"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?"