". He was now in the comfortable position of a non-unionist
in a union shed who had jumped into a sacked man's place.

Somehow the lurid sympathy of the men irritated me worse than the
boss-over-the-board had done. It must have been on account of the heat,
as Mitchell says. I was sick of the shed and the life. It was within a
couple of days of cut-out, so I told Mitchell--who was shearing--that
I'd camp up the Billabong and wait for him; got my cheque, rolled up
my swag, got three days' tucker from the cook, said so-long to him, and
tramped while the men were in the shed.

I camped at the head of the Billabong where the track branched, one
branch running to Bourke, up the river, and the other out towards the
Paroo--and hell.

About ten o'clock the third morning Mitchell came along with his cheque
and his swag, and a new sheep-pup, and his quiet grin; and I wasn't too
pleased to see that he had a shearer called "the Lachlan" with him.

The Lachlan wasn't popular at the shed. He was a brooding, unsociable
sort of man, and it didn't make any difference to the chaps whether he
had a union ticket or not. It was pretty well known in the shed--there
were three or four chaps from the district he was reared in--that he'd
done five years hard for burglary. What surprised me was that Jack
Mitchell seemed thick with him; often, when the Lachlan was sitting
brooding and smoking by himself outside the hut after sunset, Mitchell
would perch on his heels alongside him and yarn. But no one else took
notice of anything Mitchell did out of the common.

"Better camp with us till the cool of the evening," said Mitchell to
the Lachlan, as they slipped their swags. "Plenty time for you to start
after sundown, if you're going to travel to-night."

So the Lachlan was going to travel all night and on a different track. I
felt more comfortable, and put the billy on. I did not care so much what
he'd been or had done, but I was green and soft yet, and his presence
embarrassed me.

They talked shearing, sheds, tracks, and a little unionism--the Lachlan
speaking in a quiet voice and with a lot of sound, common sense, it
seemed to me. He was tall and gaunt, and might have been thirty, or even
well on in the forties. His eyes were dark brown and deep set, and had
something of the dead-earnest sad expression you saw in the eyes of
union leaders and secretaries--the straight men of the strikes of '90
and '91. I fancied once or twice I saw in his e