“Well, I’ll find out for myself what’s been your game. I’m afraid I can guess what has happened.” He rides past without another word into the arena of death, where a few crows are already at work upon the bodies. Dyesart has seen many awful sights in his time, and is expecting one now, but the scene overpowers him for a minute with mingled feelings of horror, pity, and indignation.
Speaking a few words to Saul, who is an educated “boy” he had obtained from the good missionaries of Rillalpininna on his way up from Adelaide, he fastens the horses to a tree, and proceeds on foot to examine the wounds and positions of the corpses.
“A night surprise,” he says to himself; “I thought as much. The third of the sort I have seen in two years, and yet those smiling squatters one meets down south swear through thick and thin these things occur only in the imagination of the missionaries. What cowardly devils!” he adds aloud, as he stands before the body of the pretty young mother of Deder-re-re’s children. One dark, shapely arm still clasps the baby form; the other, crushed and mangled with attempting to ward off the blows of some weapon, rests upon the gory, horror-stricken face. Both the woman’s skull and that of her child have been smashed in with axe blows. Over each body in turn the sinewy form of “Doctor” Dyesart bends, as he searches for any wounded that may still be alive for him to succour. But the work has been too well done. Thirty yards away the boss’s black boys are peering over the rocks, wondering what he is doing. Dyesart is so different to the other white men that have come within their ken. On the road up, his curiosity with regard to rocks and stones, and his perennial kindness to them and all the other “boys,” has often much amused them. Presently one of these “boys” spies out a body amongst the rocks he has not noticed before. It is that of a young boy,—the one that played with his baby brother, as it lay in its mother’s arms, last night. The child’s thigh-bone has been broken by a snider-bullet, which has torn a frightful hole in the limb’s tender flesh. He is alive and conscious. But with the firm nerves that he has inherited from his hardy ancestors, he lies motionless, feigning death, though his soul is racked with agony and fear, and his mouth is dry and burning with a feverish thirst. Saul is helping his master in the search, and sees the movements of the other “boys,” as they proceed to despatch the victim they have hitherto overlooked. A hurried sign to “Massa Sam,” and the long barrel of a “Colt” rests for an instant on a steady left arm. Then the combined noise of a yell and a revolver shot breaks the silence, followed by the ping of a bullet and the whir of rising crows. Dyesart has shown his wonderful skill with small arms on many a gold-field, but he never felt more satisfied with his shooting powers than on this occasion. The bullet, hitting the black boy’s uplifted tomahawk, hurls it from his half-dislocated wrist, and poor Deder-re-re’s son still breathes. The wounded boy is attended to, and then the question of what to do with him arises. He can scarcely be left behind, for his friends will hardly venture back to the water-hole for many days. In the meantime the horrible dingoes, crows, and ants would leave little of the original youth. Dyesart, too, wants a “boy” (as his nephew did long afterwards), as he must return Saul to the little mission station before long. So, after fastening a long branch to the child’s side and injured limb as a splint, and fixing it securely with well-trained fingers by means of strips torn from his saddle-cloth and Saul’s gaudy head-gear, Dyesart makes the little black body look like a newly “set up” skin in a taxidermist’s laboratory. Little Deder-re-re, junior, who will figure in future in these pages as Dyesart’s “boy” Billy, is then placed upon the saddle in front of Saul; and the waterbags being filled and suspended from the horses’ necks, the two riders proceed across the dreary sand-hills towards the junction of two wet-season creeks, where the explorers’ camp and “station” preliminaries have been established. It is late in the evening when the two horsemen, having been delayed by their wounded burden, reach the white tents, where the “boss” and his subordinates have previously arrived; and after a silent meal of damper and duck, Dyesart says a few words to his partner, as the whites sit round the fire smoking.
“I am returning south to-morrow,” he begins. “As it is no use, I suppose, telling fellows like you what I think of your cowardly last night’s work, all I’ll say is that I feel justified in withdrawing from the arrangement we made between us about taking up land. When a man finds he’s made a contract with another fellow who doesn’t carry out his part of the arrangements, he’s right in getting out of it.”
“I don’t want to shirk my part of the agreements,” growls the “boss.”
“Part of the contract,” calmly continues Dyesart, “between us was that all collisions with the natives were to be avoided if possible,—I quote correctly, don’t I?”
“Curse me if I know or care,” comes the muttered reply.
“And that no ‘dispersing,’ ‘rounding-up,’ or employment of the Native Mounted Police was to be allowed on any new country we should take up. You have broken this part of the contract several times, I believe, but this time once too often. I return south immediately, and if you try to hold me to my agreements with you,—but no, I don’t think you’ll be such a fool as that. Yon fellows have made me more orthodox than I was, at any rate,” he says, rising; “I never believed really in a material hell till to-day, but now I’m sure there must be one for such cowardly devils as you are.”
Next day Dyesart leaves, with his “boys” and horses, without bidding farewell to the others of the party, who, though they wouldn’t confess it for the world, are sorry to lose him with his jolly songs and genial temperament.