"Where's the gold? Where's ... my ... mates?" The last three words were almost whispered.
"Yes," said the trooper eagerly. "Where are they?"
The dying man moved his lips, but no sound issued from them. The other bent down closer to him.
"That," said the bushranger with long and painful pauses between each word, "you ... will ... never ... know."
And with that last taunt on his lips he died.
"Game to the end," the trooper said to his comrades with an admiration he made no effort to hide.
The blow had not killed Abel Cumshaw. He lay unconscious for the better part of the night, and even when the day dawned he was too weak at first to do more than crawl a few paces at the most. His head was throbbing, his mouth was a raging furnace, and all his limbs felt as if they had been racked and twisted. When daylight came at length he lay still for a while, trying to recollect what had happened. But his mind was a perfect blank and he himself was a man without an identity. The blow that had knocked him unconscious had somehow affected his memory, and he knew no more about himself than he did about the man in the moon. Something terrible had happened, something in which he had played a very prominent part, that much he realised; but beyond that simple fact his recollection did not extend. He groped about in the grass in the hope that he might find something that would give him a clue to the situation. His hand fell on his revolver. That at least was tangible, but there was nothing enlightening about it. Further search revealed a small flat piece of wood. He picked it up curiously and stared at it. Two or three sentences had been hurriedly scratched on its smooth surface with the point of a sharp knife, but though they were intelligible enough they did not appear to refer to anything concerning him. The mere fact that he had been lying almost on top of the wood struck him as strange, and in a moment of unusual thoughtfulness he slipped it into his pocket.
It was bright day by then, and the warmth of the sun seemed to revive him to a marvellous extent. He got on his feet more by sheer will-power than by any sudden accession of strength. He found that he could stagger along, though his pace was necessarily slow and his course very erratic. Some uncharted sense, instinct perhaps, led him along the track to the creek where he had pitched his camp the previous evening. There was a dim familiarity about the place that puzzled him. He felt in some absurd way that he should recognise it, and he was both angry and surprised that he could not. He found the remains of the parrot that Bradby had eaten for breakfast, and he wondered vaguely who the man might be who had been so close to him that morning. His wonder was such an impersonal thing that he did not connect his own condition with the fact of the other man's presence. Something had given way inside his head, that something that controlled rational and consecutive memory. He sat down on the bank of the creek and gazed into space. It would be incorrect to say that he was dazed or that he behaved like a man in a dream. Those are stock terms that in themselves are quite inadequate to convey his peculiar state of mind and body. It was something more than lassitude, yet it was not quite fatigue. It was rather as if some integral part of his brain had been removed.
It is impossible to say just how long he remained on the bank of the creek. At last his hunger became so acute that he determined to go off foraging. He had his revolver with him; he was a fair enough shot, and so it was not long before he tumbled a 'possum out of a tree. He made a rough meal of it, and after that set off aimlessly into the bush. Had he kept to his original intention he would have speedily wandered into the Mallee, and would have run a good chance of dying of starvation in that thinly-populated district. But his mind was still in a whirl, and instinct alone guided his footsteps to the east. He was many miles north of the valley and during his travels he moved further north, so that he did not come across it during his journey back.