In the Musgrave Ranges Part 19

An uncanny feeling came over him. Those hoof-marks, and now this design--surely the thing must be the work of man.

Suddenly he stumbled. His bare feet caught in something and he tripped. He looked down at his toe. It was cut and bleeding slightly.

He went back to find the thing which had tripped him.

It was the blade of a shovel!

One edge was sticking up. With shaking hands Stobart pulled it out of the sand. It came away easily, for the handle was burnt. He groped about near it and uncovered, one after another, a gold-was.h.i.+ng dish, a pick-head, a couple of wedges, and a hammer. The sand had drifted over them and made a mound. Then he laid bare a truly gruesome sight--charred embers of wood and half-burnt human bones.

Stobart did not disturb the sand any more. He knew now why the gold prospectors, who had penetrated into the Musgrave fastnesses in search of the wealth which was reputed to be there, had never returned. Would _he_ ever return, he wondered. The place was haunted by the spirits of the murdered dead, and was guarded by black devils in human form. Even now one of them might be watching him, waiting an opportunity of adding his bones to the collection which the sand had covered up.

He rose to his feet. He was thirsty, and the sight he had just seen made him want to soak his whole body in the cool clean water of the pool. He laughed harshly. What were all these fancies which were coming into his head? He would not give way to them. This life in a blacks' camp was upsetting his nerves. What were a few dead men after all? He had seen plenty of them. _He_ was alive and would soon escape from this outpost of death. He laughed again. The rocky walls sent back an echo of his laugh. It sounded like an evil spirit mocking him.

He walked a few paces, till he was near those white things which had been laid out so carefully in the design of the Southern Cross. He looked at them. He looked again, astonished beyond measure. Yes! No!

Yes, they were!

They were human skulls--white men's skulls!

Stobart staggered away. He lay down on the edge of the water. He needed its cool touch to save him from madness. He drank deep, deep satisfying draughts. He bathed his head and face and plunged his arms in it, splas.h.i.+ng the life-giving drops over his naked chest. The sense of horror gradually began to leave him, and he realized that he had reached the object of his search. He had found the Musgrave gold-mine.

From where he lay he looked up at the boulder-strewn knoll behind the water-hole. Even at the distance of several yards he could see that every boulder was more richly studded with the precious metal than any he had ever seen. It did not surprise him. The events of the last hour had robbed him of the power to be surprised. He just looked up at all that wealth and knew it was his--his, if only he could take it away.

He turned his head and looked at the skulls. Each bleached remains of what had once been the head of a courageous man was looking at him out of empty eye-sockets. The jaws had been propped open and seemed to be laughing with ghastly dead mirth into the face of the living man.

Stobart's imagination began to play tricks with him, for when he turned his eyes away, the glances of the skulls seemed to turn also.

He plunged his head once more into water and leaned over till his chest and arms were covered. His hands groped about in the cool sand, and when he pulled them out again they were full of wet sand. The sun's rays caught it and struck a thousand flashes from the grains. They looked unusually yellow and bright. Stobart turned the sand over and let it run between his fingers. It was like grains of sunlight. He thought that his overwrought nerves were deceiving him, and picked up another handful. It behaved exactly in the same way. It glinted and flashed yellow in a way that no sand could ever do. All at once it dawned upon him. This was no trick of sunlight on wet sand. This was no make-believe of tired nerves.

The sand of that water-hole was gold!

The white man stood up. He had no tools with which to work at the boulders for specimens to take away with him when he escaped. But here was gold, some of which could easily be hidden on his person to prove, to anybody who might doubt his story, that he alone of all men had solved the mystery of the Musgraves and had returned again to the haunts of men of his own colour. He stooped to gather another handful, and as he did so something whirled through the air and fell in the water in front of him. He jumped back quickly. The water was clear, for the grains of golden sand had settled and left no mud.

It was an old horseshoe! Surely the place was bewitched. He looked round, wondering what next would happen. Suddenly another horseshoe came from a clump of low bushes nearly a hundred yards up the gully.

Stobart saw it coming and dodged it. It fell at his feet and he picked it up. He was a good tracker and knew it at once. That shoe had made one of the tracks which he had seen in the clay. There was no doubt about it.

The sense of a supernatural foe, which was making a coward of the brave white man, left him all at once. Evil spirits do not play with old rusty metal. A human arm must have thrown that horseshoe. He had seen the second one leave the bushes where the man was in ambush. Now was the time for action. Grasping a boomerang he ran at full speed up the valley. He reached the bushes. n.o.body was there. But, leading to and from the hiding-place, were the recent tracks of a man's bare feet.

