ut, and no one could bring a mob of cattle or a flock of sheep
through like him. He knew every trick of the game; if there was grass to
be had Bill'd get it, no matter whose run it was on. One of his games
in a dry season was to let his mob get boxed with the station stock on
a run where there was grass, and before Bill's men and the station-hands
could cut 'em out, the travelling stock would have a good bellyful to
carry them on the track. Billy was the daddy of the drovers. Some said
that he could ride in his sleep, and that he had one old horse that
could jog along in his sleep too, and that--travelling out from home to
take charge of a mob of bullocks or a flock of sheep--Bill and his horse
would often wake up at daylight and blink round to see where they
were and how far they'd got. Then Bill would make a fire and boil his
quart-pot, and roast a bit of mutton, while his horse had a mouthful of
grass and a spell.

"You remember Bill, Andy? Big dark man, and a joker of the loud sort.
Never slept with a blanket over him--always folded under him on the sand
or grass. Seldom wore a coat on the route--though he always carried one
with him, in case he came across a bush ball or a funeral. Moleskins,
flannel waistcoat, cabbage-tree hat and 'lastic-side boots. When it
was roasting hot on the plains and the men swore at the heat, Jim
would yell, `Call this hot? Why, you blanks, I'm freezin'! Where's me
overcoat?' When it was raining and hailing and freezing on Bell's Line
in the Blue Mountains in winter, and someone shivered and asked, `Is
it cold enough for yer now, Bill?' `Cold!' Bill would bellow, `I'm
sweatin'!'

"I remember it well. I was little more than a youngster then--Bill
Barker came past our place with about a thousand fat sheep for the
Homebush sale-yards at Sydney, and he gave me a job to help him down
with them on Bell's Line over the mountains, and mighty proud I was to
go with him, I can tell you. One night we camped on the Cudgegong River.
The country was dry and pretty close cropped and we'd been "sweating"
the paddocks all along there for our horses. You see, where there
weren't sliprails handy we'd just take the tomahawk and nick the top
of a straight-grained fence-post, just above the mortise, knock out the
wood there, lift the top rail out and down, and jump the horses in over
the lower one--it was all two-rail fences around there with sheep wires
under the lower rail. And about daylight we'd have the