“River to-night, Sambo,” he said airily, but after that one swift glance Sambo rode after us as stolid as ever—­Sambo was always difficult to fathom—­while Dan spent the afternoon congratulating himself on the success of his dust-throwing, proving with many illustrations that “it’s the hardest thing to spring a surprise on niggers.  Something seems to tell ’em you’re coming,” he explained.  “Some chaps put it down to second-sight or thought-reading.”

When we turned in Dan was still chuckling over his cute handling of the trip.  “Bluffed ’em this time all right,” he assured us, little guessing that the blacks at the “Red Lilies,” thirty miles away, and other little groups of blacks travelling down the river towards the lagoons were conjecturing on the object of the Maluka’s visit—­“something having told them we were coming.”

The “something” however, was neither second-sight nor thought-reading, but a very simple, tangible “something.”  Sambo had gone for a stroll from our camp about sundown, and one of Jack’s boys had gone for a stroll from Jack’s camp, and soon afterwards two tell-tale telegraphic columns of smoke, worked on some blackfellow dot-dash-system, had risen above the timber, and their messages had also been duly noted down at the Red Lilies and elsewhere, and acted upon.  The Maluka was on the river, and when the Maluka was about, it was considered wisdom to be off forbidden ground; not that the blacks feared the Maluka, but no one cares about vexing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

On stations in the Never-Never the blacks are supposed to camp either in the homesteads, where no man need go hungry, or right outside the boundaries on waters beyond the cattle, travelling in or out as desired, on condition that they keep to the main travellers’ tracks—­blacks among the cattle having a scattering effect on the herd, apart from the fact that “niggers in” generally means cattle-killing.

Of course no man ever hopes to keep his blacks absolutely obedient to this rule; but the judicious giving of an odd bullock at not too rare intervals, and always at corroborree times, the more judicious winking at cattle killing on the boundaries, where cattle scaring is not all disadvantage, and the even more judicious giving of a hint, when a hint is necessary, will do much to keep them fairly well in hand, anyway from openly harrying and defiant killing, which in humanity is surely all any man should ask.

The white man has taken the country from the black fellow, and with it his right to travel where he will for pleasure or food, and until he is willing to make recompense by granting fair liberty of travel, and a fair percentage of cattle or their equivalent in fair payment—­openly and fairly giving them, and seeing that no man is unjustly treated or hungry within his borders—­cattle killing, and at times even man killing by blacks, will not be an offence against the white folk.