In the Musgrave Ranges

It was not till next morning that the boys saw that the tornado had completely upset their plans. During the few terrible minutes of the storm, and for an hour afterwards, till...

That night Yarloo returned to camp. The sky was so thickly covered with stars that it looked as if powdered silver had been dusted over a tremendous and very dark blue dome. Sto...

During the exciting scenes at the yards, Sax and Vaughan had come out from the shelter of the tank, wholly absorbed in the wild life they were now witnessing for the first time....

By Yarloo's faithfulness and forethought the little party had escaped death at the hands of wild savages, but a more deadly peril was waiting for them. It is one thing to fight...

Sax and Vaughan were very thirsty. For several days they had been compelled to drink sparingly, and for the last two they had taken only enough liquid to keep them just alive. T...

Breakfast was being prepared in camp when Yarloo brought in the terrible news. Mick Darby was greasing a couple of pack-girths, Vaughan was mixing a damper, and Sax was attendin...

If the boys expected that the night alarm would be the chief subject of conversation next day they were quite mistaken, for the matter was hardly referred to at all. Sidcotinga...

In order fully to understand the position in which Sax and his friend were soon to be placed, it is necessary to go back several weeks and find out what had happened to the famo...

Towards the end of a long hot day, a shabby mixed train stopped at one of the most wonderful townships in the world, Hergott Springs, the first of the great cattle-trucking depo...

The Sidcotinga stock-yards presented a very lively scene next morning. Sax and Vaughan were there with the rest, heartily glad to have something to do. Mick Darby had introduced...

Travelling across country in Central Australia is usually very monotonous. The same routine is gone through day after day, and there is not even the relief of meeting new faces,...

One day Stobart set out in a new direction. His only articles of dress were a pair of trousers, so ragged and torn that they did not reach below his knees, and an old felt hat....

The morning after Mick Darby had returned to them with water and food, both Sax and Vaughan felt so much better that they wanted to set out for Sidcotinga Station right away. Bu...

Boss Stobart could not afford to spend more than one day at the water-hole where he had found his friend Patrick Dorrity, because the water was practically a thin solution of mu...

The native doctor fled, like the evil black spirit that he was, up the valley. Although an old man, he was still in the prime of his strength, and he knew the path to and from t...

By noon the cattle were in two mobs, clean-skins and branded. Leaving the clean-skins in charge of three boys, with instructions to keep them from straying, Mick and the other s...

Both boys sprang to their feet and listened intently. From out that advancing mass of brown dust sounds could be heard. At first they were just a confused murmur, a sort of deep...

The sun had set several hours ago when the train finally pulled up at Oodnadatta station. A hurricane-lantern hung under a veranda, and showed a crowd of about twenty men, women...

In half an hour the camp was asleep again. Men like Mick, who live in the desert and who are constantly facing death in many forms, dismiss an adventure from their minds as soon...

Boss Stobart had had too much experience with blacks to think that he was safe. He had escaped instant death and seemed to have gained some sort of control over those savage min...

Next morning, when the horses came in, two were missing. "Which way them two horses sit down?" Mick asked one of the boys. "What for you no bring um in?"

Yarloo followed the Musgrave native's tracks for about half a mile in a nearly south direction, and then came upon a stony plain with a few large bushes growing at one end of it...

The famous drover was a prisoner. He was free to come and go when and where he liked, but he soon found that he was being closely watched, and that, until he was quite certain o...

Just before sunset, after a long and tiring day's work, the last of the clean-skins was branded, and staggered to its feet and made off to rejoin the other cattle. Mick wiped hi...

Arrkroo, the Hater, had failed again. Stobart had openly triumphed over him by burning his deadly irna. The native feared this white man, but hated him more than he feared him,...

It can well be imagined that both lads fell asleep quickly and soundly that night after their first day in the yards. Sidcotinga Government House had a veranda on one side of it...

Mick had expected to be attacked. He had worked with natives for thirty years and had had many narrow escapes for his life, and had come to anticipate danger and thus avoid it....

Next day Mick Darby rode with cocked rifle in the lead of the plant. The white boys were not with him. They rode twenty or thirty yards in the rear of the mounted blacks, ready...

The boys woke late on their first morning in the Far North. Sax's thoughts immediately turned to his father's letter. He groped under his pillow and pulled it out and read it ag...