CHAPTER XX
The Bull-roarer
In half an hour the camp was asleep again. Men like Mick, who live in the desert and who are constantly facing death in many forms, dismiss an adventure from their minds as soon as it has happened. The black stockmen were pretty much like animals, scared out of their wits one minute and forgetting all about it the next. Sax and Vaughan were sure that the drover would keep his word, and were so utterly tired out when they lay down again on their swags, that, in spite of what had just happened, they fell asleep at once. In fact, Sax did not bother to wipe the blood off his leg where the whip had cut it.
All the men were soon asleep except one. Eagle, the bound and tortured warragul, was wide awake. For the first time in his life he was helpless. Those supple limbs of his had never been bound before, and he tugged and tugged to be free till he cut his skin against the hard, unyielding bull-hide ropes. It was no good. Mick was too old a cattle-man to leave a rope so that it could be loosened by pulling. The black tried to twist his body till he could touch the green-hide with his teeth and gnaw it through, but he was bound too tightly to allow him to do this. Finally a he lay still with the fear of a captured animal in his heart, and bitter hatred against the man who had brought him to this condition.
Suddenly he heard a dry stick crackle. He was lying with his face uphill, away from the fire, but at the sound he turned over and looked toward the few smouldering embers of the camp-fire. Instantly hope blazed up in his heart. He was saved! In his previous struggles he had been reckless, not caring how much noise he made, but with the return of hope came cunning and stealth. For a few minutes after hearing that welcome crackle of fire, he lay still and gazed at the thin smoke which coiled lazily up in one or two spirals from a glowing wood-coal here and there. Then he began to move forward. His limbs were bound so tightly that they had no power of separate movement, but he succeeded in twisting his body in such a way that, very slowly and with an expenditure of great energy, he managed to get nearer and nearer the fire. It took the bound man two hours to cover a distance of three yards. Once the mind of a savage is made up to do a thing, time is of no object at all. An eye-blink, the hours between sunrise and sunset, a moon, or a season, it doesn't matter. He will persist in his intention though he die with the thing unfinished. It is civilization which breeds impatience.
At last Eagle was up against the fire. His hands were bound behind him. For a minute or two he looked intently at the grey ashes in which a few little red-hot embers were glowing, till he decided on one which was larger and hotter than any of the others. Then he deliberately rolled over till his bound wrists were right in the ashes. There is no pain worse than burning. A man will draw his hand away from fire at all costs. Several parts of the man's body were actually in the fire, but he endured it all and steeled himself to fight back the greater agony which throbbed at his wrists. The fire touched the green-hide and singed the white bull hair, giving off a pungent smell. Eagle sniffed it greedily. It helped him to bear the terrible pain, for it was a proof that the fire was doing its work.
It is impossible to tell how long that wild man endured such fearful torture for freedom's sake. Agony is not measured by the clock. His eyelids were shut tight, his teeth were clenched, his breath came in deep gasps, and every nerve and sinew in his body seemed to be quivering. He would rather die than call out, yet the effort to keep back the yells of pain was almost worse than death. In spite of what it must have cost him, he kept up a constant strain with his arms. The smell of burning became stronger, but who could say whether it was the burning of the skin of a bull or of the skin of a man?
At last he realized, through the torture which was clouding his mind, that the strain was relaxing. He put forth a mighty effort. His body could stand it no longer, and gathered all its forces for one last bid for freedom. A green-hide strand parted. Another loosened itself. A third uncoiled from his burnt wrist.
His hands were free!
Cunning is as natural to a savage as breathing. With the freeing of his hands it would have been natural for the man to jerk himself out of the fire, struggle out of his bonds, and make a dash for liberty. But no. Eagle had a superstitious fear of white men. He must do nothing to arouse the suspicions of his enemy. Almost as slowly as he had approached the fire, he now wormed his way from it till he was out of reach of its heat, and then lay still, his body racked with the pain of being burnt and bound. Gradually he reached down with his burned hands and loosened the rope which fettered his legs. It took some time, for he had almost lost the use of his hands, and the rope was very stiff and tightly drawn. But patience and perseverance triumphed, and at last the man was free.
His next moves were the most risky of all. Eagle was convinced that Mick was possessed of supernatural powers, for how else could he have seen the black-fellow and fired at him when he was fast asleep? Consequently it was with a caution which was the outcome of deadly fear that he began to crawl. He dared not take too long, for the short summer night was nearly over, and the white stockman would certainly awake at the rising of the morning star. But Mick was soundly asleep this time, and did not notice the black form which went slowly round the fire and then started up the hill near the white boys.
