Trying to think of
some excuse to explain his presence and why he had hidden.
As Roper's ears shot forward and he turned aside towards a clump of
thick-set bushes, Dan chuckled in expectation, but all Roper found was a
newly deserted gundi camp, and fresh tracks travelling eastwards - tracks
left during the night - after our arrival at the river, of course.
Dan surveyed the tracks, and his chuckles died out, and, growing
sceptical of the success of his surprise party, he followed them for a
while in silence, Sambo riding behind, outwardly stolid, but no doubt,
inwardly chuckling.
Other eastward-going tracks a mile or so farther on made Dan even more
sceptical, and further tracks again set him harking back to his theory of
"something always telling 'em somehow," and, losing interest in
nigger-hunts, he became showman of the Roper river scenery.
Down into the depths of gorges he led us, through ferny nooks, and over
the sandy stretches at the base of the mighty clefts through which the
river flows; and as we rode, he had us leaning back in our saddles, in
danger of cricking our necks, to look up at lofty heights above us, until
a rocky peninsula running right into the river, after we had clambered up
its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky surfaced
summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses' necks in
danger of taking somersaults into space, as we peered over the sides of a
precipice at the river away down beneath us.
