Then, in the brazen dawning of a day in which the sun seemed to thrust out great heat upon the baked earth even before it appeared above the horizon, the pack checked suddenly as Black-tip drew Finn's attention to a pair of Native Companions seen in the act of floating down to earth from the lower limbs of a shrivelled red-gum tree. The bigger of these two great cranes had a stature of something over five feet, and his fine blue-grey plumage covered an amount of flesh which would have made a meal for quite a number of dingoes. Yet it was not so much as food, but rather as a guide and indication, that Black-tip regarded the cranes. He knew that they would not be very far from water. The way in which the pack melted into cover in the dim, misty light of the coming day was very remarkable. For several miles now they had been travelling through a country less arid than the plains they had traversed during the previous two days, and now, while seeming to disappear into the earth itself--even as Echidna actually could and would, though the earth were baked hard--the members of the pack actually found cover by slinking low amongst a sort of wiry scrub growth with which the ground hereabouts was dotted.

It was thus that Finn saw for the first time the strange dance of the Native Companion. To and fro, and up and down beneath their scraggy gum-tree, the two great cranes footed it in a sort of grotesque minuet. There was a strange sort of angularity about all their movements, but, withal, a certain grace, bizarre and notable.

And while the Native Companions solemnly paced through what was really a dance of death for them, Finn and Black-tip and Warrigal stalked them as imperceptibly as shadows lengthen across a lawn in evening time. The three hunters advanced through the scrub like snakes moving in their sleep, and never a leaf or twig made comment on their pa.s.sage, as they slithered down the morning breeze, inch by inch, apparently a part of the shadowy earth itself. The prancing dance of the Native Companions--these birds mate for life and are deeply and devotedly attached one to another--was drawing to its close, when death came to them both like a bolt from the heavens; such a death as one would have chosen for them, since it left no time for fear or mourning, or grief at separation. Their necks were torn in sunder before they realized that they had been attacked, and within the minute their graceful feathered bodies shared the same fate, as the rest of the pack joined Finn and Warrigal and Black-tip. There was less of lordly generosity about Finn's feeding upon this occasion than he had always shown before.

The great Wolfhound realized perhaps that his frame demanded more of nutriment than was necessary for the support of a dingo, and he ate with savage swiftness, growling angrily when any other muzzle than Warrigal's approached his own too nearly.

Less than half an hour later the pack was scrambling and sliding down the high banks of a river-bed, in the centre of which, surrounded upon both sides by a quarter of a mile and more of shingle and hard-baked mud, there was still a disconnected chain of small, yellow pools of water. The water was of something like the consistency of pea-soup, but no spring-fed mountain-rill ever tasted sweeter or more grateful to a thirsty traveller than this muddy fluid to the palates of the Mount Desolation pack. Finn chose a good-sized pool, and Warrigal tackled it with him; but when two youngsters of the pack ventured to approach the other side of that pool, Warrigal snarled at them so fiercely, backed by a low, gurgling growl from Finn, that the two slunk off, and tackled a lesser pool by themselves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Scrambling and sliding down the high banks of a river-bed.]

Where the pack drank they rested. As yet their great thirst was close to them, and the neighbourhood of water seemed too good to leave. But, in such matters, the memory of the wild folk is apt to be short. The banks of the river-bed ran due east and west here; and, though the pack gave no thought to the question, it was a matter of some importance to each one of them whether they should eventually leave those banks to the northward or to the southward; a matter of importance by reason of the difference in the country to the northward and to the southward. But it was chance at last that decided the question for them. They drank many times during the day, and towards nightfall a small mob of kangaroos was sighted to the northward, and that led the pack to head northward, a little westerly, from the river-bank that night.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE TRAIL OF MAN

It was exactly a fortnight later when the pack turned despairingly in its tracks, animated by a forlorn desire to reach again the high ragged banks of that shingly river-bed, in which some trace of moisture might be left still, where the muddy pools had been.

But in that fortnight much had happened, and the character and const.i.tution of the pack had undergone notable changes. The six whelps had disappeared, old Tufter and the oldest of the mothers of the pack were no more, and neither the carrion-crows nor the ants had profited one atom by these deaths. The pack had not wittingly hastened the end of these weaker ones, but it had left only their bones behind upon the trail. And, now, when one or other of the gaunt, dry-lipped survivors stumbled a dozen pairs of hungry eyes glittered, a dozen pairs of lips were wrinkled backward from as many sets of fangs, and consciousness of this had a sinister meaning for the stumbler; a meaning which brought a savage snarl to his throat as he regained his footing with quick, threatening looks from side to side and hackles bristling.

