But he was soon back by Shanter’s blanket-gunyah watching the shiny black face, which looked very hard and stern now. He had tried him again and again with tea, water, and bread, but there was no response; and at last he had settled down to letting him rest, hoping that his patient was asleep, and feeling that he could do nothing but leave him to nature.
But it was a sad vigil, and not made more pleasant by the sight of the great kangaroo lying just at the edge of the water-hole, and toward which a perfect stream of insects were already hurrying over the dry ground, while flies buzzed incessantly about it in the air. Then, too, again and again some great bird came circling round, but only to be kept at a distance by the sight of the watcher by the tents.
“Will they never come back!” cried Norman at last, quite aloud, and he started in alarm, for there was a loud discordant laugh close at hand.
He picked up a stone and threw it angrily into the ragged tree from whence the sound had come, and one of the great grotesque-looking kingfishers of the country flew off.
At last, after scanning the distant horizon for hours, seeing nothing but a few kangaroos which looked like black fellows in the distance, and a couple of emus stalking slowly across the plain, Norman could bear it no longer.
“Shanter,” he said; “must go and find Marmi Rifle and Marmi Tim. Do you hear? I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
But there was not so much as a twitch at the corners of the black’s lips, and the boy hesitated about leaving him. At last though he rose, caught and saddled his horse, gave one final look round, but could see nothing; and he was about to mount when a sudden thought occurred to him, and taking a couple of halters he knotted them together, hitched one over the kangaroo’s neck, and attached the other end to the saddle.
The horse jibbed and shied a little, but at last he made a plunge, and the dead animal was dragged into a hollow a couple of hundred yards away, so that there should be no fear of its contaminating the water-hole. Then the halters were cast off, thrown over the tent, and after a glance at Shanter, Norman mounted to take up the trail made by Rifle and Tim, but only leaped down again, and turned his horse out to graze; for there away in the distance were the two boys cantering gently toward the camp, and half an hour later they rode up, well supplied with clucks which they had shot right away upon a creek.
That night passed with one of them watching, and the next two days glided by in the same dreary way, Shanter lying as if unconscious, and nothing passed his lips.
“Father can’t be angry with us for not keeping to our time,” said Rifle, sadly. “Poor old Shanter, I wish I could do him some good.”