In the Musgrave Ranges

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

A Tornado

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 depots of Central Australia. It was dark, but a hurricane lantern, swung under a veranda, showed that the men who were waiting for the train were not ordinary men. They were men of the desert. Most of them were tall, thin, weather-beaten Australians, in shirt sleeves and strong trousers worn smooth inside the leg with much riding. A few Afghans were there too, big, dignified, and silent, with white turbans above their black faces; while a little distance away was a crowd of aboriginal men and women, yabbering excitedly and laughing together because the fortnightly train had at last come in. The same crowd would watch it start out in the morning on the last stage of its long journey to Oodnadatta, the railway terminus and the metropolis of Central Australia.

There were very few passengers on the train, and all of them seemed known to everybody and were greeted with hearty handshakes and loud rough words of welcome back to the North. Two passengers, however, did not get out of the carriage for a time, being unwilling to face that crowd of absolute strangers. They were Saxon Stobart and Rodger Vaughan, boys of about fifteen, who were on their way to Oodnadatta. It was their first sight of the back country.

Presently a big man with only one eye climbed back into the carriage where they were sitting. "Here, don't you lads want a feed?" he asked. "You won't get it here, you know."

"We don't know where to go," said one of them. "We thought we'd wait a bit."

"Don't you do too much waiting in this part of the country," said the man kindly. "You just hop in and get your cut. See? You'll get left if you don't. Now, get hold of your things and come along. I'll fix you up."

The result of the stranger's kindness was that the two boys shared a room with him at the only hotel in the place, and had a hearty meal in a room full of men in shirt sleeves, who shouted to one another and laughed in the most friendly manner.

After tea the two friends went out into the sandy street to stretch their legs after the long day's railway ride, before going to bed. It was so dark that they couldn't see anything at first, and nearly ran into a knot of men who were standing and smoking. They recognized the voice of one of them as that of the man who had taken them over to the hotel. They knew him only as Peter, a name which his companions called him.

"I never saw it look so bad," he was saying. "Just look at the moon, too."

"How far away d'you reckon it is?" asked another man. "It's a long way yet, I reckon. You can't hear any thunder. I wonder if it's coming this way."

Vaughan nudged his companion. "What are they talking about, Sax?" he asked.

Stobart pointed north into the darkness. Overhead, and nearly to the horizon, the sky was a mass of stars, but just on the northern horizon was a patch where no stars were to be seen....