Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang

Black Peter threw the reins of his saddle-horse over the horse-shoe on
the snow-gum beside the grindstone and left the pack-horse to browse
on the budding everlastings.

"Hey! I'm off now," he called. "Did the Boss leave any fresh orders?"

There was no reply save the conversational warble of magpies all
around the horizon, and the ejaculations of a braw old rooster on the
wood-heap, where he was looking for a handsome black snake, which
earlier had disturbed one of the ladies of his harem. The man entered
a rough slab structure roofed with mountain-ash palings and with a
veranda fore and aft. A billy and a kerosene-tin boiled above the logs
in the ten-foot hearth, otherwise the place was deserted. He whistled.
A chained dog yelped in response--the Cook's second-best dog. All the
others were with the men. The men were on Wild Horse Plain burning off
winter tussocks. Smoke modified the blue of the ranges far away to the
left.

A hawk out of the limitless blue settled in the blackbutt above the
wood-pile and fixed a predatory gaze on some half-grown pullets. The
rooster cackled hysterically. To be threatened from both ground and
air was unnerving. The man disappeared into the main abode and
reappeared with a gun.

Crack! The report rattled among the timber along the echoing ridges
and seemed to enlarge the far-reaching, uninhabited silence. The
cock's overhead enemy fell almost at his feet. A big white cockatoo
screeched approval from a dead tree near the cowyard.

The January sun sparkled in a fleckless blue sky and shimmered in
visible waves above Gyang Gyang Plain, where merinos nipping the blue
tussocks were distinguishable only by movement from the outcropping
grey slate and granite. Far and wide to the high blue peaks of the
skyline, space and sunlight, sunlight and space, spring and vale,
plain and rocks, daisies and tussocks and jumbucks reigned in a glory
of solitude. Black Peter gazed all around with sweeping glances born
and trained to distance, missing little, but there was no sign of the
Cook. He cooeed preparatory to mounting. The Cook rose up from behind
a tea-tree bush, all bridal with bloom, and approached with two
kerosene-tins of water from the spring-head.

"Hey! You must have been jolly sound asleep."

"Asleep your grandmother! I was gettin' water."

"All right; you were getting water. Did the Boss leave any fresh
orders?"

"He said you was to take the car to Goonara and bring back a passenger
who's comin' through on the service car."

"Did he say if there would be much luggage?"

"He said you was to tell her he'll be home before dark. A wire come
through just as the Boss was settin' out."

"Whew! a lady. Wonder where'll we put her. Old or young?"

"I dunno. Some kind of a pommy tart I reckon from what the Boss was
sayin' on the telephone--come out from Paris on a ship."

"Scissors! She'll find Gyang Gyang a little off. You'll have to put a
patch on your pants to keep your backside out of sight."

"Too right!" said the Cook with a grin. "An' you'll have to cut a few
feet off your beard or you won't be able to kiss her good night
without her gettin' lost in it."

"I'll leave that to the cuckoo geezers who are always after the girls.
You'll have to give us coffee for breakfast and cakes for tea every
day, and keep your cigar ashes out of the porridge."