The Lost Valley Part 14

"That's so," the other agreed. "Get-up, you brute." The latter remark was addressed to the horse, which showed an inclination to drop into a walk.

"Here you, Jacky!" the sergeant called, and when the black came to him he said, "Those white men have gone this way," pointing westward. "Look out for their tracks, though I don't fancy we'll see any for some time."

The black grunted non-committally. He had much the same idea himself, though he could not understand how the white man had guessed. Still he knew enough of the white men to realise that they were very, very clever, and sometimes found out things that even the black trackers did not understand. The black went back to his work in silence. Presently he grunted again. His quick eyes had noticed a grey woollen thread stamped into the earth. He lifted it gingerly up in his hand and held it out to the police. The sergeant took it, examined it carefully, and then, without any comment, handed it round to the others. There was no need to ask what it meant. All knew without being told that someone had lately pa.s.sed that way, and who could that someone be unless one of the rangers?

The black went back again to the trail, bending down close to the ground for all the world like a little dog following the scent of the chase. He turned sharply off into the bushes and the troop went after him. Here and there--wherever the earth had chanced to be a little softer than usual--one could see round depressions somewhat about the size of a saucer, and one patch of damp soil gave a remarkably clear imprint of the fibres of some material.

"Clever chaps, by George!" the sergeant remarked. "They've got brains among them."

"How's that?" queried one of the police.

"They've tried the old duffers' dodge of blanketing the horses' hoofs.

Sort of thing that works, too, unless a man happens to have his eyes well open. Luckily I've stumbled up against this sort of thing before."

The other man, who had his own ideas about the matter, nodded his head, but otherwise made no comment.

About ten o'clock the troopers debouched from the trees into a low-lying stretch of land. One could not call it a gully; it was more of a depression, a fault in the earth due to some local subsidence. On the nearest ridge a prospector's hut was perched, from the chimney of which a wisp of smoke ascended. When one of the mounted men dropped from the saddle and opened the door he found no one in charge, though a dinner was merrily simmering away on the fire.

"Whoever he is he can't be far away," the sergeant commented. "He wouldn't leave his dinner unless he was handy. Have a look for him, boys. He might be able to tell us something."

The men scattered in different directions down the depression, and presently a shout from one of them announced that the prospector had been found. He came toiling slowly up the slope, side by side with his discoverer. He was a small wiry man, with a heavy iron-grey beard, and his age, as well as one could guess, was something near to sixty.

"You don't happen to have seen a body of men, hors.e.m.e.n, pa.s.sing this way late last night or early this morning?" the sergeant queried.

"n.o.body pa.s.sed this way last night," the man answered in a colorless voice. "Why?"

"A gold escort was robbed yesterday evening," the sergeant said, "and we've got information that the robbers came this way."

The man turned slowly and studied the lower slopes of the distant range.

He saw, or seemed to see, something that interested him, and he stared so long that the sergeant said impatiently, "Well, what about it?"

"I was just wondering," said the little man in the same colorless voice.

"I was just wondering if that was them."

"If who was?" the sergeant demanded. "Out with it, man, and don't keep us waiting all day."

"Last night," said the man distinctly, "there was a fire up on those ranges. It wasn't a bush-fire. I know a bush-fire. It was just a tiny little glow from here. I thought it was a fire showing through the open door of a hut, until I remembered that n.o.body lived up there. It didn't last long; it must have burnt out in ten minutes or so, so I knew that it was started by some traveller. It wasn't a camp-fire and they weren't cooking anything."

"How do you know that?" the sergeant said quickly.

"How do I know that?" the little man repeated slowly. "It's easy enough.

The fire was only alight ten minutes at the most, and you can't cook anything or boil a billy in that time, I know."

"The old chap's right," one of the troopers said in an undertone to his superior.

The sergeant nodded. He turned again to the old prospector. "You're sure you didn't see anyone pa.s.s this way?" he queried.

"No, I'm not sure," said the man. "I'm only saying that I didn't hear anyone."

"What do you mean by saying you're not sure that you didn't see anyone?"

the sergeant asked curiously.

"When there's shadows in the trees," said the old man, "there's times when you can't tell whether they're men or not. That's what I mean. I'm only saying that I didn't hear anyone. I'd have heard horses."

"The man's a hatter," the sergeant remarked as the troop galloped off towards the ranges. "As mad as a March hare."

