The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 170: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

160 THE he’d think his middle name was Rocke- feller.” “Still, you can’t sell a lemon like this just because you happen to be surrounded by simps. They’re the old original tight- wads when it comes to loosening up, and that pirate McKechnie is the worst. “Besides,” Bunny continued, ‘‘you can’t get away with false pretenses like that. All Australia wouldn’t be big enough to hide in. When you take away the roll of a Scotchman, it isn’t a case of watchful waiting, but war right off the bat.” “Ain’t you the cheerful home com- panion, all right? Go on, knock till you feel it’s done you some good, and then, perhaps you'll listen to your Uncle Jim. I’m not going to mention oil, and I give you my word I’m not even going to de- ceive the old Scotchman. But I’m going to let him deceive himself, and that’s just where psychology is going to get in its strong work. Now listen, for your job in this is man-sized, and you have to re- member all the acting stunts you learned in the lurid past.” The two friends thereupon went into executive session, and two hours after- wards, the mine was laid, the snare was set, the hook was baited, or—well, you can choose your metaphor to suit your- self, so long as the sense of it is that Sandy McKechnie was to be torpedoed without warning. In one of their spasmodic attempts to better the water-supply of the farm, Jim and Bunny had hired a boring plant, in- cluding a wheezy little gas engine, and had made a few ill-informed, desultory stabs to locate the artesian water that lay at an unascertained depth beneath most of that part of the country. On the day after their council of war they wended their usual way to the site of the last attempt, and proceeded to set the engine going. Work did not last long, however, for Jim, while carrying two carboys of oil from the ramshackle shed that served as shelter for the few stores necessary for carrying on the work, stumbled on some ARGOSY. rusty lengths of piping and went sprawling, the oil liberally baptizing him. More of it went over the immediate vicinity of the bore hole, which for about eight feet in height was enclosed with some rough shingling and saplings that served as supports for part of the apparatus. A few minutes afterwards they retraced their steps down the hill and into the dusty township of Yarran. big An Australian bush township has two centres of social activity, the post-office and the local saloon, in bush parlance a “pap.” The postmaster, who combines that gov- ernmental post with the less ornamental one of storeman, or baker, or what not, has two duties that rather conflict. One is to conserve the interests of the government and preserve the sanctity of the mails, the other to carry out the onerous task assigned to him by Fate, in virtue of his position, and act as the con- duit pipe of all the news that filters through to him by so many channels. If a telephone call for Corrumgobilly— four rings, two short and two long—comes through the post-office, which is also the telephone exchange, it soon becomes a matter of common knowledge that Sam Evans has been offered four shillings for his wheat, or that Mrs. Beeby’s daughter in the city has had twins. All this is important, in view of what happened, and James Attwood Cochrane counted on it in his plans. Also it is use- ful information. The pub is the disseminator’of the news supplied by the post-office. To the pub, therefore, our two adventurers wandered. In the wooden building, roofed with gal- vanized iron, Alexander McKechnie, land and commission agent, had his office, but he had found by long: experience that more business was to be picked up in the bar than was to be garnered in a hot six by eight. In the bar, moreover, could be procured, at a moment’s notice, those remedies for Go 0) AUUG S (C@