When Eagle came opposite to Sax he stopped. This boy was not a devil like the other white man. He had saved him from the torture of the whip. He was the son of Boss Stobart and was therefore to be guarded from all danger. A black remembers cruelty and will avenge it; he also remembers kindness and will pay it back if he possibly can. But what could a naked savage, fleeing for his life, do to show his gratitude to the son of Boss Stobart?
Eagle put his poor mutilated hand up to his mass of tangled hair and pulled out a piece of wood with a string attached to it. The object was about five inches long, thin and flat, and tapered to a point at each end, something like a thick cigar except that it was not round. Both sides were marked with straight lines cut across the breadth of the wood and with circles inside one another, all filled in with a mixture of grease and red ochre. At one end was a hole through which passed a string made of native women's hair. The thing was a luringa—a bull-roarer—a sacred charm, the most precious object which Eagle could possibly give to his white friend. With this luringa the white boy could travel unharmed amongst the most savage tribes of the desert, and could even enter the wildest of the Musgrave fastnesses and return, a thing which no white man had ever yet done.
Eagle looked long at the piece of wood and muttered certain words over it, and then unfastened the hair string and put it round the neck of the sleeping boy. He had no fear of any evil power which Sax might possess, and when the lad stirred uneasily, the black-fellow went on with his work till he had tied the string quite securely.
A flap of Sax's camp-sheet was spread out on the sand, and when Eagle had finished with the luringa, he spread out his mutilated hand on the piece of white canvas and made an imprint. His hand was all covered with blood and ashes, and the mark of the two fingers and the projecting thumb was left very plainly on the camp-sheet.
When Eagle was quite satisfied that Sax would know who had hung that strange symbol round his neck, he crawled on up the hill, disappeared on the other side, and fled for his life.
CHAPTER XXI
Horseshoe Bend
In order fully to understand the position in which Sax and his friend were soon to be placed, it is necessary to go back several weeks and find out what had happened to the famous Boss Stobart.
Joe Archer, the storekeeper at Oodnadatta who had been so kind to the boys, had told them that the drover had not been heard of since he had called in at Horseshoe Bend. It is possible to connect up with the Overland Telegraph Line at Horseshoe Bend, and Stobart had taken advantage of this opportunity of getting into touch with Oodnadatta.
Boss Stobart, with a thousand Queensland cattle, reached the Finke about midday. The Finke is a wide river of soft white sand, bordered on each side by gnarled and ancient gum trees. Not once in the memory of white man had the Finke carried water from its source in the Macdonnel Ranges to its mouth in the great dry salt Lake Eyre, and the trees which mark its course, and can be seen from many, many miles away scattered about the landscape, gain their nourishment from a water-supply fifty or sixty feet below the arid surface.
The drover saw the cattle safely over the dry creek, put them on camp in a clay-pen surrounded by sandhills, and then rode up to the little group of rough buildings which, because the Finke makes an almost complete turn on itself just there, goes by the name of Horseshoe Bend. The Horseshoe Bend licensed store is a low iron building ornamented on two sides by a broad veranda. Clustered at the back are a hut of split box logs thatched with cane, an iron-roofed cellar, and a few primitive outbuildings. These, with a large set of yards and troughs for watering cattle, make what is not only the homestead of a six-thousand-square-mile cattle station, but also an important depot on the Great North Stock Route, a postal and telegraph station, and the residence—when he is not away on the run—of a justice of the peace. In a cramped and dusty office, where, amid the buzzing of innumerable flies, while the temperature climbs above 110° F. every day for five months in the year, the news of Europe and Asia can be heard tick-tacked in code by inserting a little plug. The reports of a war in India, of an active volcano in South America, or of a cricket match in England could be heard at Horseshoe Bend in the centre of the Australian desert before people in Melbourne knew anything about it. The only thing necessary is to insert a little metal plug and make the current run through the recorder.
But the plug hangs idle on its nail; the recorder is covered with dust; no one bothers about either Europe or Asia. What chiefly concerns the few white men who are able to live in Central Australia are the price of stock, the best place to find a little dried grass or bush, and water. Always water, water, water—everything else is of secondary importance—cattle-feed and water.
The conversation between Stobart and the man behind the bar was all about the needs and the ways of stock. The drover hitched his horse to a veranda-post and walked into the dark drinking-room stiffly, for he had been in the saddle since three o'clock that morning, and had done some hard riding after restless cattle.
"Good-day," said Stobart.
"Good-day," replied Tom Gibbon. "Travelling?"
"Yes. Cattle. How's the water down the road?"
The man consulted a paper nailed on a board. It contained the names of all the water-holes from Alice Springs to Oodnadatta. He began to read, running his finger below the words and pronouncing them slowly: "Yellow—dry. Sugar-Loaf—dry. Anvil Soak—dry. One Tree Well—only enough for a plant; makes very slow. Simpson's Hole—dry. In fact the whole lot are dry till you get as far as the Stevenson Bore. You're right after that. How many've you got?"
