“It’s all open country, no boundary fences, and as there aren’t any adjacent holdings, excepting to the south, the Weatherby cattle may graze over a million square miles of country, which varies a lot. Very few permanent waters. A salt-pan wilderness to the west, semi-desert to the north, this Plain to the East. I’ve never been farther north than the homestead, and that was back in ’forty-nine.”

“TheWeatherbys!” pressed Bony.“Old family? How many?”

“The first Weatherby took up the holding in 1900. By all accounts a hard doer who married a woman as tough ashimself. Both died in the thirties and left the property to their two sons, Charles and Edgar. Edgar served up in the Islands during the war, and returned with his wife about the time I visited the homestead. They’d taken on a property in the west of New South which turned out no good, and the brothers decided to run in harness again. There’s no white stockmen employed. Can’t get whites these days. All the hands are aborigines.”

“Where is their outlet point?”

“Rawlinna chiefly. Much farther for them than Chifley but better country to travel in wet seasons. Old Patsy Lonergan must have gone out that way, because he never caught the train at Chifley.”

“Good citizens?”

“Never had the slightest trouble-officially.”

An hour later the scenery was precisely the same, and Bony spoke again of theWeatherbys.

“As you said a while back, theWeatherbys seem to be good citizens, officially. Ever meet them socially, Easter?”

“Oh, yes. When they come to Chifley, which isn’t often, they always spend an hour or two with the wife. Elaine likes the women very much although the wife of the younger brother, Edgar, seems a bit moody. The two men are all right, too. They mind their own business and don’t pry into ours. Never any trouble with theirabos.”

“Eighty per cent of tribal strife has its origin in white interference,” Bony said, and then put another question: