Real dogs kept the mob together, but the head stood stubborn at the gate, with none to lead the way till Rigden touched the foremost fleece with his toe and the race began. Slowly and singly at the start, as the first grains slip through the hour-glass; by wondering twos and threes, as the reluctant leaders were seen alive and well in the farther paddock; thereafter by the dozen abreast, so far as the ordinary eye could judge; but Rigden was the only one that knew, as he stood in the gateway, beating time to the stampede with raised forefinger, and nodding it with bent head.
“Hundred!” he called after the first half-minute, and “hundred!” in quarter of a minute more, while Ives raised a hand each time and played five-finger exercises with the other hand upon his thigh. At the same time Rigden vanished in a yellow cloud, whence his voice came quicker and thicker, crying hundred after hundred above the dull din of a scuffling and scuttling as of a myriad mice heard through a microphone. And the dusty fleeces disappeared on one side of the cloud to reappear on the other until all were through.
“And seventy-two!” concluded Rigden hoarsely. “How many, Ives?”
“Two thousand one hundred and seventy-two,” replied the jackeroo promptly.
“Sure?”
“Certain, sir.”
“And so am I,” said Moya, riding forward, “for I kept tally too. Yes, the hundreds are all right; but nothing will convince me that they were hundreds; you might as well count the falling drops in a shower!”
Rigden smiled as he wiped the yellow deposit from his scarlet face.
“I may be one per cent. out,” said he; “but if I’m more I deserve the sack.”
So Moya allowed that it was the most marvellous performance her own eyes had ever seen; and these were full of an unconscious admiration for Rigden and his prowess; but Rigden was conscious of it, and his chin lifted, and his jaw set, and his burnt face glowed again.
Two of the musterers were told off to take the sheep to their new tank, for their own dust had set them bleating for a drink; the rest lit their pipes and turned their horses’ heads for home; but Ives was instructed to stop at the rabbiter’s camp and tell him whom to expect.
“It would be unfair to spring you on the poor chap,” said Rigden to Moya.
Ives also had a last word to say to her, though he had to say it before the boss.
“That was something to see, wasn’t it, Miss Bethune? Doesn’t it make you keener than ever on the bush? Or isn’t that possible?”
And he took off his wideawake as he shot ahead; but Rigden and Moya rode on together without speaking.
IX
PAX IN BELLO
In happier circumstances the rabbiter’s camp would have had less charm for Moya. Its strings of rabbit-skins would have offended two senses, and she would have objected openly to its nondescript dogs. The tent among the trees would never have struck Moya as a covetable asylum, while the rabbiter himself, on his haunches over the fire, could not have failed to impress her as a horrid old man and nothing else. He was certainly very ragged, and dirty, and hot; and he never said “sir,” or “miss,” or “glad to see you.” Yet he could cook a chop to the fraction of a turn; and Moya could eat it off his own tin platter, and drink tea by the pint out of a battered pannikin, with no milk in it, but more brown sugar than enough. The tea, indeed, she went so far as to commend in perfectly sincere superlatives.
“Oh, the tea’s not so dusty,” said the rabbiter grimly; “it didn’t ought to be at the price you charge for it in your store, mister! But the tea don’t matter so much; it’s the water’s the thing; and what’s the matter with the water in these here tanks, that you should go shifting all your sheep, Mr. Rigden?”
This was obviously Rigden’s business, and Moya, pricking an involuntary ear, thought that he might have said so in as many words. But Rigden knew his type, and precisely when and in what measure to ignore its good-humoured effrontery.
“It’s the sort of thing to do in time, or not at all,” said he. “You catch me wait till my sheep begin to bog!”
“Bog!” cried the rabbiter. “Who said they were beginning to bog? I tell you there’s tons of good water in this here tank; you come and look!”
And he made as if to lead the way to the long yellow lip of excavation that showed through the clump. But Rigden shook his head and smiled, under two scrutinies; and this time he did not say that he knew his own business best; but his manner betrayed no annoyance.
Moya, however, contrived to obtain a glimpse of the water as they rode away. It looked cool and plentiful in the slanting sunlight — a rippling parallelogram flecked with gold. There was very little mud about the margin.
“So it is quite an event, this mustering?”
The question had been carefully considered over a mile or so of lengthening shadows, with the cool hand of evening on their brows already. It was intended to lead up to another question, which, however, Rigden’s reply was so fortunate as to defer.
“Oh, it’s nothing to some of our other functions,” said he.
And Moya experienced such a twinge of jealousy that she was compelled to ask what those functions were; otherwise she would never know.
“First and foremost there’s the shearing; if this interests you, I wonder what you’ll think of that?” speculated Rigden, exactly as though they had no quarrel. “It’s the thing to see,” he continued, with deliberate enthusiasm: “it means mustering the whole run, that does, and travelling mob after mob to the shed; and then the drafting; that’s another thing for you to see, though it’s nothing to the scene in the shed. But it’s no good telling you about that till you’ve seen the shed itself. We shore thirty-eight thousand last year. I was over the board myself. Two dozen shearers and a round dozen rouseabouts — —”
“I’m afraid it’s Greek to me,” interrupted Moya dryly; but she wished it was not.
