the anabranch and floating down with the stream under the shade of the
river timber--instead of going to sleep and waking up helpless and
soaked in perspiration, to find the women with headaches, as many do
on Christmas Day in Australia.

Mrs Woods tried to draw Jack out, but it was no use, and in the
evening he commenced drinking, and that made Billy uneasy. "I'm
afraid Jack's on the wrong track," he said.

After tea most of us collected about Watty's veranda. Most things
that happened in Bourke happened at Watty's pub, or near it.

If a horse bolted with a buggy or cart, he was generally stopped
outside Watty's, which seemed to suggest, as Mitchell said, that most
of the heroes drank at Watty's--also that the pluckiest men were found
amongst the hardest drinkers. (But sometimes the horse fetched up
against Watty's sign and lamppost--which was a stout one of
"iron-bark"--and smashed the trap.) Then Watty's was the Carriers'
Arms, a union pub; and Australian teamsters are mostly hard cases:
while there was something in Watty's beer which made men argue
fluently, and the best fights came off in his backyard. Watty's dogs
were the most quarrelsome in town, and there was a dog-fight there
every other evening, followed as often as not by a man-fight. If a
bushman's horse ran away with him the chances were that he'd be thrown
on to Watty's veranda, if he wasn't pitched into the bar; and victims
of accidents, and sick, hard-up shearers, were generally carried to
Watty's pub, as being the most convenient and comfortable for them.
Mitchell denied that it was generosity or good nature on Watty's part,
he said it was all business--advertisement. Watty knew what he was
doing. He was very deep, was Watty. Mitchell further hinted that if