Both were naked except for short grass skirts. The children were wholly nude. A harsh voice sent them scurrying into the bush.

"Gosh! I'd hate to meet thet long-laiged hombre in the dark." said Red.

"Hope some of them come around our campfire," added Sterl, with zest.

He had his wish. After supper, about dusk, the black man appeared, a towering unreal figure. He did not have the long spear. The cook gave him something to eat; and the native, making quick despatch of that, accosted Jones in a low voice.

"Him sit down alonga fire," replied Jones, pointing to Sterl.

The black man slowly approached the fire, then stood motionless on the edge of the circle of light. Presently he came up to Sterl.

"Tobac?" he asked, in a low deep voice.

"Yes," replied Sterl, and offered what he had taken the precaution to get from his pack. At the exchange Sterl caught a good look at the native's hands, to find them surprisingly supple and shapely. He next caught a strong body odor, which was unpleasant.

"Sit down, chief," said Sterl, making appropriate signs. The black man, folding his long legs under him, appeared to sit on them. A cigar Sterl had given him was evidently a new one on the native. But as Sterl was smoking one, he quickly caught on. Sterl, adopting the method cowboys always used when plains Indians visited the campfires, manifested a silent dignity. The black man was old--no one could have told how old. There was gray in his shaggy locks, and his visage was a map of lines that portrayed the havoc of elemental strife. Sterl divined thought and feeling in this savage, and he felt intensely curious.

Jones left the other teamsters, to come over and speak to the native.

"Any black fella close us?" he asked. "Might be," was the terse reply.

"Me watchem smokes all alonga bush."

But the aborigine returned silence to that remark. Presently he arose and stalked away in the gloom.

"Queer duck," said Red, reflectively.

"He sure interested me," replied Sterl. "All except the smell of him. Rol, do all these blacks smell that bad?"

"Some worse, some not at all. It's something they grease themselves with."

On the fifth day, they reached the blue hills that had beckoned to Sterl. The wagon road wound into a region of numerous creeks and fertile valleys where parrots and parakeets abounded. They passed by one station that day and through one little sleepy hamlet of a few houses and a store, with outlying paddocks where Sterl espied some fine horses. Camp that night offered a new experience to the cowboys. The cook was out of beef, and Jones took them hunting. They did not have to go far to find kangaroo, or shoot often. The meat had a flavour that Sterl thought would grow on him, and Red avowed it was equal to porterhouse steak or buffalo rump.

Two noons later Jones drove out of the jungle to the edge of a long slope that afforded a view of Slyter's valley.

"That road goes on to Downsville," said Jones, pointing, "a good few miles. This road leads to Slyter's station. Water and grass for a reasonable sized mob of cattle. But Bing has big ideas."

Presently Slyter's gray-walled, tin-roofed house came into sight, picturesquely located on a green bench with a background of huge eucalyptus trees, and half hidden in a bower of golden wattle.