“Hold this horse a minute, please,” he said. “There has been a mob of sheep driven here.”
“Whereabouts?” said she, staring round her.
“All about here,” he said, pointing to the ground. “Don’t you see the tracks? Hundreds of ’em. But I can’t see what they were up to. There’s no place they could get ’em out without cutting the wires, and the fence is sound enough. Good heavens, I see it now! Well, that’s smart he continued, leaning against a post and giving it a shake.
“What have they done I don’t understand. How have they got the sheep through without breaking the fence?”
“They’ve dug up four or five posts,” he said, kicking over some red earth with his foot, “laid that piece of fence flat on the ground, driven the sheep over it, and then put the fence up again. No wonder we are missing sheep! Two or three hundred have gone out here! Here’s a chance at last—the chance I’ve been waiting for all these years! What a lucky thing we came here! And now, Miss Grant,” he said, remounting, “we won’t have any jumping to-day. I’ll have to follow these tracks till I come on the sheep somewhere, if it’s in Red Mick Donohoe’s own yard. Do you think you can find your way back to the homestead?”
“What for?”
“To tell them to send Poss and Binjie after me. I don’t expect they’ve gone home yet. I want a witness with me when I catch Red Mick with these sheep, or else fifty of his clan will swear that he has been in bed for six weeks, or something like that.”
“Then,” she said firmly, gathering up the reins in her daintily gloved hands as she spoke, “I’m going with you. I’m just as good a witness as Poss or Binjie.”
“No, no, no,” said Hugh, “that won’t do. There may be a row. It’s a rough sort of place, and a rough lot of people. Now look here, Miss Grant, oblige me and go home. The horse will take you straight back.”
Her eyes glowed with excitement. “Please let me come,” she said. “You don’t know how much I want to come. I’ll do whatever you tell me!”