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I sat there smoking, watching two more riders cross the track. I heard the flap-flap of the boards as the ponies stepped across the crossing, watched the horses go up and up—noted how they seemed, as they took the last roll, very tall, and their riders very tall, then how they went over the last roll like little boats over a wave, and disappeared.

At last one said: "It do seem a pity for him over there. Reckon I'll step over and see how he's making out," and he stepped off the verandah and went ploughing over to the depôt buildings.

Just there he stopped and we who still sat on the verandah looked up. A frightful yelling broke out Westwards and grew louder. Then a metallic rattling. What was it? Was it the Dago gang? Had they come by some liquor up there at the camp, and were they coming down to Black Kettle?

The rattling grew in volume—the rattle of a pump-car. There is a kind of agitation comes over one when any noise breaks out that one does not understand. It was a relief to recognise the sound of a pump-car. Then suddenly round the bend came two horsemen, riding parallel with the track; they were whooping, screaming; and on the track, urging their pump-car and whooping and yelling, came the section gang, the gang whose boss had been so decent to me.