Part 11

He tossed and turned and the voices went on softly murmuring. He thought of Gladys and grew angry, and finally, when he had given up all hope, he fell fast asleep.

Next morning he found that peace reigned. The girl came in and quietly cleared away the remnants of last night’s meal and began making preparations for breakfast. Her mind was at ease evidently. She had no doubts about the permanency of her heaven; and when she saw him she smiled upon him the same slow, lazy, contented smile with which she had first greeted him, apparently forgetting and expecting him to forget all disagreeable episodes of the day before. How long would this peace last? asked Guy Turner of himself.

The meal done, Stanesby called to his black boy to bring up the horses, and touching the girl on the shoulder drew her aside, evidently to explain that he was going into the head-station and wanted provisions for the journey.

“We’ll take a packhorse between us,” said he to Turner, “it’ll save trouble; and I ‘ll show you a decent camping-place for to-night.” Then he followed the girl outside, and his companion began rolling up his swag.

He came back a few moments later, the girl following, and Turner could not but note the change in her face. It was not angry now, there was hardly even a trace of sullenness on it. Fear and sorrow seemed struggling with one another for the upper hand, and she was sobbing every now and then heavily, as if she could not help herself.

“Good Lord! Stanesby, what the dickens have you been doing to the girl?” he said.

Stanesby looked at him angrily.

“You seem to take a confoundedly big interest in the girl,” he said.

“Well, hang it all, man, she looks as if she had been having a jolly bad time, and really she’s only a child.”

“A child, is she? A child that’s very well able to take care of herself. I haven’t been beating her, if that’s what you ‘re thinking. I suppose I may be allowed to go into the head-station occasionally without asking my hutkeeper’s leave.”

“Oh! that’s the trouble, is it? Depends upon your hutkeeper, I should say. I don’t ask mine, but then—”

Turner paused, and Stanesby answered the unspoken thoughts with an oath.

“Oh, if you feel that way,” began Turner, but his companion flung himself out of the hut angrily.

Then the girl turned round, and Turner wondered to himself if she were going to repeat the performance of last night. But no, she was quiet and subdued now, as if all hope, all resentment even, had left her.

“Going to the head station?” she asked, and her voice was soft and low and very sweet, with just a trace of the guttural enunciation of her mother’s race; but she spoke good English, far better than her appearance seemed to warrant, and did no small credit to old Miss Howard’s training.

“Yes, yes, of course. We’re going to the head station, but Stanesby ‘ll be back in a day or two,” he added soothingly, because of the sorrow on her face. And then he hated himself for saying so much. What business was it of his?

She stepped forward and laid both hands on his arm.

“Don’t take him away, don’t, don’t!” she pleaded.

Her big dark eyes were swimming with tears, and there was an intensity of earnestness in her tones that went to the young man’s heart. Besides, he was young, and she was very good to look upon.

“My dear child,” he said, his anger against his old friend growing, “I have nothing in the world to do with it. He must go into the head-station sometimes. He must have gone often before.”

She dropped her hands and leaned back wearily against the wall.

“No,” she said, “no, not when the myalls are down along the creek.”

“Good Lord! Those d—d black fellows! I never thought of them. But they won’t touch you!”

She looked up and smiled faintly, as if amused at his ignorance.

“Kitty tumble down,” she said, relapsing into the blackfellows’ English.

“Oh! come, I say,” said Turner, “this’ll never do.” And he went outside in search of Stanesby, whom he found strapping their swags on to the packhorse.

“Look here, I say, old man, that poor little beggar’s frightened out of her wits of the myalls down by the creek there.”

Stanesby shrugged his shoulders.

“All bunkum! I know her ways. She wants to get me to stop. She seems to guess there’s something in the wind. The myalls! pooh! They ‘re as tame as possible. They steal any odds and ends that are left about—that’s about their form.”

“But the poor child is frightened.”

“Frightened! Get out. There wasn’t much fright about her when she took the knife to you last night! She knows very well how to take care of herself, I can tell you.”

“But those myalls. On Jinfalla we—Well, it really seems to me risky to leave her all alone. Even if there isn’t any danger—the very fact of being alone—.”

