Not one of the natives suspected what he was going to do. He had already chosen a suitable blazing stick, and was stooping to pick it out of the fire, when he heard Coiloo's name mentioned. He waited for a moment and listened. The men were saying that Coiloo had not come back. Nobody seemed to know what had become of him, and it struck Stobart as strange that Yarloo was not referred to as being one of the party, till he remembered that the boy would be riding a horse and would therefore leave no tracks which his fellow-tribesmen could recognize.
This moment of thought saved the drover from an act of madness which would certainly have ended in his death. Stobart trusted Yarloo implicitly, and also felt sure that Coiloo was doing his best to carry out the white man's wishes. Therefore he knew that it would be foolish to vent his rage at this particular time, and perhaps spoil what the two faithful natives were doing for him. So he picked up his weapons again, took his share of the horse-flesh, and went up to his cave.
He was very down-hearted. He was a man of action, and here he was, impelled to wait while others did things for him which he knew nothing about. He was very tired, but could not sleep because of his restless thoughts, so he went outside his cave after cooking and eating his dinner, and started to walk about in the cool evening air. He walked as silently as a native, and presently heard the sound of a voice chanting quietly and earnestly in the native tongue. He crept nearer. A man was crouching down on all four like an animal, swaying his body and muttering. Stobart was standing up and could not see who it was, so he stooped down till the man's body and head were silhouetted against the sky. It was Arrkroo, the Hater.
Inch by inch Stobart worked his way nearer, till he heard the words and saw what the native doctor was doing. There was a small pointed bone, called an irna, about eight inches long, sticking upright in the sand. At one end was a knob of hardened gum from spinifex grass, and a long string made of the hair of a lubra was attached to it. The man was stooping over the irna and muttering:
"Okinchincha quin appani ilchi ilchi-a." (May your head and throat be split open.)