Dan also considered we had “struck it lucky,” but from a different point of view, for he had only just come into camp with the mixed cattle, and as the bullocks among them more than completed the number required, he suggested the drovers should take delivery at once, assuring us, as we drank the tea, that he was just about dead sick of them “little Chinese darlings.”

The “little Chinese darlings,” inwardly delighted that the Maluka’s simple trust seemed as guileless as ever, smugly professed themselves willing to fall in with any arrangement that was pleasing to the white folk, and as they mounted their horses Dan heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

But Dan’s satisfaction was premature, for it took time and much galloping before the “little Chinese darlings” could satisfy themselves and each other that they had the very finest bullocks procurable in their mob.  A hundred times they changed their minds:  rejecting chosen bullocks, recalling rejected bullocks, and comparing every bullock accepted with every bullock rejected.  Bulk was what they searched for—­plenty for their money, as they judged it, and finally gathered together a mob of coarse, wide-horned, great-framed beasts, rolling in fat that would drip off on the road as they travelled in.

“You’d think they’d got ’em together for a boiling-down establishment, with a bone factory for a side line,” Dan chuckled, secretly pleased that our best bullocks were left on the run, and, disbanding the rejected bullocks before “they” could “change their minds again,” he gathered together the mixed cattle and shut them in the Dandy’s new yard, to keep them in hand for later branding.

But the “little Chinese darlings” had counted on the use of that yard for themselves, and finding that their bullocks would have to be “watched” on camp that night, they stolidly refused to take delivery before morning, pointing out that should the cattle stampede during the night, the loss would be ours, not theirs.

“Well, I’m blowed!” Dan chuckled, but the Maluka cared little whether the papers were signed then or at sun-up; and the drovers, pleased with getting their way so easily, magnanimously offered to take charge of the first “watch”—­the evening watch—­provided that only our horses should be used, and that Big Jack and Jackeroo and others should lend a hand.

Dan wouldn’t hear of refusing the offer.  “Bit of exercise’ll do ’em good,” he said; and deciding the bullocks would be safe enough with Jack and Jackeroo, we white folk stretched ourselves in the warm firelight after supper, and, resting, watched the shadowy mob beyond the camp, listening to the shoutings and gallopings of the watchers as we chatted.