We didn’t start so over and above early, though Starlight was up as fresh as paint at sunrise, you’d thought he hadn’t ridden a yard the day before. Even at the very last there’s a lot of things to do and to get. But we all looked slippy and didn’t talk much, so that we got through what we had to do, and had all the horses saddled and packed by about eight o’clock. Even Warrigal had partly got over his temper. Of course I told Starlight about it. He gave him a good rowing, and told him he deserved another hammering, which he had a good mind to give him, if we hadn’t been starting for a journey. Warrigal didn’t say a word to him. He never did. Starlight told me on the quiet, though, he was sorry it happened, “though it’s the rascal’s own fault, and served him right. But he’s a revengeful beggar,” he says, “and that he would play you some dog’s trick if he wasn’t afraid of me, you may depend your life on.”

“Now,” says he,“we must make our little arrangements. I shall be somewhere about Cunnamulla by the end of this month” (it was only the first week). “Jim knows that we are to meet there, and if we manage that all right I think the greatest part of the danger will be over. I shall get right across by Dandaloo to the back blocks of the West Bogan country, between it and the Lachlan. There are tracks through the endless mallee scrub, only known to the tribes in the neighbourhood, and a few half-castes like Warrigal, that have been stock-riding about them. Sir Ferdinand and his troopers might just as well hunt for a stray Arab in the deserts of the Euphrates. If I’m alive—mind you, alive—I’ll be at Cunnamulla on the day I mean. And now, good-bye, old fellow. Whatever my sins have been, I’ve been true to you and your people in the past, and if Aileen and I meet across the seas, as I hope, the new life may partly atone for the old one.”

Chapter XLIX

CHAPTER XLIX

He shook hands with me and dad, threw his leg over Rainbow, took Locket’s bridle as if he was going for an easy day’s ride, and cantered off. Warrigal nodded to both of us, then brought his pack-horse up level, and followed up.