"Ay, that it would," a selector, from ten miles out, answered. "It's what we are all afraid of now. A bush fire with the country like it is would go over five hundred square miles, and there wouldn't be a selector nor a squatter for miles round with a yard of fence nor a blade of grass to call his own."
"That's true," Marmot said. "And it's why I feel glad we held it. Though it's bad enough for me, for it leaves me a poor man."
"Not much," Peters exclaimed. "You're all right. You set us up with stores when we were broke, and now we've the chance we'll see you through."
"Seeing that the gold we brought in was probably the cause of all the trouble," Tony said.
"I don't know, lad; I don't know," Marmot replied. "How could any one but us know it was there?"
"Yes; how could they?" Peters echoed. "Only they did. We'll find out how later on. Meanwhile, one is settled—and Leary swears he's the man that tied him up before—while of the other two, one we know had a bad tumble, because we found where he took the ground, and found his horse lamed and with the gold still on its back. I'll bet that the chap carries marks enough about him to give his game away, even if he can travel all right."
"What about the other?" some one asked.
"He flung the gold away so as to get a lead on Murray and his mate—at least, so Murray said when he came in with the stuff," Peters answered.
Privately he had whispered to Tony an ugly suspicion he had—a suspicion which did not tend for peace of mind, for it was that Murray had in some way been in league with the men who had robbed and fired the store. That was a further irritant, for Tony remembered only too clearly the state of Murray's horse when he and Peters rode up to Marmot's, as well as the uneasiness in Murray's manner when they asked him who he had told of their return. Coming on the top of the other circumstances, it reduced Tony to a condition of suspecting every one and everything; so he took the first opportunity to ride away to the Flat—to test the greatest of the mysteries first.
Riding slowly, he reached the Flat about noon, his mind brooding over the perplexities which had crowded upon him since his return to Birralong, and his spirits depressed by the mingled doubts that had come to him since he had had time to realize something of the meaning of the story he had heard.