ss he was the hardest man in Bourke
to move when he'd decided on what he thought was "the fair thing to do."
Another peculiarity of his was that on occasion, such for instance as
"sayin' a few words" at a strike meeting, he would straighten himself,
drop the twang, and rope in his drawl, so to speak.

"Well, look here, you chaps," he said now. "I don't know anything about
them women. I s'pose they're bad, but I don't suppose they're worse than
men has made them. All I know is that there's four women turned out,
without any stuff, and every woman in Bourke, an' the police, an' the
law agen 'em. An' the fact that they is women is agenst 'em most of all.
You don't expect 'em to hump their swags to Sydney! Why, only I ain't
got the stuff I wouldn't trouble yer. I'd pay their fares meself. Look,"
he said, lowering his voice, "there they are now, an' one of the girls
is cryin'. Don't let 'em see yer lookin'."

I dropped softly from the plank and peeped out with the rest.

They stood by the fence on the opposite side of the street, a bit up
towards the railway station, with their portmanteaux and bundles at
their feet. One girl leant with her arms on the fence rail and her face
buried in them, another was trying to comfort her. The third girl and
the woman stood facing our way. The woman was good-looking; she had a
hard face, but it might have been made hard. The third girl seemed half
defiant, half inclined to cry. Presently she went to the other side of
the girl who was crying on the fence and put her arm round her shoulder.
The woman suddenly turned her back on us and stood looking away over the
paddocks.

The hat went round. Billy Woods was first, then Box-o'-Tricks, and then
Mitchell.

Billy contributed with eloquent silence. "I was only jokin', Giraffe,"
said Box-o'-Tricks, dredging his pockets for a couple of shillings. It
was some time after the shearing, and most of the chaps were hard up.
"Ah, well," sighed Mitchell. "There's no help for it. If the Giraffe
would take up a collection to import some decent girls to this
God-forgotten hole there might be some sense in it.... It's bad enough
for the Giraffe to undermine our religious prejudices, and tempt us
to take a morbid interest in sick Chows and Afghans, and blacklegs and
widows; but when he starts mixing us up with strange women it's time to
buck." And he prospected his pockets and contributed two shillings, some
odd pennies, and a pinch of tobacco dust.

"