Dan looked on the scene with approving eyes. "Not a bad place to ride
through, is it?" he said. But gradually as we rode on a vague depression
settled down upon us, and when Dan finally decided he "could do with a
bit more sunshine," we followed him into the blistering noontide glare
with almost a sigh of relief.
It is always so. These wondrous waterways have little part in that
mystical holding power of the Never-Never. They are only pleasant places
to ride through and leave behind; for their purring slumberous beauty is
vaguely suggestive of the beauty of a sleeping tiger: a sleeping tiger
with deadly fangs and talons hidden under a wonder of soft allurement;
and when exiles in the towns sit and dream their dreams are all of
stretches of scorched grass and quivering sun-flecked shade.
In the honest sunlight Dan's spirits rose, and as I investigated various
byways he asked "where the sense came in tying-up a dog that was doing no
harm running loose." "It weren't as though she'd taken to chivying
cattle," he added, as, a mob of inquisitive steers trotting after us, I
hurried Roper in among the riders; and then he wondered "how she'll shape
at her first muster.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125