"A thousand."
"Holy sailor! You'll never get through. Bob Hennesy was the last man down with cattle. He got as far as the Crown and had to leave them on a well there. They were as poor as wood. No stock passed this way for three months."
Boss Stobart had been a drover in Central Australia for thirty years, and the names of the water-holes which Tom Gibbon had read out were very familiar to him. Tom, however, was new to the country and did not know who his visitor was. Stobart did not show any surprise at the state of the country to the south of him, but merely remarked casually: "Oh, well, I'll have to go round then. I'm a good month ahead of time."
The barman did not know what going round meant, but had no wish to display an ignorance which was really quite evident to the drover, so he asked: "What'll you drink?"
"Got any sarsaparilla?"
Tom Gibbon laughed. It seemed a good joke to him that a bushman should ask for a teetotal drink. "Yes, any amount of it," he answered. "'Johnny Walker', 'Watson's No. 10', 'King George'—any brand you like."
"I said sarsaparilla, not whisky," said Stobart.
The laugh died out on Tom Gibbon's face. "D'you mean it?" he asked.
"Why, yes. What d'you think I'd ask for it for if I didn't want it?"
The sarsaparilla bottle was taken down from the shelf and put on the counter, together with a glass and a water-bag. "Have one with me?" invited the drover.
"No, thanks," replied the other. "I don't care for that stuff. A man needs something with a nip to it in this country."
Stobart poured out his drink and watered it. "Does he?" he asked quietly. "When you've been in this country as long as I have, you'll know what's good for you."
When his visitor had gone, Tom Gibbon asked a black-fellow who the man was that preferred sarsaparilla to whisky. He got rather a shock when the native told him that the man was not a namby-pamby new-chum as he had suspected, but was one whose name and deeds were known and talked about from one end of the country to the other.
"That one?" exclaimed the black-fellow in surprise.
"You no bin know um that one, eh? Him Boss Stobart. Big fella drover. Him bin walk about this country since me little fella. Him big fella drover all right, altogether, quite."
The "big fella" drover rode over to the cattle and, instead of starting them due south along the Great North Stock Route, he gave them a drink at Horseshoe Bend troughs and then set out west. For several days he and his black-boys travelled the mob through country which he knew well, and he managed to find enough dry grass and bush to keep the animals in fair condition, and enough water to give them a drink every other day.
He was making towards the Musgrave Ranges, knowing that the great mass of high country which loomed on the western horizon day after day was sure to have water-holes and gullies full of cattle-feed along the base of it. One day he watered the cattle at a little water-hole surrounded by box trees, under a low stony rise, and put them on camp in the open and arranged the watches. It was still an hour before sunset when Boss Stobart, after giving the cattle a final inspection, was riding back to camp to make a damper and cook a bucket of meat, when he was startled by seeing a boot track. They were in totally uninhabited country, and the sight was just as startling as a naked black-fellow in the middle of Sydney in the busy part of the day would be.
He followed it for a yard or two. The footprints turned outwards. A white man had made those tracks. They were only about a day old. What was a white man on foot doing in such a place? The drover stopped and looked back. The line of tracks was crooked and seemed as if a staggering man had made it, but the general direction was from the north. Stobart rode on slowly and thoughtfully. The wandering tracks led to a little clump of mulga trees about a couple of hundred yards away from the water-hole.
Suddenly the old stock-horse which the man was riding drew back and snorted with alarm. Something was moving in those trees. Stobart urged the horse on. Just at the edge of the clump of scraggy timber the animal shied again. A man's shirt was lying on the ground. Trousers and boots were a little distance away, and then an old battered felt hat was found upturned in the sand. Finally the horse became so much afraid that Stobart was obliged to dismount and tie it to a tree while he followed the tracks on foot. He had only a little farther to go before he too saw what his horse had already seen—a naked white man staggering round and round in a small clearing among the trees.
The man took no notice when Stobart appeared. He was quite unconscious. The drover shouted, but there was no more response than if the desert silence had remained unbroken. By the tracks of his shuffling bare feet he must have been drawing that terrible circle for several hours, while the pitiless sun beat down on his unprotected head. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and was dark-coloured and swollen, his head jerked forward loosely with each stride, and his tottering legs were bent almost double at the knees. If he sank just a little lower, his hanging hands would touch the ground, and he would crawl over the burning sand like any other dying beast, round and round, round and round, for nothing but utter exhaustion would stop that parade of death.
