They've worried the life
out of us on Jinfalla. Taken to spearing the cattle, and the men too if
they get a chance. Old Anderson thinks we ought to have some 'concerted
action,' and settle the matter once for all."

"H'm. Wipe 'em out, I suppose he means?"

"It's what a squatter generally means, isn't it, when he talks about the
blacks? Sounds brutal, but hang it all, man, what the devil is a fellow
to do? They 're only beasts, and as beasts you must treat 'em. Look
here, there was a young fellow on our run, as nice a boy as you 'd wish
to see--his people were something decent at home, I believe, but the
lad had got into some scrape and cleared out, and drifted along into the
heart of Western Australia here. He was riding tracks for old Anderson
about two hundred miles to the west there. He didn't come in last week
for his tucker, so they sent word for me to look him up."

"Well?" for Turner paused, and drew a long breath.

"Well--same old nip, of course. His hut was burnt, and he and his
hutkeeper--I tell you, Dick, it won't bear talking about--he was a lad
of twenty, and the hutkeeper was an old lag, might have been seventy to
look at him, but when I found their bodies down by the creek, I couldn't
tell which was which."

"It's bad," said Stanesby, "very bad. What did you do?"

"Buried 'em, of course, my mate and I, and shot the first buck we came
across skulking in the bush. What would you have us do?"

"It's all bad together," said the other man, with an oath. "The blacks
about here are tame enough if you let 'em alone, but these young fellows
get meddling with their women, and--well----"

"That 's all very well, but you didn't find a mate too ghastly a corpse
to look at, or you wouldn't take the matter so coolly. You 'd have done
just as I did. Something must be done, old man, or the country won't be
habitable."

They had been riding along slowly, side by side, one man eager, anxious,
interested, the other evidently with his thoughts far away. The mail he
had got that morning was stuffed into his saddlebags, and the news it
brought him made him think longingly of a home in far-away England, a
creeper-covered house, and a cosy room with a bright fire, and the rain
beating pleasantly on the windows. Rain--he had not seen rain for three
long years. Always the hard blue sky and the bright sunshine, always the
dreary plain, broken here and there by patches of prickly bush and still
more thorny spinifex, always