But Ess, uneasy as she was, would have been doubly so if she had been able to see Ned Gunliffe’s movements that night.
He had caught his horse, and quietly left the Ridge between the fall of dark and the rise of the moon, and now in the bright moonlight he was pressing on over the hills as fast as the rough ground would let him. He went straight and without drawing rein to the spot where Steve and Aleck had met that night—where they had killed the dingo pups—and he halted and dismounted, and searched the ground where they had sat and talked.
He picked up a burnt match, with triumph written on his face. “I couldn’t see their corroboree together,” he muttered, “but I saw them far enough to guess just where they met evidently. Now what is the likeliest spot for him to have gone to hide from here?” He stood and gnawed his underlip in uncertainty for a moment. “He hasn’t gone yet, that’s clear,” he said again. “His horse is still there, so....”
With an impatient oath he turned to his horse and mounted again. “I’ll try the Scoop first. That’s near here, and he could light a fire there without it being seen.”
He rode as near the Scoop as he thought safe, and then left his horse tied to a bush and reconnoitred on foot.
There was nobody in the Scoop; half-a-dozen sheep were foraging there for the scanty herbage, and he knew they would not be there if a man were. The moon was down again by now, and it was a long way back to the Ridge, and he reluctantly turned his horse’s head and abandoned his search for the night.
He was making his way to the hill track between the township and the Ridge, when suddenly his eye caught a quick flash of light on a hillside on his right front.
He pulled up short and sat staring, but there was no further gleam. He thought intently for a moment, and then a look of exultation flashed over his face.
“The old dogger’s hut,” he said triumphantly. “He’s there for a thousand. It hasn’t been used for years back, and it’s so near the township he’d hardly be searched for there. But I must make sure and hurry up about it—it’ll be coming light soon.”
He rode on a few hundred yards with the greatest caution, tied his horse, and set himself to scramble up the hill. It was a stiff climb, and there was light enough to see the dim outlines of the hut when he came to a little spur just below it. He halted and rested there, watching the door which faced him, and when he saw it open he dropped flat and peered close. What he saw brought keen disappointment to him but this quickly gave way to a savage joy, and then, as all the possibilities of his discovery came home to him, he gave a long chuckle of satisfaction.