there and then, but of
course they went to work as usual next morning. There is something sad
and pathetic about that old practical joke--as indeed there is with all
bush jokes. There seems a quiet sort of sadness always running through
outback humour--whether alleged or otherwise.

There's the usual yarn about a jackaroo mistaking Thompson for a brother
rouser, and asking him whether old Baldy was about anywhere, and Baldy
said:

"Why, are you looking for a job?"

"Yes, do you think I stand any show? What sort of a boss is Baldy?"

"You'd tramp from here to Adelaide," said Baldy, "and north to the
Gulf country, and wouldn't find a worse. He's the meanest squatter in
Australia. The damned old crawler! I grafted like a nigger for him for
over fifty years"--Baldy was over sixty--"and now the old skunk won't
even pay me the last two cheques he owes me--says the bank has got
everything he had--that's an old cry of his, the damned old sneak; seems
to expect me to go short to keep his wife and family and relations in
comfort, and by God I've done it for the last thirty or forty years, and
I might go on the track to-morrow worse off than the meanest old whaler
that ever humped bluey. Don't you have anything to do with Scabby
Thompson, or you'll be sorry for it. Better tramp to hell than take a
job from him."

"Well, I think I'll move on. Would I stand any show for some tucker?"

"Him! He wouldn't give a dog a crust, and like as not he'd get you run
in for trespass if he caught you camping on the run. But come along to
the store and I'll give you enough tucker to carry you on."

He patronized literature and arts, too, though in an awkward, furtive
way. We remember how we once turned up at the station hard up and short
of tucker, and how we entertained Baldy with some of his own ideas as
ours--having been posted beforehand by our mate--and how he told us to
get some rations and camp in the hut and see him in the morning.

And we saw him in the morning, had another yarn with him, agreed and
sympathized with him some more, were convinced on one or two questions
which we had failed to see at first, cursed things in chorus with him,
and casually mentioned that we expected soon to get some work on a
political paper.

And at last he went inside and brought out a sovereign. "Wrap this in a
piece of paper and put it in your pocket, and don't lose it," he said.

But we learnt afterwards that the best way to get along with Bald