In the Musgrave Ranges

by Conrad H. Sayce

As hour after hour went by, and Sax or Vaughan rode round the horses or squatted on the ground with the quietly breathing saddle-horse standing near, these lads were slowly but surely changed from school-boys to men. They felt that they were face to face with the power of untamed nature—the desert and the savage inhabitants of it—and that even they were units in an army of progress which was conquering that nature and making it minister to the needs of civilized man. Of course, these were not their actual thoughts, but that was certainly the general effect which night-watching had upon them.

Six days went by in this way and it appeared as if all danger was past. The party had been making towards a low range of hills on the western horizon, and on the seventh day the plant passed up a little valley and halted on the top for midday camp.

Through the clean sun-filled air of Central Australia the view was so clear that all sense of distance was lost, and objects many days away seemed no farther off than a few hours' ride. The character of the country was the same as that which they had travelled over since leaving Oodnadatta: masses of scanty mulga scrub standing out dark on a landscape of vast bare plains or rolling sand-hills. Far away, a pale-blue silhouette against the bright north-west sky, was a range of high mountains.

"Those are the Musgraves," said Mick, in answer to a question. "That's where those niggers come from who speared my two horses."

"Are the niggers very wild?" asked Sax, thinking of his father.

"They're the last that really are wild in this part of the country," answered the drover. "The rest have either come in and made camps near stations, or cleared right out into West Australia."

"Are there many of them?" asked Vaughan.

"Nobody really knows," replied Mick. "The Musgraves is a big slice of country, as you can see, and it stretches back for a couple of hundred miles north. They say there's plenty of water and game in those mountains. Chaps used to go there after gold, but so few of them came back that they chucked it and left the place alone. The Musgraves have got a bad name."

Mick Darby did not know that everything he said had a very personal application to one at least of his companions. The words of his father's note kept ringing in Sax's ears: "In difficulties. Musgrave Ranges. In difficulties. Musgrave Ranges," and his vivid imagination filled all sorts of details into the drover's bare statements about the dangers of the place. He noticed Yarloo looking intently at the distant peaks, and when he caught the boy's eye, a significant glance passed between them. They were both thinking of the lonely white man.

But imaginary dangers soon gave place to present interests. The saddle of the hills where they were camped was the eastern boundary of Sidcotinga Station, the run on which Mick was going to take up the duties of head stockman, and the boys were keen to note every landmark which he pointed out.