ed full, and in
the neighbourhood of that range they scattered and slept; for in
the gully on the other side of it there was a little muddy water,
and round about there was pleasant cover which had sheltered the
kangaroos for a week or more. Old Tufter forbore to growl, and the
young members of the pack were enthusiastic regarding the
advantages of migration in the trail of such a hunter as Finn. They
did not know that, in a leisurely way, the mob of kangaroos they
had flushed were also migrating, as the result of drought--but in
the opposite direction to that chosen by Finn, who was heading now
towards the part of the country which the kangaroos had forsaken as
being burned and eaten bare, and devoid even of such food as bark.

When the dingoes had finished with the little chain of small pools
in the gully on the afternoon of that day, there was little left
but mud; one might have called it a creek bed, but it certainly was
no longer a creek. However, that night's travel brought fairly good
hunting, and always among game moving in the opposite direction to
that taken by the pack. Finn and Warrigal and Black-tip shared a
wallaby between them, and spared some portions of it for the
whelps; though Warrigal snarled angrily when the young things came
near her; the memory of her own family being still fresh within
her. And the rest of the pack fared quite tolerably well, sharing
between them a kangaroo-rat, two bandicoots, a wallaby-hare, and
quite a considerable number of marsupial mice, besides about half
of a big carpet-snake which Finn killed.

For a week now the little pack travelled on in a north-westerly
direction, and every day old Tufter growled a little more bitterly
and with a little better cause. Game was certainly becoming
lamentably scarce, and the country traversed was one which did not
at all commend itself to dingoes, being arid, shadeless, and dry as
a bleached bone. It was the sort of country which, in Australia, is
frequently covered by beautiful flowers and scrub during the
winter, though perfectly bare in the summer. But the winter which
had preceded this summer had been too dry to bring any growth here,
so that it had not even the remains of a previous season's
vegetation, and offered no trace of cover. A long and most
exhausting chase did enable Finn to pull down a solitary emu, and
of this the pack left nothing but beak and feathers when they
passed on, still hungry, in quest of other game.

But