uld certainly run
off most of the rain which fell upon them. The drover had come across
instances of the same thing in the Macdonnel Ranges, away to the north,
and he knew that the rain soaked in at the extreme edges of the valley
and ran away in a stream many feet below the surface, and never
disturbed the sand on top. There is usually a water-hole at the head
of such a valley as this, and Stobart was on his way up to look for it,
when he received such a shock that he dropped his weapons and stood
staring at the sand, his mouth and eyes wide open with amazement. He
did not believe his sight. He rubbed his hand over his eyes and looked
away, but when his gaze came back again, there was the same sign in the
sand.

The tracks of a shod horse!

It was impossible to tell how old the marks were. There were only
three or four of them, and they ran up a little strip of clay which the
wind had blown clear of sand. They had evidently been made when the
clay was soft during rain, and the imprints had been baked hard by the
sun and would remain clear for a very long time.

Stobart gazed with utter astonishment at those few prints of a shod
horse. They meant one thing, one thing supremely, a white man--a gold
prospector most likely, one of the dauntless pioneers who had crossed
the desert and had not returned.

The tracks led up the valley. Stobart picked up his weapons and
hurried on. Soon he came to a natural embankment of sand which
stretched across from one rocky slope to another. He climbed it. The
other side was clear of timber. A glint of water caught his eye. The
sun had just penetrated the cool shade of that silent place and was
striking keen light from a water-hole at the foot of a boulder-strewn
knoll right in the middle of the valley.

The white man's thirst was now so great that he was about to start
running down to the water which lay so invitingly some twenty yards
away, when something white caught his eye.

It looked like the Southern Cross worked out in perfectly white stones
on the surface of the sand near the water-hole. Stobart did not run.
An uncanny feeling came over him. Those hoof-marks, and now this
design--surely the thing must be the work of man.

Suddenly he stumbled. His bare feet caught in something and he
tripped. He looked down at his toe. It was cut and bleeding slightly.
He went back to find the thing which had tripped him.

It was the blade of a shovel!

One edge was