The Pioneers

by Katharine Susannah Prichard

  CHAPTER XLIII

  The big kitchen was very quiet. The log that had been smouldering on theopen hearth all day broke. Deirdre swept back the scattered embers andthrust the broken ends of wood together. Flames leapt over them,lighting the room.

  They penetrated the shadows that bulked, huge and shapeless, at the endof it, revealing a hoard of store casks and boxes piled almost to theroof and half-cloaked with hessian bags sewed together. The barrel of arifle slung on the walls glimmered for a moment; the firelight showedstirrup irons and miscellaneous harnessing gear, halters and bridleshung over a peg near the door, a couple of horse-shoes nailed to it, andtwo or three hams in smoke-blackened bags with bunches of herbs besidethem, strung up to the rafters.

  A tallow dip cast a halo of garish light about Deirdre where she satsewing; a broad gleam touched the crockery on the shelves behind her.The high-backed arm-chair in which Steve lay, slack and noddingdrowsily, was drawn up before the fire.

  The door to the bar, reached by a step from the kitchen, was open. A dipburned on the bench there, too, giving the dingy windows of the shanty agleam for wayfarers. It was a wild night; the wind blowing from thesouth-west beat against the doors and rattled the windows of the frailbuilding. The doors were all shut though it was still early.

  Steve at last fell asleep in his chair. His heavy-laboured breathing hadthe sound of a child sobbing. Deirdre looked up from her work, again andagain, troubled by it. It increased her sense of desperation to hearhim. The sound became unendurable. She got up at last and awakened him.

  "Hadn't you better go to bed, Uncle Steve," she said, impatiently."You'll catch your death of cold like this. It's too late for anybody tobe coming our way now--and a bad night. I'll lock up."

  "Yes, Deirdre," he murmured sleepily; "it's a bad night and too late foranybody to be coming our way."

  She pulled the bolts across the doors at the front of the shanty andlocked and bolted the door from the bar into the kitchen; then she tookhis arm, and helped him out of his chair. He had fallen back into it,nodding drowsily again. She led him over to his room, which opened offthe kitchen.

  "I'll see the lights and the fires are out," she said, "but I want tofinish a bit of mending before I go to bed."

  "Right," he murmured. "Right, Deirdre!"

  The noise of the wind carried off the droning tones of his voice; but itwas only a few moments before she heard his heavy breathing again.

  The Schoolmaster's sock which she was darning dropped from her hand.

  She stared into the darkness beyond the dip-light. She did not want togo to bed--to be alone in the darkness with her thoughts. In the kitchenshe heard the creaking gossip of the fire and the whisper of fallingembers. Besides, she wanted to keep her hands and brain busy. In thedarkness there would be only the voice of the wind in her ears, and thatwas like the crying of her heart. She listened to the wind now. Amournful, passionate thing, it murmured about the house, rising wildly,desperately, in blasts of sudden rage, and fell back into a thin,pitiful wailing of helplessness and despair. She was afraid to listenlong, afraid of what this communicating, interpreting murmur might dowith her reason. Yet the wind was with her, she thought. The wind knewher heart--the wind was the voice of her heart crying out there in thedarkness.

  She shivered, trying to banish the strange, fantastical ideas thatswarmed upon her.

  How to pass the night--this long night in which she must not think, orfeel. To-morrow McNab would be coming. "You pays y'r money and you takesy'r choice, Deirdre," he had said. She saw his face as he had spoken,his twisted, sallow face, the glimmering of his malicious eyes, with thesmile that spilled over from them. She had made her choice. She had sether mind to it. There must be no wavering. If the Schoolmaster got off,she must marry McNab; if he was sentenced to three years imprisonmentthere would perhaps be time to scheme and out-manoeuvre him. She wouldset her wits to that. But she could not think of the next day. She mustthink of Davey, or Dan, or Steve--any of them. There must be noshrinking, shrieking, or failing. What had to be done, had to be done,and the first thing that had to be done was to give McNab her word.

  She picked up the sock she had been mending again. The needle slippedbackwards and forwards, across, under and over, the dark threads. Sheworked steadily.

  The voice of the wind drew her mind again. It tugged gently and thencarried her away on its plaintive wailing. Her hands fell in her lap asshe listened. Her heart swayed; it went out to the wind again.

  There was a clatter of a horse's hoofs on the road. The sound startledher; but it was not until she heard the dogs barking in the yard thatshe realised some late rider had come to Steve's, that there would befood and drink, and probably a shakedown, to get ready. She waited forthe sound of footsteps on the verandah and a rap on the door of the bar.The back-door flung open, and on a gust of wind and rain, a tall, gauntfigure swung into the kitchen.

