“Who’s that for?” she gasped.
“For you, of course.”
“For me!”
“Well, obviously I can’t leave you here to raise an earlier alarm than there will be in any case. And I’d much rather not tie you to a tree. But it’s either that or setting me on my way. What do you say?”
“I am in your hands,” she replied; but a great thought was leaping in her heart. On foot she was utterly at the mercy of this infamous armed man. But she was a first-rate horse-woman, and in the saddle she might at least elude him.
“This is about as much as I can carry on one arm, and your spirit compels me to leave the other one free in case of need,” said Stingaree. “I must therefore ask you to be so good as to carry my valise. It is very ungallant, but you leave me no choice.”
The valise lay on the ground. Irralie picked it up. Its heaviness surprised her, and the contents rattled under her arm.
“Its weight don’t represent its worth,” remarked the bushranger, opening the door for Irralie with his revolver-point. “It would be an uncommon poor haul but for those Quandong diamonds. And now I think we’ll talk no more until we’ve given this place a rather wider berth.”
Nor did they, but passed in silence so close to the back veranda that Irralie could have thrown a stone through the open window of her empty room. She wondered whether she should ever see it again. For her brain was now teeming with daring projects and attempts, for which her present submission was but to pave the way. And to pave it the more effectively, when he spoke again she replied with a suavity not inferior to his own.
He had said, “Upon my word, Miss Villiers, I am ashamed to have to treat you like this!”
“I am sure you are,” replied Irralie. “But there’s one thing you might do to pass the time.”
“Only tell me what!”
“You might explain exactly how you planned and carried out this conspiracy. It would edify me, and it couldn’t hurt you.”
“My dear young lady, with all my heart,” replied Stingaree. “I ask no greater privilege than to afford you any little compensation in my power. The facts of the case are very simple. Last Saturday morning nothing was farther from our minds; but we had been engaged upon some trifling business on the Balranald road, and as that was blocked against us north and south we thought it best to strike a straight line east across the fenced country. Late in the afternoon we came to your boundary, but had no notion of looking you up, when we lit on a beautifully dressed young man, equally well-mounted, but hopelessly lost in the bush. Well, Howie’s horse was dead-beat, for we had been pushing the pace a bit; and Howie’s clothes were dead-beat also; and Howie himself being not more than a size or so larger than that young gentleman, both in height and build—”
“And I never thought of that before!”
“No, Miss Villiers? Well, you weren’t meant to; though the last thing we hoped for was that our young gentleman would keep the incident to himself. You may hear from him why he did, and when you do I should like to know. To proceed, however, we stuck him up (to use a vile expression) in due course; and Howie and he exchanged horses and clothes; and Howie nearly spoilt everything by leaving a loaded shooter in the coat he took off. However, as our friend hadn’t condescended to put it on up to the time we left him, no harm was done. Howie, I should explain, is my mate (to employ another barbarism); and a very worthy soul, though no gentleman. But here we are at last at the horse-paddock gate!” It was open; probably Fullarton had been unable to shut it with his one hand; nevertheless, it conveyed to Irralie the picture of a man galloping for his life and those of his friends; and her heart softened as it leapt again. Nor was there a horse to be seen from the gate. And before striking into the paddock to look for one, the bushranger hung the saddles over the top bar to rest his arm.
“And where have you both been ever since?” inquired Irralie, finessing still, but also interested to know.
“Aha!” said he. “I’m not sure that I shall tell you that. Yet I don’t know; have you ever heard of a man they call Deaf Dawson?”
“Heard of him! Why, he drives the whim at our Seven-mile.”
“Yes; but did you never hear my name coupled with his? I don’t mean my real name. There’s not a soul in the Colony knows that But Stingaree?”
“Yes, I have,” said Irralie. “He was said to have known you.”
“To have been my mate! That’s more like it. He and Howie and I once stood in together — before we were quite so well known. Now can you guess where we’ve been since Saturday; and who told us you were going to have all the back-blocks at the station last night; and who came in with Howie to the men’s hut, and found out that the new chum had been too ashamed to explain away his old clothes, and was looked on with suspicion because of them? I think it must be obvious; and now we’ll catch that horse.”
