"Wha-at?" Marmot exclaimed.
"For why not?" Cullen went on. "He came from over by Murray's;" and he pointed away in the direction whence Slaughter had come, and which was also the direction of the Murray selection. "Old Cold-blood's a man of eddication, and eddication, you take my tip, is the joker in a hand like this. The old man's right. This ain't our game. We've got our hands full watching how things go. There's a breeze coming up from somewhere, and we're best under shelter. Leave them as wants it to take up the running. Old Cold-blood and the Three-mile ain't our dart."
Ignorant of the commotion his reappearance had created at the store, Slaughter rode on his way to his selection, from which he had been absent for a couple of weeks. Barber, before leaving (for the West, as he told Slaughter at the time, but in reality to lead the raid on the miner's gold at the constable's cottage), had promised to send a message to Slaughter to a small township on the north of Birralong, giving him full particulars as to the whereabouts of the woman whose wrong-doing was the foundation of their mutual hate. Slaughter had set out for the northern township at the appointed time, and found a letter awaiting him from Barber; but instead of containing the information promised, it told how Barber and his three companions had been attacked at night by wild blacks, how two of the party were killed, and the others so badly wounded that they were returning by slow stages to the Three-mile for rest. The letter concluded by asking Slaughter to ride out to meet them, as should either break down, the other would not be able to render him any assistance. This Slaughter had done, meeting Barber and Tap on the road from the West. They were not travelling quite so slowly as the letter might have led Slaughter to believe, neither was the condition of their wounds so serious as the letter implied; but Slaughter neither expressed nor manifested surprise. It may have been that the presence of the black-browed Barber awakened memories of a bygone period before his life was scarred by transverse currents of bitterness; it may have been that his appearance roused the latent hatred he entertained for the woman who had crossed and marred his path after those happier years; it may have been some evil influence the man exhaled, and which affected his companions;—but immediately he was thrown in contact with Barber, there came to Slaughter's eyes a dull glow unpleasant to see and as forbidding as it was foreboding. Matters of everyday note escaped him or were unheeded; inaccuracies of fact, contradictions of statement, were alike ignored; only did Slaughter seem to realize and hope for the prospect of learning how he might attain to the summit of his ambition by settling that unhappy account of the bygone years.
There were not many words lost in the greeting. Barber said that he and Tap were coming back to the Three-mile for some more business they had heard of, and that they wanted to be as quiet and free from interruption as they had been before. Leave was neither asked nor given; but the three travelled on together until a day's ride from Birralong, when Tap and Barber branched off to the right and left, leaving Slaughter to go on through the township to the selection by himself.
When he arrived at the slip-rails across the end of the track leading from the road to the selection, he saw by the gleam of firelight from the open doorway that some one was in the hut. As he entered he saw in the dim light the figures of Barber and Tap, while nearer the door a third was standing.
"Well, I'm off," the latter said, as Slaughter went into the hut. "Hullo," he added, as he met Slaughter face to face. "You back again?"
"Well, what then?" Slaughter answered, with a surly tone and manner. "This is my own place, isn't it?"
"Oh yes, it's your own place, only I didn't see you here when I last came over, and they do say in the township——"
"Look here, young fellow," Slaughter exclaimed savagely, "if you come here as often as I come to Barellan, I'll be satisfied. The less I see——"
"Dry up," Barber called out. "Dickson came with a message for me. What's it to you if the boy has doings with me?"