The Măluka being more than willing to give his fair percentage, a judicious hint from him was generally taken quietly and for the time discreetly obeyed, and it was a foregone conclusion that our “nigger hunt” would only involve the captured with general discomfiture; but the Red Lilies being a stronghold of the tribe, and a favourite hiding-place for “outsiders,” emergencies were apt to occur “down the river,” and we rode out of camp with rifles unslung and revolvers at hand.
Dan’s sleep had in no wise lessened his faith in the efficiency of dust-throwing, and as we set out he “reckoned” the missus would “learn a thing or two about surprise parties this trip.” We all did, but the black fellows gave the instruction.
All morning we rode in single file, following the river through miles of deep gorges, crossing here and there stretches of grassy country that ran in valleys between gorge and gorge, passing through deep Ti Tree forests at times, and now and then clambering over towering limestone ridges that blocked the way, with, all the while, the majestic Roper river flowing deep and wide and silent on our left, between its water-lily fringed margins. It would take a mighty drought to dry up the waters of the Territory—permanent, we call them, sure of our rivers and our rains. Almost fifty miles of these deep-flowing waterways fell to our share; thirty-five miles of the Roper, twelve in the Long Reach, besides great holes scattered here and there along the beds of creeks that are mighty rivers in themselves “during the Wet.” Too much water, if anything, was the complaint at the Elsey, for water everywhere meant cattle everywhere.
For over two hours we rode, prying into and probing all sorts of odd nooks and crannies before we found any sign of blacks, and then, Roper giving the alarm, every one sat to attention. Roper had many ways of amusing himself when travelling through bush, but one of his greatest delights was nosing out hidden black fellows. At the first scent of “nigger” his ears would prick forward, and if left to himself, he would carry his rider into an unsuspected nigger camp, or stand peering into the bushes at a discomfited black fellow, who was busy trying to think of some excuse to explain his presence and why he had hidden.
As Roper’s ears shot forward and he turned aside towards a clump of thick-set bushes, Dan chuckled in expectation, but all Roper found was a newly deserted gundi camp, and fresh tracks travelling eastwards—tracks left during the night—after our arrival at the river, of course.
Dan surveyed the tracks, and his chuckles died out, and, growing sceptical of the success of his surprise party, he followed them for a while in silence, Sambo riding behind, outwardly stolid, but no doubt, inwardly chuckling.
Other eastward-going tracks a mile or so farther on made Dan even more sceptical, and further tracks again set him harking back to his theory of “something always telling ’em somehow,” and, losing interest in nigger-hunts, he became showman of the Roper river scenery.
Down into the depths of gorges he led us, through ferny nooks, and over the sandy stretches at the base of the mighty clefts through which the river flows; and as we rode, he had us leaning back in our saddles, in danger of cricking our necks, to look up at lofty heights above us, until a rocky peninsula running right into the river, after we had clambered up its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky surfaced summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses’ necks in danger of taking somersaults into space, as we peered over the sides of a precipice at the river away down beneath us. “Nothing like variety,” Dan chuckled; and a few minutes later again we were leaning well back in our saddles as the horses picked their way down the far side of the ridge, old Roper letting himself down in his most approved style; dropping from ledge to ledge as he went, stepping carefully along their length, he would pause for a moment on their edges to judge distance, then, gathering his feet together, he would sway out and drop a foot or more to the next ledge. Riding Roper was never more than sitting in the saddle and leaving all else to him. Wherever he went there was safety, both for himself and his rider whether galloping between trees or beneath over-hanging branches, whether dropping down ridges with the surefootedness of a mountain pony, or picking his way across the treacherous “springy country.” No one knew better than he his own limits, and none better understood “springy country.” Carefully he would test suspicious-looking turf with a cautious fore-paw, and when all roads proved risky, in his own unmistakable language he would advise his rider to dismount and walk over, having shown plainly that the dangerous bit was not equal to the combined weight of horse and man. When Roper advised, wise men obeyed.
But gorges and ridges were not all Dan had to show us. Twice in our thirty-five miles of the Roper—about ten miles apart—wide-spreading rocky arches completely span the river a foot or so beneath its surface, forming natural crossing-places; for at them the full volume of water takes what Dan called a “duck-under,” leaving only smoothly flowing shallow streams, a couple of hundred yards wide, running over the rocky bridgeways. The first “duck-under” occurs in a Ti Tree valley, and, marvelling at the wonder of the rippling streamlet so many yards wide and so few in length, with that deep, silent river for its source and estuary—we loitered in the pleasant forest glen, until Dan, coming on further proofs of a black fellow’s “second-sight” along the margins of the duck-under, he turned away in disgust, and as we followed him through the great forest he treated us to a lengthy discourse on thought-reading.
The Salt Creek, coming into the Roper with its deep, wide estuary, interrupted both Dan’s lecture and our course, and following along the creek to find the crossing we left the river, and before we saw it again a mob of “brumbies” had lured us into a “drouth” that even Dan declared was the “dead finish.”