“How so?”

Theyeats into a man’s dough from the inside out. And there’s blokes wot likes it. Wouldn’t leave the place. Reckons they got a good chance with the daughter or the mother. Theysends away to Sydney or Adelaide for presents for ’em. You’ll be a wake-up in no time.”

They passed a deserted hut built of pine logs, used only at the shearing season. An hour later they sighted a windmill and two huts partially surrounded by a high canegrass wall.

“Sandy Well,”Draffin said. “Get a bit of lunch here.”

“Half-way house?”

“That’s right. Twenty-six mile to the homestead and twenty-six on to the Lake. Feller called George Barby cooks here when heain’t fur-trapping. Good bloke, George Barby, though he is a pommy.”

Three dogs came racing to meet the truck and escort it to the door in the canegrass wall. From the view of the surroundingsandhills Bony deduced that the wall was essential when the storms raged.

Through the door there emerged a slightly-built man, dark of hair and pale of skin. He was wearing white duck trousers and a white cotton vest. After him came an enormously fat pet sheep, and after the sheep came two outsized black and white cats. Finally there appeared a tame galah, red of breast and grey of back. The parrot waddled forward absurdly, flapped its wings and raised its rose-tinted comb while shrieking its welcome.

The pet sheep chased RedDraffin round the truck, and George Barby said to Bony: “Come on in and have a cuppa tea.”

Chapter Three

The Thinker

FORAMANof sixty, RedDraffin could move. So, too, could the pet sheep. The bootless, whiskered man appeared from behind the truck and raced for the door in the wall, the large wether hard astern and bouncing the sand with legs like props. Shouting with laughter, the truck driver kept the hard, butting head at bay with one hand and with the other he thrust a plug of black tobacco between his teeth, bit off a chunk and presented it to the sheep. The sheep almost spoke his thanks and retired placidly chewing.