The pack was starving. Many times during the past week the thought of turning in his tracks and making back for the river-bed had come to Finn, but he had pressed on, fearful of the arid stretch of country which he had already placed between himself and that spot.

He had no means of knowing that he was in a country of vast and waterless distances. But, acting without knowledge, Finn had turned in his tracks at length, after a fortnight's travelling in which food had been terribly scarce and water even more scarce. Such liquid as they had found would never have been called water by men-folk. Here and there had been a little liquid mud in old water-holes and stream-beds, and in other places the pack had sucked up moisture through hot sand, after burrowing with feet and nose to a depth of as much as eighteen inches from the surface. Their food had been almost entirely of the grub and insect kind, and Finn, for the first time in his life, had spent long hours in trying to ease the craving within him by gnawing at dry roots. The great Wolfhound had more stamina than any of the dingoes; he had greater resources within himself than they had, and was endowed, by Nature and upbringing, with a superb const.i.tution. But, as against that, he needed far more food than was required by the others, and at a full meal would have eaten twice as much as the biggest of them. Also, he suffered, though his body was the stronger for it, for the fact that he had never before known want.

In appearance, the members of the pack had suffered a wondrous change in these two weeks. Even Warrigal's fine coat had lost every trace of the gloss which had made it beautiful, and the iron-grey hairs of Finn's dense, hard coat had taken on the character of dry bristles, while his haunch-bones were two outstanding peaks, from which his back fell away at an acute angle to the root of his tail, where once a level pad of flesh had been. Now the tail seemed to sprout from a kind of well in his body, and a bird might have nested in the hollow between his shoulder-blades, which once had been flat as the top of a table. His back, too, which had been broad and flat, was like the ridge of a gunyah now, from one end of which his neck rose gauntly, and appeared to be of prodigious length. His ribs were plain to see on either side his hollow barrel, and over them the loose skin rolled to and fro as he ran or walked. The eyes of every member of the pack were deeply sunken and ablaze with a dry light, half wistful and half fierce, and more awe-inspiring than any form of full-fed rage could be. They ran in open order now, and when one happened to run unusually close to another, that other would snarl or growl, and, sometimes, even snap, with bitter, furtive, half-fearful irritability.

To this rule there was one exception. Warrigal ran steadily in the shadow cast by Finn's big, gaunt frame, her muzzle about level with his elbow. Black-tip kept about the same level on Finn's other side, but a good deal farther off, and the others straggled in fan-shaped formation to the rear, scouting at times to one side or the other in quest of insects and snakes, or any other living thing that fangs could crush. As to digestion, the pack had no concern regarding any such detail as this. Their one test of edibility was swallowing. They even helped Finn to demolish a native porcupine, than which one would have said no creature of a less edible sort was ever created. Altogether, there was that about the survivors of the Mount Desolation pack which would have made any single creature sorry to cross their path, however powerful he might be. No animal with flesh on its bones and blood in its veins would have been too big or fierce for the pack to have attacked just now; for hunger and thirst had made them quite desperate.

It was Black-tip, and not Finn, who, on the afternoon of the second day of the pack's despairing return journey in quest of the river-bank they had left a fortnight before, called a sudden halt.

(The dingo's sense of smell was always keener than the Wolfhound's.) Black-tip sniffed hard and long at the ground between his fore-feet, and then, raising his head, glared out into the afternoon sunlight to the south-eastward of the track they were following--their own trail.

The whimper which escaped Black-tip when he began to sniff, brought the rest of the pack about him, full of hungry eagerness to know what thing it was that had been found. There was something uncanny and extraordinary about the way in which they glanced one at another, after, as it were, taking one sip of the scent which had brought Black-tip to a standstill.

Had the scent been of kangaroo or wallaby, rabbit, rat, or any other thing that moves upon four legs, those curious glances would never have been exchanged. The pack would have been off hot-foot upon the trail, without pause for discussion. And there was the scent of a four-footed creature here, too; but it was merged in, and subordinate to, the scent over which most wild creatures cry a halt: the scent of man.

