Читать книгу The Black Troopers, and other stories онлайн

12 страница из 47

'I think it very strange that, of three men known to have started with the intention of coming to Swan Hill (the name of the locality), not one should have arrived. And this man mentioned by my hut-keeper could only have stayed either at the public-house two miles beyond us, or else gone fifteen miles down the river one way, or the same distance up the stream to the Lake station, and that after dark too, for he would only reach the ferry late in the afternoon. Now this is so utterly improbable, that if I find, on inquiry, that he did not call at the Ferry Inn that night'—

'Why, what do you suspect?' I asked, observing that he looked very grave.

'That he has been killed by the blacks?' asked Harris eagerly.

'I fear so; and in that case he is not the only victim. You see,' said Stevenson to me, 'owing to the crossing-place of the river being near us, all passing travellers from the Edward, the Wakool, and other places higher up, must come through our run; and only think, in the twenty or thirty miles of wild country, what facilities are offered in the innumerable swamps, reed-beds, and scrub-patches, for the cutting-off of solitary travellers passing on foot through such a wilderness, where the only inhabitants are the shepherd with his flock, and the hut-keeper in the lonely out-stations eight or ten miles from each other!'