d, and came over two or
three times a-week; but Job grew restless as Gerty's time drew near, and
wished that he had insisted on sending her to the nearest town (thirty
miles away), as originally proposed. Gerty's mother, who lived in town,
was coming to see her over her trouble; Job had made arrangements with
the town doctor, but prompt attendance could hardly be expected of a
doctor who was very busy, who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty
miles away.

Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there, had
more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan,
and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors of
the district together--maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him, or
he knew the Bush and Bush constitutions--or, perhaps, because he'd do
things which no 'respectable practitioner' dared do. I've described him
in another story. Some said he was a quack, and some said he wasn't.
There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him in the Bush. He drank
fearfully, and 'on his own', but was seldom incapable of performing an
operation. Experienced Bushmen preferred him three-quarters drunk: when
perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky. He was tall, gaunt, had
a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows, and piercing black eyes. His
movements were eccentric. He lived where he happened to be--in a town
hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog
shanty, in a shearer's, digger's, shepherd's, or boundary-rider's hut;
in a surveyor's camp or a black-fellows' camp--or, when the horrors were
on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him. He lost
all his things sometimes--even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin
bag which contained his surgical instruments and papers. Except once;
then he gave the blacks 5 Pounds to find it for him.

His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy; and he
rode as far and fast to a squatter's home as to a swagman's camp. When
nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand, and
the doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds. He
had on occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds by
squatters for 'pulling round' their wives or children; but such offers
always angered him. When he asked for 5 Pounds he resented being offered
a 10 Pound cheque. He once sued a doctor for alleging that he held no
diploma; but the magistrate, on