his
confidence in Yarra was absolute. The half-caste remained with him for
about an hour, and then returned into the gorge, and keeping to the bed
of the creek picked up his horse, a sober old cattle nag, where he had
left him at the foot of the range.

Yarra returned to Wat Ryder early in the forenoon of the following day.
The trooper the boy shot at the window was being nursed at Boobyalla, the
others were away beating the scrub. The half-caste brought with him a
wild duck he had trapped, and set about cooking this in its feathers. The
two dined together shortly after mid-day, and the sun was streaming into
the gully, the air was heavy with the odour of wild musk, and the Bush
was as silent as if no life remained in the intense heat. Ryder had
risen, and was looking at Wallaroo standing with his nose in the shade of
a gum-butt, fighting the avaricious flies with his tail. At that instant
a loud report rang along the gully, and Ryder staggered a few paces, and
fell with his back to one of the boulders, stunned. A bullet ricocheting
from the rock had struck him in the neck. Yarra threw himself forward,
face downward, at a space between the boulders. He saw a wreath of smoke
in the gully and a slight movement in the thick growth, and fired twice,
but the distance was too great for a revolver. The enemy, whoever he was,
was armed with a gun. The half-caste listened for a moment, and his black
eyes searched the gully. Then he heard the beat of a horse's hoofs. A
look of enlightenment came to his face. There was one horseman only; he
was riding at a pace which, in such country, threatened death at every
stride.

The boy looked at Ryder, pointing back in the direction from which the
shot had come.

'That feller mine boss,' he said, and fear tinged his blackness a slaty
gray.

Ryder had slipped to a sitting position--one hand held a blood-stained
handkerchief to his neck, the other clutched a revolver. He was white to
the lips, but his eyes blazed with life and the passion of a wounded
lion.

XXII

RYDER knew himself to be badly hurt; he realized that he was in a
desperate situation, a situation from which it would require all his
cunning to extricate himself. The plans he had formed were abandoned, and
even while suffering the first shock of the wound his mind was busy. He
had been attacked by one man; his enemy knew he was not alone, and was
not sure of the effect of his shot, otherwise he would not have fled. The