Harry wasn't expected home until the next day. He had been told to sleep at the tavern in Jerry's Town, when he had left his message at the barracks, and come home at his leisure in the morning.
About four miles from Wonga-Wonga, the dreariest part of the road to Jerry's Town, begins a two-mile stretch of dismal scrub. Harry put his heels into Guardsman's sides to make him go even faster than he was going when they got into the scrub, and was pleased to hear a horse's hoofs coming toward him from the other end.
He thought it was a neighbor riding home to the next station; but it was Warrigal. As soon as Harry pulled up Guardsman to chat a minute, Warrigal laid hold of the bridle and pulled Harry on to the saddle before him.
"Let's see, you're one of the Wonga-Wonga" (that was the name of his father's station) "kids, ain't you?" said the robber. "And where are you off to this time of night? Oh, oh, to fetch the traps, I guess; but I'll put a stop to that little game."
Just then Harry gave a coo-ey. He couldn't give a very loud one, for he was lying on a sack on the robber's horse; but it made Warrigal very savage.
He put the cold muzzle of a pistol against Harry's face and said, "You screech again, youngster, and you won't do it no more."
And then Warrigal took Harry and the horses into the scrub, and gagged Harry with a bit of iron he took out of his pocket, and tied him up to a crooked old honeysuckle-tree with a long piece of rope he carried in his saddle-bags.
"Don't frighten yourself, I'll tell yer mar where you are, and you'll be back by breakfast," said Warrigal, as he got on Guardsman and rode off, driving his own tired horse before him.
Next morning, just as the day was breaking, Warrigal and his two mates, with crape masks on, rode up to Wonga-Wonga.