The Outpost of Death
One day Stobart set out in a new direction. His only articles of dress
were a pair of trousers, so ragged and torn that they did not reach
below his knees, and an old felt hat. His shirt had been torn up into
strips to bandage his bleeding feet before they had become accustomed
to walking without boots. He carried two spears, a woomera, and a
boomerang, while an appliance for making fire hung at his belt.
He walked till it was nearly dark that day, then made a fire near a
rock-hole, cooked and ate a lizard, and went to sleep. When he awoke
the sun had not yet risen. The surrounding mountains were clearly
outlined against the pale early morning sky, and when the white man had
stooped to drink and had made up the fire, he sat down and looked idly
around him, waiting for it to be light enough for him to hunt for his
breakfast.
It was a strange position for a white man to be in, and if Stobart had
not had a stout heart he would have given way to despair, and either
"gone bush" entirely, as some white men have done, and become a full
member of the warragul tribe, or he would have committed suicide. But
Boss Stobart did not give up hope. The unaccustomed food was beginning
to tell upon his superb health and strength, and as he sat by the
little flame which seemed to get fainter and fainter as daylight
increased, he knew that he could not afford to put off his bid for
freedom much longer.
All at once his listless gaze was arrested. He leaned forward eagerly
and stared at one of the rocky peaks. From where he was sitting, its
outline against the light eastern sky looked exactly like the nose of a
man lying down. It was so perfectly clear that Stobart laughed. But
he was not laughing at its striking resemblance to a man's nose;
certain words of the old Irishman who had been murdered by the blacks
came to him. Pat Dorrity had talked in his sleep a great deal the
first night after the drover had saved him from perishing. The man was
feverish, and the sentences had been jumbled up and meaningless at the
time, but Stobart's memory now recalled certain words which he had
scarcely noticed at the time.
"Man's nose. Man's nose," the old fellow had muttered. "Man's nose
seen looking east. Waterhole on other side. Look out! Look out!"
Then he had become very excited, and such words as blacks and spears
and gold and skulls had been mixed up in hopeless confusion.
The peak which Stobart was now looking at was certainly exactly like a
man's nose, and he was also looking east. One direction was as good as
another to him that morning, and, as his curiosity was aroused, he
forgot about his breakfast and began to climb the hill-side towards the
rocky top. Before he was half-way up the sun shone over the rim of the
mountains, and he was very hot and thirsty when he finally reached the
mass of rock on the summit. He looked down on the other side for the
expected water-hole, but the valley was covered with dense scrub, and
he saw nothing to give him hope of a drink. However, the ranges were
so well watered that he started at once to go down the hill, hoping to
find a spring or rock-hole somewhere in the valley.
He was disappointed for some time. The trees thinned as he reached the
bottom of the hill and gave place to a broad stretch of sand. This
surface showed no sign of water whatever, which was strange, for there
had been several storms in the hills since Stobart had been taken
prisoner, and the steep rocky slopes of the valley would certainly run
off most of the rain which fell upon them. The drover had come across
instances of the same thing in the Macdonnel Ranges, away to the north,
and he knew that the rain soaked in at the extreme edges of the valley
and ran away in a stream many feet below the surface, and never
disturbed the sand on top. There is usually a water-hole at the head
of such a valley as this, and Stobart was on his way up to look for it,
when he received such a shock that he dropped his weapons and stood
staring at the sand, his mouth and eyes wide open with amazement. He
did not believe his sight. He rubbed his hand over his eyes and looked
away, but when his gaze came back again, there was the same sign in the
sand.
The tracks of a shod horse!
It was impossible to tell how old the marks were. There were only
three or four of them, and they ran up a little strip of clay which the
wind had blown clear of sand. They had evidently been made when the
clay was soft during rain, and the imprints had been baked hard by the
sun and would remain clear for a very long time.
Stobart gazed with utter astonishment at those few prints of a shod
horse. They meant one thing, one thing supremely, a white man--a gold
prospector most likely, one of the dauntless pioneers who had crossed
the desert and had not returned.
The tracks led up the valley. Stobart picked up his weapons and
hurried on. Soon he came to a natural embankment of sand which
stretched across from one rocky slope to another. He climbed it. The
other side was clear of timber. A glint of water caught his eye. The
sun had just penetrated the cool shade of that silent place and was
striking keen light from a water-hole at the foot of a boulder-strewn
knoll right in the middle of the valley.
The white man's thirst was now so great that he was about to start
running down to the water which lay so invitingly some twenty yards
away, when something white caught his eye.
It looked like the Southern Cross worked out in perfectly white stones
on the surface of the sand near the water-hole. Stobart did not run.
An uncanny feeling came over him. Those hoof-marks, and now this
design--surely the thing must be the work of man.
