King of the ’Possum Tribe,”
“H.M. DICK-A-DICK, KING OF THE POSSUM TRIBE.”
with a ’possum engraved underneath. The ’possum was the crest, so to speak, of King Dick-a-Dick’s tribe. Now this was the tribe from which Harry and Donald had had such a narrow escape, and, therefore, they felt rather nervous when they saw King Dick-a-Dick standing by the water-hole with his spear in his hand. But his Majesty was anxious to conciliate. He was fond of tobacco and flour, and he and his people had run short of both since they had been on bad terms with the whites. So, as soon as he saw the boys rein in, he stuck his spear, point downwards, into the ground, and beckoned to them to come on, grinning as if the top of his head was coming off. That was his way of giving “a winning smile.” When he learnt what the boys’ business was, he chuckled greatly at the thought of white fellows trying to find any one in the bush without black trackers, and then proposed that he and the boys should share the credit of finding the little girl. He made sure that he could find her. The direction in which she had left the station was known, so Dick-a-Dick took the boys back to within about a mile and a half of home, and then began to beat about. He went down on his hands and knees, and put his nose to the ground like a dog. Presently he stopped at an ant-hill, peered about for a minute, and then jumped up, and cut a caper. The boys couldn’t make it out, but he had discovered the mark of a tiny little bare heel in a dent on the ant-hill. When he had once found Maggie’s track, he scarcely ever lost it. On he went, walking with his nose almost as low as his toes. He found out little stones that had been moved, and grass-blades that had been scarcely brushed by poor little Maggie’s bare feet. He found out too the blood that had come from a scratch in one of them, got by scrambling over a splintery log.
“Dat where piccaninny lubra stop to drink,” said Dick-a-Dick, pointing to a “crab-hole”—the hole made by a bullock’s hoof—on whose side he could see the print of a chubby little brow. “Missy proud now, pick waratah,” said Dick-a-Dick soon afterwards, as he gathered up the still crimson leaves of the flower which the little girl had bruised and thrown down. “Now Missy ’fraid o’ debil-debil,” said Dick-a-Dick by-and-bye, when he came to a place in which the tracks, invisible to the boys’ eyes, were so bewilderingly visible to him on all sides that he did not know at first which to follow. He soon found the right one, however, and led the boys to a place in which he said the little girl must have slept.
So they kept up the search until, after travelling for hours in a circuitous zigzag, they came upon poor little Maggie, not four miles from home, but on the opposite side of the station to that from which she had started, coiled up in a black, jagged, charred tree-stump, with bright-eyed, basking little lizards watching her. Of course, the lizards vanished as Dick-a-Dick and the boys drew near, but his sharp eyes had seen something peculiar in their bright ones. Poor little Maggie was sound asleep; her fat little face, and neck, and arms, and legs, were sadly scratched. In a scratched, podgy little hand she held a posy of withered wild flowers.
When she woke and saw Dick-a-Dick, trying to look specially amiable, grinning down upon her, she shrieked out, “Mammy!” But when she saw the boys, she jumped up and ran to them, and hid her face between them, and clung to them with two little leech-like arms. They tried to explain to her that if it had not been for her “nas’y b’ack man” she might never have seen her “Mammy” again; and Dick-a-Dick grinned his broadest grin to propitiate her; but it was no use. She screamed whenever her eyes fell upon Dick-a-Dick. And yet, according to her own pretty little prattle, she had not been “much f’ightened in the thoods.” She had seen “nas’y b’ack ’igglin’ thin’s,” but “the kin’ yady”—whoever that might be—“thoodn’t ’et ’em bite me.”
Harry took Maggie on his horse, and cantered on in front, and Donald and Dick-a-Dick cantered behind on Flora M‘Ivor.
What a reception they had when they got to the station, for they were getting anxious there about the boys as well as the little! The head-station shepherds had come in with their sheep, and a good many of the people who had been searching for a couple of days had gathered at the station quite dispirited at their lack of luck. They all gave a great cheer when Cornstalk and the mare laid down their ears, and brought up their four riders at a steeple-chase gallop.
When Mrs. Jones had almost squeezed the breath out of poor little Maggie, she tried to garotte Harry and Donald, and then hugged Dick-a-Dick; and John Jones seemed inclined to hug all three of them, too, when he had done his best to press the little life his wife had left in her out of little Maggie; and then Mrs. Jones went into hysterics, and John Jones ran indoors and hid his face in the bed-clothes, and blubbered for a quarter of an hour; and everybody thought the better of him because he blubbered.