A Message from the Unknown
The sun had set several hours ago when the train finally pulled up at
Oodnadatta station. A hurricane-lantern hung under a veranda, and
showed a crowd of about twenty men, women, and children with eager
faces, ready to welcome anyone who had completed the interrupted
journey. But the two boys were the only passengers. They stood on the
platform of the carriage and looked at the crowd. It was seven years
since Sax had seen his father, but he felt sure he would recognize him
instantly; and, besides, it was such a rare thing for two strange lads
to come up on the Far North train, that if anyone had been there to
meet them, he would have had no trouble in picking them out.
But no one came forward. In vain did the drover's son compare the
picture of his father which he had in his mind, with one after the
other of the men under the veranda. Men, tall, thin, and bearded there
certainly were, and more than one had that stamp of the desert on his
face, which never wears off.
"Can't you see him, Sax?" asked his companion anxiously.
"Not yet. He's somewhere at the back, most likely. We'll wait a tick
and see."
So they waited, and in those minutes the lads felt more lonely than
they had ever done in their lives before. The thought would insist on
presenting itself:
"Suppose he doesn't come! What then?" The nearest person they really
knew was five days away. In front of them was a little crowd of people
who knew each other well, but who had never seen the boys before, and
all around was the vast unsympathetic silence of the desert which came
in and oppressed the boys even in the dark.
Presently a man in badly creased white trousers and very thin shirt,
open all the way down, came past. He stopped and looked up at the
boys. "Waiting for somebody?" he asked pleasantly.
"Yes, we are," said Sax, who was usually the spokesman of the pair when
strangers were concerned. "Can you tell me, please, if Mr. Stobart is
about?"
"Stobart? If it's Boss Stobart you're waiting for, I'm afraid you'll
be disappointed."
"Why?" Both boys uttered the word of dismay at the same time.
"Well, you see," went on the man, "we expected him the day before
yesterday. He's never late, so I wired up the road. I'm his agent,
you know. They haven't heard of him south of Horseshoe Bend."
"What! Is he lost, then?" asked Sax in an incredulous voice. His
hero, his father, lost? Impossible!
"Bless you, no. He's never lost. He must have taken a fresh track at
the Bend, that's all. Feed and water and that sort of thing. By the
way, who are you?"
"I'm his son," said Sax, simply and proudly, "and this is my friend.
Father said he'd meet this train."
"His son, are you? Oh, well, you may depend upon it, he's not far away
if he said he'd meet you. But he didn't come in to-day. I know that
for a cert. You'd better come over to the hotel and let me fix you up
for the night. My name's Archer--Joe Archer. I've got a store here
and manage your father's business at this end."
The kind-hearted storekeeper handed the boys over to the care of the
hotel-keeper's wife, who soon set a meal of boiled goat and potatoes
before them. Their intense disappointment at not meeting Mr. Stobart
had not lessened their appetites, and they assured one another that
they would see him in a few days, probably on the very next morning.
After their tea they went straight to their room, a little box of a
place with a window looking out over a yard where a horse was standing
perfectly still and breathing heavily, fast asleep. The friends talked
for a time and then blew out the candle.
Scarcely had they done so, when they heard a tapping on the window.
They took no notice. It came again. Tap--tap--tap. It could not
possibly have been an accident.
"What's that, Sax?" whispered Vaughan.
"Blest if I know," answered his companion from the other bed. "Shall I
light the candle again?"
"Let's wait a bit and see," suggested Boof.
The taps came again, this time louder, and were followed by a cough.
Sax struck a match. His hand shook so much that he could hardly light
the candle, but whether it was from fear or from excitement cannot be
told. The light flared up, went down again, and then burned bright and
steady.
Suddenly a man's head and shoulders appeared at the window. It was a
nigger. For a moment both lads stared at the apparition with startled
eyes. But the man did not do anything. He was just waiting till their
surprise died down. His face was not at all as forbidding as the one
they had seen at Coward Springs. He was wearing an old felt hat and a
dirty shirt, and though he had hair all over his face, there was
something about him which proclaimed him to be a young man.
After a few moments of absolute stillness and silence, they saw the
hair on his face move, and a row of beautiful white teeth showed in a
most engaging smile. Then came the words: "Which one Stobart?"
The lads had never heard an aboriginal speak before. The sound was
guttural, but there was no mistaking the words: "Which one Stobart?"
Sax started forward and the black seemed to scrutinize his features
intently. "You Stobart?" he asked.
"Yes. My name's Stobart," answered Sax. "What d'you want?"
The black fellow smiled again, groped in his shirt, and pulled out a
dirty piece of folded paper. He held it in his hand and again looked
at the lad as if to make quite sure he was not being deceived.
"Boss Stobart, him say, you walk longa Oodnadatta. You find um my son.
You give 'im paper yabber. Him good fella, Boss Stobart, so I go. My
name Yarloo."
The words came slowly, as if the man were repeating something he had
said over and over in his mind. But the words were quite distinct.
He handed the "paper yabber" to Sax, and disappeared. The two friends
came close together round the candle and looked at the paper which had
come to them from the unknown by such a strange hand. For a few
moments Sax was too excited to open it. What was the news it
contained? Good or bad? It was not addressed, or, if it ever had
been, the handling to which it had been subjected had worn any writing
completely off the outside.
At last the lad opened it. It was a sheet torn from a common note-book
ruled with lines and columns for figures, the sort of thing on which a
rough man would keep his rough accounts. It contained writing in
pencil by a hand which Sax at once recognized as his father's; but it
was uneven as if it had been written in the dark. The words were:
"In difficulties. Musgrave Ranges. Tell
Oodnadatta trooper, but _no one else_." (These last three
words were underlined several times.) "He'll
understand. Boy quite reliable. Don't worry.
Get a job somewhere. "STOBART."
The friends read it to themselves, and then Sax read it out loud.
"'In difficulties'," said Vaughan. "What does that mean?"
"Blest if I know. With the cattle, I expect. I wonder where the
Musgrave Ranges are."
"But why does he say 'tell the trooper and no one else'?" asked Vaughan
again. "Yet he wouldn't say 'don't worry' if anything was up, would
he?"
"Oh, nothing's really up," said Sax with conviction. "He means he's a
bit late, that's all. P'raps the trooper's expecting him or something.
Of course he wouldn't want anybody else to know. You see, he's got a
name here," said the lad proudly. "They call him Boss Stobart. Even
the nigger did that."
"But he'll be a long time, Sax. He won't be in for a week or so at any
rate, or else he wouldn't tell us to get a job, would he?"
The boys discussed the news from every possible point of view, and
finally arrived at the conclusion that the famous drover had been
forced out of the route he had intended to travel by difficulties with
feed and water, and that he might be very late arriving at his
destination. That he would finally arrive, they never doubted for a
moment. With this assurance, they once more blew out the light, and it
was not long before they were both fast asleep.
If they could have known the terrible danger which Drover Stobart was
in at that very time, it is certain that sleep would have been
impossible to them. He was as near death, a hideous death, as any man
can possibly be who lives to tell the tale.