Now in ordinary circ.u.mstances the pack would not have hesitated a moment over such a trail as this. They would have turned in their tracks and made off in the opposite direction, or gone straight ahead on their own trail and without reference to the man-trail, save to get away from it as quickly as possible. But these were very far from being ordinary circ.u.mstances. The pack was nearer to starving than it had ever been before, and at such a time the rules which ordinarily guide life are of precisely no account at all. The man-trail was the trail of living flesh, of warm, animal life; it was the trail of food. Also, there was merged in it the trail of a dog; and as each member of the pack acquired that fact, his lips wrinkled backward and a little moisture found its way into his dry mouth.

The pack desired food and drink so urgently that everything else in the world became insignificant by comparison with food and drink in their minds. The hatred and fear of man, as man, was blotted out of sight by the craving for animal food in any shape whatsoever. Here was a living trail, in the midst of a dead, burnt-up land of starvation and emptiness. What Finn's thoughts on the subject may have been I cannot say. But, of course, he had connected men with food all his life long. And now he was starving. I do not think Finn's thoughts could have been quite the same as those of the rest of the pack; but they moved him in the same direction none the less, and, without the smallest hesitation, the pack streamed after him when he took up a new trail, and loped off to the south-east, turning away diagonally from the old track.

As the new trail became fresher and warmer, the leader was conscious of the warring within him of various conflicting feelings and desires. In appearance Finn was now a gigantic wolf, and one mastered by the fierce pa.s.sion of hunger, at that. Apart from appearance, there actually was more of the wolf than the dog in him now. He belonged very completely to the wild kindred, and, over and above the wild folk's natural inborn fear and mistrust of men-folk, there was in Finn a resentment against man; a bitter memory of torture endured, and of the humiliation of having been driven out into the wild. But Finn's sense of smell was nothing like so acute as that of the dingoes. Even a setter or a pointer cannot compare with the wild folk in this respect, and Wolfhounds have nothing like the educated sense of smell of the setters, or the pointers, or the foxhounds. Their hunting from time immemorial has been done by sight, and strength, and fleetness, not by tracking. Finn was not so keenly conscious as his companions that he was on the trail of man. He knew it; but it was not in his nostrils the a.s.sertive fact that it was, for instance, in the nostrils of Warrigal and Black-tip. There was in the trail for him a warm animal scent which gave promise of food; of food near at hand, in that pitiless waste which the pack had been traversing for a fortnight and more. But every now and again, possibly in places at which the makers of the trail had paused, Finn would get a distinct whiff of the man scent, and that disturbed him a good deal. He wanted no dealings of any kind with man. But there was nothing else in him just then which was quite so strong or peremptory as the craving for food and drink; and so, with ears p.r.i.c.ked, and hackles uneasily lifting, he padded along at the true wolf gait, which devours distance without much suggestion of fleetness.

When night fell the trail was very warm and fresh, and a quarter of an hour later a light breeze brought news to the pack of a fire not far ahead. This, again, brought pictures to Finn's mind of the encampment from which he had been driven with burning f.a.ggots. He smelled again the singeing of his own coat, and that gave him recollection of his time of torture and captivity in the circus.

The pack advanced at a foot-pace now, and with the extreme of caution. A few minutes more brought them within full view of a camp-fire, beside which there were stretched, in att.i.tudes eloquent of both dejection and fatigue, two men and a dog; the latter a large, gaunt fox-terrier. For the last ten miles of their trailing the pack had been pa.s.sing through country which supported a certain amount of timber, and of the curious Australian scrub which seems to be capable of existence--a pale, bloodless sort of life, but yet existence--in the most arid kind of soil, and where no moisture can be discovered. The men had lighted their fire beneath a twisted, tortured-looking tree, in which there certainly was no life, for every vestige of its bark had gone from it, and its limbs were naked as the bones of any skeleton.

The pack drew in as closely as their cover in the scrub permitted, and crouched, watching the camp-fire. Suddenly, a movement on the part of one of them attracted the attention of the fox-terrier, and he flew out into the scrub, barking furiously. The pack, in crescent formation, retreated perhaps a dozen paces, saliva trickling from their curling lips. The terrier plunged valiantly forward, hopping the first low bushes, as a terrier will when rabbiting or ratting. It was Black-tip who pinned him to the earth, and Warrigal whose fangs next closed upon his body. But Finn smashed the terrier's body in half; and, in an instant, the snarling pack surged over the remains. By the time one of the men had risen and moved forward towards the line of scrub, there positively was not a hair of the dog uneaten. His collar lay there on the ground, between two bushes. For the rest, every particle of him, including bones, had been swallowed, and was in process of digestion. From beginning to end the whole operation occupied less than four minutes.

