Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: THE OUTPOST OF DEATH _Page 253_]
IN THE
MUSGRAVE RANGES
BY
JIM BUSHMAN
Author of "The Golden Valley" &c.
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW
1922
[Transcriber's Note: "Jim Bushman" is a pseudonym of Conrad H. Sayce.]
Blackie's Imperial Library
Ann's Great Adventure. E. E. Cowper.
The Golden Magnet. G. Manville Fenn.
Every Inch a Briton. Meredith Fletcher.
'Twixt Earth and Sky. C. R. Kenyon.
In the Musgrave Ranges. Jim Bushman.
No Ordinary Girl. Bessie Marchant.
Norah to the Rescue. Bessie Marchant.
What Happened to Kitty. Theodora Wilson Wilson.
Contents
CHAP.
I. A TORNADO
II. CAMELS
III. A MESSAGE FROM THE UNKNOWN
IV. WILD CATTLE
V. RIDING TESTS
VI. SMOKE SIGNALS
VII. STEALTHY FOES
VIII. FIRST SIGHT OF THE MUSGRAVES
IX. DISASTER
X. A SANDSTORM
XI. THIRST
XII. THE RESCUE
XIII. SIDCOTINGA STATION
XIV. A MAD BULL
XV. A NIGHT ALARM
XVI. MUSTERING
XVII. THE BRANDED WARRAGUL
XVIII. REVENGE
XIX. CHIVALRY IN THE DESERT
XX. THE BULL-ROARER
XXI. HORSESHOE BEND
XXII. FACING DEATH
XXIII. A FRIEND AND A FOE
XXIV. A PRISONER
XXV. THE OUTPOST OF DEATH
XXVI. ARRKROO, THE HATER
XXVII. THE DANCE OF DEATH
XXVIII. CONCLUSION
IN THE MUSGRAVE RANGES
CHAPTER I
A Tornado
Towards the end of a long hot day, a shabby mixed train stopped at one
of the most wonderful townships in the world, Hergott Springs, the
first of the great cattle-trucking depots of Central Australia. It was
dark, but a hurricane lantern, swung under a veranda, showed that the
men who were waiting for the train were not ordinary men. They were
men of the desert. Most of them were tall, thin, weather-beaten
Australians, in shirt sleeves and strong trousers worn smooth inside
the leg with much riding. A few Afghans were there too, big,
dignified, and silent, with white turbans above their black faces;
while a little distance away was a crowd of aboriginal men and women,
yabbering excitedly and laughing together because the fortnightly train
had at last come in. The same crowd would watch it start out in the
morning on the last stage of its long journey to Oodnadatta, the
railway terminus and the metropolis of Central Australia.
There were very few passengers on the train, and all of them seemed
known to everybody and were greeted with hearty handshakes and loud
rough words of welcome back to the North. Two passengers, however, did
not get out of the carriage for a time, being unwilling to face that
crowd of absolute strangers. They were Saxon Stobart and Rodger
Vaughan, boys of about fifteen, who were on their way to Oodnadatta.
It was their first sight of the back country.
Presently a big man with only one eye climbed back into the carriage
where they were sitting. "Here, don't you lads want a feed?" he asked.
"You won't get it here, you know."
"We don't know where to go," said one of them. "We thought we'd wait a
bit."
"Don't you do too much waiting in this part of the country," said the
man kindly. "You just hop in and get your cut. See? You'll get left
if you don't. Now, get hold of your things and come along. I'll fix
you up."
The result of the stranger's kindness was that the two boys shared a
room with him at the only hotel in the place, and had a hearty meal in
a room full of men in shirt sleeves, who shouted to one another and
laughed in the most friendly manner.
After tea the two friends went out into the sandy street to stretch
their legs after the long day's railway ride, before going to bed. It
was so dark that they couldn't see anything at first, and nearly ran
into a knot of men who were standing and smoking. They recognized the
voice of one of them as that of the man who had taken them over to the
hotel. They knew him only as Peter, a name which his companions called
him.
"I never saw it look so bad," he was saying. "Just look at the moon,
too."