Boss Stobart stood directly in the path of the shambling figure. It came on unheeding, with glazed eyes and spent senses, and bumped into the drover as if the hour had been pitch-dark midnight instead of a summer afternoon. Stobart caught it before it fell, and laid the limp body down very gently and looked into the man's face. He uttered an exclamation of amazement. It was Patrick Dorrity, a man whom he had seen only a few months before, cooking on Tumurti Station.
Pat Dorrity and Stobart were old friends. Pat had a fondness for a spree and had consequently never risen above the level of a casual station cook, wandering about in this capacity over the huge area of the north, where his friend the drover, who did not have the same weakness, had gone on earning the confidence and respect of every stock-owner in the country, till he was now a shareholder in more than one prosperous station property.
But bushman friendships are not based on bank balances, and the two had remained good friends. As a proof of this, the last time they had met, Pat had told the drover about a gold-mine he knew of in the Musgrave Ranges. At first Stobart laughed at the old Irishman, for there were as many reputed gold-mines in the Musgraves as there were men who had gone after them and not come back. But gradually Pat had won him over, for in the veins of every bushman runs enough gambler's blood to make the sporting risk of a gold-mine very alluring. The two men wrote to Sergeant Scott, of Oodnadatta, who was a great friend of both of them, and arranged that they would start out for the Musgraves as soon as Stobart had delivered the cattle.
Since coming to this decision, the care of a thousand bush cattle had taken up so much of Boss Stobart's attention that he had none to give to the proposed trip, and he was, therefore, all the more amazed to come across one of the partners in the venture in such a pitiable plight.
The man was perishing. Water in abundance was only two hundred yards away, yet here he was dying of thirst. Such is the irony of the desert.
Pat Dorrity's horse had been abandoned ten miles back, and the tottering man had walked on, till, when he had managed to stagger to the top of the last sandhill, and had seen two clumps of timber, one of box and one of mulga, his senses had played him false and he had gone to the mulgas.
Stobart did not stop to wonder how his old friend had come to such a pass. He needed water. Everything else must wait. The strong man lifted the weak one and walked away to his horse, leading it to the camp near the water-hole. At the sight of that little pool of muddy liquid, the closing eyes of the perishing man opened and his weak body struggled to be free; his mouth tried to shape sounds but could not do so, for his tongue was swollen and his throat dry.
The drover was too old a bushman to allow the perishing man to have all the water he wished for. Gradually the swelling of the tongue was reduced, then the parched throat was relieved by driblets of water, and even then, when Pat Dorrity could have swallowed, he was only allowed to take a sip at a time, or he would have vomited so badly that some internal rupture would have resulted.
Before Boss Stobart went on watch that night, his old friend was sleeping peacefully, with his thirst quenched, and having had a small meal of soaked damper also.
CHAPTER XXII
Facing Death
Boss Stobart could not afford to spend more than one day at the water-hole where he had found his friend Patrick Dorrity, because the water was practically a thin solution of mud, and the feed was soon eaten out within a radius of a few miles. There was really no need for delay, for the old station cook recovered quickly, and "dodging along" behind cattle, as it is called, is not hard work for a man who has nothing to do. The recuperative powers of the Australian bushman are wonderful. It is only men of the toughest fibre and the stoutest heart who can live in the central deserts, and when one of these is overtaken by sickness or disaster, he never stops fighting, and wins through in the shortest possible time. There comes a day, however, when it is not possible to win through, and the brave man dies fighting, and the sand gradually covers up the body of yet another pioneer.
Dorrity was what is called a "hatter". He had lived for long periods in the north absolutely alone; at other times his only companions had been blacks. Too much of this sort of life is not good for a man. Moreover, the deadly monotony of Pat's life was broken at long intervals by the most violent sprees, when he drank steadily for three weeks on end, finishing the bout by several days of delirium tremens. None but the strongest constitution could stand such treatment time after time, and though the Irishman's tough body had not yet shown any signs of breaking up under the strain, his mind was liable to fits of moodiness which amounted almost to madness. Such a man is not rare in Central Australia, and he goes by the name of "hatter".
After Boss Stobart's last visit to Tumurti Station, when Pat and he had arranged for the trip to the Musgraves in search of gold, the old cook had been attacked by fits of moodiness which he could not shake off. He could not rid his mind of the thought that his friend the drover was going to defraud him of his share in the gold-mine. He blamed himself for telling anybody about it, and at last worked himself up into such a state that he set out, alone except for an old horse, to go to the Musgrave Ranges. The men on Tumurti Station were used to Pat's sudden comings and goings, and took them as a matter of course and did not inquire what he intended to do. He would not have told them if they had asked, for his feeble mind was set on reaching the supposed mine before the men whom he thought were going to rob him of it.
