In the Musgrave Ranges

CHAPTER XI

Thirst

Sax and Vaughan were very thirsty. For several days they had been compelled to drink sparingly, and for the last two they had taken only enough liquid to keep them just alive. They were now entirely without drink of any kind save for that little drop of tea in a dirty and battered quart-pot, half buried in the sand. Is it any wonder that their longing eyes and thoughts were almost constantly fixed on the pot, which they had promised not to touch till sunrise next day.

While Yarloo had been with them, the white boys had kept up a good appearance of courage, and had pretended that they were not so thirsty as they really were, for no man likes to give in before a member of an inferior race; but when Yarloo went away it became harder and harder for them to keep up their pluck. For thirst is the most terrible of all forms of torture. The pain comes on slowly but surely, and increases till it seems impossible that the human body can stand any more. Yet the body is such a marvellous thing that it does stand even the terrible pain of thirst, till it gets beyond endurance and the man goes mad. The thirst which kills men in the desert is not the same as being thirsty. Down-country, it is quite pleasant to be thirsty, for it makes a drink taste so nice; but desert thirst—or "perishing", as it is called—is caused by the drying up of the moisture of the body till the organs inside actually cease to work, and the blood clogs in the arteries because it is not liquid enough.

It was such terrible thirst that Sax and Vaughan were experiencing. In appearance, Sax was of slighter build than his thick-set friend, Boof, but the drover's son had inherited from his father a natural toughness and an ability to endure privation and hardship which Vaughan, although he was quite as plucky, did not possess. It happened, therefore, that though Sax was just able to keep control of himself throughout the terrible night which followed Yarloo's departure, Vaughan lost consciousness and became delirious about half an hour before sunset.

The first signs which he gave that he was not in his right senses were when he began to undress. Sax was feeling so desperately ill himself that he did not pay much attention to what his friend was doing till he saw him throw his shirt outside, and then start to pull off his trousers. The poor lad's tongue was swollen in his mouth and was starting to stick out from between his teeth. He got his trousers off, and began fumbling at his boots, but was so weak that he couldn't untie the knots. His eyes had a peculiar look in them, something like those of a man who walks in his sleep, and when his friend spoke to him he took absolutely no notice at all.

Both lads had been lying stretched out on the sand all the afternoon, too exhausted to do anything, but, seeing his companion behaving in such a strange way, Sax tried to sit up. But he could not do it at first. As soon as he lifted himself, sharp pains stabbed him in the back and stomach, and his head throbbed so violently that he nearly fainted. He tried again and again, very gradually, till he was able to sit up at last. Vaughan had managed to drag one boot off by this time, and was feverishly busy with the other; the rest of his body was naked. Sax called out again, but the effort at sitting up had so much exhausted the little strength which remained, that his voice was so weak he hardly heard it himself. Stobart didn't understand the serious state his friend was in, but he knew that something must be done at once, and as there was nobody to do it but himself, he prepared for a supreme effort.

After several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to stand up, and when the dizziness in his head had died down a little, he tottered over towards Vaughan. He touched him on the arm. Vaughan took no notice, but wrenched at the second boot, pulling it off at last, and scrambling to his feet like a drunken man. He seemed to have far more strength than Sax had, but when he started to stagger out from under the bough-shelter, his friend suddenly remembered a yarn which Mick had told them one night, about a perishing man who pulled off all his clothes and walked away into the scrub to die a most terrible death. Sax was afraid that his companion was going to do the same thing, and that he wouldn't have the strength to prevent him.

Sax had to put his feet down very carefully or he would have fallen through sheer weakness, but he caught hold of Vaughan and clung to him. This forced the delirious lad to look at his companion, but there was no spark of intelligence in his eyes; he did not recognize who it was; he only felt something holding him back from what he had determined to do. With extraordinary strength, considering his condition, he shook himself free, and started to walk away. Sax fell, but as he did so he stretched out his hands. They touched the other's bare legs. Sax clutched the legs and hung on with all his power, and Vaughan tripped and came down with a crash.

The sun sank below the horizon and left two perishing white boys panting in the sand in the fading light.

Sax remembered nothing more for several hours. When he came to himself again he was alone. His fall had rendered him unconscious for a moment, and this state had been immediately followed by a deep sleep. The night was cool, and though his thirst was still raging, it did not seem so bad as it had done under the blazing sun; his sleep also had refreshed him. On Central Australian nights it is never too dark to see the objects around, for the light of the stars comes through the clear dry air of the desert more brilliantly than it does in any other part of the world. Consequently it needed only a hurried glance to tell Sax that Vaughan was not in the camp. His clothes were still lying where he had thrown them, and the boy soon found the tracks of bare feet leading away from the camp into the scrub.

Vaughan had gone away to die.

