Part 14 (2/2)
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.
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