"gp24w10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Gilbert)

Society did not escape flagellation. Next morning the Cadi left us. He
gave us his camps--Bora Bora, Budgery-Gar, Wintelliga, and Gilgan--since
we were to go in his direction also soon. He turned round in his saddle
as he rode off, and said gaily: "Gentlemen, I hope you'll always help to
uphold the majesty of the law as nobly as you have sustained its envoy
from your swags."

Drysdale and I waved our hands to him, but Barlas muttered something
between his teeth. We had two days of cattle-hunting in the Copper-mine
hills, and then we started westward, in the tracks of the Cadi, to make
for Barlas's station. The second day we camped at Bora Bora Creek. We
had just hobbled the horses, and were about to build a fire, when Bimbi
came running to us. "Master, master," he said to Drysdale, "that fellow
Cadi yarraman mumkull over there. Plenty myall mandowie!"--(" Master,
master, the Cadi's horse is dead over there, and there are plenty of
black fellows' tracks about.")

We found the horse pierced with spears. The Cadi had evidently mounted
and tried to get away. And soon, by a clump of the stay-a-while bush,
we discovered, alas! the late companion of our camp-fire. He was gashed
from head to foot, and naked.

We buried him beneath a rustling sandal-tree, and on its bark carved the
words:

"Sacred to the memory of Stewart Ruttan."

And beneath, Barlas added the following:

"The Cadi sleeps. The Law regards him not."

In a pocket of the Cadi's coat, which lay near, we found the picture of a
pretty girl. On it was written:

"To dearest Stewart, from Alice."

Barlas's face was stern and drawn. He looked at us from under his shaggy
brows.

"There's a Court to be opened," he said. "Do you stand for law or
justice?"

"For justice," we replied.

Four days later in a ravine at Budgery-Gar a big camp of blacks were
feasting. With loathsome pantomime they were re-enacting the murders
they had committed within the past few days; murders of innocent white
women and children, and good men and true--among them the Cadi, God help
him! Great fires were burning in the centre of the camp, and the bodies
of the black devils writhed with hideous colour in the glare. Effigies