"I'm a bit of a Jehu all right!" Mac shouted triumphantly. "It takes
judgment to do the thing in style"; and the next moment, swinging round a
patch of scrub, we flew off at a tangent to avoid a fallen tree, crashing
through its branches and grinding over an out-crop of ironstone to miss a
big boulder just beyond the tree. It undoubtedly took judgment this
"travelling across country along the ridges"; but the keen, alert bushman
never hesitated as he swung in and out and about the timber, only once
miscalculating the distance between trees, when he was obliged to back
out again. Of course we barked trees constantly, but Mac called that
"blazing a track for the next travellers," and everywhere the bush
creatures scurried out of our way; and when I expressed fears for the
springs, Mac reassured me by saying a buck-board had none, excepting
those under the seat.

If Mac was a "bit of a Jehu," he certainly was a "dead homer," for after
miles of scrub and grass and timber, we came out at our evening camp at
the Bitter Springs, to find the Head Stockman there, with his faithful,
tawny-coloured shadow, "Old Sool em," beside him.

Dog and man greeted us sedately, and soon Dan had a billy boiling for us,
and a blazing fire, and accepted an invitation to join us at supper and
"bring something in the way of bread along with him."

With a commonplace remark about the trip out, he placed a crisp, newly
baked damper on the tea-towel that acted as supper cloth; but when we all
agreed that he was "real slap-up at damper making," he scented a joke and
shot a quick, questioning glance around; then deciding that it was wiser
not to laugh at all than to laugh in the wrong place, he only said, he
was "not a bad hand at the damper trick." Dan liked his jokes well