cause of both.

Jack Denver was reckoned the most popular man in the district (outside
the principal township)--a white man and a straight man--a white boss
and a straight sportsman. He was a squatter, though a small one; a real
squatter who lived on his run and worked with his men--no dummy, super,
manager for a bank, or swollen cockatoo about Jack Denver. He was on
the committees at agricultural shows and sports, great at picnics and
dances, beloved by school children at school feasts (I wonder if they
call them feasts still), giver of extra or special prizes, mostly sovs.
and half-sovs., for foot races, etc.; leading spirit for the scrub
district in electioneering campaigns--they went as right as men could go
in the politics of those days who watched and went the way Jack Denver
went; header of subscription lists for burnt-out, flooded-out, sick,
hurt, dead or killed or otherwise knocked-out selectors and others,
or their families; barracker and agitator for new provisional schools,
assister of his Reverence and little bush chapels, friend of all manner
of wanderers--careless, good-hearted scamps in trouble, broken-hearted
new chums, wrecks and failures and outcasts of any colour or creed, and
especially of old King Jimmy and the swiftly vanishing remnant of his
tribe. His big slab-and-shingle and brick-floored kitchen, with its
skillions, built on more generous plans and specifications than even the
house itself, was the wanderer's goal and home in bad weather. And--yes,
owner, on a small scale, of racehorses, and a keen sportsman.

Jack Denver and Big Ben Duggan were boys together on the old selections,
and at the new provisional bark school at Pipeclay; they went into the
Great North-West together "where all the rovers go"--stock-riding and
droving and overlanding, and came back after a few years bronzed and
seasoned and with wild yarns.

Jack married and settled down on a small run his father had bought near
Talbragar, and his generous family of tall, straight bush boys and tall,
straight bush girls grew up and had their sweethearts. But, when Jack
married, Big Ben Duggan went back again, up into Queensland and the
Great North-West, with a makeshift mate who had also lost his mate
through marriage. Ever and again, after one, and two, and three
years--the periods of absence lengthening as the years went on--Big Ben
Duggan would come back home, and stay a while (till the Great North-West
began to call insistently