Wisps of white hair straggled from under his wideawake — his moustache and eyebrows were called white — he slouched in the saddle — grunting. Not once that day had he sung “I don’t care, for don’t you see, My wife’s mother was in front of me!”… It was the first day we had been without it for a month, and now there seemed something uncanny in his silence. Hin rode beside me, white as a clown, his black eyes glittered, and he kept shooting out his tongue and moistening his lips. He was dressed in a Jaeger vest and a pair of blue duck trousers, fastened round the waist with a plaited leather belt. We had hardly spoken since dawn. At noon we had lunched off fly biscuits and apricots by the side of a swampy creek.

“My stomach feels like the crop of a hen,” said Jo. “Now then, Hin, you’re the bright boy of the party — where’s this ’ere store you kep’ on talking about. ‘Oh yes’, you says, ‘I know a fine store, with a paddock for the horses and a creek runnin’ through, owned by a friend of mine who’ll give yer a bottle of whisky before ’e shakes hands with yer.’ I’d like ter see that place — merely as a matter of curiosity — not that I’d ever doubt yer word — as yer know very well — but …”

Hin laughed. “Don’t forget there’s a woman too, Jo, with blue eyes and yellow hair, who’ll promise you something else before she shakes hands with you. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“The heat’s making you balmy,” said Jo. But he dug his knees into the horse. We shambled on. I half fell asleep and had a sort of uneasy dream that the horses were not moving forward at all — then that I was on a rocking-horse, and my old mother was scolding me for raising such a fearful dust from the drawing-room carpet. “You’ve entirely worn off the pattern of the carpet,” I heard her saying, and she gave the reins a tug. I snivelled and woke to find Hin leaning over me, maliciously smiling.

“That was a case of all but,” said he. “I just caught you. What’s up? Been bye-bye?”

“No!” I raised my head. “Thank the Lord we’re arriving somewhere.”

We were on the brow of the hill, and below us there was a whare roofed with corrugated iron. It stood in a garden, rather far back from the road — a big paddock opposite, and a creek and a clump of young willow trees. A thin line of blue smoke stood up straight from the chimney of the whare; and as I looked a woman came out, followed by a child and a sheep dog — the woman carrying what appeared to me a black stick. She made frantic gestures at us. The horses put on a final spurt, Jo took off his wideawake, shouted, threw out his chest, and began singing “I don’t care, for don’t you see …” The sun pushed through the pale clouds and shed a vivid light over the scene. It gleamed on the woman’s yellow hair, over her flapping pinafore and the rifle she was carrying. The child hid behind her, and the yellow dog, a mangy beast, scuttled back into the whare, his tail between his legs. We drew rein and dismounted.

“Hallo,” screamed the woman. “I thought you was three ’awks. My kid comes runnin’ in ter me. ‘Mumma,’ says she, ‘there’s three brown things comin’ over the ’ill,’ says she. An’ I comes out smart, I can tell yer. ‘They’ll be ’awks,’ I says to her.