It was some weeks after he had started out from Tumurti with the old horse that Boss Stobart had found him perishing in a clump of mulgas. When he recovered, under the drover's kind and wise treatment the hatter mood had left him for a time.
The party travelled on slowly from the Box water-hole for several days, still keeping the high mass of the Musgrave Ranges in front of them, till at last they came into country which Boss Stobart did not know. The mountains sent out spurs far into the plains, and when the drover, who was riding a mile or two ahead of the cattle, came upon a rocky water-hole in a valley tolerably covered with low bushes, he decided to camp there for a day or two and explore the surrounding district to find the best route to take with the cattle.
It was early in the afternoon when the lowing mob came up to the water; so when they had had a drink, Stobart gave directions to his black-boys and rode off, leaving Pat Dorrity to look after the camp. He took with him a boy named Yarloo. This boy was a Musgrave black whom Stobart had picked up on one of his droving trips years before and had kept ever since. The native was devoted to the white man, and Stobart had responded to this faithfulness in such a way that Yarloo would have willingly given his life for his hero. The boy's services at this time were invaluable, for the party had now reached the country in which he had been born. Before many days his services were to prove more valuable still, and his devotion was to be put to a very great test.
The two men rode up the gully to the top, crossed over the spur, dipped down into a larger gully, and struck out south-west for a plain stretching towards Oodnadatta which Yarloo remembered, where there were one or two good water-holes and plenty of cattle-feed for many days. Darkness came on before they had completed their investigations, and as there was no need to get back to camp that night, they hobbled their horses on a patch of dry grass and lay down, each man pillowing his head on his upturned saddle.
Next morning they reached the plain, found it to be all that could be expected considering the drought-stricken state of the country, and then turned their horses' heads towards camp.
They had not gone more than half-way when they saw that something was wrong, for they came across one or two of the cattle which they had been driving. The animals had evidently been badly scared, for they galloped away as soon as they caught sight of the two horsemen. It took some time to round them up, and by that time others were in sight and others still. Boss Stobart always selected good black stockmen and trusted them, and he knew that something quite out of the ordinary had happened to scatter the cattle in this way, and that it was not due to any carelessness on the boys' part. At last he came upon a bullock which was tottering along, hardly able to keep on its feet. It tried to dash away when it saw the mounted men, but the effort was too much for it. It fell over, tried to get up but couldn't, and lay in the sand, panting and moaning with pain.
The point of a spear was sticking in its side just behind the shoulder-blade.
Yarloo pulled it out and looked at it. The shaft, which had broken off about a foot from the end was made of lance-wood. The head of the spear was broad and flat, and was made of red mulga, a hard, tough, poisonous wood. It was bound to the shaft with kangaroo sinews and spinifex gum in such a way that the black-boy had no hesitation in pointing to the mountain range to the left of them. "Musgrave black-fella," he said. "Me know um this one."
Stobart left the cattle which they had collected in charge of Yarloo and galloped ahead. He met other cattle, dead or dying, but was not prepared for what he saw when he topped the rise just above the water-hole where the camp had been.
A crowd of about fifty blacks squatted round a fire. Their naked bodies were smeared with red ochre and clay in fantastic designs, and many of them had feathers or grass or the claws of large birds in their bunched-up hair. Great bleeding chunks of meat and entrails were smoking and sizzling in the fire, and all around them were the carcasses of dead cattle. It seemed incredible that fifty men armed only with boomerangs and wooden spears should have been able to commit such a slaughter. The white man took all this in at a glance, and then his face hardened and he knew that he was nearer death than he had ever been before, for a little distance away were the bodies of six clothed black-boys and a white man, laid out in a row. The sun beat down pitilessly on that terrible scene, but not one of the seven put his hand up to drive away the flies or to protect his head from the glare. They were dead!
The feasting natives saw him at once and rose to their feet with a yell. Stobart did not ride away. Such an act of fear would have made his death sure, and probably more hideous than it would be if he faced those shouting, dancing, gesticulating fiends.
He took a fresh grip of the reins and urged his unwilling horse to go down the hill to meet the blacks. This act of courageous audacity checked them for a moment. They collected in a bunch and yabbered excitedly. Stobart understood several aboriginal languages, but this one was wild and harsh and quiet strange to him.
Sitting firmly but easily in the saddle, the white man rode quietly up to the savages. When he was only a horse's length away, he drew rein and looked at them. Several of the men stepped back, flung their spear-arms behind their heads, fastened the woomeras, and prepared to throw. But the long quivering shafts never left their hands. One or two jumped out from the crowd and swayed back their supple black bodies to give additional force to a boomerang. But the heavy curved weapon never started on its death-dealing course. Here and there a man sprang up in the air and waved his spears wildly over his head, and shouted words of hatred towards the white man and of encouragement to his companions. But the result of it all was nothing worse than threatening and noise.
