“The proper quarry of mankind is man.” I
T is about eight o’clock P.M., at Borbong head-station, which lies at some fifty miles’ distance from Murdaro, and the evening meal being over, half-a-dozen men are settling down to enjoy an after-dinner smoke in that sanctum of Government House, the boss’s “den.”
 
Most of the bronzed, manly figures before us are dressed in white linen and one wears the long top-boots and spurs of a sub-lieutenant in the N.M. Constabulary. Three of the other men are passing travellers, and although quite unknown to the hospitable manager of the run, till a couple of hours since, are made none the less welcome on that account, after the laudably generous custom that obtains on the better class “up-country” stations.
 
One of these strangers is the new manager of Hanga run, who is on his way northwards to take charge of his new scene of labours, and the other327 two are mining speculators up from Brisbane to look at a new find of silver in the neighbourhood.
 
“Now, gentlemen, make yourselves at home,” observes Mr. Browne, in the loud, resonant voice of one who is accustomed to give outdoor commands. “Here are some cigars that ain’t bad. You’ll have to excuse me for a bit, but I’ll be back by the time you’ve filled your glasses. I just want to see about the horses for to-morrow.” Mr. Browne retires, being followed from the door by a battalion of enormous cats, who, with tails erect, stalk noiselessly after their master, whose sole hobby is breeding animals and training them to perform all kinds of unfeline feats.
 
The manager’s guests proceed to make themselves comfortable upon various seats about the rather roughly furnished room, and an observant eye might have noticed that the older frequenters of the house studiously avoid the neighbourhood of a certain chintz-covered sofa standing near the door, which is known to them as the favourite roosting-place of their host’s strange pets.
 
The room in which the smokers are assembled has no ceiling, and the rafters of the thatched roof can dimly be descried in the gloom overhead. Upon the log walls, which are scantily covered with a mutilated covering of scrim, a few coloured almanacs and pictures from the illustrated papers have been pasted. A dusty, little-used bookcase and a well-supplied gun-rack—fit emblems of the unequal amount of influence exerted by peace and war in the locality—occupy two opposite corners of the room by the door, which, hanging upon green-hide hinges, has evidently at some time or other formed parts of various packing328 cases. This is the “den,” otherwise the sitting-room and office, of Mr. Browne,—where that splendid specimen of humanity writes his diaries, does his obtuse calculations as handicapper for the neighbouring Jockey Club, and pays his hands,—and the absence of a ceiling is not without certain advantages, as may be perceived after a number of guests have been loading the air for the best part of a warm summer night with fragrant clouds of incense in honour of the Genius of Bachelordom.
 
“Wonderful lot of cats about the place!” exclaims one of the mining speculators, moving suddenly off the aforementioned chintz-covered sofa, and proceeding to stamp and shake himself as if he had come in contact with a lively ant-hill. “I’ve always admired Henry the Third of France because he hated cats.”
 
The other men smile knowingly at each other, as if they had expected him to vacate his seat before long, and one explains, “That’s the cats’ seat; there ar’n’t any over here.”
 
“Talking of cats,” observes the station storekeeper, who, being the distant relative of an Irish baronet, is considered a person of some importance in the district, “it wouldn’t be a bad ideah, bai Joave, to twain some of Bwowne’s cweatures for the hill-country, where the dawgs cawn’t work properly. How did you manage to get along yesterday, Mr. Morth?” The last sentence is addressed to the young sub-inspector.
 
“Oh, not so badly,” replies the police officer, as he knocks his cigar end off upon the leg of his rather rickety chair. Mr. Morth is a youngish man, slim and active as a greyhound, who glories in his work from a sportsman’s point of view. “Oh, we didn’t 329 do so badly. We got another lot besides the party your boys put us on to. But that broken country at the back of the Black Rock is the very devil. Fifteen miles, sir, we had to track the beggars after we left our horses, and then they’d have got away if there hadn’t been old people with them.”
 
“You lost a boy, didn’t you?”
 
“Yes, worse luck. Poor old Jet lost the number of his mess. We got the beggars against a cliff, and when they found they were in a trap they rushed at the boys. I never saw a nigger harder to kill than the rascal that knocked Jet on the head. I put six bullets into the beggar before I dropped him.”
 