Sax listened. The absolute stillness of death was around him on all sides. Not a leaf moved on any of the scraggy mulgas standing near. Even the star in the deep, deep blue of the night sky seemed to stare down at him with unblinking eyes. What did they care for one white boy dying in delirium in the desert, and another white boy who had to keep tight hold of his mind to save it from slipping out of his control, and who would also die of thirst, if not to-day, then surely to-morrow? There is nothing so unpitying, so absolutely unconcerned, as the desert is to a perishing man.

Sax was a boy of unusual courage. He was the son of a pioneer, a member of that race of men who have opened up the centre of the Australian continent, and have laid the foundations of the future Australian nation. Though he had been reared in the comfort of cities, the cattle-plains, the scrub, and the desert were his true home, and he now showed the stuff he was made of by determining to follow after his friend. He did not stop to wonder what he would do when he found him; he only knew that he could not bear to leave him out there to die without making an effort to save him.

Suddenly he remembered the quart-pot and its precious contents. He had made up his mind to find Vaughan before he remembered the tea, and now this sudden glad thought seemed to confirm his decision, and filled him with hope. He would have something to give to the perishing lad when he found him. Sax could hardly walk. The whole middle part of his body felt as if it was dried up, and when he moved, such terrible pains shot through him that he could hardly keep from crying out; but he set his teeth and went over to the quart-pot and dug it out.

Only those who have actually been in the same circumstances as Sax was that night can have any idea of the temptation it was for him to drink some of that tea. The very sound of it swishing about inside the smoke-blackened pot nearly drove him mad with thirst. He dared not open the lid and look in, for, after all, he was so frantically thirsty that the sight of the liquid might make him forget everything but his own desire for it. Never again in his life was he to be called upon to exercise such supreme self-control as he was that night.

Clutching the precious quart-pot to his breast, he staggered off into the night, very slowly because of his weakness, and very slowly also because it was hard for him to read the tracks in the dim light.

Less than half an hour after Sax left the camp to search for his dying friend, a black form stole silently through the scrub and paused within sight of the bough-shelter. If anybody had been lying there awake, he would not have known how near a fellow human being was to him, for the native was absolutely motionless, even to the eyelids. The only part of hint which moved was the chest, which was so thickly covered with black hair that its slow rising and falling could not possibly have attracted attention at night. Even if any man who might have been in the shelter had turned and looked straight at the black-fellow, he would not have distinguished him from the trees, for, with that wonderful power of imitation known only to the scrub natives of Australia, the man was standing in such a way that he looked very much like an old dead mulga stump.

But nobody was in the bough-shelter, and when the man had made quite sure of this, he stepped out from his hiding. He was quite naked, and carried a couple of long spears with stone heads, a woomera (spear-thrower), a spiked boomerang, and a wooden shield. His long hair was plastered up into a bunch at the back, and was kept in place by rings of rope made of his mother's hair. He stood for a moment and looked intently at the shelter, then he stooped and examined the marks in the sand, following them this way and that till he knew as much about the tragedy as if he had actually watched it happen. He was particularly interested in Yarloo's tracks, and finally stuck a spear into the middle of one of them and laid his other weapons beside it.

Having rid himself of all encumbrances, he set out on the tracks of the two white boys. But what a difference between his methods and theirs! Instead of the hesitating scrutiny of each footprint which Sax had been obliged to make, the native walked quickly with his eyes several yards ahead and did not pause once, though the star-light was dim and treacherous.

He did not have far to go. The burst of strength which delirium had given to Vaughan had not lasted for more than three-quarters of a mile, and he had then fallen at the foot of a dead mulga. Sax had come up on him there, a pitiful object whom the desert was claiming as its own, his naked body showing up plainly in the dark. He had forced the tea, all of it, upon the unconscious lad, with no perceptible result, for most of it had been spilt because Vaughan's tongue was too swollen to allow any but a few drops to go down his throat.

It was absolutely certain that, before another sunset, two corpses would have been lying in the desert scrub if the wild black had not found the boys when he did. Sax was still conscious, but was too far gone to take any interest even in such an unusual sight as the sudden appearance of a strange naked black-fellow. Death was claiming him, anyhow; it did not matter much to him whether it came by a spear-thrust or by the more lingering method of thirst.

The savage stooped down and looked intently into the face of first one boy and then the other. He happened to look at Vaughan first and grunted his disapproval, but a close scrutiny of Sax's features seemed to yield him great satisfaction, for he drew himself up straight, and, with a broad grin of delight, pronounced a word which caught the boy's dulling ear:

"Bor—s Stoo—bar," he said, in long-drawn tones. "Bor—s Stoo—bar."

A familiar sound will penetrate to an intelligence which has become too dull to perceive through sight or touch, and Sax heard this word and looked up, thinking that his imagination must be playing him a trick. The man was encouraged to try again, this time adding to the name of the drover the single word "Musgrave ". It was a word he had evidently used before, for it was pronounced quite clearly.