Stobart sat and looked at them. He was a famous horse-breaker and a noted man with cattle, and had found, in dealing both with animals and with men, the power which his eye possessed. It was the focusing-point of all the force and personality of a remarkable man.
But who can quell and keep on quelling the passions of fifty savages who have tasted blood? One man broke the spell of the drover's steady glance. He jumped to one side and hurled a boomerang. Stobart dodged. It passed him and whizzed on, turning and turning for nearly two hundred yards, so great had been the force behind it. The man had put so much energy into the throw that his body was jerked forward till he was standing beside the horseman.
A great shout went up when the weapon left the hand of the black-fellow, but it was cut off suddenly to amazed silence when the boomerang passed on and left the white unharmed. This man must be a devil. At once every spear was raised, poised in the woomera, and directed, not at the white man, but at the native who had dared to pit his strength against a supernatural power. Stobart understood the situation immediately, and so did the unfortunate black, who hunched his shoulders ready for death.
Suddenly one of those reckless impulses came to the drover which come only to great men, and which are often the turning-points of their lives. He jabbed spurs into his horse's flanks and wheeled it like a flash between the cringing native and his would-be murderers. At the same time he raised his hand and shouted:
"Stop!"
Not one of them had ever heard the word before, but they understood what it meant by the white man's tone and gesture of command. They instantly obeyed. Before the sound of Stobart's voice had come back in echo from the mountains, every spear was lowered.
The white man backed his horse and looked down at the native whose life he had saved. The man was grovelling in the sand in abject fear and gratitude. Stobart motioned to him to get up and return to the others. He did so, and as he slunk away, the drover noticed that the middle two fingers of his left hand were missing.
CHAPTER XXIII
A Friend and a Foe
Boss Stobart had had too much experience with blacks to think that he was safe. He had escaped instant death and seemed to have gained some sort of control over those savage minds, but he knew that at any time the long quivering spears, which had just been lowered at his command, might be hurled at him and bury their poisonous heads in his body. So he continued to sit on his horse and look steadily at the naked savages.
When they had got over their surprise, both at the white man having power to turn aside a boomerang—as they thought—and at his saving the life of his enemy, they began to yabber and gesticulate. They pointed to the seven dead men and then at Stobart with fear in their faces; they looked round at the slaughtered cattle and wondered what revenge this supernatural man would take; the sound and smell of cooking meat grew very tantalizing, but they did not dare to continue the feast till the white man made some sign of anger or pleasure.
The drover did not turn his head. There were those in the crowd who had not come under the spell of his authority, and he knew it; therefore he kept on facing them. He looked steadily at one man in particular; a tall, well-proportioned native with a commanding head and features. Through the septum of the man's nose a little bundle of thin bones had been thrust, and this, together with a particular design painted on his chest, proclaimed him to be a man of power, the doctor of the tribe. He regarded Stobart with a scowl of hatred, and went about amongst his companions telling them that there was no difference between this white man and other men of his colour, and that he would be as easy to kill as the poor sick Irishman who was now lying so quietly in the sand. The natives, however, did not know what to do. Stobart's life hung by a thread.
This state of uncertainty was suddenly cut short by a native appearing on the top of the hill immediately behind Stobart. He had been running and had hardly breath enough to shout the news to the men below. He had seen Yarloo and the little mob of cattle. Most of the blacks at once ran up the hill and looked back in the direction where he was pointing. The native doctor and the man with the mutilated left hand were amongst those who stayed near the fire, and Stobart felt sure that the man whom he had saved was there on purpose to see that his rescuer came to no harm.
After a great deal of noise and waving of arms and stamping of feet, the party on the hill disappeared down the other side, and presently some cattle came straggling over the top and ran down to the water-hole for a drink. Yarloo followed, escorted by the blacks who had gone out to meet him. He had evidently established friendly relations with his fellow-tribesmen, for they were all laughing and talking excitedly, and already one or two of them were adorned with articles of Yarloo's clothing which he had given them. The much-envied recipients of these gifts were probably relations or members of the same totem, and the wise boy had made the most of his opportunities for showing goodwill, for his master's sake.
Yarloo was evidently very much relieved to find Boss Stobart safe. He went up to the drover and showed so plainly that the white man was his honoured friend, that the other natives at once changed their attitude, and gave every sign of favour to the man whom they had so recently wanted to kill.
