“Leaving my men to bring on the cattle and horses, I pricked my spurs into my steed’s sides, and made him scramble up the stony track; and, after half an hour’s search, found a good place to camp the cattle in a narrow part of the gorge, between two cliffs of gnarled and distorted rock. There was plenty of long grass, and the melting snow had left puddles of water all round amongst the rocks, that in the evening light looked like so many pools of blood.
“Soon the cattle arrived, and I was glad to see that, tired with their scramble up the mountain-side, they were evidently contented with their camp, and seemed likely to remain quiet all night.
“‘Not so bad after all,’ I said to myself, as I rode back to our campfire, after seeing the cattle safely put on camp.
“But the words were hardly out of my mouth when I noticed, in the twilight, a little fence of rough-split shingles, up against the cliff, exactly opposite the cattle. It was the grave of the murdered man. I knew it from having had it so often described to me. We must be then located exactly on the spot where, six years before, a mob of cattle had suddenly been seized with maddening terror, and stampeding over the drover’s camp, killing two men in their wild rush, had been lost entirely from that day to this.
“Well, there was no help for it, so I turned my horse’s head from the solitary corner in the rocks and rode on towards our fire. Was it fancy or what? I know not, but as I left the grave behind me I heard a sound like a low moan. It was followed by a low, plaintive cry overhead, in the air.
“‘Well, this is a creepy kind of place,’ I thought to myself, ‘but I won’t tell the other fellows my fears, but just double the watches to-night.’
“I saw at a glance, however, on reaching the camp, that my four white companions had evidently learned of the close proximity of the grave, and knew the history connected with it. And the black ‘boys’ had, contrary to custom, made their fire close to ours, a change that I thought it policy not to notice.
“‘Now then, Sanko,’ said I to that worthy, after supper, ‘you and Merrilie sit down alonger yarraman (horses) till I come.’
“The two ‘boys’ went off unwillingly enough,—another unusual thing that I, also, pretended not to observe. Then, knowing that no one would attempt to interfere with the cattle for an hour or two, I lay down by the blazing mulga-branches for a short nap, before sitting up for the rest of the night.
“I had not been asleep ten minutes, I suppose, before I woke to find Sanko tumbling off his horse by my side in his hurry to speak to me, and could see he was in a great state of terror about something.