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Rh ahead of us in the night, as Higgins had learned and told me."

"Well, remember what I told you about the eastern ground. 'Tain't worth a damn. So long!"

"I'll have a look at it, anyway. So long!" We whipped up into line and away started the "pack" with us after it.

Cameron was coming out of Wonacott's place on the top of the hill as we clattered by it.

"Buchanan?" he shouted, with a grin all over his face.

"Yes," I yelled back.

"Good luck!" Over my shoulder, I saw him wave his arm and caught the universal, "So long!" as the horses under Higgins and I and the boy settled down into that long, swinging walk Australian horses keep up through the bush for hundreds of miles at a rate of five or six miles an hour.

We went out past the Queen, and prepared to cross the river at the Alexandre, where we picked up the newly made tracks of two horses going in our direction. The boy got down and examined them.

"That's Wonacott's track. I know that off hind shoe. See the nail holes; there's one too many. Bob Jenkins shoed him last Friday."

Could we be sure they had taken the long trial? If so, Paddy would have reached Buchanan hours ahead of them. "Whose is the other track?" I asked.

"Dunno. See it plainer the Other side where the ground ain't so sandy. It's some one with shoes anyway. 'Tain't Bob's—'tain't more'n a five-inch shoe."

We forded the Palmer and picked up the tracks, quite clear in the soft earth on the other side. "It's Kinnear's little mare," said the boy, after looking at the tracks for a minute.

"How d'ye know?"

"Here's a track in the mud where she's sunk in and turned it over lifting her feet out. She's got a