Suddenly he stumbled. His bare feet caught in something and he
tripped. He looked down at his toe. It was cut and bleeding slightly.
He went back to find the thing which had tripped him.
It was the blade of a shovel!
One edge was sticking up. With shaking hands Stobart pulled it out of
the sand. It came away easily, for the handle was burnt. He groped
about near it and uncovered, one after another, a gold-washing dish, a
pick-head, a couple of wedges, and a hammer. The sand had drifted over
them and made a mound. Then he laid bare a truly gruesome
sight--charred embers of wood and half-burnt human bones.
Stobart did not disturb the sand any more. He knew now why the gold
prospectors, who had penetrated into the Musgrave fastnesses in search
of the wealth which was reputed to be there, had never returned. Would
_he_ ever return, he wondered. The place was haunted by the spirits of
the murdered dead, and was guarded by black devils in human form. Even
now one of them might be watching him, waiting an opportunity of adding
his bones to the collection which the sand had covered up.
He rose to his feet. He was thirsty, and the sight he had just seen
made him want to soak his whole body in the cool clean water of the
pool. He laughed harshly. What were all these fancies which were
coming into his head? He would not give way to them. This life in a
blacks' camp was upsetting his nerves. What were a few dead men after
all? He had seen plenty of them. _He_ was alive and would soon escape
from this outpost of death. He laughed again. The rocky walls sent
back an echo of his laugh. It sounded like an evil spirit mocking him.
He walked a few paces, till he was near those white things which had
been laid out so carefully in the design of the Southern Cross. He
looked at them. He looked again, astonished beyond measure. Yes! No!
Yes, they were!
They were human skulls--white men's skulls!
Stobart staggered away. He lay down on the edge of the water. He
needed its cool touch to save him from madness. He drank deep, deep
satisfying draughts. He bathed his head and face and plunged his arms
in it, splashing the life-giving drops over his naked chest. The sense
of horror gradually began to leave him, and he realized that he had
reached the object of his search. He had found the Musgrave gold-mine.
From where he lay he looked up at the boulder-strewn knoll behind the
water-hole. Even at the distance of several yards he could see that
every boulder was more richly studded with the precious metal than any
he had ever seen. It did not surprise him. The events of the last
hour had robbed him of the power to be surprised. He just looked up at
all that wealth and knew it was his--his, if only he could take it away.
He turned his head and looked at the skulls. Each bleached remains of
what had once been the head of a courageous man was looking at him out
of empty eye-sockets. The jaws had been propped open and seemed to be
laughing with ghastly dead mirth into the face of the living man.
Stobart's imagination began to play tricks with him, for when he turned
his eyes away, the glances of the skulls seemed to turn also.
He plunged his head once more into water and leaned over till his chest
and arms were covered. His hands groped about in the cool sand, and
when he pulled them out again they were full of wet sand. The sun's
rays caught it and struck a thousand flashes from the grains. They
looked unusually yellow and bright. Stobart turned the sand over and
let it run between his fingers. It was like grains of sunlight. He
thought that his overwrought nerves were deceiving him, and picked up
another handful. It behaved exactly in the same way. It glinted and
flashed yellow in a way that no sand could ever do. All at once it
dawned upon him. This was no trick of sunlight on wet sand. This was
no make-believe of tired nerves.
The sand of that water-hole was gold!
The white man stood up. He had no tools with which to work at the
boulders for specimens to take away with him when he escaped. But here
was gold, some of which could easily be hidden on his person to prove,
to anybody who might doubt his story, that he alone of all men had
solved the mystery of the Musgraves and had returned again to the
haunts of men of his own colour. He stooped to gather another handful,
and as he did so something whirled through the air and fell in the
water in front of him. He jumped back quickly. The water was clear,
for the grains of golden sand had settled and left no mud.
It was an old horseshoe! Surely the place was bewitched. He looked
round, wondering what next would happen. Suddenly another horseshoe
came from a clump of low bushes nearly a hundred yards up the gully.
Stobart saw it coming and dodged it. It fell at his feet and he picked
it up. He was a good tracker and knew it at once. That shoe had made
one of the tracks which he had seen in the clay. There was no doubt
about it.
The sense of a supernatural foe, which was making a coward of the brave
white man, left him all at once. Evil spirits do not play with old
rusty metal. A human arm must have thrown that horseshoe. He had seen
the second one leave the bushes where the man was in ambush. Now was
the time for action. Grasping a boomerang he ran at full speed up the
valley. He reached the bushes. Nobody was there. But, leading to and
from the hiding-place, were the recent tracks of a man's bare feet.
Stobart recognized them at once. The warragul doctor had thrown those
horseshoes.