Obvious it was; and Irralie’s heart sank quicker than it had risen. She had relied upon Deaf Dawson. He was a man not generally liked upon the station; a man who kept himself to himself in his outlying hut, where he was seldom visited by anybody except on business. But Irralie had stopped in her rides to shout into his ear-trumpet. And she had credited the man with some slight fondness for her; and had determined to put it to the test, if fortune favored her with a faster horse than might fall to Stingaree. She now knew what to expect at the deaf man’s hands.
But she was glad that she had steeled herself to converse with Stingaree. Here was one good thing come of it already; it was very good indeed to be forewarned. She must now think of some other plan; and as she thought, they were walking off the track among the salt-bush in search of horses; and as they walked half-a-dozen came suddenly like phantoms across their path.
Stingaree caught one adroitly, and Irralie was no less quick to secure another by the mane. She was as anxious as he to be in the saddle; and the saddling fell to her, while Stingaree stood at the horses’ heads. So Irralie left the girths of the man’s saddle judiciously loose; but when he had helped her to mount he would not let her handle her own reins; and before mounting himself he tightened his girths without a word. So they rode on together in silence at a steady canter, and the girl’s hands were empty of rein or switch. Her mount was a quiet, inoffensive buggy-horse; and his, one of her small brother’s ponies. Short of the farther gate, he pulled them both up suddenly.
“Do you know,” said he, “that your father is a very innocent man?”
“Indeed!” said Irralie, who had thought often and bitterly of her father since falling into the clutches of this wretch.
“Yes! Just imagine the skipper turning in with a dangerous pirate in irons in his deck-house! Nice thing to do, was it not?”
Irralie would not speak; that very thought had ‘been her own.
“Well,” proceeded the other, “you mustn’t be too hard on the poor unfortunate skipper! He has bad teeth. He mentioned the matter to me. I asked to see the inside of his medicine-chest, and ever since he’s been lying on his own store floor, full to the nose with chloral! I thought it a good thing done,” he concluded, laughing; “but I only wish to heaven I could have got quit of that confounded pig-headed overseer as cheap!”
Still Irralie refused to speak; and now they were at the farther gate. This also had been left open; but it had swung to again; and as Stingaree leaned over to push it open, Irralie raised the pommel which she had unscrewed from her saddle, and struck the screw with all her might into the hand that held her reins. In another instant she was through the gate and galloping headlong into the paddock beyond.
A scream, an oath, a shot, and then the tattoo of the pony’s hoofs pursued her into the night; but as yet the latter showed no sign of lifting; and Irralie felt that she could risk the random shots. Five followed her in quick succession, and one hummed past her ear. But she had straddled her mount, and hid her face in the mane, and her first great anxiety was at rest. She had retrieved her reins without getting them hobbled about the horse’s legs.
> The shots gave Irralie (what his polite threats and elaborate phrases had hitherto denied her) a sufficiently lurid insight into the ferocious nature of the man against whom she had pitted herself. Not that she was filled with any special loathing for the dastard who would empty his revolver upon a defenceless girl; never in the habit of claiming peculiar protection on the strength of her girlhood, she had in this case lost sight of sex, and, fully conscious that it was she who had struck the first shrewd blow, she was as fully ready for reprisal in kind. Nevertheless, the instant shooting was a revelation of character which prepared her for death at those bloody hands, should she again fall into them. But of this she never seemed in serious danger; a short, sharp chase over the salt-bush and through the scrub, and the chase was over; either the pony had stumbled, or the rider had decided that his own flight was the first consideration. Irralie, at all events, found herself cantering quite alone under a wide, sable sky; and the discovery filled her with an awe for which there had been no time in the heat of the chase itself. What was she to do? There were but two gates to the paddock; was she to go on to the one at the whim, and risk the villains there; or should she return to the gate at which she had committed her assault, and perhaps fall in with the greatest villain of them all, who would certainly murder her now? There were two other courses. She might hide all night in the heart of the paddock — say in that very clump where she had first seen Fullarton — or she might strike the horse-paddock fence, strap down the wires, lead her horse across, and so gallop back to the homestead and give the first alarm. She felt that she would risk something to do even that; and decided, after a horrible minute, in which she could only hear her own horse panting, upon the last-named course.
