“Got a shanty on the creek there,” he said laconically.
“Creek, is there a creek? The place looks as if it hadn’t seen water since the beginning of the world.”
“Oh, there’s a creek right enough. I believe it’s a big one when it rains, but it hasn’t rained since I ‘ve been here, and there ain’t much water in it. Just a little in the hole opposite the hut. The niggers say its permanent. Springs, or something of that sort.”
“Niggers! That’s what I ‘ve come over about. They’ve worried the life out of us on Jinfalla. Taken to spearing the cattle, and the men too if they get a chance. Old Anderson thinks we ought to have some ‘concerted action,’ and settle the matter once for all.”
“H’m. Wipe ‘em out, I suppose he means?”
“It’s what a squatter generally means, isn’t it, when he talks about the blacks? Sounds brutal, but hang it all, man, what the devil is a fellow to do? They ‘re only beasts, and as beasts you must treat ‘em. Look here, there was a young fellow on our run, as nice a boy as you ‘d wish to see—his people were something decent at home, I believe, but the lad had got into some scrape and cleared out, and drifted along into the heart of Western Australia here. He was riding tracks for old Anderson about two hundred miles to the west there. He didn’t come in last week for his tucker, so they sent word for me to look him up.”
“Well?” for Turner paused, and drew a long breath.
“Well—same old nip, of course. His hut was burnt, and he and his hutkeeper—I tell you, Dick, it won’t bear talking about—he was a lad of twenty, and the hutkeeper was an old lag, might have been seventy to look at him, but when I found their bodies down by the creek, I couldn’t tell which was which.”
“It’s bad,” said Stanesby, “very bad. What did you do?”
“Buried ‘em, of course, my mate and I, and shot the first buck we came across skulking in the bush. What would you have us do?”