CHAPTER VII
Stealthy Foes
Next morning, when the horses came in, two were missing. "Which way them two horses sit down?" Mick asked one of the boys. "What for you no bring um in?"
"Him dead," was the answer.
"Dead!" exclaimed the drover. "How dead?"
"Him speared," explained Yarloo.
"Which way? You show um me." The drover saddled his horse and went away with Yarloo, while the two white boys gave the other stockmen their breakfast, wondering what had taken Mick off in such a hurry.
Mick Darby found the two dead horses. By their tracks they had evidently strayed away from the others, and by other tracks it was clear that blacks had crept upon them in the dim light of dawn and had speared them, for the bodies were still warm. Mick always carried a bottle of strychnine about with him, and at every camp he poisoned little bits of meat and left them behind to kill the dingoes which abound in cattle country. He looked at the two horses—fine, stanch animals, both of them—and his heart became hot with anger. He put his hand to his belt and fingered the poison pouch. It was a great temptation. If the blacks had speared the horses for food, here was a chance for revenge. If he poisoned the carcass and killed the blacks, would it not be a terrible warning to the others?
But it was only for a second that the ghastly thought attracted him. He was a true white man and would not stoop to any hidden revenge. It is a white man's way to face his enemy in the open and under the sun, not to kill him by putting strychnine in his food. So Mick turned away and rode back to camp, and did not tell the boys what danger they were in.