Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/196

 spread out near upon a mile till you got into a fair-sized plain. The ridge—that's the way of 'em in dry country—was covered as thick as they could stand with pine-scrub. An old cattle-track ran right through to the plain, where they used to come to water in the old days when Baranco was a cattle-run. I was dozing on my horse, dog-tired and stiff with the cold, when I came to the water-hole at the foot of this sandhill. I always used to pull up there and have a smoke; so I stopped and looked round about, in a half-sleepy, dazed kind of way. I felt for my box of matches, and I'm dashed if they weren't gone—shot out, I expect—for I'd been working my passage and been jumbled about more than enough. That put the cap on. I felt as if I'd drop off the horse there and then. I never was one for drinking, and I didn't carry a flask. How I'd get on the next couple of hours I couldn't think.

'All of a sudden a streak of light came through the darkness of the pine-scrub to the left of me. It got broader and broader. It wasn't the moon, I knew, for that wouldn't show till nigh-hand daylight. It must be a fire. Somebody camping, of course; but why they didn't stop by the water, the regular place, with good feed and open ground all round them, I couldn't make out. I was off like a shot, and hung up my horses to the kurrajong tree, which stood handy. It was too thick to ride through the pine saplings, and I thought the walk would freshen me up. I started off quite jolly with the notion of the grand warm I should have at the fire, and the pipeful of baccy I'd be able to borrow. It was a big fire I saw as I stumbled along, getting nearer and nearer the head of an old-man pine, the branches as dry as timber, and would burn like matchwood. I could see three men standing round it. As I got nearer I was just going to halloo out, partly for fun and partly for devilment, when the wind blew the flame round, and made one of the men, who was poking a pole into the fire, shift and turn his face towards me. Mind! I was in the dark shadow of the pines. The glare of the fire lit up his face and those of the two other men as clear as day.

'The man's face, as it turned towards where I was standing, had such a hellish expression, that I stopped dead and drew behind an overhanging "balah" that grew among the pines. He seemed to be listening. Another man with an axe in his hand said something to him, when he walked a few steps down the