"Blest if I know. With the cattle, I expect. I wonder where the Musgrave Ranges are."
"But why does he say 'tell the trooper and no one else'?" asked Vaughan again. "Yet he wouldn't say 'don't worry' if anything was up, would he?"
"Oh, nothing's really up," said Sax with conviction. "He means he's a bit late, that's all. P'raps the trooper's expecting him or something. Of course he wouldn't want anybody else to know. You see, he's got a name here," said the lad proudly. "They call him Boss Stobart. Even the nigger did that."
"But he'll be a long time, Sax. He won't be in for a week or so at any rate, or else he wouldn't tell us to get a job, would he?"
The boys discussed the news from every possible point of view, and finally arrived at the conclusion that the famous drover had been forced out of the route he had intended to travel by difficulties with feed and water, and that he might be very late arriving at his destination. That he would finally arrive, they never doubted for a moment. With this assurance, they once more blew out the light, and it was not long before they were both fast asleep.
If they could have known the terrible danger which Drover Stobart was in at that very time, it is certain that sleep would have been impossible to them. He was as near death, a hideous death, as any man can possibly be who lives to tell the tale.
CHAPTER IV
Wild Cattle
The boys woke late on their first morning in the Far North. Sax's thoughts immediately turned to his father's letter. He groped under his pillow and pulled it out and read it again: