“Sorry to take the water-bag; but through you I’ve forgot mine and my swag too. Better try and find ‘em; they’re away back where I camped last night; you’re welcome to the drop that’s left, if there is one. You look a bit black about the gills as it is. Have a drop to show there’s no ill-feeling before I go.”
And he dangled the bag before her, meaning to whisk it back again. But Moya disappointed him. She was parched with thirst, though she only realised it now. She neither spoke nor moved a muscle.
“Then die of thirst, and be damned to you! Do you know where you are? Blind Man’s Block — Blind Man’s Block! Don’t you forget it again, because I shan’t be here to remind you; a horse was what I wanted, and was promised, so you’re only keeping that poor devil’s word for him. Give him my blessing if you ever see him again; but you never will. They say it’s an easy place to die in, this here Blind Man’s Block, but you’ll see for yourself. A nice little corpse we’ll make, won’t we? But we’ll die and rot the same, and the crows’ll have our eyes for breakfast and our innards for dinner! And do you good, you little white devil, you!”
Moya remained standing in the same attitude, with the same steady eye and the same marble pallor, long after the monster disappeared, and the last beat of the dapple-grey’s hoofs was lost among the normal wilds of the bush. Then all at once a great light leapt to her face. But it was not at anything that she had heard or seen; it was at something which had come to her very suddenly in the end. And for a long time after that, though lost and alone in Blind Man’s Block, and only too likely to die the cruel death designed for her, Moya Bethune was a happier woman than she had been for many an hour.
XIV
HIS OWN COIN
“Cooo-eee!”
It was a far cry and faint, so faint that Moya was slow to believe her ears. She had not stirred from the scene of her late encounter, but this inactivity was not without design. Moya was tired out already; she had too much sense to waste her remaining strength upon the heat of the day. She found the chewing of leaves avert the worst pangs of thirst, so long as she remained in the shade, and there she determined to rest for the present. Sooner or later she would be followed and found, and the fewer her wanderings, the quicker and easier that blessed consummation. Her plight was still perilous enough, and Moya did not blink this fact any more than others. Yet another fact there was, of which she was finally convinced, though she had yet to prove it; meanwhile the mere conviction was her stay and comfort. She was gloating over it, a leaf between her dry lips, and her aching body stretched within reach of more leaves, when she thought she heard the coo-ee.
She sat up and listened. It came again. And this time Moya was sure.
She sprang to her feet, and, deliverance within hail, realised her danger for the first time fully. Sunburnt hands put a trembling trumpet to her lips, and out came a clearer call than had come to Moya.
The answer sounded hoarse, and was as far away as ever; but prompt enough; and now Moya was as sure of the direction as of the sound itself. Nor had she occasion to coo-ee any more. For the first thing she saw, perhaps a furlong through the scrub, was a riderless horse, bridled but unsaddled, with a forefoot through the reins.
True to its unpleasant habit, the dapple-grey had done noble service to the human race, by swerving under a branch at full gallop, and scraping its rider into space.
The wretch lay helpless in the sun, with a bloody forehead and an injured spine. Moya’s water-bag had fallen clear, and lay out of his reach by a few inches which were yet too many for him to move. He demanded it as soon as she came up, but with an oath, and Moya helped herself first, drinking till her hands came close together upon the wet canvas.
“Now you can finish it,” she said, “if you’re such a fool. I’ve left you more than you deserve.”
He cursed her hideously, and a touch of unmerited compassion came upon her as she discovered how really helpless he was. So she held his head while he drained the last drop, and as it fell back he cursed her again, but began whining when she made off without a word.
“My back must be broken — I’ve no feeling in my legs. And you’d let me die alone!”
“Your own coin,” said Moya, turning at her distance.
“It wasn’t. I swear it wasn’t. I swear to God I was only doing it to frighten you! I was going for help.”
“How can you tell such lies?” asked Moya sternly.
“They’re not, they’re the solemn truth, so help me God!”
“You’re only making them worse; own they are lies, or I’m off this minute.”
“Oh, they are then, damn you!”
Only the oath was both longer and stronger.
“Swear again, and it won’t be this minute, it’ll be this very second!” cried Moya decisively. “So own, without swearing, that you did mean me to die of thirst, so far as you were concerned.”
“You never would have done it, though; they’ll be on your track by this time.”
“That may be. It doesn’t alter what you did.”
“I offered you a drink, didn’t I? It was my only chance to take the horse and the water-bag. I meant to frighten you, but that’s all. And now I’m half mad with pain and heat; you’d swear yourself if you were in my shoes; and I can’t even feel I’ve got any on!”
Moya drew a little nearer.
“Nearer, miss — nearer still! Come and stand between me and the sun. Just for a minute! It’s burning me to hell!”
Moya took no notice of the word, nor yet of the request.
“Before I do any more for you,” said she, “you must tell me the truth.”
“I have!”
“Oh, no, you haven’t: not the particular truth I want to know. I know it already. Still I mean to hear it from you. It’s the truth on quite a different matter; that’s what I want,” said Moya, and stood over the poor devil as he desired, so that at last the sun was off him, though now he had Moya’s eyes instead. “I — I wonder you can’t guess — what I’ve guessed!” she added after a pause.
But she also wondered at something else, for in that pause the blood-stained face had grown ghastlier than before, and Moya could not understand it. The man was so sorely stricken that recapture must now be his liveliest hope: why then should he fear a discovery more or less? And it was quite a little thing that Moya thought she had discovered; a little thing to him, not to her; and she proceeded to treat it as such.