One of the men had not troubled to rise at all. The pack withdrew to a safe distance while the other man rummaged about among the bushes for the better part of a quarter of an hour. The pack, meanwhile, were hidden among the trees a quarter of a mile away.

Then the man found the terrier's collar, and walked back to his fire with it. He walked slowly and stiffly. When he announced to his companion that there were dingoes about, and that they had carried Jock off, the other man only grunted wearily, and turned over on his side. So the first man threw some more wood on the fire, and lowered himself slowly to the ground, moving painfully, and stretching himself out for sleep.

During the night the pack scoured every inch of the scrub within a radius of one mile from the camp of the two men; and for their reward they obtained precisely nothing at all, beyond a few, a very few, grubs and insects, the eating of which served to temper as with fire the keen edge of their hunger. The hours immediately preceding daylight found most of them sitting on their haunches, in a scattered semicircular line, in the scrub, glaring through the darkness at the two sleeping men, and their now expiring fire. I should like to be able to say exactly what they looked for, what they hoped for, in connection with the men; but that is not possible. In addition to connecting men-folk with guns and traps, and fear of an instinctive and indescribable kind, most of the pack also connected men with food, with sheep, and other domesticated animals which dingoes can eat. Finn, more than any of them, connected men-folk with food. But, as against that, Finn also connected them with torture and suffering, with hostility and abuse. Finn sat farther from the camp-fire than any of the others.

To your truly carnivorous animal, like the dingo, all things that live, and have flesh on their bones and blood in their veins, are a form of food, food at its best, living food. Therefore, the two men must have appealed to the pack as food. But, for their kind, man is generally speaking forbidden food, and un.o.btainable; so long, at all events, as he can maintain his queer, erect att.i.tude. But men have lain down in the bush to die before to-day, again and again; and of these the dingoes, as well as the crows, have given a sure account. Further, there is no other such reckless law-breaker as hunger. Rules and the teaching of experience--even inherited experience--are as nothing at all to hunger. Also, these two men beside the dying fire were not erect. But they moved uneasily in their sleep now and again. The man-life was clearly astir in them still; and so even the nearest and most venturesome among the dingoes sat a good hundred yards distant from the camp. And when daylight came, and one of the men stirred on his elbow, and looked up at the sky, the pack retreated slowly, backward through the scrub, till more than double that distance separated them from the living food at which they had been wistfully glaring. There was no anger, no savagery, no vestige of cruelty in their minds and hearts. Finn, it is true, cherished some soreness and resentment where men were concerned; but even in his case this brought only the desire to keep out of man's way; while the rest of the pack felt only instinctive dread and fear of man. But now the feeling which ruled the whole pack, the light which shone in their eyes, the eagerness which brought moisture continually to their half-uncovered fangs while they watched--this was simply physical desire for food, simply hunger.

The man who had been the first to stir, rose slowly, and stretched his arms as though his frame ached, as indeed it did, from a variety of causes. When the first slanting rays of the new-risen sun reached him, they shed their light upon a man on whom physical hardship had laid its searing fingers heavily. His face had a ten days' growth of hair upon it, and was gaunt and haggard, like the rest of him. His clothes hung about him loosely, and were torn and soiled and ragged. Under the bronze tan of sunburn on his face and neck there was the sort of pallor which comes from lack of food; in his eyes--deep sunk in dark-rimmed hollows--was a curious glitter which was not at all unlike the glitter in the eyes of the wild folk who had been watching him during the night. This glitter was of eagerness and want; the expression was wistful, longing, and full of a desire which had become a pain. It was the same expression that shone out from the eyes of the starved Mount Desolation pack. And the causes behind it were the same.

Presently this man woke his companion, who growled at him, as though he resented the attention.

"Time we were on the move, old chap," said the first man. "We can't afford to wait."

The other man sat up, and blinked wearily at the daylight, showing a face to the full as haggard and gaunt as that of his friend.

"By G.o.d, I don't know!" he said bitterly. "I don't know whether we can afford to do anything else. Afford! And us carrying a fortune!

