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A little farther down the boys came to a hollow full of kangaroo-grass, and a mob of mouse-coloured, deer-eyed kangaroo were camped in it. Some were nibbling the spiky brown grass, with their fore feet folded under them like hill sheep. Some were patting one another, and tumbling one another over like kittens. Others were watching in a ring two “old men” that were fighting. One of the boxers was a nearly grey “old man,” with a regular Roman nose; the other was darker and younger, but nearly as tall, and so he did not intend to let old Roman-nose cock over him any more. The old does were looking on as if they hoped their contemporary would win, but the darkie seemed the favourite of the young “flying does.” The two bucks stood up to each other, and hit out at each other, and tried to get each other’s head “into chancery” in prize-ring style; but sometimes they jabbered at each other, just like two Whitechapel vixens, and they gave nasty kicks at each other’s bellies, too, with their sharp-clawed hind feet. They were so taken up with their fight that they let the boys watch it for nearly five minutes. When they found out, however, that they were being watched, they parted sulkily, and hopped off to “have it out” somewhere else, as fighting schoolboys slope when they see a master coming, or fighting street-boys when they see a policeman. After them hopped the rest of the mob, and Harry and Donald gave chase to one of the does. She had come back to pick up her “Joey.” The little fellow jumped into her pouch head foremost like a harlequin, and then up came his bright eyes and cocked ears above the edge of the pocket, and away Mrs. Kangaroo went with her baby. She tried hard to carry him off safe, but the boys had got an advantage over her at starting, and threatened to head her off from the rest of the mob. Into her apron-pocket went Mrs. Kangaroo’s fore paw, and out came poor little Master Kangaroo. The mother was safe then, but it would have been easy to capture the fat, half-stunned baby. The boys, however, did not wish to encumber themselves with a pet, and, besides, they could not help pitying both the baby and his mamma. So they turned their horses’ heads, and presently, when they looked back, they saw the doe watching them, and then bounding to pick up once more the Joey she had “dinged.”
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By-and-bye the boys came to the head of a fern-tree gully, and plunged into its moist, warm, dim, luxuriant jungle, overshadowed by gigantic trees. Even what they call the “dwarf” tea tree ran up there to more than one hundred feet. They rode under blackwood trees, twenty feet round at the ground, and without a branch on the straight bole for eighty feet, beech trees two hundred feet high, and gum trees with tops twice as high as theirs. Huge creepers draped and interlaced those monsters. Some of the fern trees were more than fifty feet high, and above the feathery fans of the little ferns great stag-horns spread their antlers, and nest-ferns drooped their six-foot fronds. There were fragrant sassafras trees, too, in the gully, and the gigantic lily pierced the jungle with its long spear-shaft.
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As the boys were forcing their way through it on their horses, with many a scratch and damp smack in the face from the swinging boughs, they came suddenly upon a little square of broken-down, almost smothered fencing. Inside there was more jungle, but a rough wooden cross showed them that they were looking at a bush grave. Initials and a date had been rudely carved upon the cross, but an A and 8 were all that could be made out of them. The boys had never heard of any one buried there, and it made them very serious at first to find a forgotten grave in that lonely place. They got off their horses, and took off their hats, and stood looking at the grave for some minutes in silence. Then they mounted again, and rode on, feeling, until they got out of the gully, as if they had been at a funeral. They had other things to think about when they rode into the sunshine again. They had the cattle to look up, and a camping-place to pick, because they were not going back to Wonga-Wonga until next day. But when they sat by their fire in the evening, with the weird night-wind moaning in the bush and sighing through the scrub around them, their thoughts went back to the bush grave.
“A ROUGH WOODEN CROSS SHOWED THEM A BUSH GRAVE.”
“We may die some day like that, Donald,” said Harry, “without a soul to know where we’re buried. It seems dreary somehow, don’t it?”
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“Somebody maun hae kenned where that puir fellow was buried,” answered logical Donald, “because he couldna hae buried himsel’, and put that cross up, and cut his name on’t.”
“Ah, perhaps the other fellow murdered him,” cried Harry. “And yet he’d hardly have put the cross up, if he had. No, I expect there were two of them out going to take up new country, just as you and me may be out some day, and one of ’em died. It must have been dreary work for the other chap then, and perhaps he died all by himself, and nobody knows what became of him.”
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When the boys got back to Wonga-Wonga with their cattle, they made inquiries about the grave in the fern-tree gully, but no one else on the station had either seen it or heard of it before. Old Cranky, the men said, was the only one likely to know anything about it. The old man happened to come to Wonga-Wonga three days afterwards, and Harry at once began to question him about the grave. At first Old Cranky seemed not to understand what he was being asked—then a half-sly, half-frightened look came into his face, and he said that he knew every foot of the Bush for many a mile anywhere thereabouts, and he was sure there wasn’t a grave in it. Then he said he had never been in that gully; and then he said, Oh yes, he had, and there was a grave in it years back—he remembered now—why, it was an old mate of his—they had been lagged together and had cut away together, because the cove was such a Tartar, and Squinny had knocked up, and it was he who had buried him there, and put up a cross to keep the devil off. He remembered it now as if it had all happened yesterday.
“And is it up yet?” the old man went on. “My word! a A and a 8? Oh, the A was for Andrew—that was Squinny’s name—Andrew Wilson. Didn’t you see ne’er a W? I mind the knife slipped, an’ I cut my finger makin’ it. 8? Let’s see—it was 18, summut 8, or was it 17? when I buried Squinny.”
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VII. AN AUSTRALIAN FLOOD.
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IX. THE OLD CONVICT TIMES.
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