Now we must follow for a time the adventures of Charlie Gordon
and the new chum, whom we left just starting out for 'far back',
Charlie to take over a cattle-station for Old Man Grant, and Carew
to search for Patrick Henry Considine. After a short sea-journey
they took train to a dusty back-blocks township, where Gordon
picked up one of the many outfits which he had scattered over the
country, and which in this case consisted of a vehicle, a dozen or
so of horses, and a black boy named Frying Pan.
Thy drove four horses in a low, American-made buggy, and travelled
about fifty miles a day. Frying Pan was invaluable. He seemed to
have a natural affinity for horses. He could catch them anywhere,
and track them if they got lost. Carew tried to talk to him, but
could get little out of him, for he knew only the pidgin English,
which is in use in those parts, and said "No more" to nearly every
question. He rode along behind the loose horses, apparently quite
satisfied with his own company. Every now and then he came alongside
the vehicle, and said "Terbacker." Charlie threw him a stick of
the blackest, rankest tobacco known to the trade, and off he went
again.
Once they saw him get off his horse near a lagoon, plunge his arm
into a hole, and pull out a mud-turtle, an evil-smelling beast;
this he carried for several miles over his shoulder, holding its
head, and letting the body swing at the end of the long neck--a
proceeding which must have caused the turtle intense suffering.
After a while his horse shied, and he dropped the turtle on the
ground with a dull thud.
"Aren't you going to pick him up again?" cried Carew.
"No more," replied Frying Pan, carelessly. Then he grinned, and
volunteered a remark. "Make that feller plenty tired walk home
again," he said. And this was his only conversation during a
two-hundred-mile journey.
At night they usually managed to reach a station, where the man
in charge would greet them effusively, and beg them to turn their
horses out and stay a week--or a year or two, just as long as they
liked. They met all sorts at these stations, from English swells
to bushmen of the roughest. Sometimes they camped out, putting
hobbles on the horses, and spreading their blankets under the buggy
on a bed of long grass gathered by Frying Pan.
As they got further out, the road became less and less defined,
stations fewer, and everything rougher. They left the sheep-country
behind them and got out into cattle-land, where "runs" are measured
by the hundred square miles, and every man is a law unto himself.
They left their buggy after a time, and pushed on with pack-horses;
and after travelling about two hundred miles, came to the outer
edge of the settled district, where they stayed with two young
Englishmen, who were living under a dray, and building their
cattle-yards themselves--the yards being a necessity, and the house,
which was to come afterwards, a luxury. The diet was monotonous--meat
"ad libitum," damper and tea. They had neighbours within sixty
miles, and got letters once in two months by riding that distance.
"Stay here a while," they said to the travellers, "and take up some
of the country near by."