A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 245, 29 July 1942, Page 6

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

By A. E. YARRA. (Copyright).

SERIAL STORY.

CHAPTER XIX. TRACKS IN THE DESERT. There’s' a stretch of desert between, the Wantangoona and Dry River that Is now crossed by ’planes every week and by cars now and again, in good seasons, said Long John, when he had sipped his drink and crossed his legs and puffed at his pipe a little. Twentyfive years ago it was impassable to anyone but a Myall who knew the waterholes, which were native wells as much as two days apart. Sergeant Hogan and Constable Black, with two trackers, came down from Darwin to the Wantangoona after a pair of niggers from the Fiske River who d killed a drover with a shovel, and cleared out. It seems that the drover needed killing, for he had stolen their women for himself and his second-in-cliarge, and belted the two niggers for objecting, tying ’em up to trees and flogging ’em with stockwhips. The niggers tracked him at night and flattened him out with a shovel from the cook’s cart while he was asleep. So as in the eyes of the law it was murder, and they sent Hogan to get the niggers, alive if possible. But the trackers cleared out from the police,/being in sympathy with the fugitives. The police camped with the Wantagoona tribe for a few days, and bribed the tribe to lend them a pair of trackers to follow Witchy and Moorooma across the big desert where the police had seen the last signs' of the runaways, as they left the watered and grassed country behind and took a chance of outstripping the police in country where no white man could follow.

Old Bumurradmudgee had been trading with the tribe of Witchy and Maroona for years, and he knew the story, as he loaned the sergeant two blood-brothers of the murderers, and told ’em to see that the police didn’t come back from the desert.

The first day the niggers led the police party to a dry camp, and when all hands were asleep the nigs' sneaked off in the desert to a native well they had said nothing about. They filled their bellies with good water from a rock hole on a stoney ridge, and had a bath and put themselves in good nick for the next day’s stage. There were two wells for the next day, one dry and the other, a mile away, with plenty of water. The two Myalls led the policy party to the dry one and made all sorts of apologies for not knowing that it was dry. The water bottles were emptied that night, and there was nothing for the horses to drink. It was l forty miles to the next water or eighty miles back to the Wantagoona River, with the horses knocked Tip, and orders for Sergeant Hogan to bring back the murderers. The tracks were plain enough for the sergeant to see, so he decided to go on.

Next night, after a trip through five hours' of a sandstorm, without water, the horses were beaten and the white men were on the edge of collapse. The Myalls having filled their bellies with good water from the rockhole they had kept secret from their bosses, pretended to be as badly off as Hogan and his Constable, .and the white men were too far gone, what with the blazing furnace of the sand ridges and the/ burning thirst, to be suspicious. The waterhole for that night was in a flat stretch of rock, and it was full of water, but the remains of a dead emu were in it, and had been there since the Myalls had crossed the desert on their last trip, so there was drink for neither white men, black men, nor horses. The party camped. The Myalls sneaked off into the desert and dug up water frogs with their yam sticks and squeezed out the water they hold in their anatomy as they burrow into the ground, and they were able to make a start next day, leading the white men in a bad way from thirst and hunger. Ten miles ahead there was a big gorge through a range of low hills over which they had been travelling. There was a waterhole a mile long in the gorge, full of sweet black fish, and in the scrub that grew on the. banks there were possums and snakes, birds and insecets, roots and weeds enough for a hundred Myalls to make a month’s picnic on. But the Mayalls led the two policemen five miles on the wrong side of the gorge, into a terrific sandstorm, and left them lying down, gasping for water. The police were never seen again.

The two niggers made a circuit and had a month’s holiday at the gorge, fishing, loafing, stuffing their hides, laughing- about the trick they had served the police. Then they continued their journey to Dry River, following the chain of native wells until they struck Greasy Creek. At the head of Greasy Creek, which is the top of the watershed for the Dry River country, they found tracks of two people walking beside a dray, and having examined the signs, decided that the party with the dray were lost. Now, though they were murderers in the eye of the law, these two Myalls were decent, law-abiding people, brave warriors, and entirely trustworthy fellows in the eyes of their tribe. The tribal law for wife stealing is death. The punishment for tying up the husband of the woman you have stolen and flogging him with a stockwhip for no other reason than that he lias tried to get his wife hack, also is death. So the niggers whose tracks they had led the police away from were entirely within the tribal law in killing the drover. If the drover were a member of their tribe the two niggers would be branded as cowards or fools for not killing him, quickly and efficiently.

'To be continued)