“ — and no swearing allowed in the shed; half-a-crown fine each time; that very old ruffian who gave us tea just now said it was a lapsus lingua when I fined him! You never know what they’ve been, not even the roughest of them. But to come back to the shed: no smoking except at given times when they all knock off for quarter-of-an-hour, and the cook’s boy comes down the board with pannikins of tea and shearers’ buns. Oh, they take good care of themselves, these chaps, I can tell you; give their cook half-a-crown a week per head, and see he earns it. Then there’s a couple of wool-pressers, a wool-sorter from Geelong, Ives branding the bales, Spicer seeing the drays loaded and keeping general tally, and the boss of the shed with his eye on everything and everybody. Oh, yes, a great sight for you — your first shearing!”
Moya shook her head without speaking, but Rigden was silenced at last. He had rattled on and on with the hope of reawakening her enthusiasm first, then her sympathy, then — but no! He could not keep it up unaided; he must have some encouragement, and she gave him none. He relapsed into silence, but presently proposed a canter. And this brought Moya to her point at last.
“Cantering won’t help us,” she cried; “do let’s be frank! It’s partly my fault for beating about the bush; it set you off talking against time, and you know it. But we aren’t anywhere near the station yet, and there’s one thing you are going to tell me before we get there. Why did you move those sheep?”
Rigden was taken aback.
“You heard me tell that rabbiter,” he replied at length.
“But not the truth,” said Moya bluntly. “You know you don’t usually have these musters at a moment’s notice; you know there was no occasion for one to-day. Do let us have the truth in this one instance — that — that I may think a little better of you, Pelham!”
It was the first time that she had called him by any name since the very beginning of their quarrel. And her voice had softened. And for one instant her hand stretched across and lay upon his arm.
“Very well!” he said brusquely. “It was to cover up some tracks.”
“Thank you,” said Moya; and her tone surprised him,
it was so free from irony, so earnest, so convincing in its simple sincerity.
“Why do you thank me?” he asked suspiciously.
“I like to be trusted,” she said. “And I like to be told the truth.”
“If only you would trust me!” he cried from his heart. “From the first I have told you all I could, and only asked you to believe that I was acting for the best in all the rest. That I can say: according to my lights I am still acting for the best. I may have done wrong legally, but morally I have not. I have simply sheltered and shielded a fellow creature who has already suffered out of all proportion to his fault; but I admit that I have done the thing thoroughly. Yes, I’ll be frank with you there. I gave him a start last night on my own horse, as indeed you know. I laid a false scent first; then I arranged this muster simply and solely to destroy the real scent. I don’t know that it was necessary; but I do know that neither the police nor anybody else will ever get on his tracks in Big Bushy; there has been too much stock over the same ground since.”
There was a grim sort of triumph in his tone, which Moya came near to sharing in her heart. She felt that she could and would share it, if only he would tell her all.
“Why keep him in Big Bushy?” she quietly inquired.
“Keep him there?” reiterated Rigden. “Who’s doing so, Moya?”
“I don’t know; but he was there this morning.”
“This morning?”
“Yes, in the hut. I saw him.”
“You saw him in the hut? The fool!” cried Rigden. “So he let you see him! Did you speak to him?”
“No, thank you,” said Moya, with unaffected disgust. “I was riding up to see whether there was any water at the hut. I turned my horse straight round, and did without.”
“And didn’t Ives see him?”
“No, he was with the sheep; when I joined him and said I could see no tank, which was perfectly true, he wanted to go back for the water himself.”
She stopped abruptly.
“Well?”
“I wouldn’t let him,” said Moya. “That’s all.”
She rode on without glancing on either hand. Dusk had fallen; there were no more shadows. The sun had set behind them; but Moya still felt the glow she could not see; and it was in like manner that she was aware also of Rigden’s long gaze.
“The second time,” he said softly at last.
“The second time what?”
This tone was sharp.
“That you’ve come to my rescue, Moya.”
“That I’ve descended to your level, you mean!”
He caught her rein angrily.
“You’ve no right to say that without knowing!”
“Whose fault is it that I don’t know?”
He loosed her rein and caught her hand instead, and held it against all resistance. Yet Moya did not resist. He hurt her, and she welcomed the pain.
“Moya, I would tell you this moment if I thought it would be for your good and mine. It wouldn’t — so why should I? It is something that you would never, never forgive!”
“You mean the secret of the man’s hold upon you?”
“Yes,” he said, after a pause.
“You are wrong,” said Moya, quickly. “It shows how little you know me! I could forgive anything — anything — that is past and over. Anything but your refusal to trust me ... when as you say yourself ... I have twice over....”
She was shaking in her saddle, in a fit of suppressed sobbing the more violent for its very silence. In the deep gloaming it might have been an ague that had seized her; but some tears fell upon his hand holding hers; and next moment that arm was round her waist. Luckily the horses were tired out. And so for a little her head lay on his shoulder as though there were no space between, the while he whispered in her ear with all the eloquence he possessed, and all the passion she desired.
