Part 12

“Karinda’s just to the north there.”

“A hundred and twenty miles at the very least and not a drop of water the whole way. No, that’s out of the question, old man; our only hope lies in reaching Gerring Gerring.”

“And you don’t see much probability of our doing that?”

“Well, we can try.”

He felt a great pity, this older man, for the lad--he called him a lad for all his four-and-twenty years--doomed to die, nay, dying at this very moment, in the prime of his manhood. They could but try, he said over and over again, they could but try.

And then as they rested they fell to talking of other things--talked of their past lives and of their homes as neither, perhaps, had ever talked before.

“My old mother ‘ll miss me,” said Charlie Helm with a sigh, “though Lord knows when she’ll ever hear the truth of the matter.”

“Umph, I don’t know, but I guess if we do peg out, it’ll be some considerable time before they can read the store account over us. Have you got any paper about you?”

“Not a scrap. We can leave a message on the salt though.”

“It’ll be blown away before to-morrow. Who do you want to write to? Your mother? That girl?”

Helm turned his face away. The man had no right to pry into his private concerns.

“Write to your mother, lad, write to your mother by all means. Mothers are made of different clay to other women; but don’t you bother about the other. Women are all alike, take my word for it. It’s out of sight out of mind with all of them. But write to your mother.”

“Some one may pass this way,” pondered the younger man, hardly heeding his words. “It’s just worth trying,” and he lay silent while Anderson talked on or rather thought aloud.

“It’s of the boy I’m thinking,” he said. “The poor helpless little one. He never throve since his mother died. She didn’t go much on me, but the boy was everything to her though he was a cripple. Well--well--if I were only certain he was dead now it wouldn’t be half so hard. He’d be better dead, I know, but I couldn’t think it before; he was all I had, and the last time I saw him he put up his little hand--such a mite of a hand--and clutched his daddy’s beard. He was all I had, how could I wish him dead? But now--now--my God!--if I were certain he was dead and it hadn’t hurt much.”

Helm sprang to his feet, and swore an oath.

“We’re not going to die,” he cried, “not as easily as all that. Come on, we have wasted enough precious time.

“Not till it’s a little cooler. It’s no good, I tell you, wearing ourselves out in the heat.”

And Helm, seeing the advice was good, lay down again. Lay down and tried not to listen to the cawing of the crows, the only sound that broke the stillness--tried not to think of cool waters; not to think of a household down south; not to think of the girl who, notwithstanding his mate’s cynical warning, filled all his thoughts. He dozed a little and dreamed, and wakened with a start and a strong feeling upon him that it had been something more than a dream, that some one had really called him, was calling him still. Was it his mother’s voice, or that girl’s, or was it Anderson’s? Anderson was sleeping heavily, and strong man as he was, sobbing in his sleep. Helm stretched out a hand to awaken him and then paused. Why should he? What had he better to offer than these broken dreams?

He broke a branch from a tree, thereby scattering the crows and stepped down to the edge of the glittering white salt. It crunched beneath his feet like sand, and he went on till the hard crust began to give way beneath him and the thick mud oozed up. Then when he thought it was moist enough to resist the fierce hot wind, which was blowing from the north like a breath from an oven, he prepared to write his last message. And then came the difficulty.

What was he to say? What could he say? Not that he had so little, but so much. And it might never be read after all, or at best it would only be read by some station hand who, once they were dead, would give but a passing thought to their message, only a passing thought to their sufferings. They had found a skeleton, he remembered, the first year he had been on Yerlo, a skeleton that must have been lying there years, a poor wind-tossed, sunbaked thing from which all semblance of humanity had long since departed, and he, in his carelessness, had thought so little of it, had never realized the awful suffering that must have been before the strong man came to that.

And now--and now--he took his stick and wrote in large printed letters on the crisp salt--

STOP.

LOST.

“James Anderson and Charles Helm were lost on the 20th October. They have gone S.E. from the salt-pan. Will you kindly send word to Mrs. Helm, The Esplanade, St. Kilda, and to Miss Drysdale, Gipps Street, East Melbourne.”

Then he wrote his name, “Charles Helm.”

It seemed so feeble, so inadequate, not a hundreth part of what he felt did it express, and yet what could he say? Not even in his extremity could he write tender messages to his loved ones there. They would know, surely they would know, they would understand, that his thoughts had been full of them when he wrote that cold message. What more could he say? But would they ever know the love and longing that had filled his heart? Would his mother ever know that her boy had thought of her at the last? Would Mabel Drysdale understand how he had cared for her?--all he had meant to convey by the mere mention of her name? He stepped slowly back and wakened his companion.

“Mate,” he said, “don’t you think we’d better be travelling? It’s a little cooler now, and it ‘s getting late.”

Anderson struggled to his feet wearily and then went down to the salt-pan.