In the Musgrave Ranges

by Conrad H. Sayce

Next day smoke signals were all around them and very close. It gave the boys a feeling that keen black eyes were peering at them from every bit of cover, and that lithe forms were slinking noiselessly from tree to tree, never turning a stone or breaking a twig to disturb the silence of the desert.

That evening they unpacked and unsaddled the horses early, and tied them up till after tea. Then Mick rode away with them himself, hobbled them on an open patch of dry bush, and prepared to watch throughout the night. He knew the native method of attack: a little, then a little more. If two horses had been killed last night, three or four might be speared this night. To lose their horses would leave the party at the mercy, not only of the blacks, but also of a more terrible enemy still—thirst. So the brave bushman was going to take no risks.

The spot he had chosen was a little plain covered with dry buck-bush and surrounded on all sides with mulga scrub. There was plenty of feed to keep the horses quiet all night, but Mick was obliged to ride round them again and again and turn them back from the scrub. He was perfectly sure that wild natives were in ambush behind the trees, and that the first animal who wandered within range of a spear-cast would become a victim. The moon was half-full in a cloudless sky, and the drover had no difficulty in seeing, but, after an hour or two, he had the greatest difficulty in the world to keep awake. The night was warm and still and drowsy, and the day had been one of constant tension, and as the drover sat with cocked rifle and with the horse's bridle looped over his arm, he must have nodded once or twice through sheer weariness.

Suddenly he heard a stone move on another stone. He was fully awake and alert instantly. The horses were still in the middle of the plain, quietly feeding, but one or two of them were looking at an old tree stump in the curious meditative way which resting animals have of looking at things which are of no particular interest.

All at once Mick Darby sprang to his feet. He had never seen that tree stump before. For several hours he had looked at that little plain in the moonlight, and every bush was pictured on his memory. He was absolutely sure that old tree had not been there when he started to nod with weariness. Then, how had it come? Trees do not grow from the ground, become old, and die and lose most of their branches in less than an hour of a summer's night.

Mick put his cocked rifle to his shoulder, trained the sights on the tree stump, and walked slowly towards it. The thing was about a hundred and fifty yards away when he started. He had covered a third of the distance when the tree suddenly disappeared. Remarkable as it may appear, it is a fact. One moment he saw the thick twisted trunk of a mulga tree with a few broken branches, standing out on an otherwise treeless plain; the next it had gone completely. But, instead of the tree, three wriggling black forms glided between the bushes with the stealth of snakes, making for their lives towards the scrub. They were three warragul blacks, who had crept out into the plain and had used this wonderful but quite common method of concealment.

Mick fired into the air to frighten them and any of their companions who might be lurking near. When the report had died away, the darkness under the trees became full of little sounds like the patter of rain on leaves, or like sheep passing over soft sand; a scarcely perceptible sound, yet one which told of black savages creeping for safety into the depths of the scrub.

The shot woke the two boys. They turned to one another for an explanation and saw that Mick had not returned. His swag still lay where it had been tossed off the horse. They got up from their blankets and began fastening their boots. They saw Yarloo sitting up on the other side of the fire and called him to them. Yarloo always camped away from the other black boys, for he was a member of a different tribe.

"What was that shot, Yarloo?" asked Sax.

"Me can't know um," replied the boy. "Boss, him no come back. P'raps him bin shoot, eh?"