Black Peter threw the reins of his saddle-horse over the horse-shoe onthe snow-gum beside the grindstone and left the pack-horse to browseon the budding everlastings."Hey! I'm off now," he called. "Did the Boss leave any fresh orders?"There was no reply save the conversational warble of magpies allaround the horizon, and the ejaculations of a braw old rooster on thewood-heap, where he was looking for a handsome black snake, whichearlier had disturbed one of the ladies of his harem. The man entereda rough slab structure roofed with mountain-ash palings and with averanda fore and aft. A billy and a kerosene-tin boiled above the logsin the ten-foot hearth, otherwise the place was deserted. He whistled.A chained dog yelped in response--the Cook's second-best dog. All theothers were with the men. The men were on Wild Horse Plain burning offwinter tussocks. Smoke modified the blue of the ranges far away to theleft.A hawk out of the limitless blue settled in the blackbutt above thewood-pile and fixed a predatory gaze on some half-grown pullets. Therooster cackled hysterically. To be threatened from both ground andair was unnerving. The man disappeared into the main abode andreappeared with a gun.Crack! The report rattled among the timber along the echoing ridgesand seemed to enlarge the far-reaching, uninhabited silence. Thecock's overhead enemy fell almost at his feet. A big white cockatooscreeched approval from a dead tree near the cowyard.The January sun sparkled in a fleckless blue sky and shimmered invisible waves above Gyang Gyang Plain, where merinos nipping the bluetussocks were distinguishable only by movement from the outcroppinggrey slate and granite. Far and wide to the high blue peaks of theskyline, space and sunlight, sunlight and space, spring and vale,plain and rocks, daisies and tussocks and jumbucks reigned in a gloryof solitude. Black Peter gazed all around with sweeping glances bornand trained to distance, missing little, but there was no sign of theCook. He cooeed preparatory to mounting. The Cook rose up from behinda tea-tree bush, all bridal with bloom, and approached with twokerosene-tins of water from the spring-head."Hey! You must have been jolly sound asleep.""Asleep your grandmother! I was gettin' water.""All right; you were getting water. Did the Boss leave any freshorders?""He said you was to take the car to Goonara and bring back a passengerwho's comin' through on the service car.""Did he say if there would be much luggage?""He said you was to tell her he'll be home before dark. A wire comethrough just as the Boss was settin' out.""Whew! a lady. Wonder where'll we put her. Old or young?""I dunno. Some kind of a pommy tart I reckon from what the Boss wassayin' on the telephone--come out from Paris on a ship.""Scissors! She'll find Gyang Gyang a little off. You'll have to put apatch on your pants to keep your backside out of sight.""Too right!" said the Cook with a grin. "An' you'll have to cut a fewfeet off your beard or you won't be able to kiss her good nightwithout her gettin' lost in it.""I'll leave that to the cuckoo geezers who are always after the girls.You'll have to give us coffee for breakfast and cakes for tea everyday, and keep your cigar ashes out of the porridge."