"If I catch you carrying three fleeces again," said the boss quietly,
"I'll give you the sack."

"I'll take it now if you like," I said.

He nodded. "You can go on picking-up in this man's place,"
he said to the jackeroo, whose reference showed him to be a non-union man --
a "free-labourer", as the pastoralists had it, or, in plain shed terms,
"a blanky scab". He was now in the comfortable position of a non-unionist
in a union shed who had jumped into a sacked man's place.

Somehow the lurid sympathy of the men irritated me worse than
the boss-over-the-board had done. It must have been on account of the heat,
as Mitchell says. I was sick of the shed and the life.
It was within a couple of days of cut-out, so I told Mitchell
-- who was shearing -- that I'd camp up the Billabong and wait for him;
got my cheque, rolled up my swag, got three days' tucker from the cook,
said so-long to him, and tramped while the men were in the shed.

I camped at the head of the Billabong where the track branched,
one branch running to Bourke, up the river, and the other
out towards the Paroo -- and hell.

About ten o'clock the third morning Mitchell came along
with his cheque and his swag, and a new sheep-pup, and his quiet grin;
and I wasn't too pleased to see that he had a shearer called "the Lachlan"
with him.

The Lachlan wasn't popular at the shed. He was a brooding,