In the Musgrave Ranges

by Conrad H. Sayce

The sand of that water-hole was gold!

The white man stood up. He had no tools with which to work at the boulders for specimens to take away with him when he escaped. But here was gold, some of which could easily be hidden on his person to prove, to anybody who might doubt his story, that he alone of all men had solved the mystery of the Musgraves and had returned again to the haunts of men of his own colour. He stooped to gather another handful, and as he did so something whirled through the air and fell in the water in front of him. He jumped back quickly. The water was clear, for the grains of golden sand had settled and left no mud.

It was an old horseshoe! Surely the place was bewitched. He looked round, wondering what next would happen. Suddenly another horseshoe came from a clump of low bushes nearly a hundred yards up the gully. Stobart saw it coming and dodged it. It fell at his feet and he picked it up. He was a good tracker and knew it at once. That shoe had made one of the tracks which he had seen in the clay. There was no doubt about it.

The sense of a supernatural foe, which was making a coward of the brave white man, left him all at once. Evil spirits do not play with old rusty metal. A human arm must have thrown that horseshoe. He had seen the second one leave the bushes where the man was in ambush. Now was the time for action. Grasping a boomerang he ran at full speed up the valley. He reached the bushes. Nobody was there. But, leading to and from the hiding-place, were the recent tracks of a man's bare feet. Stobart recognized them at once. The warragul doctor had thrown those horseshoes.

CHAPTER XXVI

Arrkroo, the Hater

The native doctor fled, like the evil black spirit that he was, up the valley. Although an old man, he was still in the prime of his strength, and he knew the path to and from the Pool of Skulls so well, that he had the advantage over Stobart, who had never been there before. For the first few yards the marks of his naked feet were clearly seen, and the white man ran swiftly, but the tracks soon became confused in a mass of loose stones which had fallen from the cliffs, and were finally lost altogether on the rocky sides of the valley, till Stobart could not possibly tell which way his enemy had gone. He had heard no sound and seen no sign of the running man, yet he knew that he was close upon him when he was forced to give up the chase, and, as if to confirm this opinion, when Stobart finally stood still and looked at the great boulders above him, hoping to see a black human form flit from one to another, a stone came out of the silence, hurled with deadly force and aim. Years of danger with wild cattle had made the drover's actions as quick as lightning. The stone was totally unexpected, but he jerked his head aside just in time. Instead of striking him in the face, it caught the brim of his hat and sent the old felt spinning from his head. He jumped back, picked it up, and crouched behind a rock.

Absolute silence reigned. The sun was very near its zenith, but in that deep valley the air was still cool. Across the clear flawless blue sky sailed an eagle on wide-spread motionless wings, wheeling round and round in slow circles, wondering when another human victim would be provided for him down there beside the water-hole.

After a time Stobart went back to the place of horror, with its charred bones, its terrible design in skulls, and its golden-sanded pool. He knew what fear natives have of dead bodies, and that there was only one man in all the Musgrave tribes who would dare to play such a gruesome trick with the remains of his enemies, and that man was the native doctor—Arrkroo, the Hater. Even he, powerful and feared though he was, dared not actually kill Stobart. The other natives would track their white hero and would soon know everything that had happened, and Arrkroo was afraid of what they might do to him. The Hater did not mind so long as Stobart merely hunted and behaved like a native, but when he started to wander around alone and search for signs of the glittering yellow metal, Arrkroo became alarmed, and, though the white man did not know it, his enemy had followed and watched him closely for weeks.