Within a week we returned to the homestead, and for twenty-four hours Cheon gloated over us, preparing every delicacy that appealed to him as an antidote to an outbush course of beef and damper. Then a man rode into our lives who was to teach us the depth and breadth of the meaning of the word mate—a sturdy, thick-set man with haggard, tired eyes and deep lines about his firm strong mouth that told of recent and prolonged tension.

“Me mate’s sick; got a touch of fever,” he said simply dismounting near the verandah. “I’ve left him camped back there at the Warlochs”; and as the Măluka prepared remedies—making up the famous Gulf mixture—the man with grateful thanks, found room in his pockets and saddle-pouch for eggs, milk, and brandy, confident that “these’ll soon put him right,” adding, with the tense lines deepening about his mouth as he touched on what had brought them there: “He’s been real bad, ma’am. I’ve had a bit of a job to get him as far as this.” In the days to come we were to learn, little by little, that the “bit of a job” had meant keeping a sick man in his saddle for the greater part of the fifty-mile dry stage, with forty miles of “bad going” on top of that, and fighting for him every inch of the way that terrible symptom of malaria—that longing to “chuck it,” and lie down and die.

Bad water after that fifty-mile dry made men with a touch of fever only too common at the homestead, and knowing how much the comforts of the homestead could do, when the Măluka came out with the medicines he advised bringing the sick man on as soon as he had rested sufficiently. “You’ve only to ask for it and we’ll send the old station buck-board across,” he said, and the man began fumbling uneasily at his saddle-girths, and said something evasive about “giving trouble”; but when the Măluka—afraid that a man’s life might be the forfeit of another man’s shrinking fear of causing trouble—added that on second thoughts we would ride across as soon as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly and stammered: “If you please, ma’am. If the boss’ll excuse me, me mate’s dead-set against a woman doing things for him. If you wouldn’t mind not coming. He’d rather have me. Me and him’s been mates this seven years. The boss’ll understand.”

The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone, to find a man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full of dread lest the woman at the homestead would insist on visiting him. “You see, that’s why he wouldn’t come on,” the mate said. “He couldn’t bear the thought of a woman doing things for him”; and the Măluka explained that the missus understood all that. That lesson had been easily learned; for again and again men had come in “down with a touch of fever,” whose temperatures went up at the very thought of a woman doing things for them, and always the actual nursing was left to the Măluka or the Dandy, the woman seeing to egg-flips and such things, exchanging at first perhaps only an occasional greeting, and listening at times to strange life-histories later on.

But in vain the Măluka explained and entreated: the sick man was “all right where he was.” His mate was worth “ten women fussing round,” he insisted, ignoring the Măluka’s explanations. “Had he not lugged him through the worst pinch already?” and then he played his trump card: “He’ll stick to me till I peg out,” he said—“nothing’s too tough for him”; and as he lay back, the mate deciding “arguing’ll only do for him,” dismissed the Măluka with many thanks, refusing all offers of nursing help with a quiet “He’d rather have me,” but accepting gratefully broths and milk and anything of that sort the homestead could furnish. “Nothing ever knocks me out,” he reiterated, and dragged on through sleepless days and nights, as the days dragged by finding ample reward in the knowledge that “he’d rather have me”, and when there came that deep word of praise from his stricken comrade: “A good mate’s harder to find than a good wife,” his gentle, protecting devotion increased tenfold.

Bushmen are instinctively protective. There is no other word that so exactly defines their tender helpfulness to all weakness and helplessness. Knowing how hard the fight is out-bush for even the strong and enduring all their magnificent strength and courage stand ready for those who would go to the wall without it. A lame dog, a man down in his luck, an old soaker, little women, any woman in need or sickness—each and all call forth this protectiveness; but nothing calls it forth in all its self-sacrificing tenderness like the helplessness of a strong man stricken down in his strength.

Understanding this also, we stood aside, and rejoicing as the sick man, benefiting by the comparative comfort and satisfied to have his own way, seemed to improve. For three days he improved steadily, and then, after standing still for another day slipped back inch by inch to weakness and prostration, until the homestead, without coercion, was the only chance for his life.

But there was a woman there; and as the mate went back to his pleading the woman did what the world may consider a strange thing—but a man’s life depended on it—she sent a message out to the sick man, to say that if he would come to the homestead she would not go to him until he asked her.

He pondered over the message for a day, sceptical of a woman’s word—surely some woman had left that legacy in his heart—but eventually decided he wouldn’t risk it. Then the chief of the telegraph coming in—a man widely experienced in fever—and urging one more attempt, the Dandy volunteered to help us in our extremity, and, driving across to the Warlochs in the chief’s buggy worked one of his miracles; he spent only a few minutes alone with the man (and the Dandy alone knows now what passed), but within an hour the sick traveller was resting quietly between clean sheets in the Dandy’s bed. There were times when the links in the chain seemed all blessing.

Waking warm and refreshed, the sick man faced the battle of life once more, and the chief taking command, and the man quietly and hopefully obeying orders, the woman found her promise easy to keep; but the mate’s hardest task had come, the task of waiting with folded hands. With the same quiet steadfastness he braced himself for this task and when, after weary hours, the chief pronounced “all well” and turned to him with an encouraging “I think he’ll pull through now, my man,” the sturdy shoulders that had borne so much drooped and quivered beneath the kindly words, and with dimming eyes he gave in at last to the Măluka’s persuasions, and lay down and slept, sure of the Dandy’s promise to wake him at dawn.

At midnight the Măluka left the Quarters, and going back just before the dawn to relieve the Dandy, found the sick man lying quietly-restful, with one arm thrown lightly across his brow. He had spoken in his sleep a short while before the Dandy said as the Măluka bent over him with a cup of warm milk, but the cup was returned to the table untasted. Many travellers had come into our lives and passed on with a bright nod of farewell; but at the first stirring of the dawn, without one word of farewell, this traveller had passed on and left us; left us, and the faithful mate of those seven strong young years and those last few days of weariness. “Unexpected heart failure,” our chief said, as the Dandy went to fulfil his promise to the sleeping mate. He promised to waken him at the dawn, and leaving that awakening in the Dandy’s hands, as we thought of that lonely Warloch camp our one great thankfulness was that when the awakening came the man was not to be alone there with his dead comrade. The bush can be cruel at times, and yet, although she may leave us alone with our beloved dead, her very cruelty brings with it a fierce, consoling pain; for out-bush our dead are all our own.

Beyond those seven faithful years the mate could tell us but little of his comrade’s life. He was William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with a mother living somewhere there. That was all he knew. “He was always a reticent chap,” he reiterated. “He never wanted any one but me about him,” and the unspoken request was understood. He was his mate, and no one but himself must render the last services.

Dry-eyed and worn, the man moved about, doing all that should be done, the bushmen only helping where they dared; then shouldering a pick and shovel, he went to the tattle rise beyond the slip rails, and set doggedly to work at a little distance from two lonely graves already there. Doggedly he worked on; but, as he worked, gradually his burden lost its overwhelming weight, for the greater part of it had somehow skipped on to the Dandy’s shoulders—those brave, unflinching shoulders, that carried other men’s burdens so naturally and so willingly that their burdens always seemed the Dandy’s own. The Dandy may have had that power of finding “something decent” in every one he met, but in the Dandy all men found the help they needed most.