Stiffner and Jim

(Thirdly, Bill)


We were tramping down in Canterbury, Maoriland, at the time, swagging
it--me and Bill--looking for work on the new railway line. Well, one
afternoon, after a long, hot tramp, we comes to Stiffner's
Hotel--between Christchurch and that other place--I forget the name of
it--with throats on us like sunstruck bones, and not the price of a
stick of tobacco.

We had to have a drink, anyway, so we chanced it. We walked right
into the bar, handed over our swags, put up four drinks, and tried to
look as if we'd just drawn our cheques and didn't care a curse for any
man. We looked solvent enough, as far as swagmen go. We were dirty
and haggard and ragged and tired-looking, and that was all the more
reason why we might have our cheques all right.

This Stiffner was a hard customer. He'd been a spieler, fighting man,
bush parson, temperance preacher, and a policeman, and a commercial
traveller, and everything else that was damnable; he'd been a
journalist, and an editor; he'd been a lawyer, too. He was an ugly
brute to look at, and uglier to have a row with--about six-foot-six,
wide in proportion, and stronger than Donald Dinnie.

He was meaner than a gold-field Chinaman, and sharper than a sewer
rat: he wouldn't give his own father a feed, nor lend him a
sprat--unless some safe person backed the old man's I.O.U.