sking us to put our
heads in a noose for them again.'

'How do you know?'

'I know it's that ambling horse he used to ride,' says Jim. 'I can make
out his sideling kind of way of using his legs. All amblers do that.'

'You're right,' I said, after listening for a minute. 'I can hear the
regular pace, different from a horse's walk.'

'How does he know we're here, I wonder?' says Jim.

'Some of the telegraphs piped us, I suppose,' I answered. 'I begin to
wish they forgot us altogether.'

'No such luck,' says Jim. 'Let's keep dark and see what this black snake
of a Warrigal will be up to. I don't expect he'll ride straight up to
the door.'

He was right. The horse hoofs stopped just inside a thick bit of scrub,
just outside the open ground on which the hut stood. After a few seconds
we heard the cry of the mopoke. It's not a cheerful sound at the dead of
night, and now, for some reason or other, it affected Jim and me in
much the same manner. I remembered the last time I had heard the bird
at home, just before we started over for Terrible Hollow, and it seemed
unlucky. Perhaps we were both a little nervous; we hadn't drunk anything
but tea for weeks. We drank it awfully black and strong, and a great lot
of it.

Anyhow, as we heard the quick light tread of the horse pacing in his
two-feet-on-one-side way over the sandy, thin-grassed soil, every moment
coming nearer and nearer, and this queer dismal-voiced bird hooting its
hoarse deep notes out of the dark tree that swished and sighed-like
in front of the sandhill, a queer feeling came over both of us that
something unlucky was on the boards for us. We felt quite relieved when
the horse's footsteps stopped. After a minute or so we could see a dark
form creeping towards the hut.

Chapter 11

Warrigal left his horse at the edge of the timber, for fear he might
want him in a hurry, I suppose. He was pretty 'fly', and never threw
away a chance as long as he was sober. He could drink a bit, like the
rest of us, now and then--not often--but when he did it made a regular
devil of him--that is, it brought the devil out that lives low down in
most people's hearts. He was a worse one than usual, Jim said. He saw
him once in one of his break-outs, and heard him boast of something he'd
done. Jim never liked him afterwards. For the matter of that he hated
Jim and me too. The only living things he cared about were Starlight and
the three-cornered weed he rode, that