In this she must trust him, else indeed let her never trust him with her life! But she would — she would? Surely one secret withheld was not to part them for all time! And she loved the place after all, he could see that she loved it, nor did she deny it when he paused; she would love the life, he saw that too, and again there was no denial. They had been so happy yesterday! They could be so happy all their lives! But for that it was not necessary that they should tell each other everything. It was not as if he was going to question her right to have and to keep secrets of her own. She was welcome to as many as ever she liked. He happened to know, for example (as a matter of fact, it was notorious), that he was not the first man whom she had fancied she cared about. But did he ask questions about the others? Well, then, she should remember that in his favour. And yet — and yet — she had stood nobly by him in spite of all her feelings! And yes, she had earned the right to know more — to know all — when he remembered that he was risking his liberty and her happiness, and that she had countenanced the risk in her own despite! Ah, if only he were sure of her and her forgiveness; if only he were sure!
“You talk as though you had committed some crime yourself,” said Moya; “well, I don’t care if you have, so long as you tell me all about it. There is nothing I wouldn’t forgive — nothing upon earth — except such secrets from the girl you profess to love.”
She had got rid of his arm some time before this, but their hands were still joined in the deepening twilight, until at this he dropped hers suddenly.
“Profess!” he echoed. “Profess, do I? You know better than that, at all events! Upon my soul I’ve a good mind to tell you after that, and chance the consequences!”
His anger charmed her, as the anger of the right man should charm the right woman. And this time it was she who sought his hand.
“Then tell me now,” she whispered. “And you shall see how you have misjudged me.”
It was hard on Moya that he was not listening, for she had used no such tone towards him these four-and-twenty hours. And listening he was, but to another sound which reached her also in the pause. It was the thud and jingle of approaching horsemen. Another minute and the white trappings of the mounted police showed through the dusk.
“That you, Mr. Rigden?” said a queer voice for the sergeant. “Can you give us a word, please?”
Rigden had but time to glance at Moya.
“I’ll ride on slowly,” she said at once; and she rode on the better part of a mile, leaving the way entirely to her good bush steed. At last there was quite a thunder of overtaking hoofs, and Rigden reined up beside her, with the sergeant not far behind. Moya looked round, and the sergeant was without his men, at tactful range.
“Do they guess anything?” whispered Moya.
“Not they!”
“Sure the others haven’t gone on to scour Big Bushy?”
“No, only to cross it on their way back. They’ve given it up, Moya! The sergeant’s just coming back for dinner.”
His tone had been more triumphant before his triumph was certain, but Moya did not notice this.
“I’m so glad,” she whispered, half mischievously, and caught his hand under cloud of early night.
“Are you?” said Rigden, wistfully. “Then I suppose you’ll say you’re glad about something else. You won’t be when the time comes! But now it’s all over you shall have your way, Moya; come for a stroll after dinner, and I’ll tell you — every — single — thing!”
X
THE TRUTH BY INCHES
He told her with his back against the gate leading into Butcher-boy. Moya heard him and stood still. Behind her rose the station pines, and through the pines peeped hut and house, in shadow below, but with each particular roof like a clean tablecloth in the glare of the risen moon. A high light or so showed in the verandah underneath; this was Bethune’s shirt-front, that the sergeant’s breeches, and those transitory red-hot pin-heads their cigars. Rigden had superb sight. He could see all this at something like a furlong’s range. Yet all that he did see was Moya with the moon upon her, a feathery and white silhouette, edged with a greater whiteness, and crowned
as with gold.
“Your father!”
“Yes, I am his son and heir.”
Her tone was low with grief and horror, but his was unintentionally sardonic. It jarred upon the woman, and reacted against the man. Moya’s first feeling had been undefiled by self; but in an instant her tears were poisoned at their fount.
“And you told me your father was dead!”
The new note was one of the eternal scale between man and woman. It was the note of unbridled reproach.
“Never in so many words, I think,” said Rigden, unfortunately.
“In so many words!” echoed Moya, but the sneer was her last. “I hate such contemptible distinctions!” she cried out honestly. “Better have cheated me wholesale, as you did the police; there was something thorough about that.”
“And I hope that you can now see some excuse for it,” rejoined Rigden with more point.
“For that, yes!” cried Moya at once. “Oh, dear, yes, no one can blame you for screening your poor father. I forgive you for cheating the police — it would have been unnatural not to — but I never, never shall forgive you for what was unnatural — cheating me.”
Rigden took a sharper tone.
“You are too fond of that word,” said he, “and I object to it as between me and you.”
“You have earned it, though!”
“I deny it. I simply held my tongue about a tragedy in my own family which you could gain nothing by knowing. There was no cheating in that.”
“I disagree with you!” said Moya very hotly, but he went on as though she had not spoken.
“You speak as though I had hushed up something in my own life. Can’t you see the difference? He was convicted under another name; it was a thing nobody knew but ourselves; nobody need ever have known. Or so I thought,” he ended in a wretched voice.
But Moya was outwardly unmoved.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 175
