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Updated: May 14, 2025
These last showed alertness at the sound of the flying sorrel's hoofs, and all at once a tall, keen-eyed horseman sprang to the broad doorway and strained his eyes into the night after Cumner's Son. He waited a few moments; then, as if with a sudden thought, he ran to a horse tethered near by and vaulted into the saddle.
Disorder reigned supreme, in all the desert freedom; horses and mules, goats and camels, tethered, strayed among the conical houses of hair, browsing off the littered straw or the tossed-down hay; and caldrons seethed and hissed over wood fires, whose lurid light was flung on the eagle features and the white haiks of the wanderers who watched the boiling of their mess, or fed the embers with dry sticks.
They turned in around the fire, which was kept burning, so as to keep away any possible prowling beasts. Tom Dillon was the last to retire, he looking to it that all of the horses were tethered. It was just growing daylight when Dave awoke with a start. Something had aroused him what he could not tell. He sat bolt upright, and at the same moment the old miner, who was beside him, did the same.
But he had scarcely settled himself in his chair beside Grosvenor's hammock, and closed his eyes in the hope of wooing sleep to them, than he became aware of other and nearer sounds, dominating the first, the sound of crackling flames, frequent low, muttered ejaculations, the occasional soft thud and swish of feet running through long grass, followed by a shout or two which was almost invariably responded to by a low, angry snarl, while the clashing of horns, the rattling of the trek chain, the almost continuous lowing and moaning of the oxen, the stamping of the horses tethered to the wagon, and the whining of the dogs, indicated the extreme restlessness and uneasiness of the animals.
I tethered the horses near this and within sight. Then it remained only to sup. I had a piece of bread: he had another and an onion. We ate in silence, sitting on opposite sides of the fire. But after supper I found myself in a dilemma; I did not see how I was to sleep. The ruddy light which gleamed on the knave's swart face and sinewy hands showed also his eyes, black, sullen, and watchful.
"Watch closely, so that if occasion arises you will remember how to exactly imitate my movements," he answered, and when we had tethered our horses, he led me away from the edge of the lake up the hill-side some distance to where a number of points of moss-grown rock cropped up out of the turf.
At dusk, when Charley brought in the horses, two of which we tethered near the camp, the form of a native glided like a ghost into our camp, and walked directly up to the fire. John, who saw him first, called out, "a Blackfellow! look there! a Blackfellow!" and every gun was ready.
"I had left two trails leading from that point, the one towards his hut and back again, the other into the bush to where my dogs were tethered. If he was determined to follow up the latter and to trace me to my hiding, I was ready for him, and would have the advantage of knowing his whereabouts, whilst he was ignorant of mine.
Then at a word from Ross all halted at a beautiful glade, across which ran a little brook of cold water. The horses were tethered at the edge of the forest, but were allowed to graze on the young grass which was already beginning to appear, while the men lighted a small fire of last year's fallen brushwood, at the center of the glade on the bank of the brook.
Some pigs were wallowing in the mire in one corner, and a rough pony was tethered to a post not far off; he was endeavoring, with painful insistence, to reach a clump of hay which was sticking out of a hayrick a foot or two away. Nora, seeing his wistful eyes, sprang forward, pulled a great handful of the hay, and held it to his mouth. The little creature almost whinnied with delight.
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