Which was correct. Those fifteen warriors, all that were left out of the sixty that had rushed into the Trap, had fled in panic, scattering in twos and threes as they raced across the open country to sheltering patches of scrub after scrub. And at the last scrub, with open bushland before them, they had lain hidden awaiting the cloak of night.

“We shall enter their lands before any of them return,” said the Red Chief confidently. “We shall give our enemies the surprise of their lives. This proud tribe of the Cassilis will never forget their attack on the men of Gunn-e-darr.”

And they never did.

Afternoon shadows were softly falling when they came to a prettily tree-lined creek. Noiselessly they disappeared amongst the foliage to peer down at the gurgling waters. One glance up and down the creek and they were down the bank to wade across. The Red Chief stopped with hand raised and they stood like crouching black statues, sinewy hands gripping weapons.

The Red Chief was staring down at fresh tracks—the tracks of five men on the wet sands of the creek. He glanced upstream. Boobuk stood with head upthrust—sniffing. They all sniffed the air from up creek. Their eyes rolled, teeth gleamed white as they glared one to the other with an upward thrust of the chin up creek.

Some had sniffed the fresh smoke of a newly lit cooking fire. Without a word they started upstream. They spread out, taut fingers gripping their weapons, crouching forward in a silence quiet as the approach of death. Around a bend in the tinkling creek five Cassilis men were sitting on the grass by the clean white sands of the creek, just spreading out the coals on which to cook nine fat fish. In hungry anticipation they were chuckling at some joke when the joker grunted sickeningly at a shattering blow from a club. Then clubs were smashing down upon them in a medley of struggling limbs. It was all over within seconds. The Gunn-e-darr men stood panting in the frenzied grip of their blood-lust.

But there were no more victims here. They carried swiftly on, wild eyed, urged by that terrible blood-lust as they entered their enemies’ territory. They came upon a big camp an hour after sunrise. There were thirty guards, now scattered about the camp around the gunyah fires.

The Red Chief’s men crept close up, Boobuk taking one side of the camp, the Red Chief the other. From the earth the Red Chief suddenly howled his war-cry, joined in full-throated roar by every warrior. The camp seemed stricken into stone. Open-mouthed, with fear-filled eyes, the women and children stood or crouched in motionless terror. Then the Red Chief roared again, and on the instant women and children were racing for the bush, mothers snatching up their babies, screaming to children, “Run! Run! Run!”

The guards snatched weapons and ran together for support. A shower of spears came hurtling amongst them as the howling Gunn-e-darr men came racing into the camp from all directions with tomahawk and nulla. The guards went down in the frenzied rush, except twelve who broke and ran, chased by howling men.