Stobart was invited to join the feast. His own tucker-packs had not been interfered with, for the blacks had started to cut up and eat meat as soon as the slaughter was over; so to the only item on the primitive menu he added a few tins of jam and treacle, a bottle or two of tomato sauce, and all the damper which was left. Afterwards, when all had gorged themselves to their fullest capacity, he handed round small plugs of tobacco, which the men accepted eagerly and started to chew at once. The doctor kept aloof from these proceedings and would not touch the white man's food or tobacco, so Stobart gave the man whom he had rescued from death a double share, and thereby cemented a friendship which he thought might be useful in the future.
Feasting went on into the night and did not stop till the morning star was rising. Everybody crawled under bushes and stunted trees and went to sleep. Now was Stobart's chance. He signed to Yarloo. The faithful boy had not followed his natural desires to eat as fully as his fellow-tribesmen had done, but had kept himself ready for any emergency which might occur.
"We go 'way now, Yarloo, I think," whispered Stobart. "Which way horses go?"
The boy pointed in a certain direction. "Me go find um nantu (horses), boss," he said. "Me tie um up 'nother side sand-hill. By'm-by sun come up, black-fella sleep, aller same dead; sleep like blazes. You bring um two fella saddle 'nother side sand-hill. Little bit tucker. We clear out. Me know um this country." He looked round at the naked blacks, all smeared with blood and grease and dirt, and snoring in profound sleep, and laughed quietly. "Silly fella," he remarked. "All about sleep long time. My word, too much long time."
Soon afterwards Yarloo went off on the tracks of the horses, which he had had the forethought to hobble before letting them go the previous afternoon, and when Stobart was quite sure that everybody was soundly sleeping, he went over to the packs, stuffed his pockets with tucker, and carried his own and Yarloo's saddles out of sight over the sand-hill. He returned for his rifle and water-bag, for he did not know whether their lives might not depend on one or the other of these. He did not dare to stay away too long from the sleeping blacks, for fear that one of them should wake and notice that he had gone, so he returned and lay down under a tree and waited for Yarloo.
It was nearly noon when the boy returned, and the expression on his face clearly indicated disaster.
"Nantu dead," he announced sorrowfully.
"Dead?" exclaimed Stobart. "What, all of them?"
"Yah. All about."
The drover was too much amazed to ask any more questions for a time. The blacks had certainly made a thorough work of their first slaughter, but surely they had not killed the two horses which had been let go since friendly relations were established. He looked so perplexed that the boy started to explain.
"Nantu killed aller same cattle," he said.
"Yes, but what about Billy and Ginger?" asked the white man. (These were the horses Stobart and Yarloo had ridden the previous day.)
"Dead," said Yarloo emphatically. "Me bin see um."
"How? Speared?" asked Stobart.
The native looked round stealthily as if afraid of being heard. Then he lowered his voice and whispered: "Neh. Nantu no bin speared. Throat bin cut this way." He poked his finger into his neck at the side of the gullet and made a cutting movement.
There was only one man in the tribe who would have done the killing in that way, and Stobart asked: "Doctor-man, eh?"
Yarloo looked again. The drover had never seen the boy look so startled. Then he pointed to his nose and indicated the decoration of the native doctor, and to his chest and drew the distinguishing marks of his calling, and nodded. He did not dare to speak. The man with the bunch of bones stuck through his nose, the man who had tried his best to stir up his companions to kill Stobart and had persistently repulsed all overtures of friendship, this man had tracked up the two horses in the night and had cut their throats. The white man was his enemy; he must not be allowed to escape, for he would sooner or later be put to death. Stobart knew that he had a powerful foe.
The drover had succeeded in making a friend of the man with the mutilated left hand, but had not been able to overcome the hatred of the most influential man in the tribe.
The upshot of the adventure was that Boss Stobart was forced to accompany the tribe of Musgrave warraguls back to their mountain fastnesses. In the ranges he found fertile valleys watered with permanent springs, game and birds in abundance, and many indications of the gold which so many daring prospectors had sought for at the price of their lives.
CHAPTER XXIV
A Prisoner
The famous drover was a prisoner. He was free to come and go when and where he liked, but he soon found that he was being closely watched, and that, until he was quite certain of success, any attempt to escape would be worse than useless. It would result in his death.
At first Stobart couldn't understand what they wanted to keep him for, and why they didn't kill him right away, but after a time he found out that Yarloo had told them so many wonderful things about his "white boss", that his captors' opinion as to his supernatural powers was confirmed. In his zeal to save his master's life, the faithful boy had gone a little too far, for the warragul tribe decided that they must keep such a marvellous man with them at all costs, and that his presence would be sure to bring them plenty of the good things of life—water, tucker, and healthy children.
As soon as possible without arousing suspicion, Stobart sent Yarloo to Oodnadatta with a note for Sax, hoping that Sergeant Scott would be able to send out a rescue party at once. But, as we have seen, the trooper was away from home and nobody knew when he would be back again.
