seemed to be settled
down all right, and I was sitting by my fire holding my horse and
drowsing, when all of a sudden a blessed 'possum ran out from some
saplings and scratched up a tree right alongside me. I was half-asleep,
I suppose, and was startled; anyhow, never thinking what I was doing, I
picked up a firestick out of the fire and flung it at the 'possum.

"Whoop! Before you could say Jack Robertson, that thousand head of
cattle were on their feet, and made one wild, headlong, mad rush right
over the place where poor old Barcoo Jim was sleeping. There was no
time to hunt up materials for the inquest; I had to keep those cattle
together, so I sprang into the saddle, dashed the spurs into the old
horse, dropped my head on his mane, and sent him as hard as he could leg
it through the scrub to get to the lead of the cattle and steady them.
It was brigalow, and you know what that is.

"You know how the brigalow grows," continued Bill; "saplings about as
thick as a man's arm, and that close together a dog can't open his mouth
to bark in 'em. Well, those cattle swept through that scrub, levelling
it like as if it had been cleared for a railway line. They cleared
a track a quarter of a mile wide, and smashed every stick, stump and
sapling on it. You could hear them roaring and their hoofs thundering
and the scrub smashing three or four miles off.

"And where was I? I was racing parallel with the cattle, with my head
down on the horse's neck, letting him pick his way through the scrub in
the pitchy darkness. This went on for about four miles. Then the cattle
began to get winded, and I dug into the old stock-horse with the spurs,
and got in front, and began to crack the whip and sing out, so as to
steady them a little; after awhile they dropped slower and slower, and I
kept the whip going. I got them all together in a patch of open country,
and there I rode round and round 'em all night till daylight.

"And how I wasn't killed in the scrub, goodness only knows; for a man
couldn't ride in the daylight where I did in the dark. The cattle were
all knocked about--horns smashed, legs broken, ribs torn; but they were
all there, every solitary head of 'em; and as soon as the daylight broke
I took 'em back to the camp--that is, all that could travel, because I
had to leave a few broken-legged ones."

Billy paused in his narrative. He knew that some suggestions would be
made, by way of compromise, to tone down the awful streng