  "Conal!" Deirdre cried, and flew to him.

  In her gladness at seeing him the past was a blurred page. She forgot itwhen she saw him in the doorway, his weather-beaten face turned to her.Her confidence in him, all the old joyous affection, rushed over her.

  His face was shining with rain, his hair and beard wet. From the way hisbreath came and went, and the muscles were whipped out from his neck,she knew that he had been riding hard.

  "They tell me Davey and Dan are on trial in Melbourne," he said.

  "Yes."

  "What happened? What's been doing, Deirdre?" he gasped. "I've only justheard of it. It's taken me a couple of days to get here. I don't knowanything but what I've told you. Thought p'raps you could tell mesomething before I go up to them. And give me something to eat anddrink.... I haven't had anything since yesterday morning."

  He wrenched off his wet coat and dropped into Steve's chair.

  He had a gauntness that Conal used not to have. But his eyes, those eyesof fierce tenderness, were the eyes of the big brotherly man who hadbeen the companion of so many of her and the Schoolmaster's wanderings.

  She quickly put some food on the table for him, set the kettle on thebar over the fire, and while he was eating told him what she knew ofDavey's arrest and Dan's going to swear Davey's innocence of the chargebrought against him.

  "Why did he do that? Davey was more in it than he was," Conal askedsavagely.

  "I don't know," Deirdre hesitated. "Yes, I do, Conal. It was becauseMrs. Cameron--"

  "Oh, that was it, was it?"

  Conal went on eating, hungrily.

  "What do they say about here? Do they think Davey'll get off and Dan'llhave to pay?"

  "You've heard of Mr. Cameron's death, Conal?" Deirdre asked. "They saythat'll make all the difference. Davey can't very well be accused ofstealing his own cattle, and McNab--"

  "What has he got to say about it? Of course it's his hand in it all."

  "He says ... I'm the cause...."

  Her voice faltered.

  "What's that?"

  Conal's knife and fork clattered to the table.

  "Did you know ..." she asked, "did you know, Conal, Steve and fathercame from the Island over there?"

  He moved, uneasily.

  "No," he said, but uncertainly. "Who says so?"

  "McNab. He did the chain trick here on Steve--scared him to death whenhe was by himself one afternoon. Seems he wasn't quite sure before, butSteve in his fright gave him all the proofs he wanted. And McNab'spromised to use all he knows against father and Steve unless--Says heonly put the troopers on to this cattle business to get you and Daveyout of the way, though he had another score to work off against Mr.Cameron, too. But he says he always suspected ... about Steve andfather, and was only waiting for a chance to be sure of it to make me... make me marry him."

  "By God--"

  Conal spun from his chair. His oaths startled the birds from their nightperches under the roof.

  "He'll not do that, Deirdre!" he cried. "Not while there's life in me.Rot him--the crawler! To come here scaring the wits out of you
. I'llscrew the last breath out of him, before--"

  He made for the door. Deirdre went after him. She put her hand on hisarm.

  "You'll do no good now, Conal," she said. "You're done yourself. Resttill morning. Then you can go to McNab. If he knows there's a man aboutto stand by me, p'raps he won't dare to do what he said."

  Conal jerked himself away from her.

  "No, I'll swear he won't!"

  "But you'll do nothing at all if you go now," she urged, "and I'll havenobody without you. If you'll only rest and sleep now and go in themorning, it'll be better. You'll be able to put the fear of God intoMcNab perhaps if he sees you strong and ready to make him do what youwant."

  "Sleep?" He cursed under his breath. "Do you think there's any sleep'llcome to me when I think that McNab--a filthy, damned swine likeMcNab--could come near you. I'd kill him--kill him if he touched a hairof your head."

  Her hands fell from him.

  Conal's face was distorted with rage. His words brought back memory ofthe shot that had almost killed Davey.

  Conal guessed what her movement meant.

  "Do you still believe"--he lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. "Doyou still believe I fired that shot in the dark, Deirdre?"

  "Did you, Conal?" she asked simply.

  He turned from her with a gesture of disappointment.

  "Oh, it was in anger, and when you weren't sure of what you were doing,I know," she cried.

  He opened the door.

  "You're not going to-night?" she asked.

  "No. You're right. It'll be better to wait till the morning," he said,with, for Conal, a strange quietude. "I want to give the mare a rub downand a feed. Are there any bones for Sally? Throw a shakedown by the firefor me. I'll be in directly."