An Outback Marriage | Page 5

and coach hundreds of miles to get at some flat-sided
pike-horned mob of brutes without enough fat on them to oil a man's
hair with. I've to go right away out back now and take over a place that
the old man advanced some money on. He was fool enough, or
someone was fool enough for him, to advance five thousand pounds on
a block of new country with five thousand cattle on it--book-muster,
you know, and half the cattle haven't been seen for years, and the other
half are dead, I expect. Anyhow, the man that borrowed the money is
ruined, and I have to go up and take over the station."
"What do you call a book-muster?" said the globe-trotter, who was
spending a month in the country, and would naturally write a book on
it.
"Book-muster, book-muster? Why, a book-muster is something like
dead-reckoning on a ship. You know what dead-reckoning is, don't you?
If a captain can't see the sun he allows for how fast the ship is going,
and for the time run and the currents, and all that, and then reckons up
where he is. I travelled with a captain once, and so long as he stuck to
dead-reckoning he was all right. He made out we were off Cairns, and
that's just where we were; because we struck the Great Barrier Reef,
and became a total wreck ten minutes after. With the cattle it's just the
same. You'll reckon the cattle that you started with, add on each year's
calves, subtract all that you sell,--that is, if you ever do sell any--and
allow for deaths, and what the blacks spear and the thieves steal. Then
you work out the total, and you say, 'There ought to be five thousand
cattle on the place,' but you never get 'em. I've got to go and find five
thousand cattle in the worst bit of brigalow scrub in the north."
"Where do you say this place is?" said Pinnock. "It's called No Man's
Land, and it's away out back near where the buffalo-shooters are. It'll
take about a month to get there. The old man's in a rare state of mind at
being let in. He's up at Kuryong now, driving my brother Hugh out of

his mind. Hugh would as soon have an attack of faceache as see old
Bully looming up the track. Every time he goes up he shifts every
blessed sheep out of every paddock, and knocks seven years' growth
out of them putting them through the yards; then he overhauls the store,
and if there's a box of matches short he'll keep Hugh up half the night
to account for it. He sacks all the good men and raises the wages of the
loafers, and then comes back to Sydney quite pleased; it's a little
holiday to him. You come along with me, Carew, and let old Bully
alone. What did you come out for? Colonial experience?"
An Englishman hates talking about himself, and Carew rather hesitated.
Then he came out with it awkwardly, like a man repeating a lesson.
"Did you ever meet a man named Considine out here?" he said.
"Lots of them," said Gordon promptly--"lots of them. Why, I had a man
named Considine working for me, and he thought he got bitten by a
snake, so his mates ran him twenty miles into Bourke between two
horses to keep him from going to sleep, giving him a nip of whisky
every twenty minutes; and when he got to Bourke he wasn't bitten at all,
but he died of alcoholic poisoning. What about this Considine, anyhow?
What do you want him for?"
The Englishman felt like dropping the subject altogether, not feeling
quite sure that he was not being laughed at. However, he decided to go
through with it.
"It's rather a long story, but it boils down to this," he said. "I'm looking
for a Patrick Henry Considine, but I don't know what he's like. I don't
know whether there is such a chap, in fact, but if there is, I've got to
find him. A great-uncle of mine died out here a long while ago, and we
believe he left a son; and if there is such a son, it turns out that he
would be entitled to a heap of money. It has been heaping up for years
in Chancery, and all that sort of thing, you know," he added, vaguely.
"My people thought I might meet him out here, don't you know--and he
could go home and get all the cash, you see. They've been advertising
for him."

"And what good will it do you," drawled Gordon, "supposing you do
find him? Where do you come in?"
"Oh, it doesn't do me much good, except that