First in the Field Part 64

"n.o.body can have imagined which way I was coming," thought Nic; and then, "Bother the old flour!" he said, half aloud; "how it works through the bag! Why, Sorrel, your back will be as white as my knees. Woa!"

The nag stopped short, and Nic stood at the edge of a glade dotted with clumps of acacia in full bloom, everything seeming to be covered with tiny golden b.a.l.l.s.

"Why, you two wretches, how dare you come hunting?"

Nic sat like a statue among the trees watching, as he saw the two collies suddenly come into sight about five hundred yards away and then run among the low growth for which they were making.

"Well, it won't matter," he said. "They can't tell tales. But they may come again and show some one the way. I'll send them back."

He pressed his horse's sides, and walked it toward where the dogs had disappeared, putting up a flock of the tiny zebra paroquets, which flew a little distance to another tree.

"Poor fellows! I should like to give them a good run," he said to himself; "but it's best not. I suppose I'm doing something very unlawful, but the law did wrong to that poor fellow, and I feel as if I must help him. Oh, what a thick-headed noodle I am not to have thought of it before! Why, I remember quite well now all he said about it.

Hullo! what are those? They must be the great hawk parrots old Sam talked about. Bother the birds! I've got something else to think of to-day. Why, there goes another of those great iguana things! Where did the dogs go?"

He had ridden on slowly, startling bird and lizard, and completely lost trace of the collies, when all at once he heard a smothered growl in a dense patch close at hand.

"They've found a snake," he said to himself, c.o.c.king his piece. "I mustn't have them bitten."

He pressed forward, peering in amongst the bushes, pa.s.sing some young clean-stemmed trees; and as he rode unconsciously by one, a nude black figure, neatly ornamented with two or three stripes of white pipeclay on its breast, pressed close up to the tree holding a spear erect, and, as the horse pa.s.sed, moved so exactly round that the tree was kept between it and Nic.

That tree did not appear to be thick enough to hide the black, but so cleverly did the man move that Nic saw nothing, though he was not ten yards away; and the black would have been unnoticed if it had not been for the action of the dogs, which suddenly charged out playfully, one going one side, the other the other, and then stopping barking at a respectful distance from the tree.

"You vagabonds!" cried Nic; "how dare you come! Here, what have you found? Fetch it out!"

Rumble dashed forward barking; and Nic noted that the dogs did not look excited or angry, but playful, and as Rumble charged on one side Tumble made a bound forward on the other.

"It must be a 'possum," thought Nic; but he altered his mind the next moment, for he saw a spear come forward with a poke on one side of the tree, and then drive at the second dog on the other.

Nic lowered the gun and moved round toward the other side cautiously; but the black edged himself along, as he did so cleverly keeping the tree still between them, and would have continued to keep himself in hiding if it had not been for the dogs, which, encouraged now by their young master's presence, made a playful dash together at the black's legs, and made him bound from the tree to keep them at bay with his spear.

"Why, Bung! You?" cried Nic, who felt considerably relieved, while the dogs now scampered around, barking and leaping as if at the end of a game of hide-and-seek. "What are you doing here, sir?"

The black grinned, and, supporting himself on one leg by help of his spear, made playful clutches at the delighted dogs with his right foot, whose toes worked about as he used it as if it were a great awkwardly shaped hand.

"_R-r-r-ur_!" growled the dogs together, as they now justified their names, and blundered over one another in a make-believe attempt to bite and worry the foot; Nic looking on amused as they threw themselves down, rolling over and grovelling along on their sides and backs to get close up and feel the black's toes tickle them, and catch hold of their s.h.a.ggy hair.

"Why don't you speak, sir? Why are you not at work?" cried Nic.

"Little White Mary say, 'Bung, go along see master.'"

"What! did my sister send you?"

The black nodded and laughed.

"Then just you go back, sir, directly, and take those dogs with you."

"Little White Mary say come along," persisted the black.

"I don't care what any one said," cried Nic. "Be off back."