She gained the fence; she dismounted and strapped down the wires; she was herself in the horse-paddock, tugging at the reins; but the old buggy-horse had not made the leap when the hoofs of another broke upon her terrified ears, first galloping, then trotting, and finally only ambling down the fence. But the girl was too panic-stricken to attempt to mount. And, just as the sky seemed a shade lighter from rim to rim, and a breath of wind blew in the morning, Stingaree reined up leisurely at her side.
“Waiting for you at the gate,” said he. “You should have struck the fence higher up.”
He slipped off and led his mount back into the paddock which Irralie’s had never left. Then he undid the straps and put Irralie in her saddle again without a word on either side. Not one syllable about the blow she had dealt him; but there was now a crust of blood upon the hand that held her reins; and his features, which the night had hidden, became clearer every moment, with their weeping whiskers, the glass shining in one eye, and an expression so malevolent as to make the silence more sinister than any speech.
They cantered to the track, and thence onward to the whim; but its timbers were slow to appear against the sky, for the dawn was breaking at their backs. Irralie never opened her mouth; but once the bushranger seemed to her to slacken the pace for the express purpose of humming the 30th of the Lieder Ohne Worte to the time of the pony’s hoofs. And about five o’clock in the morning they reached the whim-driver’s hut.
A big, black-bearded, round-shouldered ruffian, looking grotesque in a white tight collar and a full suit of fashionable tweeds, all too small for him, stood at the door and expressed profane surprise at the sight of Irralie. “But,” said he, “we’ve got a bit of a startler for you, too, boss!” The light-eyed, thick-set, iron-gray whim-driver took down his ear-trumpet and turned away without a word. As for Irralie, she saw the red light of a fire in the hut as she dismounted, and she entered, calculating that it was thirteen miles from the station to the police barracks, but that Fullarton should have covered them by quarter-past four. And next moment she saw him before her eyes; he was standing in his shirt-sleeves with his back to the fire, and with an indolent, half-amused, wholly characteristic expression, which froze upon his face, however, as their eyes met.
CHAPTER XII
THE MEN AT THE HUT
“Irralie!”
“Mr. Fullarton!”
“Well! what in blazes brought him here?”
The three speakers stood aghast in a common stupefaction. It was impossible to choose between their blank, incredulous faces. But Stingaree’s eye-glass was swinging on its cord; and he turned upon huge Howie with the savage alacrity of a man uncertain of his friends.
“Easy does it, mister; he’s all right,” responded Howie, in a heavy deferential manner that fitted him no better than Fullarton’s clothes. “‘E’s done brown; come here to get the deaf ‘un to go back with ‘im and swear ‘e wasn’t Stingaree! So ‘e tumbles into a bloomin’ ‘ornet’s nest for his pains, an’ very near gets stung by a lump o’ lead; only we was two to one, w’ich settles it out o’ court. But we now delivers ‘im over to you, and glad to get the beggar off of our ‘ands.”
Fullarton had handed Irralie to an old soap-box (in lieu of a chair) by the fireside; of the others he took no more notice than to nod to her in confirmation of Howie’s report. The latter had a marked effect upon Stingaree.
“Excellent!” cried he, with the lopsided grin of all eye-glassed men. “I pictured those dear good troopers a paddock behind us; and behold them still in their beds! Your hand, my friend, your horny hand! It’s a near thing yet though. Where’s that ear-trumpet?”
