lean rails and sleepers, driving Purdey’s will through the bush-heart; where they served the double saws and the axe-blades, and fed sticks to the grips that gaped ever from the tail of the logging-tracks. The bench sawyers felt it, and the trolley-men; and each tailer-out and engine driver down to the least and clumsiest slabby that lumped in the mill.
One and all, they had no time to play with Tod, until the engine called time, and the mill-men slouched across to the huts set in the straggle of raped bush, and the cooking-smell rose on the blue keen air. Then the crowd came down from the tram-head; and the gum from bleeding timber was on hairy chests and hands, and the good sappy scents strong on their clothes.
Then Steve’s heart leapt in him at sound of the bush-talk, which is a language all its own; and Lou sifted through the trampling vivid-voiced mob, picking sharpers and fools in an eye-blink; and Tod arranged three set-to’s to come after the meal, and a double with Steve as partner.
“But you’d best not be servin’ writs on Purdey,” warned Chessin. “He’s got the devil’s own science, an’ a little more o’ his own. Saw him put Pug to sleep wonst for cheekin’ him.”
There was the grate of pride in Chessin’s tone. For the bushmen are men, and they
