CHAPTER XVIII
Revenge
Just before sunset, after a long and tiring day's work, the last of the clean-skins was branded, and staggered to its feet and made off to rejoin the other cattle. Mick wiped his knife on his trousers and then used it to cut up a fill of tobacco. Sax had taken over the management of the brands after the adventure with Eagle, and was very glad to pull the irons out of the fire and let them cool in the sand. In fact, everybody was pleased to "knock off", both because they were thoroughly tired, and more especially because Mick's cruelty to the warragul had caused an unpleasant feeling to take the place of the former spirit of hearty good fellowship.
The men let the cattle go and rode dejectedly back to camp, and even Mick's efforts to start a conversation with his two white companions was not a great success. A fire was lit, the quart-pots were boiled and "tea-ed", and the damper and meat served out all round, and soon afterwards the stockmen unrolled their swags and lay down for the night.
Sax could not sleep. He turned over on one side and then on another, but did not seem able to find a comfortable position. During the excitement of his fall from the horse in the morning he had not noticed any injuries, but now, when he wanted to forget everything and go to sleep, he felt a large bruise on his hip and a sore place on each shoulder. The moon shone in his face and kept him awake, and he lay on his swag in a very unhappy frame of mind.
Mick's behaviour to Eagle worried him. His body was too tired and sore to rest, but his mind was unusually active, and kept on turning over and over the incidents of the day, and especially the short struggle between the white man and the warragul native.
Sax had been on the other side of the mob of cattle when the incident had occurred, but he had seen enough to make him very angry at the injustice. Eagle had proved himself to be Sax's friend on three occasions, and the lad consequently took the present matter to heart. He quite forgot that Mick did not know who Eagle was, and merely thought him to be a more than ordinarily useless black-fellow. Sax had found out to his cost what an exceedingly unpleasant task it is to keep brands hot on a blazing north-wind summer's day in the Australian desert.
The tired lad's indignant thoughts became confused as sleep gradually claimed him, and at last his aching body was at rest, though his mind still kept active and started to build dreams. Just after midnight, when everything was still, and the last of the cattle had ceased to splash in the water-hole and had gone out on one or another of the long cattle-pads which stretched away into the silent desert, when the half-moon looked down on the motionless and soundless world, a dark face peeped over the top of the sandhill above the sleeping stockmen. The man's naked body lay flat as a snake on the sand and wriggled forward with movements like the waving of a shadow on a wall, till the native could gain a clear view of the place where his unconscious enemy lay.
It was Eagle.
He had come to kill.