Revenge
Just before sunset, after a long and tiring day's work, the last of the clean-skins was branded, and staggered to its feet and made off to rejoin the other cattle. Mick wiped his knife on his trousers and then used it to cut up a fill of tobacco. Sax had taken over the management of the brands after the adventure with Eagle, and was very glad to pull the irons out of the fire and let them cool in the sand. In fact, everybody was pleased to "knock off", both because they were thoroughly tired, and more especially because Mick's cruelty to the warragul had caused an unpleasant feeling to take the place of the former spirit of hearty good fellowship.
The men let the cattle go and rode dejectedly back to camp, and even Mick's efforts to start a conversation with his two white companions was not a great success. A fire was lit, the quart-pots were boiled and "tea-ed", and the damper and meat served out all round, and soon afterwards the stockmen unrolled their swags and lay down for the night.
Sax could not sleep. He turned over on one side and then on another, but did not seem able to find a comfortable position. During the excitement of his fall from the horse in the morning he had not noticed any injuries, but now, when he wanted to forget everything and go to sleep, he felt a large bruise on his hip and a sore place on each shoulder. The moon shone in his face and kept him awake, and he lay on his swag in a very unhappy frame of mind.
Mick's behaviour to Eagle worried him. His body was too tired and sore to rest, but his mind was unusually active, and kept on turning over and over the incidents of the day, and especially the short struggle between the white man and the warragul native.
Sax had been on the other side of the mob of cattle when the incident had occurred, but he had seen enough to make him very angry at the injustice. Eagle had proved himself to be Sax's friend on three occasions, and the lad consequently took the present matter to heart. He quite forgot that Mick did not know who Eagle was, and merely thought him to be a more than ordinarily useless black-fellow. Sax had found out to his cost what an exceedingly unpleasant task it is to keep brands hot on a blazing north-wind summer's day in the Australian desert.
The tired lad's indignant thoughts became confused as sleep gradually claimed him, and at last his aching body was at rest, though his mind still kept active and started to build dreams. Just after midnight, when everything was still, and the last of the cattle had ceased to splash in the water-hole and had gone out on one or another of the long cattle-pads which stretched away into the silent desert, when the half-moon looked down on the motionless and soundless world, a dark face peeped over the top of the sandhill above the sleeping stockmen. The man's naked body lay flat as a snake on the sand and wriggled forward with movements like the waving of a shadow on a wall, till the native could gain a clear view of the place where his unconscious enemy lay.
It was Eagle.
He had come to kill.
The T.D.3 brand, which still throbbed on his flank, was to him a mark of shame, and he knew only one way of washing that shame away—with the life-blood of the man who had put it there.
Slowly he raised his head and looked, remaining for a minute or two without any sign of life at all, not even the blinking of an eyelid. If everybody on the camp had been awake and had chanced to look that way, they would not have been able to distinguish the black-fellow's head from the scraggy bushes which grew here and there on the sand-hill. But all the men were asleep, and after Eagle had noted carefully where Mick was lying, he ducked down again behind the sand-hill and worked his way round till he was directly above the sleeping white man.
Just to one side of Mick's swag was a row of pack-saddles and bags, and leaning against one of the saddles was the axe which had been used to chop wood for the branding fire that afternoon. In fact Eagle had been the one who had chiefly used it. He was now going to use that axe again, but for a purpose more dear to his savage heart than cutting dead branches: he was going to cut the live body of a hated white man, and cut it again and again till no semblance of humanity remained.
He crept forward down the slope inch by inch. No snake in the grass is more silent and no fox is more stealthily alert than a black-fellow creeping on an enemy. The body is held tense for instant action, and the limbs move slowly and are put forward just a little bit at a time with that slinking movement which is known only to beasts of prey and to savage men. He reached the packs at last and lay down flat, not moving for fully five minutes. Gradually a black hand stretched out and a supple arm glided silently over the sand.
He grasped the axe. He did not drag it. Even that slight noise might spoil the night's work. He lifted and rose gently on his knees and one hand, and held the axe close to his body with the other.
Eagle is six yards from Mick. The critical time has come. No one can see him move, for he changes his position such a little and such a little more that he is in a new place without seeming to have left the old one. His actions are as imperceptible as those of water. Five yards. Four and a half. Four. Nearer and nearer. Three. Two. Surely he will strike now! He is on hands and knees. He waits for a moment or two and then straightens his body, pulls up one knee, and poises the axe behind him. He is like a spring. In another second the terrible tension will be relaxed and that supple black body will launch itself at the sleeping man. The axe will split the skull in two from forehead to chin, and not a sound will tell that the forces of the desert have claimed another invader as their victim.
The silence of the night is shattered by a shot. The poised axe falls to the ground. The crouching native springs into the air with a yell and puts a broken finger in his mouth. There is a mighty shout, and Mick hurls himself at his would-be murderer. A blow under the chin which would have felled a bull sends the black-fellow spinning to the ground several yards away. The white man follows like an incarnate fury and grapples at his enemy's throat. A terrible struggle ensues. Over and over they roll. Now the black is on top, now the white, but Mick never relaxes his hold on the man's throat. Gradually the native's struggles weaken. The white stockman digs deeper with his thumbs into the neck of the gasping man and waits the inevitable end. Finally all resistance ceases. The black body grows limp and the head falls back.
The green-hide ropes are lying near. Mick reaches for them and binds his captive more securely than any clean-skin cattle have ever been bound. Then he looks up and meets the startled gaze of Sax and Vaughan.