“This is the most fishless creek!” he said. “Well, the only thing left to tell you is where the swagman came in.”
“Oh, by Jove,” Harry said, “I forgot the swaggie.”
“Was it his fault the fire started?” inquired Wally.
“Rather! He camped under a bridge on the road that forms our boundary the night Dad cleared him off the place, and the next morning, very early, he deliberately lit our grass in three places, and then made off. He’d have got away, too, and nobody would have known anything about it, if it hadn’t been for Len Morrison. You chaps haven’t met Len, have you? He’s a jolly nice fellow, older than me, I guess he’s about sixteen now—perhaps seventeen.
“Len had a favourite cow, a great pet of his. He’d petted her as a calf and she’d follow him about like a dog. This cow was sick—they found her down in the paddock and couldn’t move her, so they doctored her where she was. Len was awfully worried about her, and used to go to her late at night and first thing in the morning.
“He went out to the cow on this particular morning about daylight. She was dead and so he didn’t stay; and he was riding back when he saw the swag-man lighting our grass. It was most deliberately done. Len didn’t go after him then. He galloped up to his own place and gave the alarm, and then he and one of their men cleared out after the brute.”
“Did they catch him?” Wally’s eyes were dancing, and his sinker waved unconsciously in the air.
“They couldn’t see a sign of him,” Jim said. “The road was a plain, straight one—you chaps know it—the one we drove home on from the train. No cover anywhere that would hide so much as a goat—not even you, Wal! They followed it up for a couple of miles, and then saw that he must have gone across country somewhere. There was mighty little cover there, either. The only possible hiding-place was along the creek.
“He was pretty cunning—my word, he was! He’d started up the road—Len had seen him—and then he cut over the paddock at an angle, back to the creek. That was why they couldn’t find any tracks when they started up the creek from the road, and they made sure he had given them the slip altogether.
“Len and the other fellow, a chap called Sam Baker, pegged away up the creek as hard as they could go, but feeling pretty blue about catching the swaggie. Len was particularly wild, because he’d made so certain he could lay his hands on the fellow, and if he hadn’t been sure, of course he’d have stayed to help at the fire, and he didn’t like being done out of everything! They could understand not finding any tracks.