Page:Such Is Life.djvu/206

192 "'I think it was more this way,' says I; and each of us went his own way.

"When I got to where I thought was about the place, I listened again, and searched round everywhere. The bell was coming that way, and presently I went to meet it, leading my horse, and still listening. Then another call came through the stillness of the scrub, faint, but beyond mistake, 'Dad-de-e-e!'. There was n't a trace of terror in the tone; it was just the voice of a worn-out child, deliberately calling with all her might. Seemed to be something less than half-a-mile away, but I could n't fix on the direction; and the scrub was very thick.

"I hurried down to the bell. Everyone there had heard the call, or fancied they had; but it was out to their right—not in front. Of course, the lubra would n't leave the track, nor Bob, nor the chap with the bell; but everyone else was gone—Dan among the rest. The lubra said something to Bob.

"'Picaninny tumble down here again,' says Bob. 'Getting very weak on her feet.'

"By-and-by, 'Picaninny plenty tumble down.' It was pitiful; but we knew that we were close on her at last. By this time, of course, she had been out for seventy-two hours.

"I stuck to the track, with the lubra and Bob. We could hear some of the chaps coo-eeing now and again, and calling 'Mary!'"—

"Bad line—bad line," muttered Saunders impatiently.

"Seemed to confuse things, anyway," replied Thompson. "And it was very doubtful whether the little girl was likely to answer a strange voice. At last, however, the lubra stopped, and pointed to a sun-bonnet, all dusty, lying under a spreading hop-bush. She spoke to Bob again.

"'Picaninny sleep here last night,' says Bob. And that was within a hundred yards of the spot I had made-for after hearing the first call. I knew it by three or four tall pines, among a mass of pine scrub. However, the lubra turned off at an angle to the right, and run the track—not an hour old—toward where we had heard the second call. We were crossing fresh horse-tracks every few yards; and never two minutes but what somebody turned-up to ask the news. But to show how little use anything was except fair tracking, the lubra herself never saw the child till she went right up to where she was lying between two thick, soft bushes that met over her, and hid her from sight "

"Asleep?" I suggested, with a sinking heart.

"No. She had been walking along—less than half-an-hour before—and she had brushed through between these bushes, to avoid some prickly scrub on both sides; but there happened to be a bilby-hole close in front, and she fell in the sort of trough, with her head down the slope; and that was the end of her long journey. It would have taken a child in fair strength to get out of the place she was in; and she was played-out to the last ounce. So her face had sunk down on the loose mould, and she had died without a struggle.

"Bob snatched her up the instant he caught sight of her, but we all saw that it was too late. We coo-eed, and the chap with the bell kept it