“You brute!” cried Turner, “why didn’t you bring her with you?”
“Only got ‘em one yarramen,” said the blackfellow nonchalantly. There was only one horse, he had taken it and saved his skin. He had come to warn the white man of the destruction of his dwelling, but he did not count the half-caste girl of any value one way or another. The blacks would attack the hut at sundown when they saw the coast clear.
1 A blackfellow has hit the woman over the head with a big
stick or club. The woman is dead.
The white man would be angry at the destruction of his hut, he had ridden after him to tell him, and also because safety lay with the white man; but the girl—if there had been a horse in the little paddock, he might possibly have brought her out of danger, but even as a blackfellow he looked with contempt on a half-caste; and as a woman—well, a woman was worth nothing as a woman. There were plenty more to be got. He lay down on the ground, and lazily stretched himself out at full length. There was nothing more to be got out of him.
Stanesby kicked him, and went for his horse.
“This is terrible!” he said, in a hoarse, husky whisper. “That poor child! Old man, I ought to have taken your advice. My God! Why did you let me leave her?”
Turner was saddling his own horse, and asking himself the self-same question. That girl’s blood was on his head he felt, and yet—and yet—it was no business of his. Stanesby had declared all safe.
“What are you going to do?”
“Going straight back, of course.”
“We’ll be too late. Jimmy certainly said at sundown.”