n the horses. Many a time Jim and I
took a turn out of her when father didn't know. But put her after a
big mob of cattle--she must have known they couldn't be ours--and she'd
clatter down a range like the wall of a house, and bite and kick the
tail cattle if they didn't get out of her way. They say dogs and horses
are all honest, and it's only us as teaches 'em to do wrong. My notion's
they're a deal like ourselves, and some of 'em fancies the square racket
dull and safe, while some takes a deal kindlier to the other. Anyhow, no
cattle-duffer in the colonies could have had a better pair of mates than
old Sally and Crib, if the devil himself had broken 'em in special for
the trade.

It was child's play now, as far as the driving went. Jim and I walked
along, leading our horses and yarning away as we used to do when we were
little chaps bringing in the milkers.

'My word, Dick, dad's dropped into a fine road through this thundering
mountain, hasn't he? I wonder where it leads to? How high the rock-walls
are getting above us!' he says. 'I know now. I think I heard long ago
from one of the Crosbies of a place in the ranges down towards behind
the Nulla Mountain, "Terrible Hollow". He didn't know about it himself,
but said an old stockman told him about it when he was drunk. He said
the Government men used to hide the cattle and horses there in old
times, and that it was never found out.'

'Why wasn't it found out, Jim? If the old fellow "split" about it some
one else would get to know.'

'Well, old Dan said that they killed one man that talked of telling; the
rest were too frightened after that, and they all swore a big oath never
to tell any one except he was on the cross.'

'That's how dad come to know, I suppose,' said Jim. 'I wish he never
had. I don't care about those cross doings. I never did. I never seen
any good come out of them yet.'

'Well, we must go through with it now, I suppose. It won't do to leave
old dad in the lurch. You won't, will you, Jim?'

'You know very well I won't,' says Jim, very soberlike. 'I don't like
it any the more for that. But I wish father had broke his leg, and was
lying up at home, with mother nursing him, before he found out this
hell-hole of a place.'

'Well, we're going to get out of it, and soon too. The gully seems
getting wider, and I can see a bit of open country through the trees.'

'Thank God for that!' says Jim. 'My boots'll part company soon, and the
poor devils o