A Town like Alice

'em in there to consider things a bit, because they'd been wandering. Well, Don went to steal them off me, and he took down the top bar, but they were pretty wild, those poddys were; they hadn't had no water for about four days except the rain. Far as I can make out they pushed the second bar out on top of him when he went to loose it, and knocked him over on his back with the pole on top, and then they all ran over him and bust his leg. They ran out on the horse, too; Don had hitched his horse by the rein to something or other, and these poddys, they come charging down on to the horse and he bust the rein and he went too. So there Don was, and serve him bloody well right for going where he hadn't got no business to be."
    "Whose poddys were they, really, Joe?"
    "Mine," he replied firmly.
    She smiled. "Where had they been wandering?"
    He grinned. "Windermere. But they were my poddys. He pinched 'em off me. You heard me telling Pete he's got a poddy corral there."
    "Were these poddys that you had in your corral the same ones that you let out of his corral?" she asked. It seemed to be getting just a little bit involved.
    "Most of 'em," he said. "There might have been one or two with them that we picked up as damages, you might say." He paused. "Things get a bit mixed up sometimes," he observed.
    "Where are the poddys now?" she asked. "The ones that Don let out?"
    "They'll be on Midhurst," he said. "They'll be somewhere round about the bore, I'd say. They won't stir from the first water that they find, not even in the wet."
    She ate a little of her banana split in silence. Then she said, "Well, anyway, you're not to go after any of his poddys while he's in hospital, Joe. That's not fair. He'll come out of hospital and find there's not a poddy left."
    "I wouldn't do a thing like that."
    "I bet you would. I don't know how this game is played, Joe, but I'm quite sure that's against the rules."
    He grinned. "All right. But he'll be after mine as soon as he gets back. That's sure as anything."
    "Why can't you let each other's poddys alone?"
    "I'll let his alone, but he won't let mine alone. You see," he said simply. "I got about fifty more of his last year than he got of mine."
    This conversation, Jean felt, was not getting them anywhere; where poddys were concerned Joe's moral standards seemed to be extremely low. She changed the subject, and said, "Joe, about those little dams you were talking about on Green Island. Have you got anyone to build them for you yet?"
    He shook his head. "It's no good thinking about those until the dry."
    "Could a bulldozer build them?"
    "Oh my word," he said. "If anybody had a bulldozer he'd build the lot inside a month. But there's no bulldozer this side of the Curry."
    "There might be one," she said. She told him about Rose Sawyer and Billy Wakeling. "He's coming up to see her anyway," she said, "and she says he's looking for that sort of work to do up here. I suppose he's turning into Rose's steady. You'd better take him out to Midhurst when he comes, and have a talk to him."
    "My word," he said. "If we had a joker with a bulldozer in Willstown it’ll make a lot of difference to the stations."
    "It’ll make a lot of difference here in Willstown," she observed. "Joe, if we had a really decent swimming-pool just by the bore, with little cabins to change in and green lawns to sunbathe on, and diving-boards, and an old man in charge to mow the grass and keep it clean and nice-would people use it, Joe? If we charged, say, a bob a bathe?"
    They discussed the swimming-pool for some time, and came to the conclusion that it could never pay upon the basis of a town with a hundred and fifty people, "It's just a question of how fast this town is going to grow," he said. "A swimming-pool is just another thing to make it grow. There's not a town in the whole Gulf country that's got a pool."
    "The ice-cream parlour's paying, definitely," Jean said. "If we can keep up the quality, I feel we're home on that one. I'd like to try the swimming-pool next, I think, if I can get the money for it out of Noel Strachan."
    He smiled in curious wonder. "What comes after the swimming-pool?"
    She stared out at the wet, miry expanse of earth that was the street. "They'll get their hair wet in the swimming-pool, so we'll have to have a beauty parlour," she said. "I think that's the next thing. And after that, an open-air cinema. And after that, a battery of Home Laundries for the wet wash, and after that a decent dress