“Niggers bad up my way?” asks the new manager of Hanga Station.
 
“That’s not in my patrol, so can’t say,” replies the sub-inspector.
 
“I think you will have a deuce of a lot of trouble up there,” observes the storekeeper. “Your predecessah allowed the beggars to wandah all ovah the wun. Spoilt them all togethah. Weally one could not go neah a water-hole without seeing some of the black devils camped there. They came in from all the other stations wound.”
 
“Oh, I’ll soon alter all that,” remarks the Hanga manager with an oath.
 
“Milby was the boy with niggers,” says a dark-eyed man at the other end of the little table, as he glances up from the American cloth cover before him, upon which he has been amusing himself by imprisoning sundry stray ants in a complicated maze, traced with the wet bottom of his tumbler. “Did you ever meet him, Lawrence?”
 
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The individual addressed, who is a cattle-drover of a superior kind, replies in a husky voice that he has not only met him, but was with him some time in the Northern Territory the year before.
 
“He was a beggar to shoot niggers,” this gentleman adds, “and no mistake. Why, hang me, if he didn’t order six cases of Sniders up to the station when he first took up that MacArthur country.”
 
“What on earth did he want with that lot?” asks the new manager of Hanga run.
 
“Oh,” replies the drover, “he said the niggers’ heads up that way were so precious thick that his boys would break all their gun-stocks if he didn’t keep a good supply of ’em.”
 
A general laugh greets the news that the red-faced drover has just retailed concerning this latest piece of eccentricity of the famous Milby.
 
“I was with him for two years up at Hidamoor,” observes the dark-eyed man. “He hadn’t a single ‘boy’ on the run; they was all lubras (girls). He used to tog them out in trousers and shirts, and they made jolly good stockmen. Does he do that still up north?”
 
“Yes,” replies the drover, “they all do it up there. He lets his white stockmen have two gins (women) apiece. I brought a couple down with me to the Springs last trip; give them to Boker there.”
 
“Milby’s a smart fellow all round,” remarks Mr. Browne, who has just entered, dismissing all save two of his furry following, these latter taking the seats demurely upon the chintz-covered sofa.
 
“Yes; first time I was out with Milby,” continues the manager, stooping to use the tobacco-cutter, “we 331 got nicely on to about a dozen buck niggers near Wiseman’s water-hole—you know it, Lawrence? Well, I saw Milby taking a long feather out of his pocket when we’d grassed all the black devils, and wondered what he was going to do with it. Hanged if he didn’t send a ‘boy’ round to each of the beggars we’d knocked over to tickle their noses.
 
“‘What’s that for?’ I asked. ‘Oh, you’ll see,’ said he. And sure enough presently the ‘boy’ with the feather ranged up alongside a nigger who’d been shamming. I’d tried the beggar before with a match, in the ordinary way, and he hadn’t shown a sign. I thought I’d have died o’ laughing,” the manager continues, after moistening his inner man, “when I saw the beggar twitching his nose as the feather tickled it; he couldn’t for the life of him keep it still. That was a very good ‘dart’ of Milby’s; we’d have missed that buck without the feather dodge.”
 
“Oh, that’s an old trick,” remarks the new manager of Epsom; “they always used it about Kimberley when I was through there with horses before the rush.”
 
“Ain’t you station folk a bit rough on the niggers about here?” inquires one of the two burly individuals that we have already introduced to our readers as mining speculators. “I’ve had a good all-round experience with ’em, as you may guess, when I tell you I’m the original prospector of the Mount Walker. Now I’ve had to shoot one nigger in my time, but only one; and I was living amongst them, you might say, for about twenty years, till I made my rise at the Mount.”
 
“Oh, ah!” drawls the storekeeper, bestowing an insolently pitying smile upon the simple-minded individual who thus dares to find fault with one of the pet332 institutions of the “squattah” nobles of the country. “But you must remember there’s a deuced lot of difference between wunning a wun and wunning a mine, Mr. Walker.” This remark smells so strongly of a sneer that the black Cornish eyes flash angrily across the table, till, observing that the storekeeper is a foe that is hardly worthy of his steel, Mr. Walker calms down again.
 
“Mayb............