'I'll do either way
that Dick likes. But that colt I must have.'

'I never intended to go back,' I said. 'But we're three d----d fools all
the same--father and sons. It'll be the dearest horse you ever bought,
Jim, old man, and so I tell you.'

'Well, I suppose it's settled now,' says father; 'so let's have no more
chat. We're like a pack of old women, blessed if we ain't.'

After that we got on more sociably. Father took us all over the place,
and a splendid paddock it was--walled all round but where we had come
in, and a narrow gash in the far side that not one man in a thousand
could ever hit on, except he was put up to it; a wild country for miles
when you did get out--all scrub and rock, that few people ever had call
to ride over. There was splendid grass everywhere, water, and shelter.
It was warmer, too, than the country above, as you could see by the
coats of the cattle and horses.

'If it had only been honestly come by,' Jim said, 'what a jolly place it
would have been!'

Towards the north end of the paddock was a narrow gully with great
sandstone walls all round, and where it narrowed the first discoverers
had built a stockyard, partly with dry stone walls and partly with logs
and rails.

There was no trouble in getting the cattle or horses into this, and
there were all kinds of narrow yards and pens for branding the stock if
they were clearskins, and altering or 'faking' the brands if they were
plain. This led into another yard, which opened into the narrowest part
of the gully. Once in this, like the one they came down, and the cattle
or horses had no chance but to walk slowly up, one behind the other,
till they got on the tableland above. Here, of course, every kind of
work that can be done to help disguise cattle was done. Ear-marks were
cut out and altered in shape, or else the whole ear was cropped off;
every letter in the alphabet was altered by means of straight bars or
half-circles, figures, crosses, everything you could think of.

'Mr. Starlight is an edicated man,' said father. 'This is all his
notion; and many a man has looked at his own beast, with the ears
altered and the brand faked, and never dreamed he ever owned it. He's a
great card is Starlight. It's a pity he ever took to this kind of life.'

Father said this with a kind of real sorrow that made me look at him to
see if the grog had got into his head; just as if his life, mine, and
Jim's didn't matter a straw compared to this man'