TO last them till
next night, would scamper back again
lcross the plain till they gained the
friendly shelter of the scrub: and these
| sorties into an enemS's country must
1t least have had the charm of excite
| ment in them, as the least sound, such
as the distant gallop of mob of wild
| horses, or 'possum scuttling mp tree,
vas quite sufficient to entail II headlong
| SGuue qi peW of about mile at racing
pace. The only thing to be done with
these brutes, who:e every faculty was
'harpened by thirst and aided by the
unnatural stiffness of the bush, was to
get lot of, say a hundred, quiet cattle
md post them inside the scrub down.
wind, and do our best to drive the wild
)nes in to them, and then trust to luck
md good horsemanship to keep them.
And so, in about m hour from the
first alarm, we found ourselves we'll on
to the plains, driving our wretched
Soaches," as they are called, before
rs by the last rays of a red lurid sun,
which threatened to sink suddenly be-
hlnd Southern Cross or any other
! friendly stars, to show us the way to
where our little bush-yard of strong
'apllngs lay, far up in secluded glen,
ls our base of operations.
Every man mounted on stout little
horse of about fifteen hands, in a big
ring snatfie, blanket strapped across the
saddle, quart pot and hobbies hanging
behind, and short pipe in mouth, We
rode along, keeping close to our rather
refractory charge.
Crawling through the belt of myall,
whose dropping branches fringed the
Dines that lay behind-guided always
Oy the black fellow, whose eyes seemed
| Duly to begin to be in their element as
the darkness drew in, and who was
mounted on an old white horse, cele-
brated i'll all that countryside for his
nigh qualities in scrub-ridinG-we at
last reached our little sapling yard, and
Ihrowing down the rails put our coaches
inside; and after watching their at
,empts to knock it down or jump over
ill they found it was hopeless, we lit
fire behind, aid putting on the quart
pots in tho ready blaze of small sticks
md bark, made our frugal supper of
Tea, damper, and very salt beef.
There were eight of us, all told my
mate Jack b, the overseer; two
stock-men, great authorities on all mat
ters of bush life; three of those non
descript, straightforward, slab-sided
lads who seem to have been born in
noleskin breeches and cabbage-tree
hats, and who unite the most reckless
of philosophy, and a grim humor, only
70 be found in the backwoods of Ameri-
ga or the Australian bush ; your hum
bic servant myself, and last, but by no
means least, Quondong, the black
tracker, half-civilized darkey, whose
whole life was spent in seeing things
utterly invisible to white man, the
taintest trace of any living beast being
to Tim an open book to be read at a
gallop. We drew lots with pieces of
stick as to who should keep awake,
walk round the yard occasionally, and
wake the rest of the party when the
moon rose. Close at hand two 'possums
Kept up a wordy warfare, jumping from
branch to branch, and splitting and
chattering like two cats every now
md then the faint cry of the "More-
pork, the Australian night cuckoo, came
softly out of the intensely black scrub
behind me- 4; while far away in front,
through a gap in the pine trees, 1 could
see Mulally Plain stretching into the
distance.
Having secured and saddled up our
horses as quietly as possible, we threw
aside the slip-rails of our yard, and let
the coaches draw out, led and kept
back by Quondong, and went silently
down a mile or two to where the myall
again began to fringe the edge of the
plain. Here we stationed our two boys
in as open place as we could find, be-
hind thick, patch of prickly "mulga,"
and leaving the cattle in their charge,
followed each other silently along the
outer edge of the scrub, the trees still
keeping us in shadow of the moons
slanting rays.
Presently we came to one of the beaten