fitful light creeping through the leafy roof above, made gibbering
ghosts of the swaying gums. Mr. Abel Cumshaw and his companion, Jack
Bradby, had been brought up in the Australian bush, their nerves were as
steady as a rock, and where others saw grim visions of fancy they saw
only waving bushes and stripped gums. Though the present adventure was
their first essay in ranging, both of them had lived by their wits, or
rather by others' want of wits, for more years than were good for them.
Singly or together they had run other people's sheep and cattle and made
a lucrative, if dishonest, living at the game, and during their visits
to the towns had made it a point of warped honor to pay their expenses
with the ill-gotten gold of some duller fellow-creature. On top of it
all they had a carelessness of life and a free hand with their
easily-earned wealth that found them friends wherever they went.

Bradby pulled up suddenly and held up his hand in warning to his
companion. Some faint noise had caught his ear, and, excellent bushman
that he was, he would not rest content until he had located and defined
it. Silently as a shadow he slipped from his saddle and dropped
recumbent on the ground. With one ear to the earth beneath he listened.
He remained in this posture for perhaps a minute and a half, then he
rose abruptly and turned to Mr. Cumshaw.

"Horses," he said laconically.

"Must be them," Mr. Cumshaw replied with almost equal brevity.

Deftly, and without haste of any sort, each man knotted a red and white
spotted handkerchief across the lower half of his face, leaving only the
eyes and forehead visible. Then each tilted his hat so that the shadow
thrown by the brim shrouded the uncovered portion of the face. Mr.
Cumshaw, with the amazing simplicity of a conjurer, produced a pair of
ugly-looking revolvers from apparent nothingness, while his companion
slipped his holsters round so that his weapons were within easy and
immediate reach. He did not, however, remount his horse, but threw the
reins to Mr. Cumshaw, who draped them over his arm in such a way that
they did not hamper his movements in the least.

* * * * *

The little group of horsemen, four, or perhaps five in all, clattered
down the track as unsuspiciously as a man could wish. They were chatting
quite easily, even joyously, of the thousand and one little matters that
supplied their daily lives with interest, and nothing must