The Pioneers

by Katharine Susannah Prichard

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  The little red horse's pace was as swift as a swallow's. Sure-footed,she flashed on over the long winding roads, up the steep hillsides anddown them, slipping and sliding on the loose shingles, but keeping herknees in the cunning way that only the mountain horses know. Davey heardthe beat of her hoofs until the sound became mechanical. Though she wasmoving, she seemed to get no further--to throw no distance behind her,forging ahead through the darkness.

  Fear and a suffocating weakness began to dull his brain, he could notsee. The sagging pain in his breast ate up his strength. With adesperate effort he pulled the handkerchief from his throat and thrustit inside his shirt against the wound. He dug his heels into Red's side,urging her on.

  A diffused glow of lights loomed before him. As if wakening from anightmare in which he had been struggling to get forward and was heldback by mysterious, unknown forces, he realised that they were thelights of the shanty.

  The mare carried him on into the stable yard. The welcome yelp of dogsgreeted his ears. He flung off her, staggered across the yard and burstopen the back door. He was conscious of Farrel and Deirdre springingtowards him, of Steve behind them. Then surging darkness, the swirlingtides of dreamless darkness that had been pressing close to him all theway, closed over him. For a moment he struggled against them, trying tospeak. A few muttered, incoherent words were all Deirdre and theSchoolmaster caught.

  He pitched forward.

  Deirdre ran to him. The Schoolmaster helped her to lift Davey over onhis back. She moistened his lips with the spirit that Steve broughtquickly.

  "There's blood on him, father," she cried. There was no tremor in hervoice, only a tense anxiety.

  Farrel told her what to do, to cut away Davey's shirt where the bloodoozed on it. Steve went for water and rags as she did so. The flickeringlight of the candle the Schoolmaster held, showed the broken andblackened flesh.

  "He's been shot ... it's a slug made that mark," Steve gasped when hesaw it.

  When he had put a basin of cold water beside her, she laid soaked ragson the wound. The shock brought Davey a moment of consciousness. Hemoaned, stirring with pain. His eyes opened. He saw Deirdre's face abovehis and the Schoolmaster bending over him.

  He stared at them unseeingly. Then the mists cleared from his brain."I'm all right," he muttered, "all right...."

  He lay quite still.

  "Have you got the calves out of the paddock?" he asked a moment later,his voice stronger. "M'Laughlin and a couple of men'll be herepresently. McNab's got wind of their being in the paddock, here. Getthem out to the valley quick, or let them go."

  "Where's Conal?" Steve asked eagerly; "he ought to be in by now."

  There was a crooked furrow of pain on Davey's face.

  "I looked for him before I came out," he said. "Couldn't findhim--thought he must have gone on ahead. I got this," his hand went tohis breast, "crossing the culvert over the creek. They said at McNab's,Conal had been swearing--to do for me--but I didn't believe it...."

  His body sagged and his head went back; but Deirdre was behind him; sherested his head on her knees.

  Her eyes flew to the Schoolmaster.

  "It was Conal," she breathed. "He said he would do it."

  Farrel's face whitened. He put no man before Long Conal.

  Deirdre put a pack of wet rags over the wound again, and bound it onwith a piece of unbleached linen.

  Her eyes went anxiously to Steve.

  "He's not going to die, is he?" she asked.

  "No," Steve muttered, cheerfully. His eyes travelled the length of theboy's sturdy frame. "It's not much more than a surface wound, thoughit's cut up the flesh a good deal. He'd look different if he was goin'to kick the bucket."

  "If we could lift him into the other room it would be better," shesuggested. "The men from the Wirree may be coming."

  "Yes," the Schoolmaster said.

  As they tried to move him, Davey regained consciousness.

  "Have you got those beasts out?" he asked querulously. "There's no timeto lose. I'm all right."

  Deirdre on one side, the Schoolmaster on the other, they led him to theroom in which Farrel slept. He sank wearily on the bunk against thewall.

  The Schoolmaster went back to the kitchen for a moment.

  Deirdre bent over the bunk, gazing at Davey's still face anxiously,intently. It was no time for weeping or exclamation. She realised thedanger that threatened. If M'Laughlin and the men from the Wirree cameand found the cattle in the paddock below Steve's, not only Davey, butalso the Schoolmaster would have to pay the penalty.

  She went back to the kitchen.

  "He's sleeping," she said.

  The Schoolmaster and Steve were standing by the door arguing in anundertone together.

  The Schoolmaster turned to go out.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "Let those animals out," he said briefly. "It's no good, Teddy won't gowith them alone. He's as afraid of the dark as they are. And ifM'Laughlin's coming we've got to get them out of the way."

  "He's going to try and take them himself to the valley; and it'smadness--he can't see," cried Steve.

  "Conal was a fool to bring them near the place. I told him this morning,but he'll take his own way and nobody else's," the Schoolmaster replied."If he were here now--"

  "I'm going to take them, father," Deirdre said. "They're easy enough todrive at night and Teddy'll work with me. You watch Davey. He'll beright now, but in case--Besides the place has got to look peaceable andordinary if M'Laughlin comes."

  "I can't let you do it, Deirdre."

  The Schoolmaster's voice was harsh and peremptory.

  "I'm going to!"

  He recognised his own spirit in her.

  "There's no time to lose," she said, "and I know the track to theValley. Conal showed it to me--I helped him to bring in the calvesyesterday, and I haven't been on the roads with you both for the lastyear without knowing how to manage a handful of old cows."

  "I tell you, I'll not have it," the Schoolmaster interruptedpassionately.

