into Mick's mind. "And the
horses?" he asked eagerly. "What name the horses?"

Yarloo did not answer.

Mick sprang across the fire and seized the startled boy by the arm and
shook him in his eagerness to hear all that had happened during that
fatal night. "You yabber quickfella! quickfella! (You tell me
quickly!)" he shouted. "What name horses?"

"Them bin speared."

"Speared!" The word came from Mick's lips with a yell of horror.
"Speared!"

"Yah. Alabout. (All of them.)"

Mick sprang towards his own saddle-horse, which had been tied up all
night. He unhitched it and was across its back before the white boys
had had time to realize the meaning of the terrible news. "Show me!"
he shouted, and he and Yarloo disappeared at once on the track of the
horses.

The boy's report was only too true. The Musgrave blacks, who had not
molested them for six nights, had done the most dastardly thing
possible under the circumstances. They had stolen forward that night
and speared every one of the hobbled horses. They evidently did not
want food, for, as Mick and Yarloo went from one dead body to another,
they saw that not a single piece of meat had been cut off. It was hate
and not hunger which had actuated the deed. The poor faithful workers,
some of whom had been the drover's companions for several years, were
cold and stiff, showing that they must have been killed early the night
before.

The tracks of bare native feet made it clear that, after completing
their acts of cold-blooded murder--for it was nothing less--the
warragul blacks had crept towards the drover's camp. They had
approached it on the black boys' side of the fire and had thus missed
seeing Mick's saddle-horse, which was tied to a tree near its master.
The rest of the story was easy to read. The wild blacks had enticed
the camp boys away, and Ranui, Ted, and Teedee had left everything
behind them and had fled with the horse-killers through the night in
the direction of the ill-famed Musgrave Ranges.

Mick's boys had actually taken no part in the killing; that was one
thing in their favour. Another satisfaction, which stood out like a
dull gleam of light in the grim dark tragedy, was that now there were
three fewer men to share their limited supply of water. But the
greatest good of all, in fact the only real ray of hope, was the fact
that one horse was still left, Mick's stanch gelding, Ajax. If the
drover had not fastened him up the e