Sax started forward and the black seemed to scrutinize his features intently. "You Stobart?" he asked.
"Yes. My name's Stobart," answered Sax. "What d'you want?"
The black fellow smiled again, groped in his shirt, and pulled out a dirty piece of folded paper. He held it in his hand and again looked at the lad as if to make quite sure he was not being deceived.
"Boss Stobart, him say, you walk longa Oodnadatta. You find um my son. You give 'im paper yabber. Him good fella, Boss Stobart, so I go. My name Yarloo."
The words came slowly, as if the man were repeating something he had said over and over in his mind. But the words were quite distinct.
He handed the "paper yabber" to Sax, and disappeared. The two friends came close together round the candle and looked at the paper which had come to them from the unknown by such a strange hand. For a few moments Sax was too excited to open it. What was the news it contained? Good or bad? It was not addressed, or, if it ever had been, the handling to which it had been subjected had worn any writing completely off the outside.
At last the lad opened it. It was a sheet torn from a common note-book ruled with lines and columns for figures, the sort of thing on which a rough man would keep his rough accounts. It contained writing in pencil by a hand which Sax at once recognized as his father's; but it was uneven as if it had been written in the dark. The words were:
"In difficulties. Musgrave Ranges. Tell
Oodnadatta trooper, but no one else." (These last three
words were underlined several times.) "He'll
understand. Boy quite reliable. Don't worry.
Get a job somewhere. "STOBART."
The friends read it to themselves, and then Sax read it out loud.
"'In difficulties'," said Vaughan. "What does that mean?"