As soon as the morning call sounded, the black stockmen rolled out of their camp-sheets, picked up their bridles, and went off in the grey light on the tracks of the hobbled horses. Their skill in tracking was a constant source of wonder to the boys. The type of country didn't seem to matter at all; soft sand or hard stony tableland was all the same to them; they tracked the wandering horses with as much careless certainty as if they could actually see them, though on some nights they had strayed, in search of feed, several miles away from camp.

When the black boys had gone, Sax and Vaughan collected wood for the morning fire, raked last night's ashes together, and made a blaze.

Then they filled the seven quart-pots with water and set them near the flame to boil for breakfast.

The drover was always busy in the early hours. There was probably a piece of horse-gear to mend, a broken or faulty girth, the stuffing of a saddle which had become lumpy, or a buckle which had torn away. When these were all in order, there was the everlasting "damper" to make.

Vaughan volunteered to become a.s.sistant cook if Mick would give him lessons in the great bush art of damper-making.

"You'd better start on Johnny-cakes," said the drover. "The mixture's just the same, but if you make a mess you won't spoil a whole damper.

You watch me to-day. You can try your hand to-morrow, if you like."

It was still an hour or so before sunrise when the white boys had their first lesson in bush cookery. Mick went over to one of the packs and pulled out a seventy-pound bag of flour about half full. He untied the mouth of the bag and took out a tin of baking-powder. Then he spread a folded sack on the sand, and piled on it about five double handfuls of flour, mixing a lidful of baking-powder with it. He gave this a good stir round, dry as it was, and then made a hollow in the middle and poured in water in which a little salt had been dissolved. The proper mixing of the dough only came by experience, Mick told them; as dry as possible and yet damp enough to stick together. The work was done quickly but thoroughly.

"If you wanted it for a damper," explained Mick, giving the dough a final roll, "you'd put the whole lot in together. But I'll show you Johnny-cakes first; they're easier and don't take so long."

He divided the dough into little pieces and rolled each out in his hands till it was the size and shape of an ordinary bun. He arranged these on the bag and pulled it near the fire. "I always let the things rise for a couple of minutes," he said. "Some chaps don't, but I always do."

Then he prepared the fire for cooking. Every fragment of blazing wood was put on one side, and a heap of soft glowing ashes left. With a curved stick, this pile was scooped about till it was like a very big saucer, all glowing hot and yet not actually burning. On this warm bed the Johnny-cakes were dropped, leaving a s.p.a.ce between each so that they wouldn't run together. When all the white b.a.l.l.s of dough were in place, Mick flicked some of the ashes from the edge of the hollow on to them, gradually increasing the amount till the cakes were covered right over and the whole affair was a mound of grey with no sign of the cooking cakes.

"How long before they're done?" asked Vaughan.

"Depends," answered Mick. "Depends on the size of them and the heat of the fire. I don't like the fire too hot. We'll have a look at these in about a quarter of an hour."

At the end of that time the top of the pile of ashes had begun to crack here and there with the upward pressure of the rising Johnny-cakes.

Mick scooped one of them out from the edge. It was brown and hard on the outside, with a most appetizing smell, and a soft ring round it where the top had pulled away, just like the top on a loaf of bread.

To the boy's surprise, the cakes were quite clean, and a few flicks with a wisp of leaves left them as free from sand or ashes as if they had been baked in an oven. Mick tapped the cake with his knuckles.

"Another couple of minutes won't hurt," he said.

Presently the distant sound of a jangling stock-bell was heard, and a few minutes later the horses came into camp, lead by an old black mare who carried a bell, and driven by the four black boys riding bareback.

Everything was bustle for a few minutes. The horses were again hobbled to prevent them from straying, and then the men all settled down to breakfast. Vaughan usually took charge of the tea. Directly a quart-pot came to the boil, he tipped in some sugar and a pinch of tea, and moved the pot away from the fire. Sax superintended the tucker--a slab of damper, or a Johnny-cake, and a chunk of salt meat for each man. These are the bush rations year in and year out: meat, damper, and tea. Breakfast was eaten quickly, and then the pack-bags were weighted evenly and fastened up, horses caught and saddled, a final look given round the camp to see that nothing was left behind, and the three white men set out in a certain direction with no track and with no guidance of any kind except that of the sun, followed at once by the plant of horses driven by the blacks.

