have got a black tracker or some other imp of
Satan who'll be able to follow us, even if we left as little trace as so
many flies."

"Where are we heading for anyway?" Abel Cumshaw enquired as he spurred
his horse alongside his companion's.

"That's more than I can say," Bradby retorted. "If we'd had any gumption
we'd have explored the place before we took on this last job. But we
hadn't the time, and that's all there is to say about it. It's my
impression that this section of the State is as full of hiding-places as
ever the Blue Mountains or the Wombats were. If we only keep up this
spurt of ours we'll make a gully or a valley where we can hide for
months without a soul being a whit the wiser."

"I hope so," said Cumshaw, in the manner of a man who has very grave
doubts.

"Hold your breath for your work," Mr. Bradby advised. "You might need it
all yet."

They had made good headway by this, and the path that they had picked
out took them every hour deeper into the unexplored heart of the
country. On every side of them stretched the unbroken fastnesses of the
primeval wilderness, sheer precipices dropping suddenly into infinite
space, jagged peaks towering dizzily into the misty vault of heaven,
quaintly situated valleys so masked by timber and brushwood that one
came across them only by accident. There is something in the naked face
of Nature, in the sheer magnificence of incredible heights and the
marvellous massiveness of big timber that somehow dwarfs man into
insignificance and makes him realise the puniness of his strength. There
was something in the scenes now opening up before the rangers that
subdued them and beat them into silence. There was beauty in the sight,
the soft eternal beauty of an unravished land, but over and above that
was the suggestion that the travellers were fighting not merely against
their kind but against the untrammelled forces of an all-powerful
wilderness.

The time was early December, and the golden wattle in full bloom. From
end to end the ranges were a blaze of color, near at hand deep gold,
fading away in the distance into that hazy blue-grey peculiar to
Australian mountains. Hour by hour the men rode on in silence, at times
galloping down the slopes, at others crawling slowly and painfully up
hills that stretched apparently to heaven, hills that yet dropped
suddenly into space when one had almost given up all hope of ever
reaching the summit.

They had lost all sight of t