To Ride a Fine Horse by Mary Durack Page B

determined that these boys would speak properly like himself. He soon became fond of his charges but would never admit that these sons of the Kimberley tribes had the intelligence and character of the Queenslanders.
    He had been at Argyle only a few months when he met a prospector on the way to Hall’s Creek with a family of Queensland natives including a bright little boy of about six years old. He soon persuaded the mother that the wandering life she led was no good for her child and that she should leave him in his charge. The woman made no conditions, but the white prospector insisted that the boy be exchanged for the horse Pumpkin was riding and a tin of plum jam, which was a great luxury in the bush. Pumpkin had no need to consult anyone for he had as much say in the running of Argyle as the rest of them, and he knew they would all be as pleased with this bargain as he was himself. The little boy was called Boxer and was to grow up to become one of the great characters of the north.

    The little boy was called Boxer
. . . 
    When the new station was organized and running along much as Thylungra had done before, Patsy rode off to the goldfields. He had been sorry to hear that the goldfields’ population was falling off so soon and believed that it would come back if only machinery could be brought in to work deeper shafts. On reaching Hall’s Creek he at once pegged out a claim and set off back to Queensland to purchase mining equipment. He remembered the temptation it had been in his youth to stay on at the fields after he had made his first thousand pounds. Fortunately he had resisted it so that now he had earned the right to gamble, and could afford it—or so he thought.

15
An End and a Beginning
    P ATSY returned the following year with his mining machinery and after a few days with his boys at Argyle, set off again to Hall’s Creek. Now, more than ever, he was anxious to find gold and bring life back to the Kimberley fields. The drought had not broken in the east and it had begun to look doubtful whether he would ever get paid for his Queensland estates. Throughout the country people were again walking off their outback properties and many feared that Australia was facing the worst depression in her history. Even Patsy had to admit that the position looked serious, but he was sure his crushing machinery would soon prove that there was as much gold in Kimberley as at Ballarat and Bendigo.
    He had been working hard for some months without much luck when a telegram from Queensland warned him that his investments were in danger. He left at once for Brisbane, confident that he would soon be able to set things right and return to his mining. His brothers, looking worn and sad, met him with the news that their financial position was now not only bad but quite hopeless, for their entire fortune, like that of so many others throughout Australia, had vanished almost overnight as panic spread and banks began to close down.
    It took Patsy some time to realize that he had lost everything, even ‘Maryview’, the home of his dreams,and that he was again almost as poor as when he had arrived in Australia as an immigrant boy thirty-seven years before. His wife did her best to cheer him, saying how fortunate it was that the Kimberley property was safe, as Patsy had signed this over to his boys, and they could make a home there until times improved.
    â€˜But I promised you, Mary,’ her husband said, ‘that I would never take you and the girls to live outback again.’
    Mrs Patsy smiled as though she wanted nothing more than to go to Kimberley. ‘But it will be wonderful to be with the boys again!’
    It was decided at last that the two girls should be sent for a while to a convent in Goulburn, the youngest boy to college in Brisbane, while the third son, Pat, accompanied them to Kimberley.
    Only a few of Mrs Patsy’s own possessions now remained in the family, to go out with them in