“Pooh! Considering she tramped from the head-station here all the eighty miles on foot, just because of some breeze with the cook there, she must be mightily afraid of being alone. However, if you don’t like her being left, it ‘s open to you to stop and look after her. I ‘m going to start in about two minutes.”

“Oh, well, if you think it s all right—”

“Of course it’s all right. There ‘s Jimmy got your horse for you. Come on, old chap.”

Turner mounted, and Stanesby was just about to do the same, when with a quick cry the girl ran out of the hut and caught his arm.

She said no word, and before he, taken by surprise, could stop her, she had wound both her arms around his neck and laid her face against his breast.

Turner put his spurs into his horse, and rode off smartly. It was no affair of his. The whole thing made him angry whenever he thought of it.

As for Dick Stanesby, though usually never anything but gentle with a woman, he was thoroughly angry now; he had felt angry before, but now he was roused, which did not often happen, to put his anger into words.

“Confound you, Kitty! Do you hear me? Don’t be a fool!” and he roughly shook her off, so roughly that she lost her balance, staggered, and fell. He made a step forward to take his horse, which was held by the stolid black boy, but she was too quick for him and, grovelling on the ground at his feet, put out her arms and held him there, murmuring inarticulate words of tenderness and love. Stanesby stooped down, and caught her wrists in both his hands.

“Get up!” he said roughly, and dragged her to her feet. She stood there, leaning all her weight on his supporting hands, looking at him with reproachful eyes.

They were beautiful eyes, and there was need enough for her sorrow had she only known; but what Stanesby was thinking of was the awkwardness of the situation. He did not mind the black boy, he counted him as so much dirt—but Turner! Already this girl had made an exhibition of him, and now it was worse than ever. Every moment he dreaded he would turn round, and even though he did not it was equally bad, he kept his face purposely averted.

The girl broke out into passionate prayer to him not to leave her, then, seeing he was still unmoved, she began to call him every tender name her limited vocabulary contained, though there was little enough need to do that, her eyes said enough.

“Kitty, go back to the hut this moment! For God’s sake, don’t be such a fool! One would think I was going to murder you.”

“The myalls will,” she said. Then she paused, and added solemnly, “to-morrow.”

“What confounded rot!”

He let go her hands suddenly, and she fell to her knees and tried to put her arms round him again; but with a quick movement he stepped backwards, and she fell forward on to her face. He pushed her aside roughly, angrily, with an anger that was not all against her, and mounted hurriedly, snatched the packhorse’s rein from the black boy, and was off at full gallop after his friend before she could regain her feet But she did not try to, once she realised that all hope was gone. He had left her, it was all over with her, she might just as well lie there.

At the sound of the galloping horses behind him Turner looked round. Through the haze of the early morning, the haze that promised fierce heat later on, he saw the horses coming towards him, and beyond, half-veiled by the dust they made as they passed, a dusky red bundle flung carelessly out on the plain, of use to no one. The black boy walked away, it was no business of his. There was the lonely hut and the far-reaching plain, nothing in sight but the bluffs far away to the east, nothing at all, only that red bundle lying there alone and neglected.

He had no words for his comrade when he did come up. That dusky red heap seemed to fill all his thoughts, and about that silence was best. Stanesby checked his horses, and they rode on slowly as men who have a long journey before them. The sun climbed up and up to the zenith, but there was no shelter, no place for the noonday rest. Then away in the distance arose a line of trees raised up above the horizon, and Stanesby pointed it out to his companion.

“We can spell there a bit,” he said. “It’s only that beastly prickly bush, for all it looks like a forest of red gum at the very least from here, but there’ll be a scrap of shade, and I’m getting tired. There’s water there sometimes, but it was dry as a bone last time I passed.”

“It’s a grand country!” sighed Turner.

“By George!” said Stanesby, “I never will come back this way. Why should I, now I ‘m free to do as I please?”

Why, indeed? And Turner’s thoughts immediately flew back to the dark-eyed girl, and the solitary hut as he had last seen it through the haze of the morning, with that red heap lying there carelessly flung aside, and the black fellow stalking away. Why should he go back? Why indeed? Only to have that scene repeated. Better go straight on to England, and home, and pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed Gladys Rowan.

