Three Times They Drew Up And Faced About And Each
Time A Stallion Fell Before The Rifles, Then, Becoming More
Wary, they
led us farther and farther back, evading the rifles at every halt, until
finally they galloped out of
Sight, and beyond all chance of pursuit.
Then, Dan discovering he had acquired the "drouth," advised "giving it
best" and making for the Spring Hole in Duck Creek.
"Could do with a drop of spring water," he said, but Dan's luck was out
this trip, and the Spring Hole proved a slimy bog "alive with dead
cattle," as he himself phrased it. Three dead beasts lay bogged on its
margin, and held as in a vice, up to their necks in slime and awfulness
stood two poor living brutes. They turned piteous terrified eyes on us
as we rode up, and then Dan and the Maluka firing in mercy, the poor
heads drooped and fell and the bog with a sickening sigh sucked them
under.
As we watched, horribly fascinated, Dan indulged in a soliloquy - a habit
with him when ordinary conversation seemed out of place. "'Awful dry Wet
we're having,' sez he," he murmured, "'the place is alive with dead
cattle.' 'Fact,' sez he, 'cattle's dying this year that never died
before.'" Then remarking that "this sort of thing" wasn't "exactly a
thirst quencher," he followed up the creek bank into a forest of
cabbage-tree palms - tall, feathery-crested palms everywhere, taller even
that the forest trees; but never a sign of water.
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