“My three wives will come,” answered Burradella promptly, “with their babies.”

“I’m sure Weetah will come with her baby,” said the Red Chief, “and she will bring her little brother Tuki. Every boy will be wild to come, anyway—we’ll have no doubts with them. And most of the girls will come, too. Then there are the wives of your fourteen young guards, with babies most of them—I’m sure they’ll come and join us here with their babies.”

“You’ll get all the women and children you want,” agreed Burradella confidently. “And now—you mention the fourteen guards. That means there will not be a man left to guard the women remaining in the Secret Camp, and those women and children who will escape from here!”

“The guards must all come,” replied the Red Chief desperately. “Even with every man we can muster we shall have only thirty-five spears—unless Boobuk’s men come—against three times our number, perhaps even more! Our spearmen are from the youngest Bora lad warriors to greybeards, while the Cassilis warriors are the pick of the tribe. Every stripling, every greybeard, every boy must be ready in this Trap tonight—and must do his very best to save our tribe!”

Burradella nodded. “We will win,” he said gravely.

“Good,” replied the Red Chief earnestly, “and make every man confident when you muster them. Look, Burradella, it is not really as desperate as it seems. We know every tree of this scrub, every blade of grass in this great Wallaby Trap of ours, while to our enemy every yard is strange country. We have also complete surprise and darkness on our side. Then again, our spearmen lining the black scrub will be invisible to them, while we will have them out in the open Trap under the cold mist of the coming dawning. Our spears will rain into their massed numbers crammed into the narrow little space here. They will get the shock of their lives—they will lose their senses—helpless as the panic-stricken wallabies. And we need lose very few men—if only all know what to do, and do it when, and only when, the time comes.”

Burradella nodded.

“If we lose—” the Red Chief shrugged—“then it is the end. They will kill us, then hunt the women and children at their leisure, hunt Boobuk and his men like dingoes. If we lose, then it means the end of the Gunn-e-darr tribe.” Again Burradella nodded. “But I am sure we are going to win,” went on the Red Chief eagerly. “I know it! We shall deal them such a crippling blow that the survivors will break away in terror. We should kill enough of them to bring their numbers down to the combined strength of our tribe, while their confusion and panic will then give us time to get all our men together and hunt them down.”

“We are going to win!” declared Burradella. “What do I do now?”

“Get your men here,” ordered the Red Chief. “Leave only four back there at the scrub edge to make the scouts think we are still waiting there. Put a hidden guard well out in front of the Trap here to scare off any Cassilis scouts that might come wandering this way too soon—we do not want them to see this opening in the scrub until we have baited it well. Send a runner to bring here ten of the old women—make sure there are some good, shrill-voiced fighters amongst them. Send a runner for all the boys. You prepare the Trap. Build the temporary gunyahs, set others collecting wood for the campfires. Make the Trap look perfectly natural while I hurry for the women and children and camp guard.”