Month after month it creeps on,
until, reaching the end of the section, it turns round to creep out
again.
Year in, year out, it had crept in and out, and for twenty years Happy
Dick had seen to its peace and comfort. Nothing ever ruffled him. "All
in the game" was his nearest approach to a complaint, as he pegged away
at his work, in between whiles going to the nearest station for killers,
carting water in tanks out to "dry stage camps," and doing any other work
that found itself undone. Dick's position was as elastic as his smile.
He considered himself an authority on three things only: the line party,
dog-fights, and cribbage. All else, including his dog Peter and his
cheque-book, he left to the discretion of his fellow-men.
Peter--a speckled, drab-coloured, prick-eared creation, a few sizes
larger than a fox-terrier--could be kept in order with a little
discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy Dick; but all the discretion
in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping off of hands, failed to keep
order in the cheque-book.
The personal payment of salaries to men scattered through hundreds of
miles of bush country being impracticable, the department pays all
salaries due to its servants into their bank accounts at Darwin, and
therefore when Happy Dick found himself the backbone of the line party,
he also found himself the possessor of a cheque-book.
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