Being young and foolish—or, let me say, unsuspicious—I chose to disregard this warning and to take my own way. I thought the poor fellows had been hardly treated. It was their country, after all. A policy of conciliation would doubtless show them that some of the white men had their good at heart.
To the westward of our camp lay the great tract of lava country before mentioned. This had been doubtless an outflow in old central-fire days from the crater of Mount Eeles. Now, cooled, hardened, cracked, and decomposed, it annually produced a rich crop of grass. It was full of ravines, boulders, masses of scoria, and had, besides, a lakelet in the centre. It was many miles across, and extended from Mount Eeles nearly to the sea.
It was not particularly easy to walk in. And, as for riding, one day generally saw the end of the most high-couraged, sure-footed horse. As a natural covert for savages it could not be surpassed.
In this peculiar region our "Modocs lay hid." We could see the smoke of their camp fires in tolerable number, but had no means of seeing or having speech of them. One day, however, having probably sent out a scout previously who had made careful examination of us while we were totally unconscious of any such supervision, they debouched from the rocks and came up to camp. They sent a herald in advance, who held up a green bough. Then, "walking delicately," they came up, in number nearly fifty. I was at home, as it happened, as also was the old stockman. How well I remember the day and the scene!
We all carried guns in those days, as might the border settlers in "Injun" territory.
CHAPTER VI THE EUMERALLA WAR
We had been informed that the Eumeralla people, when that station was first taken up by Mr. Hunter for Hughes and Hoskins, of Sydney, always took their guns into the milking-yard with them, for fear of a surprise. The story went that one day a sudden attack "was" made. While the main body was engaged, a wing of the invading force made a flank movement, and bore down upon the apparently undefended homestead. There, however, they were confronted by Mr. William Carmichael, a neighbour of Falstaffian proportions, who stood in the doorway brandishing a rusty cutlass which he had discovered. Whether the blacks were demoralised by the appearance of the fattest man they had ever seen, or awestricken at the fierceness of his bearing, is not known, but they wheeled and fled just as their main army had concluded to fall back on Mount Eeles.