While the Billy Boils | Page 6

fruit-trees" when the government surveyors--whom he'd
forgotten all about--had a resurrection and came and surveyed, and
found that the real selection was located amongst some barren ridges
across the creek. Tom reckoned it was lucky he didn't plant the orchard,
and he set about shifting his home and fences to the new site. But the
squatter interfered at this point, entered into possession of the farm and
all on it, and took action against the selector for trespass--laying the
damages at L2500.
Tom was admitted to the lunatic asylum at Parramatta next year, and
the squatter was sent there the following summer, having been ruined
by the drought, the rabbits, the banks, and a wool-ring. The two became
very friendly, and had many a sociable argument about the
feasibility--or otherwise--of blowing open the flood-gates of Heaven in
a dry season with dynamite.
Tom was discharged a few years since. He knocks about certain
suburbs a good deal. He is seen in daylight seldom, and at night mostly
in connection with a dray and a lantern. He says his one great regret is
that he wasn't found to be of unsound mind before he went up-country.

ENTER MITCHELL
The Western train had just arrived at Redfern railway station with a lot
of ordinary passengers and one swagman.
He was short, and stout, and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He
had red hair and small, twinkling, grey eyes, and--what often goes with
such things--the expression of a born comedian. He was dressed in a
ragged, well-washed print shirt, an old black waistcoat with a calico
back, a pair of cloudy moleskins patched at the knees and held up by a
plaited greenhide belt buckled loosely round his hips, a pair of
well-worn, fuzzy blucher boots, and a soft felt hat, green with age, and
with no brim worth mentioning, and no crown to speak of. He swung a
swag on to the platform, shouldered it, pulled out a billy and water-bag,
and then went to a dog-box in the brake van.
Five minutes later he appeared on the edge of the cab platform, with an
anxious-looking cattle-dog crouching against his legs, and one end of

the chain in his hand. He eased down the swag against a post, turned
his face to the city, tilted his hat forward, and scratched the
well-developed back of his head with a little finger. He seemed
undecided what track to take.
"Cab, Sir!"
The swagman turned slowly and regarded cabby with a quiet grin.
"Now, do I look as if I want a cab?"
"Well, why not? No harm, anyway--I thought you might want a cab."
Swaggy scratched his head, reflectively.
"Well," he said, "you're the first man that has thought so these ten years.
What do I want with a cab?"
"To go where you're going, of course."
"Do I look knocked up?"
"I didn't say you did."
"And I didn't say you said I did....Now, I've been on the track this five
years. I've tramped two thousan' miles since last Chris'mas, and I don't
see why I can't tramp the last mile. Do you think my old dog wants a
cab?"
The dog shivered and whimpered; he seemed to want to get away from
the crowd.
"But then, you see, you ain't going to carry that swag through the
streets, are you?" asked the cabman.
"Why not? Who'll stop me! There ain't no law agin it, I b'lieve?"
"But then, you see, it don't look well, you know."
"Ah! I thought we'd get to it at last."
The traveller up-ended his bluey against his knee, gave it an
affectionate pat, and then straightened himself up and looked fixedly at
the cabman.
"Now, look here!" he said, sternly and impressively, "can you see
anything wrong with that old swag o' mine?"
It was a stout, dumpy swag, with a red blanket outside, patched with
blue, and the edge of a blue blanket showing in the inner rings at the
end. The swag might have been newer; it might have been cleaner; it
might have been hooped with decent straps, instead of bits of
clothes-line and greenhide--but otherwise there was nothing the matter
with it, as swags go.
"I've humped that old swag for years," continued the bushman; "I've

carried that old swag thousands of miles--as that old dog knows--an' no
one ever bothered about the look of it, or of me, or of my old dog,
neither; and do you think I'm going to be ashamed of that old swag, for
a cabby or anyone else? Do you think I'm going to study anybody's
feelings? No one ever studied mine! I'm in two minds to summon you
for using insulting language towards me!"
He lifted the swag by the twisted towel which served for a
shoulder-strap,