Part 3

“Take yer seats.”

When I got out, the driver was on the box, and the others were getting rum and milk inside themselves (and in bottles) before taking their seats.

It was colder and darker than before, and the South Pole seemed nearer, and pretty soon, but for the rum, we should have been in a worse fix than before.

There was a spell of grumbling. Presently someone said:

“I don't believe them horses was lost at all. I was round behind the stable before I went to bed, and seen horses there; and if they wasn't them same horses there, I'll eat 'em raw!”

“Would yer?” said the driver, in a disinterested tone.

“I would,” said the passenger. Then, with a sudden ferocity, “and you too!”

The driver said nothing. It was an abstract question which didn't interest him.

We saw that we were on delicate ground, and changed the subject for a while. Then someone else said:

“I wonder where his missus was? I didn't see any signs of her about, or any other woman about the place, and we was pretty well all over it.”

“Must have kept her in the stable,” suggested the Joker.

“No, she wasn't, for Scotty and that chap on the roof was there after bags.”

“She might have been in the loft,” reflected the Joker.

“There was no loft,” put in a voice from the top of the coach.

“I say, Mister--Mister man,” said the Joker suddenly to the driver, “Was his missus sick at all?”

“I dunno,” replied the driver. “She might have been. He said so, anyway. I ain't got no call to call a man a liar.”

“See here,” said the cannibalistic individual to the driver, in the tone of a man who has made up his mind for a row, “has that shanty-keeper got a wife at all?”

“I believe he has.”

“And is she living with him?”

“No, she ain't--if yer wanter know.”

“Then where is she?”

“I dunno. How am I to know? She left him three or four years ago. She was in Sydney last time I heard of her. It ain't no affair of mine, anyways.”

“And is there any woman about the place at all, driver?” inquired a professional wanderer reflectively.

“No--not that I knows on. There useter be a old black gin come pottering round sometimes, but I ain't seen her lately.”

“And excuse me, driver, but is there anyone round there at all?” enquired the professional wanderer, with the air of a conscientious writer, collecting material for an Australian novel from life, with an eye to detail.

“Naw,” said the driver--and recollecting that he was expected to be civil and obliging to his employers' patrons, he added in surly apology, “Only the boss and the stableman, that I knows of.” Then repenting of the apology, he asserted his manhood again, and asked, in a tone calculated to risk a breach of the peace, “Any more questions, gentlemen--while the shop's open?”

There was a long pause.

“Driver,” asked the Pilgrim appealingly, “was them horses lost at all?”