"That's what I do most of my time now.

The old man--Grant, you know--my boss--he's always hearing of mobs of cattle for sale, and if I'm down in the south-west the mob is sure to be up in the far north-east, but it's all one to him.

He wires to me to go and inspect them quick and lively before someone else gets them, and I ride and drive and coach hundreds of miles to get at some flat-sided pike-horned mob of brutes without enough fat on them to oil a man's hair with.

I've to go right away out back now and take over a place that the old man advanced some money on.

He was fool enough, or someone was fool enough for him, to advance five thousand pounds on a block of new country with five thousand cattle on it--book-muster, you know, and half the cattle haven't been seen for years, and the other half are dead, I expect.
Anyhow, the man that borrowed the money is ruined, and I have to go up and take over the station." "What do you call a book-muster ?" said the globe-trotter, who was spending a month in the country, and would naturally write a book on it.
"Book-muster, book-muster?
Why, a book-muster is something like dead-reckoning on a ship.