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Bradby stirred uneasily, threw out one arm, rolled over on his side, and in an instant was wide-awake. He sat up abruptly and gazed around. Abel Cumshaw was still sleeping peacefully, his head pillowed on the saddle-bags that contained the plunder. Mr. Bradby smiled grimly at the sight. Softly, without waking his companion, he rose from his rough bed and glided to the open doorway.
"It's the end I'm looking at," Bradby said gloomily. "It might be the sort of end neither of us'd fancy." Mr. Cumshaw made no immediate reply. He was peering very intently through the boles of the trees as if he was not quite sure that what he saw was really there. "What are you looking at?" Bradby demanded irritably.
In very many cases they do not even know how to mount, but finding ponies so cheap, or, better still, getting a discarded racer as a cumshaw, they take to riding as naturally as if to the manner born, so that there are but few residents of either sex who cannot ride, and China ponies consequently hold a place in the estimation of foreigners which is altogether denied them by the natives.
"But," Cumshaw objected, "he didn't know as much about the Valley then as we do now." "Quite so," I said. "I never thought he really meant anything by what he said, but that remark's been running through my head. It seems to me that everyone right through has been obsessed by the idea of the tree, and now that it's disappeared we're at a loose end.
"I rather think," he said slowly, "that it will have just the opposite effect." "You can't have any nerves in those fingertips of yours," I said. "Why will it?" "I don't seem to have any, do I? I think I saw one of the men at Great Western." "You don't know them," I said. "How could you?" "Mr. Bryce described them in his letter," Cumshaw answered.
Cumshaw said something under his breath, but before I could drop on him for it Moira interposed. "How about walking round at the foot of this ridge and seeing where it'll lead us to?" she suggested. "That's as fine a plan as any," I answered. "We'll try it." We did. We sauntered along listlessly for the best part of an hour, and then it struck me all of a sudden that we were rising rapidly.
Still the fact remains that twice within twenty-four hours the same queer feeling crept over me, and on each occasion the course of events proved that it was premonition. But that is running a shade ahead of the story. I ran down the slope to meet Cumshaw, and the first thing I noticed was that there was a great livid bruise across his right temple.
I don't suppose any passer-by would be likely to notice that we've come down here, do you?" "All things considered," Mr. Cumshaw said slowly, "we've made little mess. We've got to thank that grassy slope for that. If it had been dry earth there'd have been tracks enough in all conscience. Yes, I think we can reasonably say that we've no need to fear anything unless accidents."
I vote we start right away." "But, Mr. Cumshaw," Moira protested, "do you think you feel well enough?" "Miss Drummond," he answered, "I've got pains all down my neck, and my head's humming like a hive of bees, and I've got incipient rheumatics in every joint in my body from lying all night on the damp ground.
Ten minutes' close search brought to light a pile of bones that might or might not be those of the missing animals Cumshaw had no knowledge of anatomical structure and so did not feel quite clear on that point but the remarkable feature about them in his eyes was that they were all more or less blackened, and amongst them he found a heap of lime-dust, which he took to be bones reduced to their elemental form by the application of great heat.
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