He could race over the roughest ground without misplacing a hoof
or altering his stride, and he could sail over fallen timber
and across gullies like a kangaroo. Nearly every Sunday
we were after the brumbies, until they got as lean as greyhounds
and as cunning as policemen. We were always ready
to back White-when-he's-wanted to run-down, single-handed,
any animal in the bush that we liked to put him after -- wild horses,
wild cattle, kangaroos, emus, dingoes, kangaroo-rats -- we barred nothing,
for, if he couldn't beat them for pace, he would outlast them.

And then one day he disappeared from the paddock, and we never
saw him again. We knew there were plenty of men in the district
who would steal him; but, as we knew also of many more who would "inform"
for a pound or two, we were sure that it could not have been local "talent"
that had taken him. We offered good rewards and set some of the right sort
to work, but heard nothing of him for about a year.

Then the surveyor's assistant turned up again, after a trip
to the interior. He told us the usual string of back-block lies,
and wound up by saying that out on the very fringe of settlement
he had met an old acquaintance.

"Who was that?"

"Why, that little bay horse that I rode after the brumbies that time.
The one you called White-when-he's-wanted."

"The deuce you did! Are you sure? Who had him?"

"Sure! I'd swear to him anywhere. A little drover fellow had him.