Where the pack drank they rested. As yet their great thirst was close to them, and the neighbourhood of water seemed too good to leave. But, in such matters, the memory of the wild folk is apt to be short. The banks of the river-bed ran due east and west here; and, though the pack gave no thought to the question, it was a matter of some importance to each one of them whether they should eventually leave those banks to the northward or to the southward; a matter of importance by reason of the difference in the country to the northward and to the southward. But it was chance at last that decided the question for them. They drank many times during the day, and towards nightfall a small mob of kangaroos was sighted to the northward, and that led the pack to head northward, a little westerly, from the river-bank that night. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXXI THE TRAIL OF MAN It was exactly a fortnight later when the pack turned despairingly in its tracks, animated by a forlorn desire to reach again the high ragged banks of that shingly river-bed, in which some trace of moisture might be left still, where the muddy pools had been. But in that fortnight much had happened, and the character and constitution of the pack had undergone notable changes. The six whelps had disappeared, old Tufter and the oldest of the mothers of the pack were no more, and neither the carrion-crows nor the ants had profited one atom by these deaths. The pack had not wittingly hastened the end of these weaker ones, but it had left only their bones behind upon the trail. And, now, when one or other of the gaunt, dry-lipped survivors stumbled a dozen pairs of hungry eyes glittered, a dozen pairs of lips were wrinkled backward from as many sets of fangs, and consciousness of this had a sinister meaning for the stumbler; a meaning which brought a savage snarl to his throat as he regained his footing with quick, threatening looks from side to side and hackles bristling.