It'll be the dearest horse you ever bought, Jim, old man, and so I tell you.' 'Well, I suppose it's settled now,' says father; 'so let's have no more chat.

We're like a pack of old women, blessed if we ain't.' After that we got on more sociably.

Father took us all over the place, and a splendid paddock it was--walled all round but where we had come in, and a narrow gash in the far side that not one man in a thousand could ever hit on, except he was put up to it; a wild country for miles when you did get out--all scrub and rock, that few people ever had call to ride over.

There was splendid grass everywhere, water, and shelter.
It was warmer, too, than the country above, as you could see by the coats of the cattle and horses.
'If it had only been honestly come by,' Jim said, 'what a jolly place it would have been!' Towards the north end of the paddock was a narrow gully with great sandstone walls all round, and where it narrowed the first discoverers had built a stockyard, partly with dry stone walls and partly with logs and rails.
There was no trouble in getting the cattle or horses into this, and there were all kinds of narrow yards and pens for branding the stock if they were clearskins, and altering or 'faking' the brands if they were plain.

This led into another yard, which opened into the narrowest part of the gully.