"Bor—s Stoo—bar.... Mus—grave."

The strange coupling of his father's name with that of the mysterious range of mountains roused sufficient interest in Sax to make him wish to reply. He tried to speak, but couldn't. His tongue was too swollen and his throat too dry. The native watched him, and the boy felt that the man was friendly, for he continued to stretch out his black arm towards the distant ranges. Finding that he could not make any sound, Sax waited till the man again said the words, "Bor—s Stoo—bar," and then he pointed to himself several times and nodded, and then waved his hand to the Musgraves. The native grinned his understanding and again looked very closely into the white boy's face. Sax did not know if he was like his father or not, but felt that a great deal depended on whether the black stranger decided that he was indeed the son of the famous Boss Stobart.

The man was quite satisfied at last. He first of all held his left hand close to Sax's face; it had been terribly mutilated, and the two middle fingers were missing. The native evidently wished to impress that crippled hand on the boy's memory, for he put it on his hairy chest and then in front of Sax's face again and again. He did not say anything, for his knowledge of English was apparently limited to the name of the drover and the name of the mountain range. In spite of his exhausted condition, Sax could not help remembering that black left hand, and he had reason to recall it in future days under the most exciting circumstances. Then the man lifted Vaughan's limp body on his shoulders and walked away back to the shelter. Stobart was not left alone for long, before he also was carried back to camp.

By this time the sun was just showing over the eastern rim of the land, and the few trees were casting long shadows on the sand. The native gathered up Vaughan's clothes, but did not know how to put them on the lad; so he covered him over with them. He had been careful not to leave the quart-pot behind, and as soon as the boys were safely under the shelter again, the man took the quart-pot and started off.

He was evidently going for water. In a few minutes, however, he came running back to camp at top speed. He was very excited and only stayed long enough to put the quart-pot down on the ground, before he grabbed his weapons and disappeared into the scrub in the opposite direction, running as hard as he could, yet making no more noise than a cat.

He had not returned the quart-pot exactly as he had found it. When he took it away, it was empty, but now it contained a sprig of sharply-pointed leaves.

Yarloo came on the scene almost as soon as the other black was out of sight, and was probably the cause of the first man's sudden disappearance, Yarloo was carrying a small bunch of parakelia leaves. The first things he noticed were the new tracks, and he stopped dead. From where he stood, he could not see into the bough-shelter, and so he waited for a couple of minutes to see if the man who had made the tracks was anywhere about. There was absolute silence; the only things which moved were the shadows, which got shorter very very slowly as the sun rose. With minute care Yarloo examined the marks of the stranger. At first he was upset to find from the tracks that the man was a wild Musgrave black, but as soon as he came to the place where the warragul had set up his spear, he smiled and felt no more anxiety, for it is a sign of perfect goodwill towards a man to dig a spear in his track. (To find a spear or a boomerang on your track means that the owner of them likes you so well that he gives you his weapons, because there is no need for him to carry them when he meets you.)

As soon as Yarloo knew that the stranger native was friendly, he went over to the shelter. The two white boys were lying on their backs in the sand, one of them unconscious and gasping, with his tongue swollen so much that it was too big for his mouth; the other gasping also, but still in possession of his senses. Sax's eyes opened, and a glimmer of intelligence showed in them, but he couldn't speak, and was too weak to move. Yarloo looked down at them, but particularly at Sax, the son of his master. Then his glance wandered to the quart-pot, and suddenly everything else was forgotten.

No prospector who has toiled for years without any luck, and then comes upon a nugget of gold quite unexpectedly, could have been more glad than Yarloo was at sight of that little sprig of leaves. He took it up and looked at it with huge satisfaction. The stem was woody and each leaf was grey, narrow, and not more than half an inch long. The peculiarity about them was, however, that each little leaf ended in a spike. The black-fellow felt the spikes and grinned to feel the pricks of pain, for the leaves had only recently been pulled from the tree. Then he dropped his handful of parakelia and grabbed the quart-pot and started to run, tracking the other native to find the tree from which that sprig of leaves had been picked.

On the discovery of that tree rested the salvation of the white boys' lives. It was the famous needle-bush.

CHAPTER XII

The Rescue

Yarloo followed the Musgrave native's tracks for about half a mile in a nearly south direction, and then came upon a stony plain with a few large bushes growing at one end of it. He gave a yell of delight. They were needle-bushes. The party was saved. Here was water, stored by nature right in the middle of an arid desert.

The trees were all about five or six feet high, though some were much bushier than others. Yarloo chose one which was very wide-spreading, and began piling dry bark and twigs and anything which would burn quickly and easily, right in the middle of the tree, all among the branches. He went on till the needle-bush was carrying as big a load as it possibly could.

