“What, camp here?” demanded Waldron, in a most aggrieved tone.
“Why not? You would not have us go on to the lake before we know whether the tribe is not in force there. No! here we have the scrub at our backs, and if attacked—and we must keep that possibility uppermost in our minds—we have a capital cover to fight or fly in, whichever may be most expedient.”
So they abode there, warily abstaining from making any but the smallest fire, and deferring possession of the new world till the morrow.
They had been long on their way to the lake—to their lake—concerning the name of which they had already held discussion, before the sun irradiated the virgin waste which lay unclaimed, untrodden, save by the foot of the wandering savage, before and around them. The pyramid of fantastically piled rocks rose clear and sharp in outline on the shore of the lake. The distance, as is usual with such landmarks in a perfectly level country, was greater than they had supposed. It was midday when they loosed their tired horses among the luxuriant herbage at its base, and wandered to the edge of the gleaming waters, doubly gracious from their rarity in that land of fierce heat and infrequent pool and stream. Amid the caves which deeply tunnelled the foundation of this wonder-temple of Nature they found traces of burial and tribal feast, and the strange, gigantic Red Hand, the symbol of forgotten rites, traced rudely but indelibly upon the dim cavern walls. Doorival gazed with wondering and troubled looks upon these tokens of an older day—a more powerful organization of the fast-fading tribes.
“I believe big one black fellow sit down here,” he said, with some appearance of awe and perturbation, a most unusual state of mind with him, a full-blooded wolf cub that he was, and curiously devoid of fear; “one old man Coradjee come every moon and say prayer along a that one murra. By and by wild black fellow run track belonging to us, and sneak up ’long a camp.”
“We must keep a good look out, then, Doorival,” said Redgrave, sanguine and fearless in the presence of the great discovery. “Keep your revolver in good order, and Mr. Waldron and I will pick them off with our rifles like crows. Help will tell us when they are coming, won’t you, old man?”
That intelligent quadruped, conscious that he was being appealed to, but not, let us say, fully understanding the whole of the conversation, looked wistfully at his master for a minute, and then relieved his feelings by a series of loud barks and a rush down to the lake, in the erroneous expectation of catching some of the water-fowl that thronged the shallows.
They concluded to camp at the lake that day, and on the next to try and discover the river which they doubted not divided at some point this magnificent tract of country. The one fact established of a permanent watercourse, and their prize was gained. They had nothing more to do but to put in their tenders for as many five-mile blocks as they pleased of the Raak country. Their fortune was made; they could easily dispose of a third part of it; stock up another third with breeding cattle, and after three or four years of very easy squatter-life—pace the blacks—might consider themselves to be wealthy men.
CHAPTER XXI.
“The brown Indian marks with murderous aim.”—Goldsmith.