The other grinned cheerfully. "Still there's a lot in what he said," he answered. "Now that about the fire----"

"I wonder why they lighted it," the sergeant cut-in.

"Don't know," the other said. "What's the sense of worrying anyway?

We'll know soon enough. But don't you think we should have brought the old chap along with us?"

The sergeant shook his head. "What'd be the good?" he said. "He couldn't do any more than he's done already."

He swung round in his saddle and faced the troop. "Now, men," he said, "we've got to put our best foot foremost. Those 'rangers are somewhere ahead of us, making for the mountains. Keep your eyes skinned, for you never know the minute we'll catch up to them. They can't have such a big start of us, and they're heavily loaded at that."

The troopers unslung their carbines and examined the loading, then, satisfied that every preparation had been made, they set spurs to their horses and cantered up the track that led to the ranges.

It was Mr. Abel c.u.mshaw who first discovered the pursuers. Early in the afternoon the two men commenced to ascend the mountains proper. Just before they disappeared into the belt of timber that fringed the slopes the younger man turned in his saddle and cast one last backward glance at the valley they had left beneath them. Far away below them, in among the misty shapes of the distant trees, he caught a glimpse of a collection of dark little dots whose unfamiliar look puzzled him. He called Mr. Bradby's attention to them, and that gentleman glanced at them in an offhand way and p.r.o.nounced them to be kangaroos.

"Come on," he added in a different tone. "Hurry up with you there!"

Mr. c.u.mshaw had no intention of moving until he was fully satisfied in his own mind that the little black dots were really kangaroos. Something seemed to whisper that they weren't.

"They're not kangaroos," he said with conviction. He had caught the glint of sunlight on metal, a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton of a man's uniform, or perhaps the polished barrel of a carbine.

"Oh," said Mr. Bradby, "so you've tumbled."

"They're police," Mr. c.u.mshaw stated. "That's what they are."

"Didn't you know that, Abel? I guessed it as soon as I saw them. I'd never confuse a trooper with a kangaroo. I only said that to--well, I didn't want to scare you unnecessarily."

"You needn't be afraid of that," said Mr. c.u.mshaw airily. "I'm in the game for good or ill, and I'm taking all risks equally with you. It's as much my funeral as yours."

"It doesn't matter whose funeral it is," Jack Bradby said impatiently.

"We've got to get away and do it smart. You must remember that neither of us knows anything at all about this country, and it's ten to one that those infernal police have got a black tracker or some other imp of Satan who'll be able to follow us, even if we left as little trace as so many flies."

"Where are we heading for anyway?" Abel c.u.mshaw enquired as he spurred his horse alongside his companion's.

"That's more than I can say," Bradby retorted. "If we'd had any gumption we'd have explored the place before we took on this last job. But we hadn't the time, and that's all there is to say about it. It's my impression that this section of the State is as full of hiding-places as ever the Blue Mountains or the Wombats were. If we only keep up this spurt of ours we'll make a gully or a valley where we can hide for months without a soul being a whit the wiser."

"I hope so," said c.u.mshaw, in the manner of a man who has very grave doubts.

"Hold your breath for your work," Mr. Bradby advised. "You might need it all yet."

They had made good headway by this, and the path that they had picked out took them every hour deeper into the unexplored heart of the country. On every side of them stretched the unbroken fastnesses of the primeval wilderness, sheer precipices dropping suddenly into infinite s.p.a.ce, jagged peaks towering dizzily into the misty vault of heaven, quaintly situated valleys so masked by timber and brushwood that one came across them only by accident. There is something in the naked face of Nature, in the sheer magnificence of incredible heights and the marvellous ma.s.siveness of big timber that somehow dwarfs man into insignificance and makes him realise the puniness of his strength. There was something in the scenes now opening up before the rangers that subdued them and beat them into silence. There was beauty in the sight, the soft eternal beauty of an unravished land, but over and above that was the suggestion that the travellers were fighting not merely against their kind but against the untrammelled forces of an all-powerful wilderness.

The time was early December, and the golden wattle in full bloom. From end to end the ranges were a blaze of color, near at hand deep gold, fading away in the distance into that hazy blue-grey peculiar to Australian mountains. Hour by hour the men rode on in silence, at times galloping down the slopes, at others crawling slowly and painfully up hills that stretched apparently to heaven, hills that yet dropped suddenly into s.p.a.ce when one had almost given up all hope of ever reaching the summit.