Stobart recognized them at once. The warragul doctor had thrown those horseshoes.

CHAPTER XXVI

Arrkroo, the Hater

The native doctor fled, like the evil black spirit that he was, up the valley. Although an old man, he was still in the prime of his strength, and he knew the path to and from the Pool of Skulls so well, that he had the advantage over Stobart, who had never been there before. For the first few yards the marks of his naked feet were clearly seen, and the white man ran swiftly, but the tracks soon became confused in a ma.s.s of loose stones which had fallen from the cliffs, and were finally lost altogether on the rocky sides of the valley, till Stobart could not possibly tell which way his enemy had gone. He had heard no sound and seen no sign of the running man, yet he knew that he was close upon him when he was forced to give up the chase, and, as if to confirm this opinion, when Stobart finally stood still and looked at the great boulders above him, hoping to see a black human form flit from one to another, a stone came out of the silence, hurled with deadly force and aim. Years of danger with wild cattle had made the drover's actions as quick as lightning. The stone was totally unexpected, but he jerked his head aside just in time. Instead of striking him in the face, it caught the brim of his hat and sent the old felt spinning from his head. He jumped back, picked it up, and crouched behind a rock.

Absolute silence reigned. The sun was very near its zenith, but in that deep valley the air was still cool. Across the clear flawless blue sky sailed an eagle on wide-spread motionless wings, wheeling round and round in slow circles, wondering when another human victim would be provided for him down there beside the water-hole.

After a time Stobart went back to the place of horror, with its charred bones, its terrible design in skulls, and its golden-sanded pool. He knew what fear natives have of dead bodies, and that there was only one man in all the Musgrave tribes who would dare to play such a gruesome trick with the remains of his enemies, and that man was the native doctor--Arrkroo, the Hater. Even he, powerful and feared though he was, dared not actually kill Stobart. The other natives would track their white hero and would soon know everything that had happened, and Arrkroo was afraid of what they might do to him. The Hater did not mind so long as Stobart merely hunted and behaved like a native, but when he started to wander around alone and search for signs of the glittering yellow metal, Arrkroo became alarmed, and, though the white man did not know it, his enemy had followed and watched him closely for weeks.

Arrkroo understood that if once the secret of the ranges was known beyond the desert, many white men would come with weapons which make a noise like thunder in the hills and which kill a long way off. They would drive out the natives who owned the mountain fastnesses, for, thought the doctor, what does a white man care so long as he can put that heavy yellow sand in little bags and take it away?

So, for the safety of his people, as well as because he was jealous of Stobart's power, the Hater was determined that the white man should die.

Stobart stood by the pool and looked at the golden sand. He was more than ever determined to escape, and now he wanted to take away with him just enough of that precious metal to prove to others that his story was true. He wanted so many men to believe him that there would be such a rush to the Musgraves that they would escape, by sheer force of numbers, from the terrible fate of the lonely prospectors.

But how could he take that golden sand away? His only garment was a tattered pair of trousers with the pockets torn out, and a belt at which hung his fire-sticks, and where he still kept his old black pipe, though it had been cold and empty for many weeks. He could not possibly tear his trousers to make a bag, for there was not a single piece of good cloth left; his hat was no good for the purpose. But his pipe--ah! that was the thing!

He sc.r.a.ped his pipe clean and then jammed the bowl full of fine gold.

To make sure that the gold was pure, he panned it off in the old rusty dish which he had unearthed near the half-burnt bones. When he had filled the pipe nearly to the top, he daubed it over with stiff clay so that none of the sand could fall out. Then he picked up his weapons and started back for the camp.

A surprise was waiting for him. The marauding band, which had gone out against Mick Darby's party, had returned. They were in high spirits and reported that they had killed all the horses of the plant, and that a white man and two white boys had been left to perish. Stobart did not hear the whole story at once, for, as soon as he walked into camp, the excitement died down, and n.o.body cared to tell this white man that three other white men had just met the most lingering of all deaths in the desert scrub. But blacks are like children and cannot keep a secret, and Stobart soon knew all that he wanted to know.

The light of his life went out. The drover was devoted to his son. He was one of those splendid men who do things as well as they possibly can in order to satisfy their own stanch sense of honour; but there can be no doubt that one of the main springs of Boss Stobart's life was the thought that he would one day share it with his son. And now Sax was dead! Just when he had found the object of his search, just when the time of his escape had almost come and he was only waiting for the return of the faithful Yarloo, just when hope was highest, these fiends had killed his son.

