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"On horseback." "Any one with him?" "Yes, another horseman." "What was he like?" "Slight, dark man, youngish, good-looking." "Warrigal the half-caste! By George! warrants out for him also," says Sir Ferdinand. "On a good horse, of course, with an hour's start. We may give up the idea of catching him this time. Follow him up as a matter of form. Good-bye, Clifford.
We sent out our scout, Warrigal, and he got our letters and papers too, from a 'sure hand', as Starlight said the old people in the English wars used to say. The papers were something to see. First he brought us in a handbill that was posted in Bargo, like this:
But though, as yet, he gave them nothing of his great weight, he was slashing them cruelly about the necks and shoulders, and once when Warrigal swore by her teeth and claws it was he managed to pluck Black-tip's cousin bodily from the earth and fling him by the neck clean over a low bush.
And then they lay and licked and nosed, and chatted amicably for an hour. After this, Warrigal rose and stretched her handsome figure to its full length there was not a white hair about her, nor any other trace of cross-breeding her nose pointing west and by south a little, for the back ranges, whence she came.
Towards morning, when they were a good thirty miles distant from Mount Desolation, they topped a ridge, upon the farther slope of which a small mob of nine kangaroos were browsing among the scrub. Finn was after them like a shot, and Warrigal was at his heels, the rest of the pack streaming behind in a ragged line, the tail of which was formed by old Tufter and the whelps.
We got into the old way of working hard all day and sleeping well at night. We could eat and drink well; the corned beef and the damper were good, and Jim, like when we were at the back of Boree when Warrigal came, wished that we could stick to this kind of thing always, and never have any fret or crooked dealings again as long as we lived. But it couldn't be done.
This defiance of the admitted lords of the range was not altogether without its ground of alarm for Warrigal; its utter recklessness made the skin over her shoulders twitch, but it was something to have a mate who could dare so much, even in ignorance.
'Hullo, Warrigal! sung out Jim suddenly, 'what's up now? Some devil's work, I suppose, or you wouldn't be in it. Why don't you knock at a gentleman's door when you come a visiting? 'Wasn't sure it was you, he answered, showing his teeth; 'it don't do to get sold. Might been troopers, for all I know.
When their relations had grown temperately fond and familiar they took to the western trail together, and presently Warrigal "pointed" a big bandicoot for Finn, and Finn, delighted to exhibit his prowess, stalked and slew the creature with a good deal of style. Then the two fed together, Finn politely yielding the hind-quarters to his inamorata.
Every track and short cut there was in the mountains was as easy to him as the road to George Storefield's was to us. Nulla Mountain was full of curious gullies and caves and places that the devil himself could hardly have run a man to ground in, unless he'd lived near it all his life as Warrigal had.
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