These undraped fellows, carrying spears and boomerangs, roaming about an unfenced wilderness, romantic enough in contour and general setting, capable enough, one would judge, of eating uncooked rattlesnakes for choice—whining "Baccy?"
It was exasperating. Besides, I wasn't going through the country loaded up with tobacco for free distribution among blackfellow-strangers.
It, at the instant, occurred to me that those three strapping fellows might, if they chose, possess themselves of all the tobacco I had, and the bicycle into the bargain, I was certainly too weak to—
Then it flashed through my mind—"What would the fearless fellow back at the Stirling do?" I made up my mind for him at once.
"You fellows, get!"
Then I turned over, as if dead certain they would "get!"
And after "yabbering" to or about the bicycle they disappeared—whither I did not know.
By the generality of those white men with whom I conversed on such matters before reaching Alice Springs, it is—or was—an accepted belief that, from that place onward, natives are nearly always about at watering places along the overland track, although the traveller may not catch sight of even one. They are ever so much more sharp of sight and hearing than the whites, and, being treacherous themselves, they are very suspicious of strangers, and so they hide if they do not clear out on learning of a strangers coming.
Some of them believe or pretend to believe the whites have robbed them of their choicest hunting grounds, and, naturally, these work themselves up into revengeful passions when dwelling on their wrongs.