Australian Tales - Setis

joke to be robbed of his all. “Niver fear, Joe, they won't rob me I'll
warrant, unless they murther me firsht; an thin I'll have the playsure of
knowing they'll be hanged, the vagabins.”
“Have yez got sich a thing as an owld pill box to give me, to put me
money intil? You may kape the pills yerself; the box will do me more
good.”
“Put your money into your boot, Micky;” urged Joe. “Don't trust it in
pill boxes, nor pockets neither. Your boot is the safest place — take my
word, — inside the lining. Howsomever, if you want a pill box, here is
one which I got from Doctor Dux tother day! a timber-box half as big as
a pannikin.”
“Hand it here, Joe, my jewel, you're the bist frind I've got. That's jist
the identical thing; it wud hold pills enough to comfort a hape of poor
miserable mortals or scare starvation out of a little village, so it wud. Ho,
ho, ho! them's univarsal pills,” chuckled Mick as he counted nineteen
new sovereigns into the pill box, which he then put into the centre of his
bundle, rolled all up tightly in a blue blanket and affixed straps thereto
for the convenience of carrying it on his back.
“Now I call that a jintale little swag,” said Mick, tossing it on a rough
bedstead in the corner of the hut, and then sitting down to his breakfast.
“A rig out that Prince Alfred would be glad to own if he hadn't got a
betther one. It's all my own, every bit of it, an it's all I've got in the wide
worrld to bother me, barrin the clothes I stand up in, an the old boots
under the bed, which I will lave to you, Joe, as a kapesake. And now my
darlin't, I'll wager me fortin there to your long-handled frying-pan that no
bushrangers will rob me, unless they knock me spacheless firsht and
foremost; and I won't fight wid em naythir. Bedad, what ud be the good
of my shallaley aginst the involving pistols of thim savages? — not a bit
in the worrld, I might as well try to bate em wid a German sassage. No,
no, I won't fight wid em anyhow, nor I won't rin away naythir, and yet I
tell you agin Joe, there isn't a bushranger in the bush as 'll rob me of a
haporth; that is if I can ony make him jist understand plain English,
mixed wid a trifling taste of ginuine Irish brogue.”
Soon afterwards Micky arose from his meal, took an affectionate leave
of his friend Joe, and his dog Nip, then shouldered his bundle, and went
on his way laughing as if somebody were tickling him.
Onward he trudged, whistling “The Wanderer from Clare,” and other
fancy tunes; stopping now and then to wet his whistle at a waterhole, and
to have a few whiffs from his little black pipe, which he carried in his
hat-band; and then onward he would trudge again, twirling his shillelah
over his head, and making the bush musical with his joyful exclamation,
and merry Irish airs.
About two hours before sunset, as Micky was calculating whether he
should be able to reach a neighbouring sheep station before night, or be