Then he made fire. He pulled two pieces of wood out of his hair; one was the size of a man's palm, a flat piece of soft bean-wood with a little hollow in the middle of it; the other was a stick about as thick as a pencil but nearly twice as long, of hard mulga wood. He squatted down and set the soft piece on the ground and held it in place with his toes, and teased out a few pieces of very dry bark till they were like tinder, and put it near the hollow. Then he took the long piece of mulga and twirled it with his two hands in the hollow. He did this faster than any white man could possibly twirl it, and in a couple of minutes a coil of smoke came up from the pile of bark. Yarloo blew this into a flame and made a little fire. When it was burning well, he threw the blazing sticks into the needle-bush. There was a crackling sound for a moment or two and then a roar, as the flames licked up the dry fuel, till in a very short time the needle-bush was a blazing bonfire.

The black-fellow waited till the flames had died down, and then started to dig around the roots a few feet away from the tree. He was so skilful at this that he soon exposed the main roots. Then he chopped off one or two of them and set the pieces upright in the quart-pot. A thin dark liquid began to drain out of the roots and collect in the pot till it was half-full. Yarloo took a drink and chopped up some more roots, and when the quart-pot was full he returned to camp.

It needed great care and patience to minister to the perishing white boys, and not many natives would have done what Yarloo did for Sax and Vaughan during that blazing day. He made trip after trip to the stony plain where the needle-bushes were growing, and, with the water obtained in this way, he gradually revived his two friends. Sax was his first care, and after he had softened the boy's tongue so that drops of liquid could trickle down his throat, the drover's son quickly revived sufficiently to help Yarloo with the more serious case of Vaughan. The powers of recovery which a healthy lad possesses are wonderful, and before nightfall both lads were sitting up under the shelter, with their thirst quite quenched, and actually feeling hungry.

Yarloo went away for the last time to get another quart-pot of water from the needle-bushes. To do this, he had to fire another tree. It was about half an hour after sunset and nearly dark, and the bonfire lit up the plain and could be seen for miles.

Mick Darby saw it as he rode along at the end of a very tiring day. When he had reached Sidcotinga Station, late the evening before, the yards had been full of working horses ready to set out on a big cattle-muster the next morning. He could not have struck a more favourable time. Before he went to bed that night, he and the manager drafted off a plant of six good horses, stocked a set of pack-gear with cooked tucker, and filled two big canteens with water all ready for an early start the following day. Mick could easily have slept late the next morning, but when he woke up, as he always did, at the rising of the morning star, he did not turn over and go to sleep again, but roused himself, had a drink of tea and a chunk of bread and meat, and started out back on his tracks, accompanied by a station black-boy whom the Sidcotinga manager had lent him. The horses were fresh; they had just come in from a six months' spell and would be turned out again directly they returned. So Mick did not hesitate to ride hard. He rode to such good purpose that he did not expect to pull up till he had reached the camp where he had left the boys, and was riding along, with seven miles still to go, when he saw the blazing needle-bush.

He loosened his revolver and rode over at once to investigate. It was fortunate that he did so, for he would have reached the old camp and found it, not only deserted, but also wrecked, with torn gear and evidences of wanton destruction all over the place. He would naturally have thought that his former companions had either been killed or carried off, and as the sandstorm had covered up all tracks, he would not have known which way to follow them.

Yarloo was squatting down, watching the roots drain the precious liquid into the quart-pot, when he heard the sound of hobble-rings striking one another as they hung from the neck of a horse. Then a hoof struck a stone. Such sounds in the desert meant one thing and one thing only, white men. Yarloo stood up and gave the call: "Ca—a—a—w—ay!" (not coo-ee, as is usually supposed).

It was answered by a white man's voice out of the gathering darkness: "Hul—lo—uh!"

In a few minutes Mick Darby rode up. He saw Yarloo, and the smouldering needle-bush, and knew that something was wrong.

"What name?" he asked.

"White boy close up finish," replied Yarloo, still taking care of the quart-pot of dark water.

"Close up finish?" echoed Mick in surprise. "What name you no sit down longa that camp same as me yabber (as I told you)?"

Yarloo tried to explain, but his vocabulary of white man's words was too small. He broke off at last and said: "White boy, they yabber (they'll tell you)."

"But white boy close up finish," objected the drover.

"No finish now," grinned Yarloo, pointing to the other burnt needle-bushes near. "No finish now. Him good fella now, quite."

