picked team and the new wagon, leaving me to begin afresh with the remains of Pribble’s skeletons and my own old wagon. Then a year or two afterward, I went in debt to buy that plant of Mulligan’s—him that was killed off the colt at Mossgiel—and that same winter the pleuro broke out in my lot, and they went like rotten sheep till fourteen were gone; and then, of course, the plague was stopped. Not having any use for Mulligan’s wagon, I swapped her for a new thirty-by-twenty-four wool-rag, and a Wagga pot, good for eight or ten mile on a still night; and, within a month, Ramsay’s punt went down with my wagon; she’s in the bottom of the Murrumbidgee now, with eight ton of bricks to steady her, and the tarpaulin and bell to keep her company. She’ll be fetching the most critical planks out of a steamer some of these times, and I’ll get seven years for leaving her there. Afterward, when I was hauling logs for pontooning, on the Goulburn, I kept buying up steers and breaking them in, till I had two twelves; and one day I left sixteen of them standing in yoke while I went looking round for a good log; and suddenly I heard a crash that rattled back and forward across the river for a quarter of an hour. I had a presentiment that Providence was on the job again, and I wasn’t disappointed. One of the fallers had left a tree nearly through when he went to dinner; and a gust of wind sent it over, and it carried a couple of other trees before it, right on the spot where my team was folded up in the shade. Eight of them went that trip, between killed and crippled, leaving me with sixteen. My next piece of luck was to lose that new Yankee wagon in the Eight-mile Mallee, on Birrawong. Then I could see plain enough that Providence had taken up Charley’s case, and was prepared to block me of keeping two teams; so I determined to have one good one. Now, I’ve always stood pretty well with the agents and squatters, and I know my way round Riverina, so I can turn over as much money as any single-team man on the track, bar Warrigal Alf (I beg your pardon, Cooper; I forgot)—but what’s the use of money to me? Only vanity and vexation of spirit, as Shakespear says. I get up to a certain point, and then I’m knocked stiff. Mind, I’ve only given you a small, insignificant sample of the misfortunes I’ve had since I cheated that dead man; but if they don’t prove there’s a curse on me, then there’s no such thing as proof in this world.”
Price cleared his throat. “Them misforcunes was invidiously owin’ to yer own (adj.) misjudgment,” he said dogmatically.
“Serve you right for not havin’ better luck,” added Dixon.
“Learn you sense, anyhow,” remarked Mosey.
“Misforcunes does some people good,” hazarded Bum.
“Yes,” replied Thompson gently. “I’ve had my turn. I hope I take it like a man. Your turns will come sooner or later, as sure as you’ve got heads on your bodies—perhaps next year; perhaps next week; perhaps to-morrow. Let’s see how you’ll take it. Mind, there’s a curse on every one of us. And look here—we had no business to travel to-day; there was a bite of feed in the Patagonia Swamp, if it came to the worst. Now we’re in for it. I’ve got a presentiment that something’ll happen before to-morrow night. Just mark my words.”
