ived only for their
destruction; and innumerable small marsupials, from the tiny,
delicate little kangaroo-mouse, up to the fleet and muscular
wallaby-hare, with bandicoots, kangaroo-rats (bushy-tailed and
desperately furtive), 'possums, native cats, and even a couple of
amiable and sleepy-headed native bears, and a surly, solitary
wombat, all took an opportunity of peering out from the nearest
point of dense covert for the sake of having a glimpse of the
helpless kangaroo-hound. To the wild folk, an animal that cannot
rise and fend for itself is regarded as an animal practically dead,
and but one remove from carrion; which, of course, Jess would have
been, lacking the friendly attentions of her man, and, it may be,
lacking the protection of the great Wolfhound.

Be that as it may, it is a fact that news reached the rocky hills
behind Warrimoo of Jess's condition, and during the second night of
her helplessness three dingoes left their hunting range to come and
look into this matter for themselves. A dying hound might prove
well worth investigating, they thought. The movements of these
dingoes, once they reached within a couple of miles of Bill's
gunyah, would have interested any student of the wild. The caution
with which they advanced was extraordinary. Not a dry leaf nor a
dead twig on the trail but they scanned it shrewdly with an eye for
possible traps or pitfalls. They moved as noiselessly as shadows,
and poured in and out among the scrub like liquid vegetation of
some sort; a part of their environment, but volatile. When the
three dingoes from the hills reached the edge of the clear patch in
which the gunyah stood, they saw the almost black, smouldering
remains of a camp-fire, and, stretched within a couple of yards of
the ashes, Finn. His shaggy coat was not that of a kangaroo-hound,
and his place beside the man-made fire seemed to forbid the
possibility of his being a monster dingo. Vaguely, the dingoes told
themselves that Finn must be some kind of giant among wolves who
was connected in some mysterious way with men-folk. They had
learned something during the past few years with regard to the
possibilities of Nature in the matter of strange beasts; and they
remembered that the new-comers in their country had arrived with a
strange and persistent taint of man about them; were even brought
there by man, some said.

In the meantime, it was quite evident to the dingoes' sensitive
nostrils that man inhabited th