A Dinner for Five

For a time there was nothing but the usual commonplace talk, while
the soup and fish were disposed of; when they reached the champagne
and the entrees, things become more homelike and conversation flowed.
A bushman, especially when primed with champagne, is always ready
to give his tongue a run--and when he has two open-mouthed new
chums for audience, as Gordon had, the only difficulty is to stop
him before bed-time; for long silent rides on the plain, and lonely
camps at night, give him a lot of enforced silence that he has to
make up for later.

"Where are you from last, Gordon?" said the Bo'sun. "Haven't seen
you in town for a long time."

"I've been hunting wild geese," drawled the man from far back,
screwing up one eye and inspecting a glass of champagne, which he
drank off at a gulp. "That's what I do most of my time now. The
old man--Grant, you know--my boss--he's always hearing of mobs of
cattle for sale, and if I'm down in the south-west the mob is sure
to be up in the far north-east, but it's all one to him. He wires
to me to go and inspect them quick and lively before someone else
gets them, and I ride and drive and coach hundreds of miles to get
at some flat-sided pike-horned mob of brutes without enough fat on
them to oil a man's hair with. I've to go right away out back now
and take over a place that the old man advanced some money on. He
was fool enough, or someone was fool enough for him, to advance
five thousand pounds on a block of new country with five thousand
cattle on it--book-muster, you know, and half the cattle haven't
been seen for years, and the other half are dead, I expect. Anyhow,
the man that borrowed the money is ruined, and I have to go up and
take over the station."