“Baal me shoot him, boss. I find him longa place where all four fellow been camp in little gully. He been try to put saddle on horse, but fall down and die—boigan been bite him I think it, when he swim across waterhole.”
“Come and show me,” said Gerrard, and, suffering as he was, he mounted his horse, and followed Tommy. In a few minutes they came to the place where Forreste and his gang had hidden their horses, all of which were tethered.
Lying doubled up on the ground beside a saddle, was the body of Cheyne. He had succeeded in putting the bridle on his horse, and then had evidently fallen ere he could place the saddle on the animal.
Gerrard struck a match, and held it to the dead man's face; it was purple, and hideous to look upon.
“Boigan,” said Tommy placidly, as he re-lit his pipe.
CHAPTER XXXI
Three days passed before Gerrard and the black boy were able to leave the Rocky Waterholes. The bodies of their treacherous assailants they interred in the soft, sandy soil at the foot of one of the granite pillars, and then Gerrard took their valises containing their gold, together with their arms and saddle pouches, and rolled them in a blanket, which he strapped on one of the gang's horses, which was to serve as a pack. He intended to hand everything over to the Gold Commissioner, whom he expected to see at Ochos Rios in a few weeks, and who having judicial powers, would, he expected, hold the official inquiry into the deaths 'of the men at the station itself.
Tommy made but little of his wound, and only grinned when Gerrard said he was lucky not to have had his jaw smashed by the bullet. He doctored it in the usual aboriginal manner: first powdering it with wood ashes, and then plastering the whole side of his face with wattle gum.
“My word, Tommy,” observed his master gravely, “you got him handsome fellow face now—all the same as me. Plenty fellow lubra want catch you now for benjamin.” {*}