Читать книгу The Black Troopers, and other stories онлайн

19 страница из 47

Polly and Kitty were two fine young women. One had a picanniny about twelve months old; the other a little boy of four or five years. The latter was coiled up fast asleep; but the other was kicking and sprawling in his mother's arms, while Jimmy, its father, on the other side of the fire, sat gravely cutting away at a boomerang he was fashioning, now and then stopping to notice the child, which was crowing at him, or to say, in an insinuating tone to me, 'Doc, doc! you carry 'moke um bacca?' Billy sat at the second fire close by, busy in preparing a new pipe he had got, and making it fit for black fellows' use. This process consisted in rubbing it thickly with fat, and tying a greasy rag round it, and burning it in the ashes. At the third fire were my old patient Toby, and two lads of eighteen or nineteen respectively, named Pothook and 'little Toby,' to distinguish him from 'old man Toby,' who was either his father or grandfather, I could not make out which.

The miami where these last were was at some little distance from the other two, and I thought I saw a fourth figure; but when I came up I found only the old man and the lads. I asked where the other man was, but they denied that any other man had been there. I could see, however, they were lying, and believed that, from the glimpse I had got, it was Bobby Peel, although he was without his European clothing, and had on a 'possum-skin cloak. I had distinctly seen his face by the light of the fire, as I quietly approached from the huts across the grass of the paddock; and, although I had not met him since the day of our first interview, his features were too strongly impressed upon my memory for me to forget them. I found shortly afterwards that he had excellent reasons for keeping out of the way.