Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/198

 I was too done to stand; so there I had to crouch down and wait till I got the chance to go back on my tracks.

'All the time they kept pushing the bodies into the centre of the fire, without stopping, as they got smaller and smaller. Two of the men were at this dreadful work, while the third was sweeping round every edge of the fire. At last the two men I first saw, sat down on a log close handy and began to smoke. Now was my chance. I crawled from my tree and crept along the cattle-track till I come to where my horses were standing. I mounted one, somehow, and took the other's bridle. I rode steady enough for a while, and then, hustling the poor brutes into a hand-'gallop, kept along the road to Waranah till I reached the gate at the boundary of the run. Even then I felt as if I was hardly safe. I looked round and could almost see witches and devils following me through the air, and waving ghosts' arms in every bough of the stunted trees through which the road wound.

'When I saw the lights of the little township, I was that glad that I shouted and sang all the way up to the hotel where the mail was delivered. I had a strange sort of feeling in my head as I rode up to the door. Then I reeled in my saddle; everything was dark. I remembered no more till at the end of a week I found myself in bed recovering from fever.

'I suppose I'd been sickening for it before. What with hot days, cold nights, and drinking water out of swamps and dry holes that were half mud and half—pah! something you don't like to think of—the wonder is we bushmen don't get it oftener. Anyhow I was down that time, and next morning it seems they had the doctor to me. He was a clever man and a gentleman, too, my word! He fetched me round after a month, but I was off my head the first week, and kept raving (so they told me afterwards) about men being knocked on the head and burned, hawkers' carts, and Derwenters, and the big water-hole by Budgell Creek.

'They thought it was all madness and nonsense at first, and took no notice, till one afternoon Mr. Belton, the overseer of Baranco, comes riding into town, all of a flurry, wanting to see the police and the magistrate, Mr. Waterton. This was what he had to say:—

'There had been some heavy lots of travelling sheep passing through the station, and he was keeping along with them for