dead men fly!

Cattle on a camp see ghosts, sure enough--else, why is it that, when
hundreds are in camp at night--some standing, some lying asleep, all
facing different ways--in an instant, at some invisible cause of alarm,
the whole mob are on their feet and all racing _in the same direction_,
away from some unseen terror?

It doesn't do to sneak round cattle at night; it is better to whistle
and sing than to surprise them by a noiseless appearance. Anyone
sneaking about frightens them, and then they will charge right over
the top of somebody on the opposite side, and away into the darkness,
becoming more and more frightened as they go, smashing against trees and
stumps, breaking legs and ribs, and playing the dickens with themselves
generally. Cattle "on the road" are unaccountable animals; one cannot
say for certain what they will do. In this respect they differ from
sheep, whose movements can be predicted with absolute certainty.

All the cussedness of the bovine race is centred in the cow. In
Australia the most opprobious epithet one can apply to a man or other
object is "cow". In the whole range of a bullock-driver's vocabulary
there is no word that expresses his blistering scorn so well as "cow".
To an exaggerated feminine perversity the cow adds a fiendish ingenuity
in making trouble.

A quiet milking-cow will "plant" her calf with such skill that ten
stockmen cannot find him in a one-mile paddock. While the search goes on
she grazes unconcernedly, as if she never had a calf in her life. If
by chance he be discovered, then one notices a curious thing. The very
youngest calf, the merest staggering-Bob two days old, will not move
till the old lady gives him orders to do so. One may pull him about
without getting a move out of him. If sufficiently persecuted he will
at last sing out for help, and then his mother will arrive full-gallop,
charge men and horses indiscriminately, and clear out with him to the
thickest timber in the most rugged part of the creek-bed, defying man to
get her to the yard.

While in his mother's company he seconds her efforts with great
judgment. But, if he be separated from her, he will follow a horse and
rider up to the yard thinking he is following his mother, though
she bellow instructions to him from the rear. Then the guileless
agriculturist, having penned him up, sets a dog on him, and his cries
soon fetch the old cow full-run to his assistance. Once in the yard
she is roped,