"
"Wouldn't know the old place," he said, a day or two later, surveying his
own work with pride. Then he left us, and for the first time I was sorry
the house was finished. Johnny was one of the men who had not "learnt
sense" but the world would be a better place if there were more Johnnies
in it.
Just as we were preparing to go out-bush for reports, Dan came in with a
mob of cattle for branding and the news that a yard on the northern
boundary was gone from the face of the earth.
"Clean gone since last Dry," he reported; "burnt or washed away, or
both."
Rather than let his cattle go, he had travelled in nearly thirty miles
with the mob in hand, but "reckoned" it wasn't "good enough." "The time
I've had with them staggering bobs," he said, when we pitied the poor,
weary, footsore little calves: "could 'av brought in a mob of snails
quicker. 'Tisn't good enough."
The Maluka also considered it not "good enough," and decided to run up a
rough branding wing at once on to the holding yard at the Springs; and
while Dan saw to the branding of the mob the Maluka looked out his plans.
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