This relieved Mick's mind greatly, and he set off at once, guided by Yarloo, to the bough-shelter where Sax and Vaughan were sitting. It was a very happy reunion. The boys were still weak, but the thirst, which would have killed them if the stranger black-fellow had not put that sprig of needle-bush in the quart-pot, was quite gone. They were very hungry. A fire was soon lit, and neither of the lads had ever enjoyed a meal so much as they did that one. The food was plain, though much better than what they had been having for the past weeks. The bread had been made with yeast, which makes it far nicer than baking-powder damper, and the Sidcotinga cook had included a few currant buns with the tucker. The story of their adventures was told at length and gone over more than once, for each boy supplied what the other did not remember, and there had been many hours during which Vaughan's memory had recorded nothing.

One thing, however, remained a secret. Only Sax knew about it, and he obeyed his father's injunction not to tell anybody of his whereabouts. He did not tell Mick that the strange nigger who had saved their lives had mentioned the name Boss Stobart.

Yarloo came in for his share of praise, and richly did he deserve it. The black-boy sat down with the white men after tea and listened to what was said without making any remarks, and with a stolid expression. But when, just before they all turned in for the night, Mick handed him a new pipe, a box of matches, and—greatest luxury of all—a tin of cut-up tobacco, he beamed all over his honest black face and grunted his supreme satisfaction with the gift. He did not think that he had done anything heroic; he had acted so towards the white boys because a certain white man had treated him well in the past, but these simple signs of Mick's approval made him the happiest black-fellow in all Central Australia.

CHAPTER XIII

Sidcotinga Station

The morning after Mick Darby had returned to them with water and food, both Sax and Vaughan felt so much better that they wanted to set out for Sidcotinga Station right away. But the drover would not hear of such a thing. He knew, better than the boys did, that it would be some time before even their strong young bodies recovered from the "perish", and they all stayed where they were for three full days, and made themselves comfortable by building a more substantial shelter from sun and wind. They could have stayed longer if they had wanted to do so, for Dan Collins, the Sidcotinga manager, had told Mick of a well not more than six miles away to the north, and the black boys drove the horses there every day and also renewed the supply of water in the canteens. It was evidently from this well that the fierce Musgrave niggers who had attacked them had obtained water.

On the fourth morning the horses were brought in early, and the party set out west after breakfast, on its interrupted journey, travelling by easy stages, and taking three days over a distance which Mick had accomplished in one.

The cook was the only white man on the station when they reached Sidcotinga, and he made them welcome with the genuine rough hospitality for which the back country is famous. The resources of a desert cattle-station are very limited, but everything which was possible was done for the two white boys, and they spent a very restful and enjoyable week and a half, loafing round the homestead. It was not much of a place to look at, but Sax and his friend thought it was wonderful. They had travelled across the desert for a month in order to reach that little collection of buildings, and during that time they had not seen a fence or a roof of any kind, and the only sign of civilization had been an artesian bore two days out from Oodnadatta. Though the iron sheds and strong bough-shelters which comprised the homestead were very rough, there was a workmanlike air about the place which seemed to say that white men had taken possession of the wilderness and meant to stay there.

There was an iron hut divided into two rooms where the manager and the white stockman lived. Such a building as this is known throughout the length and breadth of Australia's cattle-country as "Government House". A few yards away was the "cook-house", also made of iron, where meals for the white men were served. Then there was a store, in which enough personal and station requirements were stocked to last at least a year, for the string of camels, which came out from the head of the railway with loading for Sidcotinga Station, only came once in every twelve months and was sometimes late. The horse-gear room was a fascinating place to these two lovers of horses, and though it was rather empty when they reached the station, because every available man was out mustering on the run, they found enough in it to interest them for many hours. The blacksmith's shop also came in for its share of attention, the more so perhaps because neither of the lads knew anything about blacksmith's work. Dan Collins, the manager, prided himself on his blacksmith's shop, and rightly so, for there was no metal work—other than actual castings—which he could not manage to make or repair for station use.

Dominating the homestead, by reason of its height, was a large iron wind-mill mounted on a tall stand, with a huge water-tank raised on a staging near it. The mill pumped water from a hundred-foot well into this tank, which supplied, not only the cattle-troughs, but also the dwellings, for there were taps outside Government House, the cook-house, and the blacksmith's shop—a very unusual convenience on such an outlying station.

It was not the buildings, however, which interested the boys most; it was the stock-yards. The whole station seemed to centre in these yards, and indeed they were of chief importance, and were the real reason for everything else being there. At first the mass of yards, races, pounds, wings, and gates seemed just like a maze to the new-chums, but they were soon to learn how perfectly everything about that rough strong stock-yard was arranged for the quick handling of cattle.

One morning, a couple of days after their arrival at Sidcotinga Station, the white boys were sitting in the sand with their backs against the wall of the horse-gear room, which threw a narrow patch of shade over them, when Yarloo came up. They had been so interested in all the novel sights and sounds around them since coming to the station, that they had almost forgotten the faithful black-fellow; but they looked up now with pleasure, and greeted him with a friendly "Hullo, Yarloo!"

