Viewing the nature and “lay” of this ravine, as he halted above it Mat entirely changed his method of procedure, and once more prepared to follow the tactics he had pursued for so many years with the Waigondas when engaged in stalking game.
Divesting himself of his clothing, and twining green leaves into his hair and beard, he dropped into the long blady grass which grew along the bank of the creek, and, wriggling himself, like a snake, to the cover of a hibiscus bush, peered cautiously through, and found that he was right over the robbers’ camp!
A couple of hundred yards to the right of him, and in the dry bed of the creek, were two men lying stretched out under a huge specimen of the eucalyptus (known as the ti-tree, but pronounced te-tree), with their cabbage-tree hats over their eyes, fast asleep, and, as Mat hoped, in a drunken sleep, for he saw the glitter of empty bottles strewed around them. Their guns he could also see leaning against the ti-tree.
All this our forester took in at a glance. Without shifting his position, he peered anxiously about, until at length he descried a third man, Magan, wide awake and eating something, seated on a spit of sand a few yards higher up than the two sleepers. The bushranger had chosen his position with great cunning, not a tree or bush to afford cover to a foe being near him.
Mat could see, even at the distance that he was, that the whole attitude of the man betokened extreme fatigue; yet ever and anon he turned his head about, as if listening for any sign of pursuit.
Here was evidently a stronghold of the gang, for Mat could see a cave in the side of the gully, with saddles and swags lying in the mouth of it.
The two men, Mat guessed, had awaited the bushranger at this spot. At all events, he had seen no other tracks during his pursuit of the robber.
And where was Annie?
Our forester decided—in that cave.
Long and anxiously did he study the situation, for one false step would now ruin all.