So they lay there in the scanty shade and spelled, and built a small fire of dry sticks, and filled the billy from the waterbag that hung at each horse’s neck, and boiled their tea, and ate their humble mid-day meal, and dozed the afternoon away, lazily watching the hobbled horses as they searched on the still damp edges of the shallow clay pan for such scanty grass as the moisture induced to grow there. They hardly spoke, they had nothing in common now; once they reached the head-station, they would part never to meet again. Each felt it instinctively, and each was thankful that it should be so. The sooner the parting came, the better now.

The shadows of the thorny bushes began to grow longer and longer as the sun sank in the west, and they mounted their horses and started off again. Then the sun went down, and the colour faded out of the sky as the stars, bright points of light, came out one by one. The new moon was a silver rim clear cut in the west, and not a sound broke the stillness. How lonely it was, how intensely lonely! Turner thought of the poor girl alone in the hut miles behind them, and wondered if his companion too were thinking of her. After all, surely the very loneliness gave safety. At any rate, she was safe at night. If the blacks did not attack at dusk they would leave her alone for the night. But the morning—next morning! Was it right to leave her? He himself had no faith in the myall blacks, they were treacherous, they were cruel. Had he not come over to arrange some plan of campaign against them? And yet he went away and left that girl at their mercy, completely at their mercy. He felt strongly tempted to turn back. If they could not stop with her, at least they might have brought her along with them. She was defenceless; her blood was no protection, rather the reverse. And then, when he turned to speak to Stanesby, the recollection of his scornful, “It’s open to you to stop and look after her,” tied his tongue. After all, it was not likely Stanesby would have left if there was the slightest danger; he had lived among these blacks, he understood them thoroughly; it was an insult to the man he had known all his life to suppose anything else; and yet the thought of the girl’s loneliness haunted him. The moon set, and by the starlight they saw looming up ahead some rocks, isolated rocks, roughly piled together by some giant hand.

“We’ll camp there,” said Stanesby, “there’s a little water down under the rocks—about enough to keep life in the horses; there’s some grass and a bush or two to make a fire. What more could the heart of man desire?”

Out in the bush not much time is wasted, and soon after they had halted their blankets were spread, and they were asleep, or lying, if not asleep, staring up at the bright starlit sky of the southern hemisphere.

But Turner could not sleep, it was worse than it had been the night before. Why should he be haunted in this way? Why should he take Stanesby’s sins on his shoulders? The girl was all right, she must be all right; why should she haunt his dreams, and keep him wakeful on his hard bed, when he had a long journey still before him? Stanesby was sleeping peacefully as a child. He could hear his deep breathing; if there was anything to be feared he would not sleep like that. It was hot still, very hot. This was an awful climate, a cruel life, and Stanesby had done with it all. No wonder he slept soundly.

He sat up restlessly. A sound in the distance broke the stillness, then he started, surely it was the trotting of a horse. He rubbed his eyes. Their own three horses were there close beside them, he could see them vague and indistinct in the gloom. They were there right enough. What could this be? Who could be riding about at this time of night? They were still a good forty miles from the head-station, and this horse was coming from the opposite direction.

He put out his hand, and shook his companion awake.

“Some one’s coming,” he said shortly.

“Some one! Gammon! Good Lord!—”

There was no doubt about it, and he rose to his feet It was the other side of the rocks, and they walked round quietly. They were only curious, there was nothing to fear. In the dim starlight they saw a man on horseback advancing towards them.

“Hallo!” called out Stanesby, as he came quite close, “who the devil are you?”

The horse was done. They could hear his gasping breath, and the man bent forward as if he too had come far and fast, but he did not answer, and as he came closer Turner saw he was a blackfellow.

Stanesby saw it too, and saw more, for he recognised his own black boy Jimmy.

“Good God! Jimmy, is it you?”

There must be something wrong, very wrong indeed, that would bring a black-fellow, steeped in superstitious fears of demons and evil spirits, out at dead of night.

