Such Is Life

extricating himself, and kicking the beast till she staggered to her feet. “Come on agen, an’ don’t gimme no more o’ your religiousness.” He remounted, and the mare, under the strong stimulus of his spurs, cantered laboriously out into the dark.
Meanwhile, Mosey had taken a handsaw from its receptacle on his wagon, and had cut the pine spar to a length of about eighteen inches less than a panel of the fence. “Lash this ’ere saplin’ hard down on the top rail,” he now commanded. Price and Dixon obeyed, and Mosey laid his powerful bottlejack on the rail, filling up the space, and began to turn it with a long bolt, by way of lever. “You see, Tom,” he remarked to me; “this fixter’ll put the crooked maginnis on any fence from ere to ’ell. It’s got to come. No matter how tight rails is shouldered, they’ll spring some; an’ if every post’ll give on’y half a inch, why then, ten posts makes five or six inches; an’ that’s about all you want. Then in the mornin’, you can fix the fence so’s the ole-man divil his self couldn’t ball you out. Ah! ⸻! That’s what comes o’ blowin’.” For the post, being wild and free in the grain, had burst along the two mortices; one half running completely off, just above the ground. “Serve people right for puttin’ in rails when wire would do,” he continued, removing the screwjack. “Accidents will happen⁠—best reg’lated famblies. ’Tain’t our business, anyhow. Now, chaps, round up yer carrion, an’ shove ’em in.”
The four wires in the lower part of the fence rung like harp strings as the cattle stepped into or over them, and in a few minutes the whole live stock of the caravan-eighty-four bullocks and seven horses⁠—were in the selection, but too thirsty to feed. Then whilst Thompson, Mosey, Willoughby and I tailed them toward the tank, Dixon hurried on ahead with his five-gallon oil-drum, in order to replenish it before the water was disturbed; and Price, by Mosey’s orders, accompanied him on the same business. We steadied the bullocks at the tank till all were satisfied, then headed them back to within fifty yards of the wagons, where we hobbled all the horses, except Bum’s mare.
“Steve,” said I to my old schoolmate: “of course, you and I are seized of the true inwardness of duffing; but to those who live cleanly, as noblemen should, this would appear a dirty transaction.”
“The world’s full of dirty transactions, Tom,” replied the bullock driver wearily. “It’s a dirty transaction to round up a man’s team in a ten-mile paddock, and stick a bob a head on them, but that’s a thing that I’m very familiar with; it’s a dirty transaction to refuse water to perishing beasts, but I’ve been refused times out of number, and will be to the end of the chapter; it’s a dirty transaction to persecute men for having no occupation but carting, yet that’s what nine-tenths of the squatters do, and this Montgomery is one of the nine. You’re a bit sarcastic. How long is it since you were one of the cheekiest grass-stealers on the track?”
“Never, Steve. You’ve been drinking.”
“Anyway, you needn’t be more of a hypocrite than you can help,” grumbled Thompson. “If you want a problem to work out, just consider that God constructed cattle for living on grass, and the grass for them to live on, and that, last night, and tonight, and tomorrow night, and mostly every night, we’ve a choice between two dirty transactions⁠—one is, to let the bullocks starve, and the other is to steal grass for them. For my own part, I’m sick and tired of studying why some people should be in a position where they have to go out of their way to do wrong, and other people are cornered to that extent that they can’t live without doing wrong, and can’t suicide without jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. Wonder if any allowance is made for bullock drivers?⁠—or are they supposed to be able to make enough money to retire into some decent life before they die? Well, thank God for one good camp, at all events.”
“How’s the water?” asked Cooper, meeting us at the fence.
“Enough for tonight,” replied Thompson; “but very little left for posterity.”
“After us, the Deluge,” observed Willoughby.
“I hope so,” replied Cooper devoutly. “Lord knows, it’s badly wanted; and I’m sure we don’t grudge nobody the benefit. Turnin’ out nice an’ cool, ain’t it? The bullocks’ll be able to do their selves some sort o’ justice.”
It was a clear but moonless night; the dark blue canopy spangled with myriad stars⁠—grandeur, peace, and purity above; squalor, worry, and profanity below. Fit basis for many an ancient system of Theology⁠—unscientific, if you will, but by no means contemptible.
Price and Cooper, being cooks, had kindled an unobtrusive fire in a crabhole, where three billies were soon boiling. And the tea, when cool enough, needed no light to escort a due proportion of simple provender into that mysterious laboratory which should never be considered too curiously.
After supper, we lay around, resting ourselves; everyone smoking tranquilly except Willoughby. Dixon and Bum were evidently old friends; they reclined with their heads together, occasionally laughing and whispering⁠—a piece of bad manners silently but strongly resented by the rest of the company.
“I’ll jist go an’ have a squint at the carrion,” remarked Mosey, at length, with the inevitable adjective; and, passing through the broken fence, he disappeared in the timber and old-man salt-bush.
“Wants some o’ the flashness took outen him,” remarked Price, in arrogant assertion of parental authority, yet glancing apprehensively after Mosey as he spoke.
“Should ’a’ thought about that before,” observed Cooper gravely. “Too late now. You ain’t good enough.”
A few minutes silence ensued, while each member of the company thought the matter over in his own way. Then Mosey returned.
“Grass up over yer boots, an’ the carrion goin’ into it lemons,” he remarked. “I do like to give this Runnymede