could revive sufficiently next
morning to drag on again until another sun goes down.

Hopeless-looking swagmen are met with during the afternoon, and one
carrier--he of the sanded leg--lends them tobacco; his mates contribute
"bits o'" tea, flour, and sugar.

Sundown and the bullocks done up. The teamsters unyoke them and drive
them on to the next water--five miles--having previously sent a mate to
reconnoitre and see that boundary-rider is not round, otherwise, to make
terms with him, for it is a squatter's bore. They hurry the bullocks
down to the water and back in the twilight, and then, under cover of
darkness, turn them into a clearing in the scrub off the road, where a
sign in the grass might be seen--if you look close. But the "bullockies"
are better off than the horse-teamsters, for bad chaff is sold by the
pound and corn is worth its weight in gold.

Mitchell and I turned off the track at the rabbit-proof fence and made
for the tank in the mulga. We boiled the billy and had some salt mutton
and damper. We were making back for Bourke, having failed to get a cut
in any of the sheds on the Hungerford track. We sat under a clump of
mulga saplings, with our backs to the trunks, and got out our pipes.
Usually, when the flies were very bad on the track, we had to keep twigs
or wild-turkey=tail feathers going in front of our faces the whole time
to keep the mad flies out of our eyes; and, when we camped, one would
keep the feather going while the other lit his pipe--then the smoke
would keep them away. But the flies weren't so bad in a good shade or in
a darkened hut. Mitchell's pipe would have smoked out Old Nick; it
was an ancient string-bound meerschaum, and strong enough to kill a
blackfellow. I had one smoke out of it, once when I felt bad in my
inside and wanted to be sick, and the result was very satisfactory.

Mitchell looked through his old pocket-book--more by force of habit
than anything else--and turned up a circular from Tattersall's. And that
reminded him.

"Do you know what I'd do, Harry," he said, "if I won Tattersall's big
sweep, or was to come into fifty or a hundred thousand pounds, or,
better still, a million?"

"Nothing I suppose," I said, "except to get away to Sydney or some
cooler place than this."

"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Mitchell, talking round his pipe. "I'd
build a Swagman's Rest right here."

"A Swagman's Rest?"

"Yes. Right here on this very God-forsaken spot. I'd bu