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in connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night,

at the end of his contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly,
`I'll go up to Tinned Dog next week and try my luck.'

His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to laugh,
and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian actor

would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to think,
with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an imaginary table

and exclaimed --
`By God! Jimmy'll do it.' (Applause.)

. . . . .
So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day

runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour,
when a clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,

greased-bluchered -- altogether a model or stage swagman came up,
was served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way

to the river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.
A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah,

smoking a clean clay pipe. Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked,
`Is that trav'ler there yet, Mary?'

`Yes, missus. Clean pfellar that.'
The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do

when limited for `stuff' or wondering whether a section has been cut wrong --
or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn't been a `clean pfellar'.

She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out
across the clearing.

`Good-day, mister,' she said, seeming to become aware of him
for the first time.

`Good-day, missus!'
`Hot!'

`Hot!'
Pause.

`Trav'lin'?'
`No, not particular!'

She waited for him to explain. Myers was always explaining
when he wasn't raving. But the swagman smoked on.

`Have a drink?' she suggested, to keep her end up.
`No, thank you, missus. I had one an hour or so ago. I never take

more than two a-day -- one before breakfast, if I can get it,
and a night-cap.'

What a contrast to Myers! she thought.
`Come and have some tea; it's ready.'

`Thank you. I don't mind if I do.'
They got on very slowly, but comfortably. She got little out of him

except the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract,
and was `just having a look at the country.' He politely declined

a `shake-down', saying he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out
this weather. She got his name with a `by-the-way', as he rose to leave,

and he went back to camp.
He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning,

and got along so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon
pottering about the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of nails.

And, well -- to make it short -- when the big Tinned Dog shed had cut-out,
and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly impressed

by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words --
HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL,

BY
JAMES GRIMSHAW.

Good Stabling.
The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five.

At Dead Dingo.
It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside

the weather-board and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road,
where there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes

called `Roasted', and other times `Potted Dingo' -- nicknames suggested
by the everlastingdrought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township

of Tinned Dog.
From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road,

running right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep
in the red sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest

blue-grey bush, dust, and the heat-wave blazing across every object.
There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year's Day.

There weren't many more in the county. The girl sat behind the bar
-- the coolest place in the shanty -- reading `Deadwood Dick'.

On a worn and torn and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen
cooler places and better days, lay an awful and healthy example,

a bearded swagman, with his arms twisted over his head and his face
to the wall, sleeping off the death of the dead drunk. Bill and Jim

-- shearer and rouseabout -- sat at a table playing cards.
It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and they had been gambling

since nine -- and the greater part of the night before -- so they were,
probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps physically)

than the drunken swagman on the sofa.
Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail,

lay a sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.
Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unluckygambler" target="_blank" title="n.赌徒">gambler, rose with an oath

that would have been savage if it hadn't been drawled.
`Stumped?' inquired Jim.

`Not a blanky, lurid deener!' drawled Bill.
Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went

slowly and hopelessly round the room and out the door.
There was something in the eyes of both, except when on the card-table,

of the look of a man waking in a strange place.
`Got anything?' asked Jim, fingering the cards again.

Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty,
and spat out on to the verandah floor.

`That's all I got,' he drawled. `It's gone now.'
Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the dog.

`That there dog yours?' he asked, brightening.
They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each other

as Bushmen can be.
Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog.

The dog woke suddenly to a flea fact.
`Yes,' drawled Bill, `he's mine.'

`Well, I'm going Out-Back, and I want a dog,' said Jim,
gathering the cards briskly. `Half a quid agin the dog?'

`Half a quid be ----!' drawled Bill. `Call it a quid?'
`Half a blanky quid!'

`A gory, lurid quid!' drawled Bill desperately" target="_blank" title="ad.绝望地;拼命地">desperately, and he stooped over his swag.
But Jim's hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.

`Alright. Call it a ---- quid.'
The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died again.

Remember this, it might come in useful.
Bill sat down to the table once more.

Jim rose first, winner of the dog. He stretched, yawned `Ah, well!'
and shouted drinks. Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up

with his foot, unwound the chain, said `Ah, well -- so long!'
and drifted out and along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following

with head and tail down.
Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck,

shouldered his swag, said, `So long, Mary!' and drifted out and along the road
towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.

. . . . .
A long, drowsy, half hour passed -- the sort of half hour

that is as long as an hour in the places where days are as long as years,
and years hold about as much as days do in other places.

The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild
for a moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor,

rested his elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands,
and came back to life gradually.

He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar,
and formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words --

`Put up a drink?'*
--

* `Put up a drink' -- i.e., `Give me a drink on credit', or `Chalk it up'.
--

She shook her head tightly and went on reading.
He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperatedistress signals

with hand, eyes, and mouth.
`No!' she snapped. `I means no when I says no! You've had too many

last drinks already, and the boss says you ain't to have another.
If you swear again, or bother me, I'll call him.'

He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his swag,
and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily. Then he blinked round,

whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round,
through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again.

He turned and started through to the back-door.
`What the devil do you want now?' demanded the girl,

interrupted in her reading for the third time by him.
`Stampin' all over the house. You can't go through there!

It's privit! I do wish to goodness you'd git!'
`Where the blazes is that there dog o' mine got to?' he muttered.

`Did you see a dog?'
`No! What do I want with your dog?'

He whistled out in front again, and round each corner. Then he came back
with a decided step and tone.

`Look here! that there dog was lyin' there agin the wall when I went to sleep.
He wouldn't stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn't dragged.

He's been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn'ter lost him for a fiver.
Are you sure you ain't seen a dog?' then suddenly, as the thought struck him:

`Where's them two chaps that was playin' cards when I wenter sleep?'
`Why!' exclaimed the girl, without thinking, `there was a dog,

now I come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps.
Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.'

He stared at her blankly, with thundergathering in the blankness.
`What sort of a dog was it?'

Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it.
He scowled at her darkly.

`Now, look here,' he said; `you've allowed gamblin' in this bar --
your boss has. You've got no right to let spielers gamble away a man's dog.

Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your boss?
I'll go straight across to the police camp and put you away,

and I don't care if you lose your licence. I ain't goin' to lose my dog.
I wouldn'ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog! I ----'

She was filling a pewter hastily.
`Here! for God's sake have a drink an' stop yer row.'

He drank with satisfaction. Then he hung on the bar with one elbow
and scowled out the door.

`Which blanky way did them chaps go?' he growled.
`The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.'

`And I'll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely
lose me shed! Here!' jerking the empty pewter across the bar,

`fill that up again; I'm narked properly, I am, and I'll take
twenty-four blanky hours to cool down now. I wouldn'ter lost that dog

for twenty quid.'
He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out,

muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the track
to Tinned Dog.

--------------------
Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite settled it

in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog. I leave it to you.
Telling Mrs Baker.

Most Bushmen who hadn't `known Bob Baker to speak to',
had `heard tell of him'. He'd been a squatter, not many years before,

on the Macquarie river in New South Wales, and had made money
in the good seasons, and had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding,

and long trips to Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace.
So after a pretty severedrought, when the sheep died by thousands

on his runs, Bob Baker went under, and the bank took over his station
and put a manager in charge.

He'd been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that
he'd been a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned,



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