As Eyre raised his faithful companion in his arms he expired.
"At the dead hour of night, in the wildest and most inhospitable waste of Australia, with the fierce wind raging in unison with the scene of violence before me, I was left with a single native, whose fidelity I could not rely on, and who, for aught I knew might be in league with the other two, who, perhaps were even now lurking about to take my life, as they had done that of the overseer." On examining the camp, Eyre found that the two boys had carried off both double-barrelled guns, all the baked bread and other stores, and a keg of water.

All they had left behind was a rifle, with the barrel choked by a ball jammed in it, four gallons of water, forty pounds of flour, and a little tea and sugar.
When he had time to think the matter over calmly, Eyre judged, from the position of the body, that Baxter must have been aroused by the two natives plundering the camp, and that, getting up hastily to stop them, he was immediately shot.

His first care was to put his rifle into serviceable condition, and then, when morning broke, he hastened to leave the ill-omened place.

It was impossible to bury the body of his murdered companion; one unbroken sheet of rock covered the surface of the country for miles in every direction.

Well might Eyre write, many years afterwards:-- "Though years have now passed away since the enactment of this tragedy, the dreadful horrors of that time and scene are recalled before me with frightful vividness, and make me shudder even now when I think of them.