Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/195

 sunstroke in exploring of mail routes through the 'Never Never' country. Hairbreadth escapes were daily bread to him. He seemed to thrive on 'em, but this one must have been out of the common way.

He looked round over the great plain, where we could see the glimmer of water on every side by the light of the low moon, just showing, red and goblin-like. A murmuring wind began to whisper and sob among the stunted myall, swaying the long streamers as if they were mourning for the dead. It felt colder, though we'd piled up the logs on the fire lately, when he filled his pipe and said: 'We'll turn in after this, but you may as well take it to sleep on. It was nigh twenty year ago it happened, yet it comes back to me now as fresh as I saw it that cursed night. You chaps remember,' he said, taking a good steady draw at his pipe, by way of starting it and the yarn at the same time,—'you remember, as I told you, I was running a horse mail between Marlborough Point and Waranah, somewhere about '68. A different season from this, I tell you. No rain for about eighteen months, and when the autumn came in dry, with the nights long and cold, the sheep began to die faster than you could count 'em. I had a fairish contract, and though the mail was a heavy one, I was able to manage it by riding one horse and leading a packer. A terrible long day's ride it was—three times a week—eighty-five mile. Of course I had a change of horses, but I didn't get in till eleven or twelve at night to Waranah. The frosty nights had set in, and sometimes, between being half-frozen and dead-tired, I could hardly sit on my horse. It was getting on in June, and still no rain, only the frosts getting sharper and sharper, when I came along to a sandhill by the side of a billabong of the Murrumbidgee, about ten miles from Waranah. There was a big water-hole there; it was a favourite camping place between the township and Baranco station. I was later than usual, and it was about midnight when I got to this point. Through a weak horse as had knocked up I'd had to walk five miles. I was nigh perished with the cold; hungry too, for I'd had no time to stop and get a feed; and as I'd been in the saddle since long before, daylight, you may guess I was pretty well tuckered out. A particular spot, too, when you come to think of it. The sand-ridge ran back from the water-hole a good way (there was a big kurrajong-tree beside it, I remember), and