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Updated: May 9, 2025
They wished to get out of revolver range of the Overlanders and then use their rifles on them, but by the time the desert ruffians turned, facing the scene of their late battle, Hi, Hippy, Grace and Elfreda were shooting steadily with their rifles, pouring a hot fire into them. One ruffian was seen to sway in his saddle and pitch to the ground.
"Sir, Feeling assured that the Governor would be anxious to hear from me as soon as possible after the receipt of my letters from Lake Victoria, I should have taken the earliest opportunity of forwarding despatches to his Excellency after I had ascertained whether the reports I had heard of the massacre of a party of overlanders at the lagoons on the Darling was founded in fact or not; but having been obliged to cross over from the ana-branch of the Darling to that river itself for water, and its unlooked-for course having taken me greatly to the eastward, I had no opportunity by which to send to Moorunde, although I was most anxious to allay any apprehensions my former letter might have raised as to the safety of my party.
"What is it, Laundry?" called Hippy. Washington's lips refused to frame the words that he was trying to utter. The Overlanders started forward at a run, bringing up abruptly as they gained their camping place. Not a vestige of it, save the ashes of their cook fire, remained. Everything was gone. "De hosses!" exploded Washington.
The pebble went rather wide of the mark that is, the mark for which it was intended, but it reached another and a fully as satisfactory one. The pebble hit Washington's pack mule on the tender part of its hind leg, galvanizing that member into instant and vigorous action. The eyes of the Overlanders were not quick enough to see the movement that followed.
Their heads were full of hay, their eyes were red, and their faces showed much loss of sleep. "You folks go down to the brook and wash, and by the time you return we shall have breakfast cooked for you," offered Elfreda. The breakfast they cooked on Mrs. Thompson's stove, but in the Overlanders' utensils. Nor would they permit any of the girls to come into the house for the food.
Here some of the men began washing for gold, and, finding yellow specks the size of pin-heads in the fine sand, a number of them knocked up cabins for themselves and remained west of Edmonton to try their luck. Later, when these belated Overlanders decided to follow on to Cariboo, they suffered terrible hardships.
The big trees soon began to char, and, within an hour, were glowing pillars of fire, as one after another broke into flames that mounted higher and higher. Had there been leisure to view it as a spectacle, the sight would have been a magnificent one, but the Overlanders had other things to occupy their attention.
Why, he said that a person, by con-centrating properly, could move a house if he wished." The Overlanders shouted. "You'd better see a doctor," advised Hippy. "Brown Eyes, you haven't told me what happened to you. Who shot you?" "I don't know. I did not see the person who did it. He saw me, evidently. Perhaps, catching a glimpse of my campaign hat, he thought it was you and shot at me.
The heat was a lifeless heat, and the members of the outfit found themselves nodding and swaying in their saddles, keeping awake only by much effort. "Water only five miles away," called Hippy Wingate late in the afternoon in a cheerful voice. "Wake up, Overlanders! Hi says we will be there before sundown."
The chief factor was away, but the young clerks in charge sent Indians along to pilot the Overlanders through the rapids below Fort George, known as the most dangerous on the Fraser. These rapids, it will be recalled, had wrecked Alexander Mackenzie and had almost cost Simon Fraser his life. But the treasure-seekers did not have to go as far south as Alexandria, where Mackenzie had turned back.
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