"How far away d'you reckon it is?" asked another man. "It's a long way
yet, I reckon. You can't hear any thunder. I wonder if it's coming
this way."
Vaughan nudged his companion. "What are they talking about, Sax?" he
asked.
Stobart pointed north into the darkness. Overhead, and nearly to the
horizon, the sky was a mass of stars, but just on the northern horizon
was a patch where no stars were to be seen. As their eyes became
accustomed to the night, they saw that this patch looked as if it was
alive with flashing, coiling, darting red things. It was like a mass
of snakes squirming in agony, and now and again a clear white jet of
light came out of the darkness, as if one of them was spitting venom at
the sky. In reality, the boys were looking at one of those terrible
electric storms which tear across Central Australia after a severe
drought, and the lurid colours were caused by lightning flashing inside
a very thick cloud.
But no interest was strong enough to overcome the healthy weariness of
the boys, and they went to bed soon afterwards and fell asleep almost
at once.
Saxon Stobart was the son of a famous drover who took huge mobs of
cattle across the centre of the continent, and who was noted for his
pluck and endurance, and for his skill as a bushman, which enabled him
to travel through parts of the country where very few white men have
ever been. His son had many of the qualities of mind and body which
had made his father such a fine man. He was tall and thin, but was as
active as a cat and stronger than most boys of his size and age. His
friend Vaughan was a different-looking boy altogether. He was short
and thick-set. Although Vaughan was not fat, he was so solidly built
that his nickname "Boof" suited him very well indeed. His father used
to own Langdale Station, a big sheep run in the Western District, but a
series of bad droughts had forced him to sell the place.
The two boys had been great friends at school, and when Drover Stobart
wrote to his son: "Come on up to Oodnadatta for a bit of a holiday
before settling down, and bring your mate along with you", they both
accepted the invitation with enthusiasm.
* * * * *
The boys were suddenly roused from sound sleep about three o'clock next
morning by someone in the room shouting at them; "Hi, there! Hi! Get
up, it's coming. Get up quick."
The next instant the bedclothes were jerked back and a man was pulling
them roughly to their feet. It was all so sudden and unexpected that
each boy thought that he was dreaming; but as the man shook and punched
them into activity, they became aware of a terrifying noise coming at
them across the desert through the black darkness of the night. The
air vibrated with a tremendous booming which affected their ears like
the deep notes of a huge organ, and the loudest shout was only just
heard.
"It's me. It's Peter," said a voice at their side.
"Come for your lives. The tornado's right on top of us."
He caught each boy firmly by the wrist and dragged them, dressed only
in pyjamas just as they had tumbled out of bed, out of the room, down
the corridor, and out at the back of the hotel. Everything was in
confusion. They bumped into people and upset chairs and things in
their mad rush. Now and again Peter's voice rose above the din,
shouting, "The tank! The tank!" but nobody paid any attention, even if
they heard the voice of a man above that other and more dreadful voice
which was coming nearer and nearer and striking terror into the hearts
even of the brave dwellers in the desert.
The shock of the night air did more than anything else fully to arouse
the boys. It was like a dash of cold water, and though Peter still
kept a tight grip of them, they ran along level with him of their own
accord. Out into the yard they dashed, round one or two corners, over
a fence at the back of an outhouse, and suddenly the man stopped dead
and began pulling at something on the ground. It was a grating with a
big iron handle. It stuck. The approaching tornado roared with anger
while the man put out all his great strength. The booming sound rose
to a shriek of triumph, as if the storm actually saw that these
escaping human beings were delivered into its power. But Peter's
muscles were like steel and leather. He strained till the veins stood
out on his forehead like rope. At last the thing loosened and came up,
and the bushman sprawled on his back. But he was on his feet again
instantly. Speech would have been no good, so he gripped Vaughan by
the collar of his pyjamas and swung him into the hole in the ground,
and only waited long enough for the boy to find a foothold before he
did the same with Stobart. Then he scrambled down himself. They were
in a big cement rain-water tank built in the ground at the back of the
hotel. There was no water in it.
