nd not by what they could
say. He liked both the appearance of the boys and the report which
Mick had given of how they had "shaped" on the way out, but his
weather-beaten face did not relax at all, and the boys thought he was a
hard man. They were wrong, however. Dan Collins was a strong man, and
through dealing for many years with blacks, he had come to hide his
thoughts behind an unyielding expression of face, though many a man
knew how kind a heart beat in his big rough body.

So the boys were on their mettle. There were no other white men in the
yard except Mick and the manager; the rest were blacks.

An hour or two before dawn, as soon as it was light enough to
distinguish one beast from another, all hands went down to the yards
for drafting. Sax and Vaughan were each given a gate to open and shut
when their particular call came, and they found that it needed every
bit of their attention to do even this simple job well. By the time
breakfast was announced by the cook, who summoned all hands to the meal
by beating the back of a frying-pan with a wooden spoon, the thousand
cattle had been divided into three lots: about a hundred and twenty
cleanskins (unbranded cattle), over a hundred three-year-old bullocks
which would soon be ready to send to town, and the rest, which were to
be allowed to go bush again.

Breakfast and "Smoke-o" were got over quickly, and everybody was again
at the yards as soon as possible. A fire was lit outside the rails,
and a half-dozen T.D.3 brands, and as many number brands, were put in
the blaze to get hot. Green-hide ropes were coiled ready and knives
sharpened. The cleanskins were attended to first. Most of them were
about a year old and could be scruffed, which means that one or another
of the black-fellows would watch his opportunity, catch the calf, and
throw it on the ground with a dexterous twist. As soon as it was down,
he would hook one of its front legs behind its horns and hold it there
till the brand was applied. Sometimes four calves were being scruffed
at the same time, and the work went on very quickly. Blacks always
work well in a yard. Not only is there the personal and sometimes
risky struggle with the animals, which appeals strongly to their savage
minds, but the emulation amongst themselves, each being very anxious to
do better than his fellows. There is usually a good deal of laughter
and joking talk in a stock-yard, and a good deal of hard, strenuous,