“I still don’t think they will bother with them yet,” replied the Red Chief uneasily. “Anyway, I can’t spare men to protect them. They must take their chance now.”

The Red Chief was right. Those Cassilis scouts halted a safe distance from the scrub in which the twenty old women remained hidden. They decided that they could go in and get that easy game any time if the fight went their way. But they were taking no unnecessary risk of walking into a trap now. The old women could wait.

The scouts turned parallel with the line of scrub and began to walk back along it, well out of spear-throw from the scrub edge.

“They seek to cut tracks leading to, or out from the scrub!” growled the Red Chief.

“Yes,” answered Burradella, “but they won’t find any except those of our own party entering here, and of the old women away across there.”

“They suspect there are more of us in the scrub. Look! These fellows coming towards here have stopped, too. And they turn. They are going back along the scrub—in the opposite direction.”

“Yes,” agreed Burradella, “and taking their time about it, too. They’re making certain as to just how many of us there are in the scrub, from this side, anyway. I wonder where their other men are? This does not look like an attack today.”

The Red Chief frowned uneasily, watching the enemy scouts walking away along the edge of the scrub. “If they don’t attack,” he muttered, “it gives us more time. But in a way it looks worse for us—they must presently learn our true numbers. If they do they’ll wipe us out.”

“Boobuk should arrive any time now.”

“Not if the fool has not seen the signals!” replied the Red Chief angrily. “But someone did answer me—or seemed to. Their eyes must have been all for their bellies. They’ll be away out on the Mooki now, gorging themselves with kangaroo meat and just loafing along. That is,” he added uneasily, “unless they’ve run into an ambush!”

“I don’t think so,” replied Burradella. “The enemy’s other party seems to be scouting along the Namoi and the Burrell Lagoon.”

“They appear to be scouting the whole country.” The Red Chief frowned. “If they cut the tracks of our hunters they’ll chase them to earth, party by party. We’re in a bad way. We’ll be finished if the complete tribe does not swiftly gather. We must do something quickly—if it is only to break their plans—before they are sure they have us cornered.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Burradella. “Here comes young Kuppa from the Black Hill. And,” he added, “Dhina-wan from Carrowreer running behind him!”

“I did not think the boys could get there!” declared the Red Chief. “It’s a wonder the Cassilis chief did not send men up there to make a trap before the dawn.”

The Cassilis warriors had done so, as young Dhina-wan told them with shining eyes, still panting for breath. Four had arrived there at the same time as the boys. The boys had heard them, followed up close behind them, then hidden on the hilltop almost beside the enemy warriors, who had expected Gunn-e-darr lookout men to be already there, or to come with the dawn—but never to climb up with them and hide almost beside them.