“Those are nice-looking boys,” said Carew. “I mean the two new boys just coming in.”
“New boys!” said the old man. “Them! They’re my two gins. And see here, Mister, you’ll have to keep off hangin’ round them while you’re camped here. I can’t stand anyone interferin’ with them. If you kick my dorg, or go after my gin, then you rouse all the monkey in me. Those two do all my cattle work. Come here, Maggie,” he called, and the slight “boy” walked over with a graceful, easy swing.
“This is new feller?” he said, introducing Carew, who bowed gracefully. “He b’long Sydney. You think him plenty nice feller, eh?”
“Yowi,” said the girl laughing. “He nice feller. You got ’em matches?” she said, beaming on Carew, and pulling a black pipe out of her trousers’ pocket. “Big fool that Lucy, drop ’em matches.”
Carew handed over his match-box in speechless amazement.
“They’ve been out all day with the cattle,” said the old man. “I’ve got a lot of wild cattle in that there mob. I go out with a few quiet ones in the moonlight, and when the wild cattle come out of the scrubs to look at ’em we rush the whole lot out into the plain. Great hands these gins are—just as good as the boys.”
“Good Lord!” said Carew, looking at the two little figures, who had now a couple of ducks each, a puftalooner or two, and a big pannikin of tea, and were sitting on the edge of the verandah eating away with great enjoyment; “what have they been doing with the cattle to-day?”
“Minding them lest the wild ones should clear out. They dropped their matches somehow; that’s what fetched ’em home early. They’ll have to sleep on the verandah to-night. We’ll make that their boodore, as they say in France.”
The dark was now falling; the sunlight had left long, faint, crimson streaks in the sky. The air was perceptibly cooler, and flights of waterfowl hurried overhead, making their way to the river. The Chinaman lighted a slush-lamp, by whose flickering light Charlie produced from his swag a small bundle of papers, and threw them on the table.
“We might as well get our business over, Keogh,” he said. “I’ve got the paper here for you to sign, making over your interest in the block and the cattle, and all that.”
He pored over the document, muttering as he read it. “Your name’ll have to be filled in, and there’s a blank for the name of the person it’s transferred to.”