Everything looked as if they’d gone off in a hurry, and never come back at night or since. One of their horses was tied with a tether rope close to the tent poles, an he’d been walking round and trampling down the grass, as if he’d been there all night. We couldn’t make it out.

We rode on, hardly looking at one another, but following Warrigal, who rattled on now, hardly looking at the ground at all, like a dog with a burning scent. All of a sudden he pulls up, and points to a dip into a cross gully, like an old river, which we all knew.

“You see um crow? I b’leeve longa Black Gully.”

Sure enough, just above the drop down, where we used to gallop our ponies in old times and laugh to see ‘em throw up their tails, there were half-a-dozen crows and a couple of eagle-hawks high up in the sky, wheeling and circling over the same place.

“By George! they’ve got the old man,” says Jim. “Come on, Dick. I never thought poor old dad would be run down like this.”

“Or he’s got them!” says Starlight, curling his lip in a way he had. “I don’t believe your old governor’s dead till I see him. The devil himself couldn’t grab him on his own ground.”

Chapter XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

We all pulled up at the side of the gully or dry creek, whatever it was, and jumped off our horses, leaving Warrigal to look after them, and ran down the rocky sides of it.

“Great God!” Starlight cries out, “what’s that?” and he pointed to a small sloping bit of grass just underneath the bank. “Who are they? Can they be asleep?”

They were asleep, never to wake. As we stood side by side by the dead men, for there were four of them, we shook so, Jim and I, that we leaned against one another for support. We had never seen a sight before that like it. I never want to do so again.

There they lay, four dead men. We didn’t know them ourselves, but guessed they were Hagan and his lot. How else did they come there? and how could dad have shot them all by himself, and laid them out there? Were Daly and Moran with him? This looked like Moran’s damnable work.

We looked and looked. I rubbed my eyes. Could it be real? The sky was dark, and the daylight going fast. The mountain hung over us black and dreadful-looking. The wind whimpered up and down the hillside with a sort of cry in it. Everything was dark and dismal and almost unnatural-looking.