THE FIGHTING MEN.

Maoriland Worker, Volume I, Issue 6, 20 February 1911, Page 13

THE FIGHTING MEN.

cßy g. Mcknight.) I often think of the fighting men, And the days of long ago, On the endless stretch of the Western plains, That the Queensland bushmen know ; Of droughts, and floods, and wide lagoons, At the place we called "Out Back," Where we humped the swag as the years went by On the sun-scorched dusty tracks. There was one I knew; he was "White," straight wire, Though he wasn't given to blow ; He'd often preach to the chaps by the hour, Telling them of things they should do. "If you got twelve months for doing the square, In a strike, or a row, what then ? Well, do the time, and when it's past. Keep doing the square like men !" And he did it, too, when the strikes were on, Speaking his thoughts out loud; He stood on the stump in the slush lamp's glare, And put courage and fight in the crowd. He was lumbered with others for being a man, He did his time, and then Came back to the very place he was pinched, And played the man again. I remember the time at Billabong Creek, When what was creek was mud; The road was long, and parched, and dry, And I chucked it up for good. I lay down to die in the dust at my feet, In the shade of a gaunt, blighted tree; F3ut big Bill Blair did the waterless stretch, And the drum that he humped was mc ! He died "Out Back" in a "six by eight;" Outside the curlews cried; I sobbed like a child the night that he went, As I tried to pray at his side. "Don't mind," he said, "if I turn my toes, It matters little to mc, We've travelled some with the fighting men, Fighting to be free." Many are gone, and few are left, And the few will go, too, some day. I hope they'll join the fighting men Beyond the "Blue and the Grey." When my time comes—and God is good— This shall be my prayer : — "May I march in the ranks of the fighting men, At the side of big Bill Blair."