All day they rode, silent for the most part, but occasionally Mick would answer a question as to a tree, a strange track, or a feature on the horizon. No other living thing was seen hour after hour, save a solitary eagle high in the air, a few lizards darting about the clumps of porcupine gra.s.s, and ants and flies. These latter pests are the curse of the back country. The weather was hot. That day and on several others one hundred and thirty degrees was reached, and even that temperature was exceeded now and then over sandhills and plains which quivered in the heat. But the boys would not have minded the heat if the flies had only left them alone. Long before dawn, before even the morning star had risen, flies buzzed around them, making life well-nigh unbearable.

A halt was made about noon for dinner, the packs and saddles taken off the horses for an hour, and then the journey was resumed, each man riding a fresh horse, for no one rides the same horse all day in Central Australia, if he can possibly help it.

Evening camp was usually made near a water-hole or native well, but sometimes the horses had to go as long as two days without a drink.

They were unsaddled and hobbled out, and allowed to roam about all night and pick up scanty bits of food. It amazed the white boys to see what very little herbage of any kind there was for an animal to live on. No gra.s.s; just a dry uninviting bush here and there, growing up out of loose barren sand, with, at long intervals, a clump of twisted mulga trees. Yet the horses "did" well, and certainly the thousand T.D.3 bullocks which had come down from the territory looked none the worse for their trip over country just as barren as the boys were now camped on.

After tea was the time the two white boys enjoyed most, for Mick would light his pipe then, prop himself up against his swag, and, with a quart-pot of tea by his side, tell them yarns about the back country.

Many of these narratives included Boss Stobart, for he and Mick had gone about together a great deal, and had established overland droving records which are still unbeaten. He told of drought and flood, of thirst and hunger, of cattle rushes and disease, of mining camps, of Afghans and their camels, of Chinamen and opium, of grog shanties, of troopers, of wild blacks and still wilder whites, until his listeners'

minds flamed at the thought that they, even they, were in the country where such adventures had taken place--and perhaps some day would be met with by themselves. And at night, when they lay out on their swags under the cool sky, which looked so much farther away than it did in cities, and heard the high quavering hunting-call of the dingo, their thoughts would go, not towards the scenes where they had spent their boyhood, but onwards into the unknown.

One day, when the routine of "the road" had gone on for more than a fortnight, they were crossing a broad expanse of hard stony country, shut in on the north by dense mulga scrub, when Sax noticed a thin column of smoke rising from the trees a few miles away. He could hardly believe his eyes, and when he looked again it was no longer coming up from the trees, but was rising up and up and fading away against the flawless blue of the sky. He was about to call Vaughan's attention to it when his horse stumbled and nearly fell. Next time he looked to the north the smoke was again rising from the trees, and then again it was cut off, and floated away and was lost.

His curiosity was thoroughly roused. "Mick!" he shouted, for by this time the boys had dropped the "Mr." when speaking to their drover friend. "Mick! Is that _smoke_ over there in the trees?"

"Sure it's smoke," he answered. "And so's that ahead there." He pointed across the plain, where the heat was dancing, to a little hill.

It must have been eight miles away, and from it rose a thin coil of smoke. At first Sax thought it was merely the effect of the sun causing everything in the distance to quiver and take on fantastic shapes, but he trusted the bushman's eyes, and at last convinced himself that it was indeed smoke.

"Then somebody must be camped there," said Vaughan.

"Is it a station, Mick, or just chaps travelling like ourselves?" asked Sax.

"It's n.i.g.g.e.rs, lad. They're signalling to one another."

The columns of smoke were at once invested with a new interest to the two boys. Natives were near them, unseen, sending messages to other natives at a distance. The simplicity of this bush telegraphy was fascinating.

"What are they saying, Mick, d'you know?" asked Vaughan eagerly.

"This lot," said the drover, "is telling that other lot over there that we're coming. So many white men, so many blacks, and so many horses.

We're getting into n.i.g.g.e.r country now."

"Will we see them?" asked the boys.