The camp where the drover was obliged to live consisted of thirty or forty wurlies on the side of a little hill above a spring. The dwellings were temporary and primitive, as blacks' dwellings are: branches stuck into the ground and drawn together at the top to make a shape like an inverted bowl. Stobart could have had one of these, but as the former occupant had not left it as clean as a white man likes his home to be, he chose a small cave a few yards above the camp. This gave him the considerable advantage of being away from the dogs and smell which are inseparable from a blacks' camp.
A bushmen always makes the best of a bad job, and Stobart did not see why he should not have as good a time as he possibly could while waiting for the chance to escape. He never for one moment doubted that his adventure would end successfully, and his chief sorrow was for the loss of the cattle. In the thirty years during which he had driven stock from one end of Central Australia to the other, he had never had one real disaster. Of course there had been small losses, sometimes because of drought, once by flood, and once also because of a band of marauding blacks which he had succeeded in driving off before they had done much damage; but he had never failed to deliver his charges at their destination better in condition and in greater numbers than could be expected under the circumstances. It speaks well for the man's stern sense of duty that, though he was a captive in a camp of the wildest savages in Australia, and liable to death at any time, he worried, not about his own safety, but about the lost cattle.
He became proficient with both boomerang and spear, and could soon knock over a rock wallaby or a cockatoo as neatly as any man in the tribe, and, because of his greater strength, he was more than a match for the natives at any kind of sport. He had been a good tracker for many years, but he now found that he had much to learn from these natives, who for generation after generation had hunted for their food by tracking it. Sometimes he was away from camp for days together with a hunting expedition, and in this way he became perfectly familiar with the lay of the country. By his constant association with the warraguls, he picked up a good deal of their speech, and was soon able to carry on conversations with them, supplying anything he did not know by gestures, which are the same all over the world.
After several weeks had gone by in this way, and he had made no attempt to escape, he started to go hunting with only a few natives instead of with a big party. The man with the mutilated left hand was always one of these, and Stobart gradually made his companions fewer and fewer, till it became quite the recognized thing for him to go off with only this one native. The man's name was a long one, and Stobart shortened it to Coiloo. At first his companion, though he very much appreciated the honour of being with his hero, was shy, and did no more than fulfil the white man's wishes faithfully and well. But Stobart had learnt how to win the confidence of blacks, and before long the man had ceased to fear his master—for so he considered the man who had saved him from death—and was devoted to him with all his heart.
Soon after this Coiloo told Stobart about the expedition which was about to set out against Mick's party travelling to Sidcotinga Station. With the wonderful power which the blacks possess of conveying information over tremendous distances by means of smoke signals, the tribes in the Musgrave Ranges knew all about Mick Darby and his companions, and Stobart was very much concerned when he heard that two white boys were of the number. He knew at once who they were. Not twice in a man's lifetime do boys, fresh from a city school, travel up into Central Australia and leave the few little centres of civilization which are there, and strike out west into the desert; so the drover was certain that one of those white boys was his son.
He spent a whole day describing the boy to Coiloo. He only had an old photograph to guide him, and even this had been left behind in the packs near the fatal water-hole; but the father had so often pictured his son in his own mind, that the description which he gave again and again to the warragul was so good that the man had no difficulty in recognizing Sax when he saw him. Then Stobart told Coiloo to join the marauding-party and to see that the boys came to no harm. The result of the native's faithfulness is already known.
When Coiloo had gone, Stobart frequently went out alone. He was such a successful hunter, and was so willing to add the result of his prowess to the general food-supply of the camp, that nobody objected to his solitary expeditions. But Stobart had a more important reason for his wanderings than bringing home dead game. He was looking forward to the day when everything would be ready for a successful escape from the Musgrave Ranges, and he was determined to take away with him something more than his bare life: he meant to take the secret of the Musgrave gold.
At first, when he started to go out alone, he always returned at night, but gradually he accustomed the camp to his absence for longer periods, till he was able at last to carry out his investigations unhindered. He found many traces of gold, but as he had no tools, and did not want to arouse any suspicions as to the real object of his journeys, he was not able to tell whether the traces lead to any larger deposits. There were little gullies which ran water in times of storm, where specks of the glittering metal could easily be seen in the sand; and quartz boulders stained with what looked like rust, here and there on a scrub-covered hill-side; and little cracks in the sheer face of a cliff where veins of dirty red ran about like the marks in marble. The Ranges were evidently a very rich "prospect", and it was no wonder that white men had braved the desert and the men who lived there, for the lure of gold is the strongest of all, and men die willingly in answering its call.