Part 23

“Make your fortune, eh! Made it?”

“Of course. Money-making game riding tracks on Jinfalla! Made yours?”

“Money-making game riding tracks on Nilpe Nilpe.”

The two men looked at each other, and laughed. In truth, neither looked particularly representative of the rank and aristocracy of their native land. The back blocks are very effectual levellers, and each saw in the other a very ordinary bushman, riding a horse so poor, the wonder was he was deemed worth mounting at all. Both were dusty and dirty, for the drought held the land in iron grip, and the fierce north wind, driving the dust in little whirls and columns before it, blew over plains bare of grass and other vegetation as a beaten road.

Around them was the plain, hot and bare of any living creature, nothing in sight save a low ridge bounding the eastern horizon, a ridge which on closer inspection took the form of bluffs, in most places almost inaccessible. Overhead was the deep blue sky, so blue it was almost purple in its intensity, with not a cloud to break the monotony. Sky and desert, that was all, and these two Englishmen meeting, and the shadows cast by themselves and their horses, were the only spots of shade for miles.

“Sweet place!” said Guy Turner, looking round. “Warmish too. Wonder what it is in the shade?”

“In the shade, man. There ain’t any shade, unless you count the shadows of our poor old mokes, and mine’s so poor, I ‘ll bet the sun can find his way through his ribs. I ‘ve been in the sun since daybreak, and I reckon it is somewhere about boiling point.”

“I suppose it must be over 1600. What the dickens did you come out for?”

“Well, seeing it’s been like this for the last three months, and is likely to go on for three more, as far as I can see; it ain’t much good stopping in for the weather; besides there’s this valuable estate to be looked after. But to-day I rode over for the mails.”

“What, to the head-station?”

“Lord, no! The track to Roebourne passes along about twenty miles off over there, and I get the boss to leave my mail in a hollow tree as he passes.”

“Trusting, certainly. There ‘s some good about this God-forsaken country.”

Dick Stanesby, or, to give him his full name, Richard Hugh De Courcy Stanesby, shrugged his shoulders scornfully.

“Evidently, Dick, that mail wasn’t satisfactory. Has she clean forgot you, Dick, the little white mouse of a cousin, with the pretty blue eyes? She was mighty sweet on you, and------”

But there was a frown on Dick’s usually good-tempered face. He was in no mind to take his old chum’s pleasantry kindly, and the other saw it, and drew his own conclusions therefrom.

“Chucked him over, poor beggar, I suppose. Hang it all! Women are all alike; once a man’s down, he’s forgotten,” but he did not speak his thoughts aloud. He looked away across the sweltering plain, and said casually,

“Where do you hang out, old man?”

Stanesby pointed east in a vague sort of manner, that might indicate South Australia, or far distant New South Wales.

“Got a shanty on the creek there,” he said laconically.

“Creek, is there a creek? The place looks as if it hadn’t seen water since the beginning of the world.”

“Oh, there’s a creek right enough. I believe it’s a big one when it rains, but it hasn’t rained since I ‘ve been here, and there ain’t much water in it. Just a little in the hole opposite the hut. The niggers say its permanent. Springs, or something of that sort.”

“Niggers! That’s what I ‘ve come over about. They’ve worried the life out of us on Jinfalla. Taken to spearing the cattle, and the men too if they get a chance. Old Anderson thinks we ought to have some ‘concerted action,’ and settle the matter once for all.”

“H’m. Wipe ‘em out, I suppose he means?”

“It’s what a squatter generally means, isn’t it, when he talks about the blacks? Sounds brutal, but hang it all, man, what the devil is a fellow to do? They ‘re only beasts, and as beasts you must treat ‘em. Look here, there was a young fellow on our run, as nice a boy as you ‘d wish to see--his people were something decent at home, I believe, but the lad had got into some scrape and cleared out, and drifted along into the heart of Western Australia here. He was riding tracks for old Anderson about two hundred miles to the west there. He didn’t come in last week for his tucker, so they sent word for me to look him up.”

“Well?” for Turner paused, and drew a long breath.

“Well--same old nip, of course. His hut was burnt, and he and his hutkeeper--I tell you, Dick, it won’t bear talking about--he was a lad of twenty, and the hutkeeper was an old lag, might have been seventy to look at him, but when I found their bodies down by the creek, I couldn’t tell which was which.”

“It’s bad,” said Stanesby, “very bad. What did you do?”

“Buried ‘em, of course, my mate and I, and shot the first buck we came across skulking in the bush. What would you have us do?”