, with their thirst quite quenched, and actually feeling hungry.

Yarloo went away for the last time to get another quart-pot of water
from the needle-bushes. To do this, he had to fire another tree. It
was about half an hour after sunset and nearly dark, and the bonfire
lit up the plain and could be seen for miles.

Mick Darby saw it as he rode along at the end of a very tiring day.
When he had reached Sidcotinga Station, late the evening before, the
yards had been full of working horses ready to set out on a big
cattle-muster the next morning. He could not have struck a more
favourable time. Before he went to bed that night, he and the manager
drafted off a plant of six good horses, stocked a set of pack-gear with
cooked tucker, and filled two big canteens with water all ready for an
early start the following day. Mick could easily have slept late the
next morning, but when he woke up, as he always did, at the rising of
the morning star, he did not turn over and go to sleep again, but
roused himself, had a drink of tea and a chunk of bread and meat, and
started out back on his tracks, accompanied by a station black-boy whom
the Sidcotinga manager had lent him. The horses were fresh; they had
just come in from a six months' spell and would be turned out again
directly they returned. So Mick did not hesitate to ride hard. He
rode to such good purpose that he did not expect to pull up till he had
reached the camp where he had left the boys, and was riding along, with
seven miles still to go, when he saw the blazing needle-bush.

He loosened his revolver and rode over at once to investigate. It was
fortunate that he did so, for he would have reached the old camp and
found it, not only deserted, but also wrecked, with torn gear and
evidences of wanton destruction all over the place. He would naturally
have thought that his former companions had either been killed or
carried off, and as the sandstorm had covered up all tracks, he would
not have known which way to follow them.

Yarloo was squatting down, watching the roots drain the precious liquid
into the quart-pot, when he heard the sound of hobble-rings striking
one another as they hung from the neck of a horse. Then a hoof struck
a stone. Such sounds in the desert meant one thing and one thing only,
white men. Yarloo stood up and gave the call: "Ca--a--a--w--ay!" (not
coo-ee, as is usually supposed).

It was answered by a white man's voice out of the ga