Читать книгу The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West онлайн

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All purchases made, the team fed and rested, the loading arranged as only the experienced ssss1 overlander knows how, and supper over, a start was made by the light of a rising moon.

‘We take this track, sir,’ said Waters. ‘It’s the main road to the “twenty-mile soak,” and give out as we’re goin’ to Kurnalpi. There’s whips o’ tracks for ten or twelve mile; and then we strike due west. If any of ’em follers us up, we can say we’re makin’ for Kimberley—that’ll choke ’em off, if anything will.’

‘I suppose there are men on these fields that will track up prospectors if they believe they’ve made a find?’

‘In course there are, sir. Chaps as like pickin’ up the fruits of other men’s work, and ain’t game to tackle the hardships theirselves.’

So the strangely constituted companions journeyed on, by the faint wavering light of the struggling moon, sometimes obscured, but generally available, as the track, so far, was across open plains or downs, sandy, gravelly, or rock-strewn by turns, but offering no serious obstacle to the passage of horse or man. What timber there was consisted chiefly of scrub and brushwood, mulga or mallee. Some of it was available for camel food; but, in a general way, it appeared to the Commissioner as a land accursed of God and man—unfitted for providing sustenance for man or beast.