"Little White Mary say, 'Gun no shoot--mumkull.'"

"Put down that spear," cried Nic, who now pointed the gun at Bungarolo, who replied by striking an att.i.tude, holding his spear in a graceful position as if about to hurl it at the boy's head.

"No mumkull Bung?" cried the black.

"Not if you run off back," cried Nic. "If you don't I'll pepper you."

"No pepper Bung, no mumkull. Baal shoot gun. Little White Mary fellow say Bung come."

"You go back home," cried the boy, following him up.

"Little White Mary say--"

"Go home."

"Little--"

"Will you go, sir? Here, Rum--Turn! Run him home."

The dogs made a rush, and the black darted off, but a hundred yards away ran behind a tree, where the dogs hunted him out.

"Home!" roared Nic, and the black darted on again, Nic riding after him again and again, till, satisfied that the black was really making for the station, followed by the dogs, he made a circuit in among the trees, and rode hard for a time, altering his course at last, and not pausing till he was close up to the precipitous edge of the huge gorge.

Here the boy dismounted in a patch of rich gra.s.s surrounded by mighty trees, hobbled his horse, removed the bit, which he hung to the saddle, and then paused to think.

"He's here somewhere," the boy said to himself, "but the thing is where."

He was not long coming to the conclusion that the convict had devoted himself during his shepherding tours to hunting out some place where he could descend the terrible precipice into that glorious valley far below, where there were sheep and cattle, plenty of water, and no doubt wild fruits to enable him to subsist.

"And if he found his way down, why shouldn't I?" said Nic, with a little laugh. Then, shouldering his gun, he dived in among the trees and wattle scrub which lay between him and the edge of the precipice, with the intention of keeping cautiously along it, first in one direction and then in the other, till he found traces of some one having climbed down.

Two hours' work convinced him that he had undertaken a task that might have made Hercules sit down and scratch his ear, for it promised to be hard enough to equal any of the celebrated labours of that mythic personage. Nic had toiled on in one direction only, forcing his way through thorns, tangles, and over and between rocks, pausing from time to time, whenever he came to an opening, to gaze across the tremendous gap at the glories of the rock wall opposite, or to look shuddering down into the beautiful paradise thousands of feet below, where the tints of green were of the loveliest hues, and he could see the cattle calmly grazing, mere dots in the natural meads which bordered the flashing waters seen here and there like lakes, but joined possibly, for the trees shut out broad stretches of the river in the vale.

For a time he would lie there, resting and listening to the whistling calls of birds whose names he did not know, to the shrieks of parrots, and now and then catch sight of what seemed to be tiny fragments of paper falling fluttering down, till he saw them turn, and knew that he was gazing at c.o.c.katoos.

Then, after yielding to the fascination of peering down into the awful depth, he would turn suddenly away, for a cold chill would run through him as he experienced the sensation as of something drawing him downward, and he would creep yards distant and sit there wiping the perspiration from his face.

He soon recovered, though, and once more continued his search for a way down.

"It is as if it would take years," he said to himself; "but I don't care, I shall come again and again and keep on trying. I will find it,"

he said half aloud, as he set his teeth in dogged determination, and for another hour he struggled on, till, feeling utterly exhausted, he seated himself at the edge of the precipice at a point where he could divide the bushes and look down. Here, only a few yards away, he saw that there was a broad shelf some fifty feet below, and along it a mere thread of water trickled to a lower edge and disappeared, leaving among the stones amidst which it had meandered patch after patch of richest green, showing its fertilising power.

That water was tempting in the extreme, for his mouth was dry; he was faint, and he knew by the position of the sun that he had been struggling through the dense growth for hours without refreshing himself, though all the time he had a cake of damper in his pocket, keeping the powder-flask company.

If he could get down there, he thought, he might have half an hour's rest, and then tramp back to where he had left Sorrel, and ride gently home in the cool of the evening.

"And come again." For come again he would till he had found poor Leather, "unless," he said to himself with a shudder, "he has fallen down this terrible place."