  "It means as much to me as to any of you," she said, a little breathlesssob in her voice. "You don't know how much. You can't have these beastswith the new brands running the hills now. Conal ought to be responsiblefor them, but that won't help us much if they're found here. Davey'sknown to have been working with him--and you were suspected of beingwith him even when you weren't!"

  The door slammed behind her.

  Steve followed her out of doors.

  He pulled the chestnut's girths when she had thrown a saddle across hisback.

  "You can manage the calves, of course, Deirdre," he said. "Keep 'm quietas you can. No shouting, mind. The dogs know night work with cattle'smostly quiet work--keep 'm back. You'll not be raising a whip yourself.I'll tell Teddy, the less crackin' the better. These beasts'll go quietenough."

  He and the Schoolmaster watched her flying out across the faintlymoonlit paddocks. The dogs were soon working round the mob in a farcorner where the fence panels were down. Deirdre drove them through theopening. The black boy was on the road waiting to keep the beasts' nosesnorthwards with an adroit flick of his whip. It was with an occasionallowing and rattling of horns, the brush and rattle of hoofs on the drytimber that they passed out into the shadows of the road.

  The Schoolmaster had no fear that Deirdre could not manage this handfulof yearlings and old cows. She had chased calves from paddock to paddockwhen she was big enough to straddle a pot-bellied pony, and had crackeda light whip which Conal had made for her, with a fall a couple ofinches shorter than his own, round many a restless herd when Conal andhe were droving and she was on the roads with them. It was thebitterness of not being able to drive himself that plagued Farrel: theconsciousness of having to stand by and let her do what there was dangerin doing, incensed him. Steve watched the road for sound or sign of menand horses from Wirreeford. Then he chased his own two milkers up fromthe cow paddock and ran them backwards and fo
rwards along the road wherethe mob had passed, to obliterate its tracks.

  A weight was off the Schoolmaster's mind when Steve said that Deirdreand the black were out of sight. He knew that by taking the cattle alongthe narrow tracks on the ledges of the hills, she would save them.Narrow Valley scrubs would screen them from curious eyes. If M'Laughlincame, the road would tell no tales. Steve's cows had made it look as ifa mob had passed in the opposite direction beyond the shanty, and he andthe Schoolmaster had a story to fit the tracks. They did not think thatanybody but themselves knew the way under the trees on the Valleyhillsides. Only if M'Laughlin brought a tracker would he be able tofollow Deirdre.

  Farrel wondered how word had reached McNab, and what foolhardiness hadled Conal to bring these branded calves to the paddock below Steve's.For a moment the idea that Conal, baited and maddened with drink, mighthave given some hint at McNab's of the beasts being in Steve's paddock,occurred to him. And then there was Davey. For a while his mind broodedover what had happened to him.

  "It was only mad with drink, Conal could have shot at a man in thedark," he told himself. "The open fight is his way." Conal and he hadbeen friends a good many years, and there was something in his estimateof the man which defied the idea that he had shot Davey. And yet itlooked as if he had. Why was he not in? He had left Wirreeford an hourbefore Davey. Conal was on the road before Davey. And he had beendrinking at McNab's. He had been taunted with Deirdre's name.

  "It was only mad with drink he could have done it," the Schoolmastertold himself again. And even then a fierce contempt and condemnationsurged within him. The memory of Deirdre's fired young womanhood; of thelook in her face, of the glow in her eyes, told him what this hurt toDavey meant to her.

  Steve watched in the room beside Davey.

  His shrunken, crippled limbs ached. His head sank on his breast. Hedrooped and slept forgetfully. The Schoolmaster strode the length of thekitchen. The fire smouldered low. He threw some wood on it. Thecrackling flames flashed and played freakishly across the room. Hewondered if Conal would come--where he was. The hours passed. There wasno sound or sign of late riders from the Wirree. He opened the door ofthe hut. The night was very still. Only a mopoke called plaintively inthe distance.

  There was a stir in the room in which Davey was sleeping. Farrel heardSteve's voice in startled and sleepy protest. The door opened, Daveystood on the threshold his eyes with a delirious brightness in them.

  "What have you done about those calves?" he asked, his voice quick andclear.

  "We are going to let 'em go," Steve gasped. "You go back and lie downnow, Davey."

  "You can't do that with the new brands on them," Davey brushed himaside, irritably. "I'm all right now. I can take them to the Valley.It's a bit of luck M'Laughlin hasn't turned up yet. P'raps I upset hiscalculations--his and McNab's. He's not so fond of gettin' a move on,Johnny Mac. Might've guessed I'd got a notion he was going to be busywhen I went round asking for Conal. Thought we'd give him the slipanyway and he'd save himself the trouble of coming!" He laughed a littleunsteadily. "Think I'll get the calves along to the Valley, all thesame."

  The Schoolmaster took his arm.

  "Go and lie down, Davey," he said. "If you go wandering about like this,you'll bring on the bleeding again. Besides, Deirdre--"

  "Where is she?" His eyes flew searching the room for her.

  "She"--it seemed difficult to say--"She has gone down to the Valley, soit'll be all right," he said.

  Davey turned towards the door.

  "Don't be a fool, Davey!" The Schoolmaster intercepted him.

  Davey pushed him aside.

  He strode into the stable yard as though nothing had happened to disablehim. A moment later the Schoolmaster heard the rattle of hoofs on theroad.

  Every fibre of him shivered at the boy's contempt, the blazing amazementof his eyes. He sank into a chair, covering his face with his hands.