picked up part of
a woman's dress splashed with blood, and in one place, among some
smouldering packages and boxes, a long lock of woman's hair, fair,
bright-brown, that looked as if the name of Terrible Hollow might not
have been given to this lonely, wonderful glen for nothing.

We spent nearly a week in this way, and were beginning to get rather
sick of the life, when father, who used always to be looking at a bare
patch in the scrub above us, said--

'They're coming at last.'

'Who are coming--friends?'

'Why, friends, of course. That's Starlight's signal. See that smoke? The
half-caste always sends that up--like the blacks in his mother's tribe,
I suppose.'

'Any cattle or horses with them?' said Jim.

'No, or they'd send up two smokes. They'll be here about dinner-time, so
we must get ready for them.'

We had plenty of time to get ourselves or anything else ready. In about
four hours we began to look at them through a strong spyglass which
father brought out. By and by we got sight of two men coming along on
horseback on the top of the range the other side of the far wall. They
wasn't particularly easy to see, and every now and then we'd lose sight
of 'em as they got into thick timber or behind rocks.

Father got the spyglass on to 'em at last, pretty clear, and nearly
threw it down with an oath.

'By----!' he says, 'I believe Starlight's hurt somehow. He's so infernal
rash. I can see the half-caste holding him on. If the police are on his
tracks they'll spring the plant here, and the whole thing'll be blown.'

We saw them come to the top of the wall, as it were, then they stopped
for a long while, then all of a sudden they seemed to disappear.

'Let's go over to the other side,' says father; 'they're coming down the
gully now. It's a terrible steep, rough track, worse than the other. If
Starlight's hurt bad he'll never ride down. But he has the pluck of the
devil, sure enough.'

We rode over to the other side, where there was a kind of gully that
came in, something like the one we came in by, but rougher, and full of
gibbers (boulders). There was a path, but it looked as if cattle could
never be driven or forced up it. We found afterwards that they had an
old pack bullock that they'd trained to walk up this, and down, too,
when they wanted him, and the other cattle followed in his track, as
cattle will.

Father showed us a sort of cave by the side of the track, where one man,
with a couple of gun