Danny was "acting the goat" round the fireplace; as ill-luck would have it, his attention was drawn to a basket of clean linen which stood on the side table, and from it, with sundry winks and grimaces, he gingerly lifted a certain garment of ladies' underwear -- to put the matter decently. He held it up between his forefingers and thumbs, and cracked a rough, foolish joke -- no matter what it was.
The laugh didn't last long. Alice sprang to her feet, flinging her work aside, and struck a stage attitude -- her right arm thrown out and the forefinger pointing rigidly, and rather crookedly, towards the door.
"Leave the room!" she snapped at Danny. "Leave the room!
How dare you talk like that before me-e-ee!"
Danny made a step and paused irresolutely. He was sober enough to feel the humiliation of his position, and having once been a man of spirit, and having still the remnants of manhood about him, he did feel it.
He gave one pitiful, appealing look at her face, but saw no mercy there.
She stamped her foot again, jabbed her forefinger at the door, and said, "Go-o-o!" in a tone that startled the majority of the company nearly as much as it did Danny. Then Yankee Jack threw down his cards, rose from the table, laid his strong, shapely right hand -- not roughly -- on Danny's ragged shoulder, and engineered the drunk gently through the door.
"You's better go out for a while, Danny," he said; "there wasn't much harm in what you said, but your cheque's gone, and that makes all the difference.
It's time you went back to the station. You've got to be careful what you say now."
When Jack returned to the parlour the barmaid had a smile for him; but he didn't take it. He went and stood before the fire, with his foot resting on the fender and his elbow on the mantelshelf, and looked blackly at a print against the wall before his face.
"The old beast!" said Alice, referring to Danny. "He ought to be kicked off the place!"
"HE'S AS GOOD AS YOU!"
The voice was Jack's; he flung the stab over his shoulder, and with it a look that carried all the contempt he felt.
She gasped, looked blankly from face to face, and witheringly at the back of Jack's head; but that didn't change colour or curl the least trifle less closely.
"Did you hear that?" she cried, appealing to anyone.
"You're a nice lot o' men, you are, to sit there and hear a woman insulted, and not one of you man enough to take her part -- cowards!"
The Sydney jackeroo rose impulsively, but Jack glanced at him, and he sat down again. She covered her face with her hands and ran hysterically to her room.
That afternoon another bushman arrived with a cheque, and shouted five times running at a pound a shout, and at intervals during the rest of the day when they weren't fighting or gambling.
Alice had "got over her temper" seemingly, and was even kind to the humble and contrite Danny, who became painfully particular with his "Thanky, Alice" -- and afterwards offensive with his unnecessarily frequent threats to smash the first man who insulted her.
But let us draw the curtain close before that Sunday afternoon at Stiffner's, and hold it tight. Behind it the great curse of the West is in evidence, the chief trouble of unionism -- drink, in its most selfish, barren, and useless form.
. . . . .
All was quiet at Stiffner's. It was after midnight, and Stiffner lay dead-drunk on the broad of his back on the long moonlit verandah, with all his patrons asleep around him in various grotesque positions.
