Another striking feature was the way in which they got themselves
mixed up with each other. Their names were so tangled up that no
one could keep tally of them. There was a Red Mick Donohoe (son
of the old publican), and his cousin Black Mick Donohoe, and Red
Mick's son Mick, and Black Mick's son Mick, and Red Mick's son
Pat, and Black Mick's son Pat; and there was Gammy Doyle (meaning
Doyle with the lame leg), and Scrammy Doyle (meaning Doyle with
the injured arm), and Bosthoon Doyle and Omadhaun Doyle--a Bosthoon
being a man who never had any great amount of sense to speak of,
while an Omadhaun is a man who began life with some sense, but lost
most of it on his journey. It was a common saying in the country-side
that if you met a man on the mountains you should say, "Good-day,
Doyle," and if he replied, "That's not my name," you should at once
say, "Well, I meant no offence, Mr. Donohoe."
One could generally pick which was which of the original stock,
but when they came to intermarry there was no telling t'other from
which. Startling likenesses cropped up among the relatives, and
it was widely rumoured that one Doyle who was known to be in jail,
and who was vaguely spoken of by the clan as being "away," was in
fact serving an accumulation of sentences for himself and other
members of the family, whose sins he had for a consideration taken
on himself.
With such neighbours as these fighting him for every block of
land, Andrew Gordon soon came to the end of his resources, and it
was then that he had to take in his old manager as a partner. Before
Bully Grant had been in the firm long, he had secured nearly all
the good land, and the industrious yeomanry that the Land Act was
supposed to create were hiding away up the gullies on miserable
little patches of bad land, stealing sheep for a living. Bully
fought them stoutly, impounded their sheep and cattle, and prosecuted
trespassers and thieves; and, his luck being wonderful, he soon
added to the enormous fortune he had made in mining, while Andrew
Gordon died impoverished. When he died, old Bully gave the management
of the stations to his sons, and contented himself with finding
fault. But one dimly-remembered episode in his career was talked of
by the old hands around Kiley's Hotel, long after Grant had become
a wealthy man, and had gone for long trips to England.
Grant, in spite of the judgment and sagacity on which he prided
himself, had at various times in his career made mistakes--mistakes
in station management, mistakes about stock, mistakes about men,
and last, but not least, mistakes about women; and it was to one
of these mistakes that the gossips referred.