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