"No chance in life," replied the drover. "These n.i.g.g.e.rs are wild and scared to death of white men. They're different from the camp blacks who hang round stations. They'll likely be station blacks themselves some day, for the wild n.i.g.g.e.r's dying out. But just now, they keep away and live their own lives. We call them warraguls."

CHAPTER VII

Stealthy Foes

Next morning, when the horses came in, two were missing. "Which way them two horses sit down?" Mick asked one of the boys. "What for you no bring um in?"

"Him dead," was the answer.

"Dead!" exclaimed the drover. "How dead?"

"Him speared," explained Yarloo.

"Which way? You show um me." The drover saddled his horse and went away with Yarloo, while the two white boys gave the other stockmen their breakfast, wondering what had taken Mick off in such a hurry.

Mick Darby found the two dead horses. By their tracks they had evidently strayed away from the others, and by other tracks it was clear that blacks had crept upon them in the dim light of dawn and had speared them, for the bodies were still warm. Mick always carried a bottle of strychnine about with him, and at every camp he poisoned little bits of meat and left them behind to kill the dingoes which abound in cattle country. He looked at the two horses--fine, stanch animals, both of them--and his heart became hot with anger. He put his hand to his belt and fingered the poison pouch. It was a great temptation. If the blacks had speared the horses for food, here was a chance for revenge. If he poisoned the carca.s.s and killed the blacks, would it not be a terrible warning to the others?

But it was only for a second that the ghastly thought attracted him.

He was a true white man and would not stoop to any hidden revenge. It is a white man's way to face his enemy in the open and under the sun, not to kill him by putting strychnine in his food. So Mick turned away and rode back to camp, and did not tell the boys what danger they were in.

Next day smoke signals were all around them and very close. It gave the boys a feeling that keen black eyes were peering at them from every bit of cover, and that lithe forms were slinking noiselessly from tree to tree, never turning a stone or breaking a twig to disturb the silence of the desert.

That evening they unpacked and unsaddled the horses early, and tied them up till after tea. Then Mick rode away with them himself, hobbled them on an open patch of dry bush, and prepared to watch throughout the night. He knew the native method of attack: a little, then a little more. If two horses had been killed last night, three or four might be speared this night. To lose their horses would leave the party at the mercy, not only of the blacks, but also of a more terrible enemy still--thirst. So the brave bushman was going to take no risks.

The spot he had chosen was a little plain covered with dry buck-bush and surrounded on all sides with mulga scrub. There was plenty of feed to keep the horses quiet all night, but Mick was obliged to ride round them again and again and turn them back from the scrub. He was perfectly sure that wild natives were in ambush behind the trees, and that the first animal who wandered within range of a spear-cast would become a victim. The moon was half-full in a cloudless sky, and the drover had no difficulty in seeing, but, after an hour or two, he had the greatest difficulty in the world to keep awake. The night was warm and still and drowsy, and the day had been one of constant tension, and as the drover sat with c.o.c.ked rifle and with the horse's bridle looped over his arm, he must have nodded once or twice through sheer weariness.

Suddenly he heard a stone move on another stone. He was fully awake and alert instantly. The horses were still in the middle of the plain, quietly feeding, but one or two of them were looking at an old tree stump in the curious meditative way which resting animals have of looking at things which are of no particular interest.

All at once Mick Darby sprang to his feet. He had never seen that tree stump before. For several hours he had looked at that little plain in the moonlight, and every bush was pictured on his memory. He was absolutely sure that old tree had not been there when he started to nod with weariness. Then, how had it come? Trees do not grow from the ground, become old, and die and lose most of their branches in less than an hour of a summer's night.

Mick put his c.o.c.ked rifle to his shoulder, trained the sights on the tree stump, and walked slowly towards it. The thing was about a hundred and fifty yards away when he started. He had covered a third of the distance when the tree suddenly disappeared. Remarkable as it may appear, it is a fact. One moment he saw the thick twisted trunk of a mulga tree with a few broken branches, standing out on an otherwise treeless plain; the next it had gone completely. But, instead of the tree, three wriggling black forms glided between the bushes with the stealth of snakes, making for their lives towards the scrub. They were three warragul blacks, who had crept out into the plain and had used this wonderful but quite common method of concealment.