I said out there that I'd never had good luck before, and--it was right, too. Good luck's not for the likes o' me."

"Oh, yes, it is," said the other man, with an obvious effort at cheerfulness. "You wait till we get our legs under a dinner-table, my boy; then you'll tell another tale about luck. And it will be a dinner-table, too, mark you; no tin pannikins, but silver and gla.s.s and linen and flowers, and food----Man, think of the juicy fillet, done to a turn; the crisp _pomme rissole_, and--yes, a little spinach, I think, done delicately in the English way; none of your Neapolitan messes. I'm not certain about the bread--whether little crusty white rolls or toast. What? Oh, well, it's no use going the other way, old man; cursing and growsing won't help us any. Come on! Let's have breakfast and get on. I think you're perfectly right about parting this morning. We can take that to be east, where the scrub gets thick, and that to be south. We'll toss who takes which, and one or other of us will strike something before nightfall, you mark my words; and after that it will be easy to pick up the other's trail. Better make the trail as plain as possible as we go along. Come; buck up, Jeff, old man; this will be our last day hungry. I'm going to take my breakfast now."

Imitating his companion, and with an attempt to look a little more cheery over it, Jeff stood up now and carefully uncorked a canvas-covered water-bottle. Each man filled his mouth full from the gurgling contents of his water-bottle, and stood, swishing the water in his mouth slowly, and allowing it to trickle little by little down his parched throat. In this way several minutes were devoted to the swallowing of a single mouthful of water, and that was breakfast.

"If we hadn't have chucked the guns away we might have got a chance at something to-day," growled Jeff, when his breakfast was done. "I could make a roast dingo look foolish this morning, and I'm none so sure I couldn't eat the brute raw if I got him. You said it was dingoes got Jock last night, didn't you?"

"I suppose it must have been," said the other man. "I don't see what else it could have been. And as to the guns; well, you know, it was that or the stuff. We couldn't carry any more."

"I know. And I'm not sure it's much good carrying that any longer.

I reckon I'll dump mine somewhere to-day, before it dumps me.

Sixty-six pounds don't seem to ride very easy on an empty belly.

Sixty-six pounds--sixty-six solid pounds o' best pin-fire--and us dyin' for want of a crust. Come on, then! One more try!"

"You've got your revolver still, haven't you?" asked Jeff, as he fitted the straps of a big, heavy swag (which had served him for a pillow) about his shoulders, while his companion did the same with his swag.

"Yes," said the other man. "And I tell you what, Jeff; you shall take it to-day. I've got a jolly good stick here, and I've no use for the revolver, anyhow; couldn't hit a house at a dozen yards, even if I was likely to see one. Yes, you take the shooting-iron, my dear fellow; you might manage to pot something. I hope you will."

They gravely tossed a twig to decide the question of who should head south and who east; and then as gravely shook hands and parted, Jeff heading south and the other man due east.

"Well, if we've got a chance at all, I guess this ought to double it, anyway," said Jeff.

"Why, yes; and one of us'll strike pay dirt to-day all right, you'll find. So good-bye till then, Jeff," said the other man.

"So long, mate; so long!"

Away in the scrub to the northward of the two men a dozen pair of eyes more hungry than their own were watching them; or, to be exact, eleven pairs were watching them. Finn lay stretched still at full length, beside a bush, at Warrigal's feet, while Warrigal peered eagerly through the scrub. Black-tip, followed by three strong young dogs and a b.i.t.c.h, loped off at once, without comment or communication with the rest of the pack, in the direction of the trail of the south-bound Jeff. Warrigal's eyes, as it happened, were fixed upon the shoulders of the other man, and it was his trail that she made for now, after rousing Finn with a touch of her muzzle. And so the wild-folk divided, even as the men-folk had done, five going south after Jeff, and five others, besides Finn and Warrigal, going east after the other man. But it was broad daylight, and none of them made any attempt to draw near the makers of the trails they followed. They merely followed, muzzles carried low, and nostrils and eager eyes questing as they went for any sign of life in the scrub--anything, from an ant to an emu, that by any possibility could represent food. Meanwhile the warm trail of the man ahead kept hope and excitement alive in them, though that man would have said that he was about as poor a source of hopefulness as any creature in Australia. To be sure, he had never thought of himself in the light of food. The dingoes had.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.xII