Nobody spoke. Nobody _could_ speak. The air was so packed full of
sound that it seemed as if it could not possibly hold one sound more.
It was like the booming of a thousand great guns at the same time; the
shock, the recoil, and the rush of air across the entrance to the tank
was as if artillery practice on an immense scale were going on. There
was a screaming sound as if shells were hurtling through space. Now
the pitch blackness of the night was a solid mass; then it was red and
livid like a recent bruise; and then again, with a crackle like the
discharge of a Maxim, vivid flashes of white fire split the air.
Thunder rolled continuously and lightning played without stopping, in a
way which is seen and heard only on a battle-field or during a tornado
in the desert. It sounded as if the pent-up fury of a thousand years
had suddenly been let loose upon that little collection of houses on
the vast barren plain.
Down in the tank it was as dark as a tomb. The boys were close to one
another, crouched against the wall, unable to move through sheer
amazement. Peter stood up and looked out through the entrance,
expecting every moment to hear the sound of houses being torn up from
their foundations and flung down again many yards distant, mere heaps
of splintered wood and twisted iron, with perhaps mangled human corpses
in the wreckage. But such a sound did not come.
The tornado lasted about three minutes--that was all--and then it
passed, and all those tremendous sounds became muffled in the distance
as it retreated.
Gradually the stunned senses of the boys began to recover, and they
heard Peter speaking. "It missed us," he was saying. "It came pretty
close, though. I thought the hotel was gone for a cert." Then he
struck a match and held it to his pipe. The little light flared up
steadily and showed two boys in pyjamas, the smooth cement walls of the
tank, and the bushman in his shirt and trousers, but without his boots.
It showed also a cat which had died a long time ago, and which had been
dried up by the great heat. The sight of the squashed cat was so
funny, down in the tank, that the boys started to laugh. It was a
relief to do so after the strain of the last few minutes.
"We'd better get out of this," said Peter, throwing the match at the
cat and starting to climb up an iron ladder. "Were you lads much
scared?"
It was so evident that they had been very much scared that their
emphatic denial of it made them all laugh again. "I tell you, I was,"
confessed the bushman. "I reckoned the whole town was going to glory.
It would have, too, if the wind had struck it. The thing must have
turned off before it got here."
Such tornadoes as the one described occur in Central Australia just
before the breaking up of long droughts. Sometimes they are mere
harmless willy-willies, which have not enough power to blow a man off
his horse, but now and again a bigger one comes along, which travels at
thirty or forty miles an hour at the centre and sweeps everything
before it. These tornadoes may not be more than a quarter of a mile
across, and look from the distance like huge brown waterspouts coiling
up into the air till they are lost in the clear blue of the sky.
Sometimes the whirling column of sand leaves the ground for a time and
goes on spinning away high over the heads of everything, but it usually
comes down again and goes on tearing across the country. The Central
Australian tornado must not be confused with the tropical typhoon or
cyclone, which is sometimes three or four hundred miles across.
Peter was right about the tornado turning off before it reached Hergott
Springs. It came across the country from the Musgrave Ranges in the
north-west till it reached the Dingo Creek. Here it turned and
followed the dry depression, wrecked the Dingo Creek railway bridge,
leaving it a mass of twisted iron and hanging sleepers, and then tore
on down the line, doing a great deal of damage and making straight for
the helpless township.
There is a very deep and wide cutting about a mile north of Hergott
Springs, and the fury of the wind that night completely filled it up
with sand from bank to bank. This undoubtedly saved the town, for,
after this exhibition of its power, the tornado turned slightly to the
east, and missed the houses entirely. The fringe of it, however,
touched the end of the station yard, where the great water-tank stood.
The wind caught this tremendous weight, lifted it from the platform,
and threw it fifty yards, while the steel pillars of the stand were
twisted together as if they had been cotton. A tool-shed which used to
stand near the tank was moved bodily, and no trace of it was ever
found. No doubt it was buried deep in one of the many sandhills which
these terrific winds leave behind them.