dry country that
they don't know anything about, and dying within a few yards of water
sometimes. But even now, whenever I hear that an old bush mate of mine
is dead, I don't fret about it or put a black band round my hat, because
I know he'll be pretty sure to turn up sometimes, pretty bad with the
booze, and want to borrow half a crown.

"I've been dead a few times myself, and found out afterwards that my
friends was so sorry about it, and that I was such a good sort of a chap
after all, when I was dead that--that I was sorry I didn't stop dead.
You see, I was one of them chaps that's better treated by their friends
and better thought of when--when they're dead.

"Ah, well! Never mind.... Talking of killing bushmen before their time
reminds me of some cases I knew. They mostly happened among the western
spurs of the ranges. There was a bullock-driver named Billy Nowlett. He
had a small selection, where he kept his family, and used to carry from
the railway terminus to the stations up-country. One time he went up
with a load and was not heard of for such a long time that his missus
got mighty uneasy; and then she got a letter from a publican up
Coonamble way to say that Billy was dead. Someone wrote, for the widow,
to ask about the wagon and the bullocks, but the shanty-keeper wrote
that Billy had drunk them before he died, and that he'd also to say that
he'd drunk the money he got for the carrying; and the publican enclosed
a five-pound note for the widow--which was considered very kind of him.

"Well, the widow struggled along and managed without her husband just
the same as she had always struggled along and managed with him--a
little better, perhaps. An old digger used to drop in of evenings and
sit by the widow's fire, and yarn, and sympathize, and smoke, and think;
and just as he began to yarn a lot less, and smoke and think a lot
more, Billy Nowlett himself turned up with a load of rations for a sheep
station. He'd been down by the other road, and the letter he'd wrote to
his missus had gone astray. Billy wasn't surprised to hear that he was
dead--he'd been killed before--but he was surprised about the five quid.

"You see, it must have been another bullock-driver that died. There
was an old shanty-keeper up Coonamble way, so Billy said, that used to
always mistake him for another bullocky and mistake the other bullocky
for him--couldn't tell the one from the other no way--and he used to
have bills against Bi