“It might be better to get Gordon to take a couple of the Kalchut blacks over to Green Swamp Paddock than to attempt to get there from here by car,” Blake stated. “Ring me up after dinner. I’ll be on hand all day. Been a good rain, hasn’t it?”

“It has that. We had an inch and seventy points. Let’s hope it means the beginning of a good wet winter. All right, I’ll ring you again early this afternoon. Good-bye.”

Again seated at the breakfast table, Sergeant Blake related the story to a news-hungry wife who was, too, a devout Methodist. She quoted:

“ ‘He thattaketh up the sword shall perish by the sword.’ A violent man will surely meet with violence.”

“It’s not yet proved that Jeff Anderson has met with violence,” her husband pointed out.

“No, but it will be proved some time if not now. As I’ve often said, you’ll be taking Jeffery Anderson before he’s much older, mark my words. Where’s Abie this morning? He hasn’t come for his breakfast.”

“He’s lying in, I suppose. And the horse waiting for a feed. Abie’s getting that way that I’ll have to shake him up. They all go the same in time. Can’t keep away from the tribe more than a month.”

Breakfast over, Blake rose and lit a pipe. Without hat he stepped down into the yard at the rear of the building and crossed it to the stables on the far side. Here a horse was always kept ready for duty, although Blake ran his own car and one of his two constables owned a motor cycle outfit. It was the tracker’s main duty to exercise, feed and groom the horse, and he camped in one of the vacant stalls.

To Blake’s astonishment the stretcher provided for the tracker was not occupied, nor were there lying about it any articles of spare clothing or the stockwhip of which he was so proud. The sleek brown mare in the adjacent stall whinnied her request for breakfast, and, with a heavy frown between his eyes, the Sergeant took her out to water at the trough. He shouted several times for Abie. There was no reply. Blake was now convinced that the tracker had left to rejoin his tribe. He had been at the stable at ten o’clock the previous night. Out in the yard Blake met one of his two constables.