An Outback Marriage

"What do you call a book-muster?" said the globe-trotter, who was

spending a month in the country, and would naturally write a book

on it.

"Book-muster, book-muster? Why, a book-muster is something like

dead-reckoning on a ship. You know what dead-reckoning is, don't

you? If a captain can't see the sun he allows for how fast the ship

is going, and for the time run and the currents, and all that, and

then reckons up where he is. I travelled with a captain once, and

so long as he stuck to dead-reckoning he was all right. He made

out we were off Cairns, and that's just where we were; because we

struck the Great Barrier Reef, and became a total wreck ten minutes

after. With the cattle it's just the same. You'll reckon the cattle

that you started with, add on each year's calves, subtract all that

you sell,--that is, if you ever do sell any--and allow for deaths,

and what the blacks spear and the thieves steal. Then you work out

the total, and you say, 'There ought to be five thousand cattle

on the place,' but you never get 'em. I've got to go and find five

thousand cattle in the worst bit of brigalow scrub in the north."

"Where do you say this place is?" said Pinnock. "It's called No

Man's Land, and it's away out back near where the buffalo-shooters

are. It'll take about a month to get there. The old man's in a rare

state of mind at being let in. He's up at Kuryong now, driving my

brother Hugh out of his mind. Hugh would as soon have an attack

of faceache as see old Bully looming up the track. Every time he

goes up he shifts every blessed sheep out of every paddock, and

knocks seven years' growth out of them putting them through the

yards; then he overhauls the store, and if there's a box of matches

short he'll keep Hugh up half the night to account for it. He sacks

all the good men and raises the wages of the loafers, and then

comes back to Sydney quite pleased; it's a little holiday to him.

You come along with me, Carew, and let old Bully alone. What did

you come out for? Colonial experience?"

An Englishman hates talking about himself, and Carew rather hesitated.

Then he came out with it awkwardly, like a man repeating a lesson.

"Did you ever meet a man named Considine out here?" he said.

"Lots of them," said Gordon promptly--"lots of them. Why, I had a

man named Considine working for me, and he thought he got bitten

by a snake, so his mates ran him twenty miles into Bourke between

two horses to keep him from going to sleep, giving him a nip of

whisky every twenty minutes; and when he got to Bourke he wasn't

bitten at all, but he died of alcoholic poisoning. What about this

Considine, anyhow? What do you want him for?"