It hung round the deaf-man’s neck, as he knelt scowling over the billy-can upon the fire. Stingaree seized it, thrust the end into the other’s ear, and roared through the trumpet, “Tea for the lot of us, quick as you know how!” Dawson growled, but threw a handful of tea into the can as the water broke out in bubbles; and Irralie watched him from her seat beside the fire. He refused to look at her. His face was as dark as aloes against its mat of iron-gray hair; his expression as bitter.
While the tea drew, Stingaree took Howie aside. They whispered together at the door, and the coarse, big man in the fine, tight collar and clothes, and the little whiskered dandy — all weapons and jewels — made a quaint pair, framed in the doorway, touched on one side by the warm fire-light, and on the other by that of the raw red east. Fullarton never forgot them. But Irralie, after failing in all her efforts to catch the deaf man’s sullen eye, was comparing Fullarton and Stingaree. And here the contrast was the more remarkable in that both had good looks; yet the ready, energetic, strutting bantam of a man was not only a stronger figure than his heedless, indolent, hare-brained captive; he looked still, and in the teeth of the facts, the likelier gentleman of the two.
“They’re listening — the two of ‘em!” cried Howie, suddenly. “They can ‘ear every word; let’s get outside.”
Stingaree looked round the hut; there was but the one door, and no window save those on either side of it; inner compartment there was none, and the floor was honest earth.
“All right — a few yards,” said he. “I tell you, Howie, I mean to have my way; and you know what that means. So let’s fix it here on the spot. You may go to the devil or stop where you are. I’ll have my way about the girl!”
Howie’s reply was inaudible; they were well outside the hut; but before Irralie and Fullarton could exchange more than glances, he was back, and had snatched the ear-trumpet from the deaf man’s neck. Dawson turned round with a curse, his face scrubbed by the cord; but Howie was gone, and the other made no attempt to rise or follow, but only darkened his scowl as he stirred the tea and added sugar for all.
“I know what that means,” said Fullarton. “We’re not to get at him. We shall see!”
He took a twig from a heap of logs by the fire, and scratched with his left hand on the bare, sandy ground —
HELP US AND YOU ARE SAFE.
Fullarton then pulled the whim-driver’s arm, and pointed to the words. The deaf man looked at them and got up to get pannikins without moving a muscle of his face.
“Can he read?” asked Fullarton.
“Yes; I have brought him papers myself. You should make it plainer.”
Fullarton picked up the twig and printed underneath the former line, but in characters twice the size —
I DOUBLE YOUR SCREW.
“You do, do you?” said Dawson’s voice above his head. It trembled with anger; and next moment Dawson’s heels had obliterated every word. He said no more, however, but only glared at Fullarton with quivering fists. And when he had dipped a pannikin in the tea, he spilled some of it before he could set it down at Irralie’s feet.
“Hopeless!” said Fullarton. “They are three to one.”
“For mercy’s sake try no resistance!”
“I fear it would be useless — though the sporting thing to do.”
“Don’t dream of it! He sticks at nothing. He has emptied a revolver upon me already!”
“Upon you?”
The words came hoarsely from a face which Irralie could scarcely recognize, so transfigured was it with horror and rage and incredulity.
“Yes! I struck him first — with the screw-end of my pommel — on the hand.
His blood was up; but he would do it again!”
“Would he?” cried Fullarton, as his eye roved about for a weapon; and then, “It was my fault!” he bitterly exclaimed. “I should never have left you there! But you promised to keep out of the way; and not one of them would have stood by me without some proof on my side; and this blackguard was my only hope!”
“Not one?” said Irralie, in a low voice. “Not I?”
“Not even you.”
“I think I did stand by you!”
“But not because you believed in me; out of the pure compassion of your heart; however, let that rest. It would only have terrified you to know the truth just then. And I argued that he was on his good behavior as long as he kept up the game; but I was wrong, wrong, wrong!”
He spoke so bitterly that the girl’s eyes filled with tears; or it may have been the way in which a slice of cold plum-duff had been placed beside her pannikin without a word. In the ensuing silence the raised voices of the men outside carried to the ears of those within.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 74
