'"Haven't we had blood enough for one day?" says the other man. "By George! when I think of these two poor chaps' faces, just afore you dropped 'em with the axe, I'd give all we've made ten times over to have 'em alive again."
'"You always was a snivelling beggar," says the tall man. "If you'd had your back scratched at Port Arthur half as often as me, you'd think no more of a man's life than a wild dog's. I believe it must 'a been one or a wallaby as made the stir."
'I've faced a trifle of danger, and seen some "close calls" in my time, but nothing came near that half-hour I spent there till I could make myself steady enough to stir. I couldn't sit; I was too done to stand; so there I had to crouch down and wait till I got the chance to go back on my tracks.
'All the time they kept pushing the bodies into the centre of the fire, without stopping, as they got smaller and smaller. Two of the men were at this dreadful work, while the third was sweeping round every edge of the fire. At last the two men I first saw, sat down on a log close handy and began to smoke. Now was my chance. I crawled from my tree and crept along the cattle-track till I come to where my horses were standing. I mounted one, somehow, and took the other's bridle. I rode steady enough for a while, and then, hustling the poor brutes into a hand-gallop, kept along the road to Waranah till I reached the gate at the boundary of the run. Even then I felt as if I was hardly safe. I looked round and could almost see witches and devils following me through the air, and waving ghosts' arms in every bough of the stunted trees through which the road wound.
'When I saw the lights of the little township, I was that glad that I shouted and sang all the way up to the hotel where the mail was delivered. I had a strange sort of feeling in my head as I rode up to the door. Then I reeled in my saddle; everything was dark. I remembered no more till at the end of a week I found myself in bed recovering from fever.
'I suppose I'd been sickening for it before. What with hot days, cold nights, and drinking water out of swamps and dry holes that were half mud and half—pah! something you don't like to think of—the wonder is we bushmen don't get it oftener. Anyhow I was down that time, and next morning it seems they had the doctor to me. He was a clever man and a gentleman, too, my word! He fetched me round after a month, but I was off my head the first week, and kept raving (so they told me afterwards) about men being knocked on the head and burned, hawkers' carts, and Derwenters, and the big water-hole by Budgell Creek.
'They thought it was all madness and nonsense at first, and took no notice, till one afternoon Mr. Belton, the overseer of Baranco, comes riding into town, all of a flurry, wanting to see the police and the magistrate, Mr. Waterton. This was what he had to say:—
'There had been some heavy lots of travelling sheep passing through the station, and he was keeping along with them for fear they might miss the road and not find it again till they'd ate off a mile or two of his best grass. All of a sudden a mob of the Baranco weaners ran across a plain and nearly boxed with 'em. Mr. Belton gallops for his life—I expect he swore a bit, too—and was just in time to head 'em off into the pine-scrub by the sandhill. They took the old cattle-track over towards the water-hole, he following them up, till all of a sudden he comes plump on a hawker's cart!
'This pulled him up short. He let the sheep run on to the frontage and got off his horse. He knew the Colemans' cart. They always stayed a night at Baranco. When they passed, a week since, they were to make Waranah that night. What the deuce were they doing here? Hang the fellows! were they spelling their horses? Feed was scarce. No! they were not the men to do that. Honest, straight-going chaps they'd always been.
'He walked over to the cart. Something wrong surely! The big slop-chest was open. The cash-box, with lock smashed, was empty. Boots, clothes, tobacco, which they always had of the best, lying scattered about. Where were the poor fellows themselves? If they had been robbed, why hadn't they gone to the police at Waranah and complained? Whoever had done this must have camped here in the middle of the scrub. Then there'd been a fire over by the big pine-stump—an "old man" fire too. Wonder they hadn't set a light to the dry grass? No rain for the half-year to speak of. No; they had been too jolly careful. Swept in the twigs and ashes all round. Curious fire for bushmen to make too—big enough to roast an ox. He stares at the ashes; then gropes among them with his hand. My God! What are these small pieces of bone? Why, the place is full of them. And this? and this? A metal button, a metal buckle—one, two, three—twelve in all.