Part way up the steps, one of them was just backing down into the crowd, while another, called out by name, was coming up.

It was Joan's voice that had called him, and Sheldon reined in his horse and watched.

She sat at the head of the steps, behind a table, between Munster and his white mate, the three of them checking long lists, Joan asking the questions and writing the answers in the big, red-covered, Berande labour-journal.
"What name ?" she demanded of the black man on the steps.
"Tagari," came the answer, accompanied by a grin and a rolling of curious eyes; for it was the first white-man's house the black had ever seen.
"What place b'long you ?" "Bangoora." No one had noticed Sheldon, and he continued to sit his horse and watch.
There was a discrepancy between the answer and the record in the recruiting books, and a consequent discussion, until Munster solved the difficulty.
"Bangoora ?" he said.

"That's the little beach at the head of the bay out of Latta.

He's down as a Latta-man--see, there it is, 'Tagari, Latta.'" "What place you go you finish along white marster ?" Joan asked.
"Bangoora," the man replied; and Joan wrote it down.
"Ogu!" Joan called.
The black stepped down, and another mounted to take his place.