The Inheritor Frank Robert The man and the ewe and the dingo and a few crows wheeling above were the only visible living creatures in all that desolation. They were on the only high land for miles around, a peaked hill known as Lone Pine because it had one tree on it . The tree was a very ordinary eucalypt but the words Lone Pine have such an historic association, even now, half a century afterward, that any hill with one tree on it is apt to be known locally by that name. This tree had suffered intense dry heat in its summers and withering dry cold in its winters and now, dead, its bare nand gnarled and twisted branches made as good a monument as any to inland life, which is a longer war. But the man saw it with a pratical eye merely as the marker to a final refuge from the flood. The ewe and the dingo had no feelings at all about the tree, but the crows had. It was their natural roost and they had been there, conscious of the ewe cropping grass below them, and of the flood, and always prepared to wait patiently for the main chance when the dingo had appeared slinking along a low ridge, equally afraid of the rising water and of being silhouetted so plainly. The dog scouted around the shrinking perimeter of Lone Pine, returned to the point where ridge met hillside, and stood sniffing the wind and waiting for a flash of instinct. It had come, and then he had walked up to the highest point of the hill and settled down near the tree to watch and wait.

To be continued.......

He had seen the ewe but was not in a killing mood just then. And the crows flapped away from the tree, wheeled back to it, perched, and flapped away again. They were restless but not afraid of the dingo. He was a good provider. But when the man appeared, walking along the ridge-top with the floodwater soaking his boots and running throught the eroded dip where the ridge came to the hill, the crows left the tree and wheeled continuously. The man leaped from the ridge to the hillside and walked up the hill. He didn't see the earth-colored dog until it snarled. Then he saw it its white teeth and blazing eyes. He looked down at the ridge and then up at the branches of the tree which he could reach with a good jump. But could he pull himself up quickly enough---or would the dingo rear at the sudden movement and slash at his legs?The essential habits of dingos were not in his experience, and the flood was another factor. Then thenewe scented the wild dog. It was unlikely that she saw him. But she turned to run downhill and found the flood in front of her and bleated and ran around the hill, and the dingo crawled a few inches, watching her. The man felt relieved. Presently the dog would attack the ewe, and he would hoist himself into the tree. He had only to remain still, and to divert the dingo from its instinctive passion for the ewe's throat. The sheep ran about until it lost the dog scent, and then it noticed a new patch of grass and resumed cropping, moving onand up as the flool nudged its hoofs. It was stupid, even as sheep went. The man stayed very hill, watching the dingo stir as inch every time the ewe moved, hackles up and the skin along its spine quivering.

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