He gazed round, listening. Neither sound nor sign of enemy. With growing confidence, but in anxious haste, he ran back and crossed the creek. Nareen and Naroo were still there, standing exactly where he had left them. He stared a moment and they gazed back at him. Slowly a smile lightened his grim, anxious face. Nareen smiled from dark eyes shining from excitement, Naroo pointed into the timber where the elder warrior’s spear had gone, then to the nulla under an ironwood-tree. Swiftly then he found his own wommera.

What a brave pile all these weapons made! What a fight he could now put up! Smiling at the girls, he listened tensely. There came no sound but the chortling of magpies, the lilting tingle of water rippling over stones, a sighing from the creek oaks. Back in the mountains long shadows were climbing down gorge and gully. Hurriedly he rearranged the girls’ bundles with the captured rugs, gave them spare weapons to carry, then smiled.

“We push on fast now—we travel all night again. It looks as if these were but two hunters returning to some near by camp. They will be missed at nightfall; tomorrow morning their friends will come looking for them. When they find them—!” He stared grimly at the girls then pointed with his wommera. “At a fast jog-trot!”

They bore away from the creek towards ranges that led to the Mullaley Plains. Red Kangaroo breathed deeply of the cool, fresh air—if only he could cross those plains. He must cross them. Once across those plains and the boundary of his own tribal lands would be welcoming his feet. He must urge the girls on—no, they were doing their best. He trotted behind them, anxiously gazing back now and then. He breathed more freely when they came under the long shadows of the ranges. At nightfall he called a halt deep in a boulder-lined gully. With a sigh they sat down. Quickly he lit a sheltered fire, threw on the last of the wallaroo meat, and took off the gags. The girls thankfully loosened their jaws and drank deeply from the water-bag. Their dark eyes glistened in the sheltered fire-glow, but he saw that those eyes were tired.

“We eat,” he said, “and rest here until full starlight. See that you eat well, drink well, rest well. For when we are on the move again we do not stop until we reach my own country, and it is still a long way away.”

They said nothing, just sat there resting with their backs against the rocks, gazing silently at him.

“Tell me,” he said, as he turned the meat upon the fire, “why you girls did not throw yourselves on the ground when your warrior tribesman called to you to do so? Had you obeyed he would have had me a close target for his spear.”

They remained silent, until Nareen said softly, “You had not a spear then.”

“I know,” he replied, “and that made the advantage all on his side. Why did you both not throw yourselves to the ground?”