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Updated: May 21, 2025
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. Arrkroo, the Hater The native doctor fled, like the evil black spirit that he was, up the valley.
The string frizzled instantly, the knob of spinifex melted and flared up, and the bone was soon reduced to white powder. 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.
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 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.
Stobart had gained influence over the minds of the tribesmen, and was allowed to go. This was just what Arrkroo had hoped for. Next day Wuntoo was worse, due to another dose of the poison which the crafty Arrkroo had administered. A second meeting was called. The old man was dying.
He would strike his enemy dead even though it was his last act, for no one can do such a thing when Tumana is speaking without terrible consequences. The sound of the bull-roarer went on. Arrkroo swayed back to gain force for a smashing blow. Then he uttered a wild shout of triumph and jerked his black painted body forward. The club swung A shot rang out.
Suddenly the tension broke. Like dead leaves before a gale, the natives scattered and fled. Stobart, Sax, Arrkroo, and the corpse of Wuntoo were left alone. Arrkroo feared the bull-roarer, which spoke with the dreaded voice of Tumana, as much as anyone. Yet he stood his ground with uplifted club. The helpless white man was within easy reach. Arrkroo would not miss his vengeance this third time.
The crowd of frenzied warraguls, eager to pull him limb from limb, leaned forward, but he still held them with his fearless eye. How long would it last? Arrkroo danced nearer and nearer. When one of those whirling arms of his touched the victim, the spell would be broken, and Boss Stobart, the bravest drover of Central Australia, would go down before the onslaught of a hundred yelling fiends.
Arrkroo was the only man present who really knew what ailed Wuntoo, for he himself had put poison in the old man's food the juice of a narrow-leafed vine which grew only in the Valley of the Skulls. He had used this same poison to kill every prospector who had found the golden-sanded pool.
Everybody present knew the fate of the white prospectors, and that if once the secret was known, such a rush would set in that the warraguls would be driven out of this, their last great stronghold. Arrkroo turned towards Stobart. Every man in the gathering looked at him also. "See," shouted the Hater in the native tongue. "See. White man. He find gold. His tracks all around Pool of Skulls.
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