"Goo-day," he said, with a grin of delight at being noticed; but he at once became serious, and continued, speaking especially to Sax: "Me go 'way.... Me come back by'm by."

"Going away?" asked Sax. "Whatever for?"

"Me walk longa Musgraves.... Me come back by'm by," he repeated.

"But what'll Mick say?" asked Vaughan.

"Mick good fella," said the native simply. "Him real good fella, quite.... Him only little time boss longa me. Boss alday longa me (my real boss) sit down over dere," he pointed to the Musgrave Range. "Me yabber Boss Stobart." He said the name with pride.

"I'll go with you," said Sax, starting up as if he meant to set out immediately. "I'll go with you to find my father."

"By'm by," replied Yarloo. "White boy come by'm by. No come now. S'pose white boy come now, Boss Stobart, rouse like blazes (would be very angry). White boy sit down little time. Me come back by'm by."

"Well, at any rate, I'll send Father a note," said Sax, and he ran to Government House to get a pencil and some paper. He found an old diary, and tore a sheet out of it and wrote: "We're at Sidcotinga Station. I wanted to come out to you, but Yarloo would not let me. Tell him that we may come out. Love from Sax."

He ran back to the horse-gear room, but Yarloo had gone. The boy had evidently not understood what Sax meant and had already started out for the Musgrave Ranges. It was a great disappointment to the boys not to be allowed to go straight away and find the white drover, yet they had already experienced enough, both of the hatred of the Musgrave tribes and of the power of the desert, to convince them that they had better take the advice of those who knew the conditions so much better than they did. They talked a lot about the ranges which appeared to be so near, seen through the clear dry air, and they went over and over again the message which they had received in Oodnadatta from Boss Stobart, trying to find an explanation for the mystery.

"In difficulties. Musgrave Ranges. Tell Oodnadatta trooper, but no one else. He'll understand. Boy quite reliable. Don't worry. Get a job somewhere. "STOBART."

Sax and Vaughan had been at Sidcotinga for eleven days, and were not only feeling recovered from their "perish", but were also beginning to wish that they had something to do, when the musterers returned one afternoon with well over a thousand head of cattle. It was a still day, and Sax had climbed up the mill tower, and was sitting on the platform near the big wind-wheel, looking over the barren landscape, when he saw what looked like a brown stain on the southern sky near the horizon. He remembered having seen something similar to that at Oodnadatta, and he knew at once that it was caused by a big moving mob of stock. Vaughan was near the troughs, vainly trying to entice a galah (a cockatoo with rose-coloured breast and grey wings and back) to eat bread out of his hand, when Sax startled both him and the bird by shouting: "They're coming, Boof! They're coming!"

Vaughan looked up and saw that his venturesome friend had climbed even higher than the platform, and was standing right on top of the main casting, and was waving his arms towards the south.

"They're coming, Boof!" he shouted again. "It's cattle." To Vaughan's relief—for Sax had got used to doing things on the mill which Vaughan was too scared even to attempt—his friend began climbing down, but he went so fast that his neck and limbs were in danger every moment. When he reached the ground, he ran off to Government House to find Mick, who was lying on his back reading a three-months old copy of Pals.

The boys expected their drover friend to be as excited as they were, but he had seen cattle yarded so many hundreds of times that he took things very coolly. He first made sure that the troughs were full of water, and that the valves were working properly, and then fixed the stock-yard gates ready for receiving the cattle.

The cloud of dust came nearer, and the lowing of cattle and the cracking of whips could soon be heard, and the voices of men rose above the din. From out of the dust a few leading cattle appeared, then others and others still, till the astonished white boys saw a bigger mob of cattle than they had ever seen before. Sax was on the platform of the mill again, and Vaughan was about half-way up, so they both got a good view of what was going on below them.

The thirsty animals smelt the water and tried to rush, but well-mounted black boys wheeled here, there, and everywhere, checking the restless cattle, and allowing them to come on slowly without any chance of a break. The big voice of a white man on a black horse in the rear was heard from time to time giving orders which were at once obeyed. Presently the four long lines of troughing were hidden from sight by drinking cattle, and the sucking of their lips, the gushing of water through the valves, and the grumbling of the tired animals all blended together, and seemed to be part of the dust which rose from the trampling feet and settled on everything till men and stock were alike brown.

Mick Darby was keeping the trough-valves at full pressure, and the manager rode over to him. The white boys followed the mounted man with their eyes. This was to be their boss; that is, if he would take them. They were evidently the subject of conversation, for Mick pointed up at the mill, and Dan Collins looked up also. They could not see his face, and he made no sign, but went off again to keep the waiting cattle rounded up.

