"On The Edge of a Plain" is a sketch story by Australian writer Henry Lawson, featuring his recurring character Jack Mitchell.
[1] Mitchell and his mate drop their swags, and sit down in the mulga shade on the edge of a plain.
While he speaks, he holds a young cattle-pup, and occasionally intercuts his tale with observations about the pup's feet, or a request for a knife.
With his story complete, Mitchell and his mate take up their swags, "[turn] their unshaven faces to the wide, hazy distance, and [leave] the timber behind them."
[1] Critic John Barnes believes that the story was ahead of its time, writing that "to a modern reader of Chekhov, the art of this little story is quickly recognised, but the originality of what Lawson was doing on his own went unremarked when While the Billy Boils was published in 1896.