Stealthy Foes
Next morning, when the horses came in, two were missing. "Which way
them two horses sit down?" Mick asked one of the boys. "What for you
no bring um in?"
"Him dead," was the answer.
"Dead!" exclaimed the drover. "How dead?"
"Him speared," explained Yarloo.
"Which way? You show um me." The drover saddled his horse and went
away with Yarloo, while the two white boys gave the other stockmen
their breakfast, wondering what had taken Mick off in such a hurry.
Mick Darby found the two dead horses. By their tracks they had
evidently strayed away from the others, and by other tracks it was
clear that blacks had crept upon them in the dim light of dawn and had
speared them, for the bodies were still warm. Mick always carried a
bottle of strychnine about with him, and at every camp he poisoned
little bits of meat and left them behind to kill the dingoes which
abound in cattle country. He looked at the two horses--fine, stanch
animals, both of them--and his heart became hot with anger. He put his
hand to his belt and fingered the poison pouch. It was a great
temptation. If the blacks had speared the horses for food, here was a
chance for revenge. If he poisoned the carcass and killed the blacks,
would it not be a terrible warning to the others?
But it was only for a second that the ghastly thought attracted him.
He was a true white man and would not stoop to any hidden revenge. It
is a white man's way to face his enemy in the open and under the sun,
not to kill him by putting strychnine in his food. So Mick turned away
and rode back to camp, and did not tell the boys what danger they were
in.
Next day smoke signals were all around them and very close. It gave
the boys a feeling that keen black eyes were peering at them from every
bit of cover, and that lithe forms were slinking noiselessly from tree
to tree, never turning a stone or breaking a twig to disturb the
silence of the desert.
That evening they unpacked and unsaddled the horses early, and tied
them up till after tea. Then Mick rode away with them himself, hobbled
them on an open patch of dry bush, and prepared to watch throughout the
night. He knew the native method of attack: a little, then a little
more. If two horses had been killed last night, three or four might be
speared this night. To lose their horses would leave the party at the
mercy, not only of the blacks, but also of a more terrible enemy
still--thirst. So the brave bushman was going to take no risks.
The spot he had chosen was a little plain covered with dry buck-bush
and surrounded on all sides with mulga scrub. There was plenty of feed
to keep the horses quiet all night, but Mick was obliged to ride round
them again and again and turn them back from the scrub. He was
perfectly sure that wild natives were in ambush behind the trees, and
that the first animal who wandered within range of a spear-cast would
become a victim. The moon was half-full in a cloudless sky, and the
drover had no difficulty in seeing, but, after an hour or two, he had
the greatest difficulty in the world to keep awake. The night was warm
and still and drowsy, and the day had been one of constant tension, and
as the drover sat with cocked rifle and with the horse's bridle looped
over his arm, he must have nodded once or twice through sheer weariness.
Suddenly he heard a stone move on another stone. He was fully awake
and alert instantly. The horses were still in the middle of the plain,
quietly feeding, but one or two of them were looking at an old tree
stump in the curious meditative way which resting animals have of
looking at things which are of no particular interest.
All at once Mick Darby sprang to his feet. He had never seen that tree
stump before. For several hours he had looked at that little plain in
the moonlight, and every bush was pictured on his memory. He was
absolutely sure that old tree had not been there when he started to nod
with weariness. Then, how had it come? Trees do not grow from the
ground, become old, and die and lose most of their branches in less
than an hour of a summer's night.
Mick put his cocked rifle to his shoulder, trained the sights on the
tree stump, and walked slowly towards it. The thing was about a
hundred and fifty yards away when he started. He had covered a third
of the distance when the tree suddenly disappeared. Remarkable as it
may appear, it is a fact. One moment he saw the thick twisted trunk of
a mulga tree with a few broken branches, standing out on an otherwise
treeless plain; the next it had gone completely. But, instead of the
tree, three wriggling black forms glided between the bushes with the
stealth of snakes, making for their lives towards the scrub. They were
three warragul blacks, who had crept out into the plain and had used
this wonderful but quite common method of concealment.
Mick fired into the air to frighten them and any of their companions
who might be lurking near. When the report had died away, the darkness
under the trees became full of little sounds like the patter of rain on
leaves, or like sheep passing over soft sand; a scarcely perceptible
sound, yet one which told of black savages creeping for safety into the
depths of the scrub.
The shot woke the two boys. They turned to one another for an
explanation and saw that Mick had not returned. His swag still lay
where it had been tossed off the horse. They got up from their
blankets and began fastening their boots. They saw Yarloo sitting up
on the other side of the fire and called him to them. Yarloo always
camped away from the other black boys, for he was a member of a
different tribe.
"What was that shot, Yarloo?" asked Sax.
"Me can't know um," replied the boy. "Boss, him no come back. P'raps
him bin shoot, eh?"
"Which way did he go?" asked Sax again. "It sounded quite close."
"Me find um all right."
"I vote we go too," said Vaughan.
Yarloo looked at him for a moment in hesitation; then he pointed to the
other blacks and said: "No two fella white man go. No leave um camp
quite 'lone. See?"
"He's right, Boof," said Sax. "You go with Yarloo. I'll stay," and as
his friend and the black boy disappeared in the darkness, he heaped
wood on the fire and blew it into a blaze.
Yarloo tracked Mick Darby with absolute certainty and found him within
half a mile of the camp. The drover was surprised to see the white
boy, and at once made use of Yarloo to put the horses together in a
bunch and hold them for a time. He told Vaughan what had happened, for
it was no good trying to keep the secret any longer. "We lost two
horses last night," he said. "I told you they'd cleared out. But it
wasn't that. The niggers had speared them."
"Then that's what the smoke signals meant?" asked Vaughan.
"Yes. I wasn't sure at first whether it was hunger or devilment, so I
watched. They tried to get in amongst the horses again to-night."
"Did you hit anyone?" asked Vaughan.
"No. I didn't try. I fired into the air to scare them."
By this time Yarloo had walked round the horses, turning them towards
the middle of the plain, and was squatting down on his haunches,
watching.
"That's a real good sort of a nigger," said Mick. "He's got more sense
than most of them. Seems to have taken to you boys. I wonder why."
"He used to work for Sax's father," explained Vaughan. "I thought you
knew."
"I see. That explains it. Hi! Yarloo!" he called, and when the boy
came up: "You go back longa camp. Watch till piccaninny daylight. No
shut um eye, mind."
Yarloo grinned his understanding of the order and disappeared. Then
the seasoned bushman and the new-chum white boy kept watch, turn and
turn about till dawn. At least, that was the arrangement, but Vaughan
found that the drover fell so soundly asleep, and seemed to be so very
tired, that he did not wake him till the morning star was well above
the trees and had turned from fierce red to clear pale silver in a sky
which was rapidly becoming lighter.