It takes a long time to water a thousand head of cattle, and by the time the Sidcotinga troughs were full, with no cattle drinking at them, the sun had just set. Gradually the animals were worked away from the water towards the wing of the yard. Probably both Sax and his friend were hoping that there would be a break, for there is nothing more exciting to watch—or to be in—than a cattle-rush; but these men were on their own country, and at their own stock-yards. They eased the big mob of animals slowly up to the yards, then sat back and let them have a spell, just holding them within the compass of the wings. The leading bullocks nosed the stock-yard rails, went up to the gates and smelt the air, gave one or two inquiring bellows, and then walked through. Finding space on the other side of the gates, they went right into the yards. Others followed, till soon the whole mob was filing through the gates. Then came the shouting of men, the racket of stock-whips, the prancing of horses, and the protesting roar of cattle, as they were jammed up tight. At last the gates were swung to and fastened with a chain.

CHAPTER XIV

A Mad Bull

The Sidcotinga stock-yards presented a very lively scene next morning. Sax and Vaughan were there with the rest, heartily glad to have something to do. Mick Darby had introduced his young friends to the manager the night before, and to their earnest request that he would "take them on at the station" he had replied: "We'll talk about that to-morrow night. There's a long day in the yards between now and then. We'll see how you shape." Dan Collins looked at them very sternly when he was speaking. He had been on cattle-stations all his life, and was used to judging men by what they could do and not by what they could say. He liked both the appearance of the boys and the report which Mick had given of how they had "shaped" on the way out, but his weather-beaten face did not relax at all, and the boys thought he was a hard man. They were wrong, however. Dan Collins was a strong man, and through dealing for many years with blacks, he had come to hide his thoughts behind an unyielding expression of face, though many a man knew how kind a heart beat in his big rough body.

So the boys were on their mettle. There were no other white men in the yard except Mick and the manager; the rest were blacks.

An hour or two before dawn, as soon as it was light enough to distinguish one beast from another, all hands went down to the yards for drafting. Sax and Vaughan were each given a gate to open and shut when their particular call came, and they found that it needed every bit of their attention to do even this simple job well. By the time breakfast was announced by the cook, who summoned all hands to the meal by beating the back of a frying-pan with a wooden spoon, the thousand cattle had been divided into three lots: about a hundred and twenty cleanskins (unbranded cattle), over a hundred three-year-old bullocks which would soon be ready to send to town, and the rest, which were to be allowed to go bush again.

Breakfast and "Smoke-o" were got over quickly, and everybody was again at the yards as soon as possible. A fire was lit outside the rails, and a half-dozen T.D.3 brands, and as many number brands, were put in the blaze to get hot. Green-hide ropes were coiled ready and knives sharpened. The cleanskins were attended to first. Most of them were about a year old and could be scruffed, which means that one or another of the black-fellows would watch his opportunity, catch the calf, and throw it on the ground with a dexterous twist. As soon as it was down, he would hook one of its front legs behind its horns and hold it there till the brand was applied. Sometimes four calves were being scruffed at the same time, and the work went on very quickly. Blacks always work well in a yard. Not only is there the personal and sometimes risky struggle with the animals, which appeals strongly to their savage minds, but the emulation amongst themselves, each being very anxious to do better than his fellows. There is usually a good deal of laughter and joking talk in a stock-yard, and a good deal of hard, strenuous, skilful work as well.

The two white boys kept out of the way while scruffing was going on. They would only have been a hindrance, so they sat together on the stock-yard fence and looked on, never missing a twist or a turn, and learning, learning, learning all the time.

At last all young calves had been branded and had rejoined their mothers. There still remained about thirty unbranded steers which were too big to scruff. One or two of them were nearly four years old, wild creatures which had refused to be mustered year after year until now. The ropes were brought into use for these cattle. The big cleanskins were driven out of the branding yard into an adjoining one, and admitted back again one by one. As soon as a beast rushed through the gate a green-hide lasso was thrown. The loop fell over its horns or neck. Four or five strong niggers were holding the end of the lasso outside the yard, and they pulled the captured animal up to the rails. Front and back leg ropes were flung on and hitched round posts, and the beast fell helplessly in the sand. After a couple had been done in this way, Dan Collins signalled to the white boys to lend a hand. Their job sounded simple, but it needed all their strength and watchfulness to do it properly. If they failed at any point, the prostrate animal would be free, and the work would have to be done all over again.

The cleanskin was lassoed and pulled to the rails, the leg ropes were fixed and hitched, and then the front rope was handed to Sax and the back one to Vaughan. They had to hang on and keep the ropes tight; that was all, but only those who have worked in stock-yards, hour after hour, know how difficult such an apparently simple task really is.

