Bad water after that fifty-mile dry made men with a touch of fever only
too common at the homestead, and knowing how much the comforts of the
homestead could do, when the Maluka came out with the medicines he
advised bringing the sick man on as soon as he had rested sufficiently.
"You've only to ask for it and we'll send the old station buck-board
across," he said, and the man began fumbling uneasily at his
saddle-girths, and said something evasive about "giving trouble"; but
when the Maluka--afraid that a man's life might be the forfeit of another
man's shrinking fear of causing trouble--added that on second thoughts we
would ride across as soon as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly
and stammered: "If you please, ma'am. If the boss'll excuse me, me
mate's dead-set against a woman doing things for him. If you wouldn't
mind not coming. He'd rather have me. Me and him's been mates this
seven years. The boss 'll understand."
The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone, to find a
man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full of dread lest the
woman at the homestead would insist on visiting him.
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