In contrast to this exploit, behold the sons of the waste under the same circumstances. Riding along with apparent carelessness, several pairs of sharp eyes are piercing the forest glades in every part of the foreground. One man has descried the outline of a group of slowly-moving forms, or it may be but a single beast, high up a hillside in the gorge of a mountain-range, the depths of a narrow brook, traversed ravine—it matters not. It is the herd they are seeking, or a section of it. The quick-eyed scout gives a low whistle, perhaps holds up his hand; the signal is understood. Bridle-reins are gathered up. No word is spoken, but each man has his horse in hand as they move slowly towards the grazing or stationary outliers. A few minutes bring them nearer, within perhaps good wheeling distance, when a sentinel gets view or winds them, and the whole troop is off like a shot. Each horse, but a minute since stumbling along at a 'stockman's jog' or a go-as-you-please walk, starts into top speed as if for a mile heat. The men, taking a 'bee-line,' ride straight for the fast-vanishing cattle, as if there was not a tree or a rock within miles. How they do it is a never-ending marvel to the uninitiated. But they will not only keep with the outlaws, but out-pace and out-general them; wheeling them at critical places, racing ahead and rounding them up; eventually, with mingled force and diplomacy, hustling them across a country without track, road, or apparently natural features, till dead-beat and defeated they are landed in the high, secure stock-yard, from which some of their number at least will never emerge alive.
'Rum things happen in the bush, you take my word for it,' suddenly broke out Dan M'Elroy as we were sitting smoking round a camp fire, far back in the 'Never Never' one night. The whole tract of country west of the Barcoo was under water that summer. We were all stuck hard and fast, about fifty miles from Sandringham, waiting for the creeks and cowalls to go down. They weren't small ones either—twenty feet deep in some places and half a mile wide. There were a dozen teamsters with wool-waggons, Jim and me and two black boys with four hundred head of fat cattle from Marndoo. A police trooper bringing down a horse-stealer for trial, committed by the Bench there, made up the party. The prisoner was made comfortable—only chained to a log for safety. Here we were, waiting, waiting, and had to make the best of it. We walked about in the daylight, and did a bit of shooting. We'd put up a bough yard for the cattle, more for the exercise than anything else; and to make the time pass we'd taken to telling yarns. Some of them were that curious I wish I hadn't forgotten 'em. But this one that Dan told that night I shall remember to my dying day. He was the mail contractor between St. George and Bolivar Run, a weather-beaten Bathurst native, as hard as iron-bark, who'd have contracted to run the mail from the Red Sea to Jordan in spite of all the Arabs if they'd made it worth his while. He was afraid of nothing and nobody. In his time he had been speared by blacks, shot at by bushrangers, fished for dead out of flooded creeks, besides being 'given up' in fever, ague, and sunstroke in exploring of mail routes through the 'Never Never' country. Hairbreadth escapes were daily bread to him. He seemed to thrive on 'em, but this one must have been out of the common way.