"You didn't expect to find hairpins, and a woman, in a
camp in the back blocks," I said, feeling he was a character, and longing
for him to open up. But he was even more of a character than I guessed.
"Back blocks!" he said in scorn. "There ain't no back blocks left.
Can't travel a hundred miles nowadays without running into somebody! You
don't know what back blocks is, begging your pardon, ma'am."
But Dan did; and the camp chat that night was worth travelling several
hundred miles to hear: tales dug out of the beginning of things; tales of
drought, and flood, and privation; cattle-duffing yarns, and long tales
of the droving days; two years' reminiscences of getting through with a
mob--reminiscences that finally brought ourselves and the mob to
Oodnadatta.
"That's the place if you want to see drunks, ma'am," the traveller said,
forgetting in his warmth his "begging your pardon, ma'am," just when it
would have been most opportune, seeing I had little hankering to see
"drunks."
"It's the desert does it, missus, after the overland trip," Dan
explained.
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