The work went on. The hard green-hide ropes blistered the unaccustomed hands of the new-chum white boys, but they set their teeth and held on. Beast after beast fell with a bellowing roar, the red-hot T.D.3 was pressed on its near-side shoulder till the mark was seared right into the skin, so that it could never wear out. Then the ropes were pulled off and the dazed animal scrambled to its feet and was hustled out of the yard, while another one was being caught and thrown.

A big roan-coloured steer was being saved till last. He was a fully matured animal, very powerful and wild. His bellow had been heard all night, and he had been more difficult to draft than any other animal in the yards. Everybody was looking forward to dealing with this fellow; it would be a good finish to a good run of work.

He came through the gate with a rush. Mick Darby had the lasso this time, and flung it faultlessly over the animal's horns. There was a shout of excitement and the blacks outside the rails pulled for all they were worth. But no power of man could make such a creature stir unless it wanted to. It braced its fore legs and stood immovable, then shook its mighty head till the lasso twanged like a fiddle-string, but did not give an inch. Finally the steer caught sight of its tormentors outside the yard, and rushed. At once the rope became slack and the watchful men pulled it tight again, and soon the great beast was jammed up against the fence, using all its strength to try and break the green-hide rope. But the lasso was made out of the hide of a bull and could have held any steer that was ever calved. Leg ropes were thrown, hitched, and drawn tight, and the steer fell, roaring and plunging for a moment, and then lying still, but never relaxing the tremendous strain for a moment.

Dan Collins was branding, and called out: "Brand-o!" The red-hot iron was handed through the rails and pressed on the quivering shoulder.

Now came the great test. Pain added the final ounce to the steer's strength. He struggled. The front leg rope broke. Through being constantly hitched round a rough post it had become a little bit frayed, and this final strain was too much for it. It snapped and sprang apart like a collapsed spring. The chest of the steer was now free, but the head rope still held it down. The knowledge that it had broken one of its bonds gave the animal heart, and it lifted its curl-crowned head. The lasso quivered and stretched, quivered and stretched. There was a crack! Had that bull-hide rope broken? No. Another crack. One of the steer's horns broke off at the skull. With an agonized bellow it slipped the stump of a horn through the loop and rose to its fore feet, free except for the back leg rope which Vaughan was holding. All the animal's strength, raised to its highest pitch by the pain of the broken horn, was centred in its captive hind leg. Vaughan held on manfully, but the rope was gradually pulled through his hands, tearing the skin till he could not possibly hold it any longer. With a roar, the steer rose from the ground; but just as it struggled to its feet, Vaughan seized the rope again and twisted it round his wrist.

A yard is no place for a man when an infuriated bull is raging around it. Everybody leapt for the rails except Sax. Was there not some way of helping his friend? The steer saw him and charged. Round the yard once, twice, it rushed, Vaughan dragging along at the back, and hindering it so that he undoubtedly saved his friend from a very nasty accident. Round the yard the third time. Sax was too dazed to leap for the rails, and the animal was too close for him to climb them.

Everybody had been so intent on the sudden turn which events had taken that they had not noticed an almost naked black-fellow who had left the lasso and had climbed quickly along the top of the rails. He was a stranger, and had come in that morning and had taken a hand at the yards like any other black would do, hoping for a feed and a stick of tobacco. But now he seemed to be full of energy and courage. When everybody else was gasping with astonishment, he lay on the top rail as flat as a lizard.

Sax came round the third time, and the shaggy head of the steer was lowering for a toss, when the native's black arm reached down suddenly and grabbed the white boy by the belt and swung him clear off his feet. He was not a second too soon. The steer charged by, and Sax was safe. The stranger native had put out so much of his strength that he could not recover himself, and he overbalanced, still keeping hold of the white boy, and rescuer and rescued toppled over backwards into the other yard. Sax was winded and the black-fellow was the first to get up. He scrambled to his feet and walked away, not only from the yards, but away from the station altogether, as if he did not want to be recognized. But as he was getting between two rails, he put his left hand on one of them, and Sax saw that the two middle fingers were missing. It was the same black who had brought the sprig of needle-bush.

Excitement was by no means over in the branding-yard. The infuriated bull, cheated of one victim, now turned its attention to Vaughan. It wheeled quickly, and in so doing twisted the rope, which Vaughan was still holding, round the boy's body. He could not escape. He was at the mercy of a wild steer.

The sudden and unexpected rescue of Saxon Stobart had roused the white men, so that when the bull turned on its helpless victim, they were ready. But what could they do? What could a mere man possibly do against a full-grown steer? It would take too long to set the boy free, for the hard unyielding rope was hitched tight round him. There was only one thing to do, and Dan Collins did it.

He waited till the bull had gathered itself for a final rush, and, when it had actually started to charge, he dropped to the ground like a flash. In a fraction of a second his powerful right arm went out, and he gripped the nostrils of the bull, pressing his thumb and forefinger home as far as he could. Then he twisted, suddenly and unexpectedly.