you
wonder that our chaps get hot and talk wild and act a little wild now and
then?"

Nellie pressed his arm answeringly.

"I feel myself a coward sometimes," went on Ned. "Last drought-time some
of us were camped 'way back at a water-hole on a reserve where there was
the only grass and water we could get for hundreds of miles. We had our
horses and the squatter about wanted the grass for his horses and tried
to starve us away by refusing to sell us stores. He wouldn't even sell us
meat. He was a fool, for we took his mutton as we wanted it, night-times,
and packed our stores from the nearest township, a hundred and eighty
miles off. I used to think that the right thing to do was to take what we
wanted off his run and from his store, in broad daylight, and pay him
fair prices and blow the heads off anybody who went to stop us. For we'd
a better right to the grass than he had. Only, you see, Nellie, it was
easier to get even with him underhand and we seem to do always what's
easiest."

"They've always acted like that, those squatters, Ned," said Nellie.
"Don't you recollect when they closed the road across Arranvale one
drought 'cause the selectors were cutting it up a bit, drawing water from
the reserve, and how everybody had to go seven miles further round for
every drop of water? I've often wondered why the gates weren't lifted and
the road used in spite of them."

"They'd have sent for the police," remarked Ned. "Next year Arranvale
shed was burned," he added.

"It's always that way," declared Nellie, angrily. "For my part I'd sooner
see the wildest, most hopeless outbreak, than that sort of thing."

"So would the squatters, Nellie," retorted Ned, grimly. "I feel all you
do," he went on. "But human nature is human nature and the squatters did
their level best, ignorantly I admit, to make the men mere brutes, and
the life alone has made hundreds mad, so we can't wonder if the result
isn't altogether pleasant. They've made us hut in with Chinese and
Malays. They've stuck up prices till flour that cost them tuppence a
pound I've seen selling us for a shilling. They've cut wages down
whenever they got a chance and are cutting them now, and they want to
break up our unions with their miserable 'freedom of contract' agreement.
Before there were unions in the bush the only way to get even with a
squatter was by some underhand trick and now we've got our unions and are
ready to stand up manly and fight him fair he's