“Jimmy!” Stanesby caught him by the shoulder, and fairly pulled him from his horse, “What’s the meaning of this?”

Jimmy did not answer for a moment. He was occupied with his horse’s bridle, then he said carelessly, as if he were rather ashamed of making such a fuss about a trifle.

“Myalls pull along a hut.”

“My God!” cried Turner. It seemed like the realisation of his worst fears.

But Stanesby refused to see any cause for alarm.

“And you ‘ve ridden like blazes, and ruined the mare, to tell us rot like that. What if they do come up to the hut? They’ve been there before.”

The answer was more to his companion than his servant, but Jimmy answered the implied reproach.

“Blackfellow burn hut,” he stated.

“Nonsense!”

“This fellow sit down along a bush,” he went on stolidly.

“Well—if you did! I wish to heaven you had stopped alongside your confounded bush before you ruined my mare.”

“Bungally you!” said Jimmy, who was no respecter of persons, meaning “you are very stupid.” “Blackfellow put firestick in humpy and—”

“Good God! Stanesby, I knew it. The myalls are going to burn down the hut, and this beggar’s got wind of it.”

Jimmy nodded approvingly.

“All gone humpy,” he said, stretching out his hands as if to denote the deed was done.

“But the girl, Jimmy, the girl!”

“Poor gin tumble down.”

“I—Jimmy,” Stanesby caught him by the shoulder, and shook him violently, and Turner knew by the change in his voice that his fears were roused at last, “how did you know this? When did you hear it?”

“Sit down along a bush,” said Jimmy again. His vocabulary was limited.

“But when—when? It must have been all right when you left?”

“Blackfellow pull along a humpy to-night,” said Jimmy, nodding his head solemnly, feeling that at last he had got a serious hearing, and hoping to hear no more about the mare.

“But the girl—the girl! Where’s the girl?”

“That one myall hit him gin along a cobra big fellow nulla-nulla? Gin tumble down.” {1}

“But—my God! what ‘d you leave her there for?”

“Myall got ‘em nulla-nulla for this fellow.”

“You brute!” cried Turner, “why didn’t you bring her with you?”

“Only got ‘em one yarramen,” said the blackfellow nonchalantly. There was only one horse, he had taken it and saved his skin. He had come to warn the white man of the destruction of his dwelling, but he did not count the half-caste girl of any value one way or another. The blacks would attack the hut at sundown when they saw the coast clear.

1 A blackfellow has hit the woman over the head with a big stick or club. The woman is dead.

The white man would be angry at the destruction of his hut, he had ridden after him to tell him, and also because safety lay with the white man; but the girl—if there had been a horse in the little paddock, he might possibly have brought her out of danger, but even as a blackfellow he looked with contempt on a half-caste; and as a woman—well, a woman was worth nothing as a woman. There were plenty more to be got. He lay down on the ground, and lazily stretched himself out at full length. There was nothing more to be got out of him.

Stanesby kicked him, and went for his horse.

“This is terrible!” he said, in a hoarse, husky whisper. “That poor child! Old man, I ought to have taken your advice. My God! Why did you let me leave her?”

Turner was saddling his own horse, and asking himself the self-same question. That girl’s blood was on his head he felt, and yet—and yet—it was no business of his. Stanesby had declared all safe.

“What are you going to do?”

“Going straight back, of course.”

“We’ll be too late. Jimmy certainly said at sundown.”

“He may be wrong, you know; besides, there’s no trusting these devils. They might have changed their minds. You ‘ll help me, old man, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

It took but a few moments to prepare for that journey back. Each man saw that his revolvers were loaded, saddled his horse, and they were ready. The horse Jimmy had ridden was done.

“Shall we leave him?” said Stanesby, contemptuously stirring him with his foot.

“No, by Jove! no,” said his companion, “we must have him. He knows all the sign.”

So they forced the reluctant Jimmy to mount the packhorse, and distributed his load between them, taking only what was absolutely necessary.

When they were quite ready Stanesby looked at his watch.

“Ten o’clock,” he said. “We must be there before daylight if we want to do any good;” and Turner could not but note that there was a more hopeful ring in his voice. Evidently he thought that perhaps all would be well after all.