"Poor old man," said the Baker to his dead horse, "you brought me 'ere, and you died thirsty. Do you know, Smith, I sometimes think it's a bloomin' queer world?"
"Do you?" said Smith, with a savage bitterness that made Mandy jump. "Do you? What a big discovery. Have you found out that it's a bit queer for animals to suffer as we make 'em suffer? Yes, you're right, it's a queer world, a particularly damnably, disagreeably queer world. And some folks who will never get to any heaven would actually object to meet the ghost of a vivisected rabbit there, except in a celestial pie."
"I don't tumble," said the puzzled Baker. But Smith didn't explain as he savagely humped stores under a blazing sun.
Their new camp was right on the edge of Smith's creek, in a small clearing, with thick and almost impenetrable scrub around them.
"And it had better be very small fires, Mandy," said Smith. "If there are any black-fellows about, we needn't shout to them with a big blaze."
"D'ye think there are any?" asked Mandy, who had no liking for any black, negro or Papuan or Australian aboriginal. "For if there are, I wish we'd brought more weapons than my revolver and yours. A repeatin' rifle now, Smith; that would make 'em skip."
But Smith did not look for any trouble of that kind.
"We must chance it, and just be careful," said he; "and we'll put in time prospecting. It looks a good country. You might strike anything here."
And they camped down, pulling quietly at their pipes as they lay in the smoke of their fire, damped to keep the mosquitoes off.
The whole of the next week, which was one of unmitigated heat, they spent looking for gold. They tried every gully and every range. Though they got very rich indications of alluvial, they never struck any out-crop of gold in quartz such as Herder's specimen could come from. And Smith, now peculiarly greedy, was after this and this only. He grumbled at any alluvial work with the pan as waste of time, and as the Baker's special leaning was "pay dirt," they sometimes almost quarrelled. But since they loved each other dearly, their rows never amounted to much.