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It was the nostalgia of the wilderness, of the life of the wild; and, as he looked out into the moonlight, Finn saw again in fancy, the boundary-rider's lonely humpy, the rugged, rocky hills of the Tinnaburra; a fleeing wallaby in the distance, himself in hot pursuit.
He was not quite sure of Bill's intentions, and had been greatly disturbed by the pressure of the boundary-rider's arm across his shoulders. It had brought with it an instant flashlight picture of an iron-barred cage, and other matters connected therewith. He did not realize that Bill, and not he himself, had killed the old-man.
If a man succeeded in getting himself as much chopped about as Finn had been since the evening of his departure from the boundary-rider's gunyah and the severance of his connection with the world of men-folk, he would require weeks of careful nursing and doctoring before he could be said to have recovered.
He lived where he happened to be in a town hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog shanty, in a shearer's, digger's, shepherd's, or boundary-rider's hut; in a surveyor's camp or a black-fellows' camp or, when the horrors were on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him.
The mouth of the den was narrow and very low for one of Finn's stature, but he bent his aching body gladly and followed his mate in, to find that the den itself was comparatively roomy and capable of accommodating half a dozen dingoes. As a matter of fact, it had been the den of Warrigal's mother, but it was more than a year now since that mother had fallen to a boundary-rider's gun.
There was no sign of Jess that nose or eye or ear could detect, but Finn told himself as he moved away from the gunyah that this was doubtless Bill, and that Jess would be likely to follow. As his custom was, where Bill was concerned, Finn took up his stand about five-and-twenty paces from the humpy, prepared gravely to observe the boundary-rider's evening tasks: the fire-lighting, and so forth.
But a giant Wolfhound, with a very hungry mate and four ravening little pups, all waiting eagerly upon his hunting, was quite differently situated. Finn's hunting took him one evening far enough south and by east to bring him within half a mile of the boundary-rider's encampment in which he had lived with Jess.
They carried a spare set of tucker-bags, and if, for instance, they were out of sugar and had plenty flour and tea, Brummy or Swampy would go to the store, boundary-rider's hut, or selector's, with the sugar-bag in his hand and the other bags in his shirt front on spec. He'd get the sugar first, and then, if it looked good enough, the flour-bag would come out, then the tea-bag.
But all that had been changed, and everything and everybody strange was now suspect to Finn. The Wolfhound was the first to wake in the very early morning of the day following that of his arrival at the boundary-rider's gunyah. His movement waked Jess, and together they stretched and walked round the camp.
Then, slowly, he lowered his great length to the ground, without for an instant removing his gaze from the boundary-rider's face, and lay with fore-legs outstretched, watching and waiting, and resting at the same time. Evidently the man regarded this as some sort of a step forward, for he yielded now, and flung the piece of meat so that it fell beside Finn's paws.
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