He looked round at their savage black faces. He caught sight of Arrkroo, the man who hated him. He saw the naked women and children, he noticed the dogs and the filth on all sides, and his hand tightened on the huge boomerang which he held. Why shouldn't he rush in amongst these men and deal out death, right, left, in front, behind. His anger was rising to madness. He felt that he could overcome the whole tribe of them. And if he failed, what matter? At least he would have had his revenge.

He dropped his spears and got ready. A fire was burning in front of him. With a few lighted sticks he could set the camp ablaze. He imagined the wurlies roaring up to heaven, while he, a captive white man, mad with rage, ran shouting through the crowd, dealing out death with every blow of his boomerang.

Not one of the natives suspected what he was going to do. He had already chosen a suitable blazing stick, and was stooping to pick it out of the fire, when he heard Coiloo's name mentioned. He waited for a moment and listened. The men were saying that Coiloo had not come back. n.o.body seemed to know what had become of him, and it struck Stobart as strange that Yarloo was not referred to as being one of the party, till he remembered that the boy would be riding a horse and would therefore leave no tracks which his fellow-tribesmen could recognize.

This moment of thought saved the drover from an act of madness which would certainly have ended in his death. Stobart trusted Yarloo implicitly, and also felt sure that Coiloo was doing his best to carry out the white man's wishes. Therefore he knew that it would be foolish to vent his rage at this particular time, and perhaps spoil what the two faithful natives were doing for him. So he picked up his weapons again, took his share of the horse-flesh, and went up to his cave.

He was very down-hearted. He was a man of action, and here he was, impelled to wait while others did things for him which he knew nothing about. He was very tired, but could not sleep because of his restless thoughts, so he went outside his cave after cooking and eating his dinner, and started to walk about in the cool evening air. He walked as silently as a native, and presently heard the sound of a voice chanting quietly and earnestly in the native tongue. He crept nearer.

A man was crouching down on all four like an animal, swaying his body and muttering. Stobart was standing up and could not see who it was, so he stooped down till the man's body and head were silhouetted against the sky. It was Arrkroo, the Hater.

Inch by inch Stobart worked his way nearer, till he heard the words and saw what the native doctor was doing. There was a small pointed bone, called an irna, about eight inches long, sticking upright in the sand.

At one end was a k.n.o.b of hardened gum from spinifex gra.s.s, and a long string made of the hair of a lubra was attached to it. The man was stooping over the irna and muttering:

"Okinchincha quin appani ilchi ilchi-a." (May your head and throat be split open.)

He said this three times, moved the irna to a new place, and then began a new curse:

"Purtulinga apina-a intaapa inkirilia quin appani intarpakala-a." (May your backbone be split open and your ribs torn asunder.)

This went on for some time and then Arrkroo got up and walked away, leaving the irna in the ground. Next night he would return for it, and whoever the man pointed that bone at would most certainly die. Natives do not think that any man dies from a natural cause; it is always a case of magic, and if a big strong healthy black-fellow happens to be "boned" by his enemy in the proper way, he gets weaker and weaker, either with or without some special disease, till at last he dies. He always dies.

Arrkroo was afraid to kill Stobart openly, therefore he had prepared powerful magic and was going to "bone" him. Stobart guessed this, and took the chance of showing his power over the native doctor. He caught hold of the irna by the string, pulled it out of the sand, and walked back to the camp with it.

The men were all feasting round the fire. Arrkroo was amongst them, eating sparingly, as is the habit with the native doctors, and no doubt thinking what he was going to do to-morrow when he boned the hated white man. Everybody looked up when Stobart came into the firelight.

One or two of the men saw the irna and called out, and at once the whole tribe was on its feet in alarm. Arrkroo saw it also and shook with fear. The white man was indeed a devil, for how else could he have found a little bone stuck in the sand on a dark night? In an instant the fire was deserted. The frightened natives crouched behind wurlies and breakwinds, dreading least the white man should point that deadly bone at them. But Stobart swung it by its hair string till it was over the hottest part of the fire and then let it drop. The string frizzled instantly, the k.n.o.b of spinifex melted and flared up, and the bone was soon reduced to white powder.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Dance of Death

Arrkroo, the Hater, had failed again. Stobart had openly triumphed over him by burning his deadly irna. The native feared this white man, but hated him more than he feared him, and was more than ever resolved to bring about his death.

Several days later, an old man of the tribe, named Wuntoo, became ill.