ry bushman runs enough gambler's blood to make
the sporting risk of a gold-mine very alluring. The two men wrote to
Sergeant Scott, of Oodnadatta, who was a great friend of both of them,
and arranged that they would start out for the Musgraves as soon as
Stobart had delivered the cattle.

Since coming to this decision, the care of a thousand bush cattle had
taken up so much of Boss Stobart's attention that he had none to give
to the proposed trip, and he was, therefore, all the more amazed to
come across one of the partners in the venture in such a pitiable
plight.

The man was perishing. Water in abundance was only two hundred yards
away, yet here he was dying of thirst. Such is the irony of the desert.

Pat Dorrity's horse had been abandoned ten miles back, and the
tottering man had walked on, till, when he had managed to stagger to
the top of the last sandhill, and had seen two clumps of timber, one of
box and one of mulga, his senses had played him false and he had gone
to the mulgas.

Stobart did not stop to wonder how his old friend had come to such a
pass. He needed water. Everything else must wait. The strong man
lifted the weak one and walked away to his horse, leading it to the
camp near the water-hole. At the sight of that little pool of muddy
liquid, the closing eyes of the perishing man opened and his weak body
struggled to be free; his mouth tried to shape sounds but could not do
so, for his tongue was swollen and his throat dry.

The drover was too old a bushman to allow the perishing man to have all
the water he wished for. Gradually the swelling of the tongue was
reduced, then the parched throat was relieved by driblets of water, and
even then, when Pat Dorrity could have swallowed, he was only allowed
to take a sip at a time, or he would have vomited so badly that some
internal rupture would have resulted.

Before Boss Stobart went on watch that night, his old friend was
sleeping peacefully, with his thirst quenched, and having had a small
meal of soaked damper also.

CHAPTER XXII

Facing Death

Boss Stobart could not afford to spend more than one day at the
water-hole where he had found his friend Patrick Dorrity, because the
water was practically a thin solution of mud, and the feed was soon
eaten out within a radius of a few miles. There was really no need for
delay, for the old station cook recovered quickly, and "dodging along"
behind cattle, as it is called, is not hard