“You know you’re not Captain Bovill at all,” she told him, in the quiet voice of absolutely satisfied conviction.
“Who told you that?” he roared, half raising himself for the first time, and the fear and fury in his eyes were terrible to see.
“Nobody.”
“Ah!”
“But I know it all the same. I’ve known it this last half-hour. And if I hadn’t I should know it now. I see it — where I ought to have seen it from the first — in your face.”
“You mean because my son’s not the dead spit of his father? But he never was; he took after his mother; he’ll tell you that himself.”
“It’s not what I meant,” said Moya, “though it is through the man you call your son that I know he is nothing of the kind. His father may have been a criminal; he was something else first; he would not have left a woman to perish of thirst in the bush, a woman who had done him no harm — who only wished to befriend him — who was going to marry his son!”
There were no oaths to this; but the black eyes gleamed shrewdly in the blood-stained face, and the conical head wagged where it lay.
“You never were in the hulks, you see,” said the convict; “else you’d know. No matter what a man goes in, they all come out alike, brute beasts every one. I’m all that, God help me! But I’m the man — I’m the man. Do you think he’d have held out a finger to me if I hadn’t been?”
“I’ve no doubt you convinced him that you were.”
“How can one man convince another that he’s his father?”
“I don’t know. I only
know that you have done it.”
“Why, he knew me at once!”
“Nonsense! He had never seen you before; he doesn’t remember his father.”
“Do you suppose he hasn’t seen pictures, and heard plenty? No, no; all the rest’s a true bill; but Captain Bovill I’ve lived, and Captain Bovill I’m going to die.”
Moya looked at him closely. She could not help shuddering. He saw it, and the fear of death laid hold of him, even as he sweltered in the heat.
“With a lie on your lips?” said Moya, gravely.
“It’s the truth!”
“You know it isn’t. Own it, for your own sake! Who can tell how long I shall be gone?”
“You shan’t go! You shan’t go!” he snarled and whined at once. And he clutched vainly at her skirts, the effort leaving him pale as death, and in as dire an agony.
“I must,” said Moya. “There’s the horse; the saddle’s quite near; you shall have all the help that I can bring you, with all the speed that’s possible.”
She moved away, and the ruthless sun played on every inch of him once more.
“I’m burning — burning!” he yelled. “Have I been in hell upon earth all these years to go to hell itself before I die? Move me, for Christ’s sake! Only get me into the shade, and I’ll confess — I’ll confess!”
Moya tried; but it was terrible; he shrieked with agony, foaming at the mouth, and beating her off with feeble fists. So then she flung herself bodily on an infant hop-bush, and actually uprooted it. And with this and some mallee-branches she made a gunyah over him, though he said it stifled him, and complained bitterly to the end. At the end of all Moya knelt at his feet.
“Now keep your promise.”
“What promise?” he asked with an oath, for Moya had been milder than her word.
“You said you would confess.”
“Confess what?” he cried, a new terror in his eyes. “I’m not going to die! I don’t feel like dying! I’ve no more to confess!”
“Oh, yes, you have — that you’re not his father — nor yet Captain Bovill.”
“But I tell you I am. Why—” and the pallid face lit up suddenly— “even the police know that, and you know that they know it!”
It was a random shot, but it made a visible mark, for in her instinctive certainty of the main fact Moya was only now reminded that Rigden himself had told her the same thing. Her discomfiture, however, was but momentary; she held obstinately to her intuition. The police might know it. She knew better than the police; and looking upon their quarry, and going over everything as she looked, came in a flash upon a fresh theory and a small fact in its support.
“Then they don’t know who it is they’re after!” cried Moya. “You’re not even their man; his eyes were brown; it was in the description; but yours are the blackest I ever saw.”
It was not a good point. He might well make light of it. But it was enough for Moya and her woman’s instinct; or so she said, and honestly thought for the moment. She was less satisfied when she had caught the horse and still must hear the mangled man; for he railed at her, from the gunyah she had built him, to the very end. And to Moya it seemed that there was more of triumph than of terror in his tone.
XV
THE FACT OF THE MATTER
Sergeant Harkness had his barracks to himself. To be sure, the cell was occupied; but, contrary to the usual amenities of the wilderness, such as euchre and Christian names between the sergeant and the ordinary run of prisoners, with this one Harkness would have nothing to do. It was a personal matter between them: the capital charge had divided them less. Constable and tracker had meanwhile been called out on fresh business. That was in the middle of the day. Since then the coach had passed with the mail; and Harkness had been pacing his verandah throughout the sleepiest hour of the afternoon, only pausing to read and re-read one official communication, when Moya’s habit fluttered into view towards four o’clock.
“Well, I’m dished!” exclaimed the sergeant. “And alone, too, after all!”
He hastened to meet her.
“Where on earth have you been, Miss Bethune? Do you know there’s another search-party out, looking for you this time? My sub and the tracker were fetched this morning. I’d have gone myself only — —” and he jerked a thumb towards a very small window at one end of the barracks.
“Mr. Rigden?” said Moya, lowering her voice.
“Yes.”
“So you’ve got him still! I’m glad; but I don’t want him to know I’m here. Stay — does he think I’m lost?”
“No. I thought it better not to tell him.”
“That was both wise and kind of you, Sergeant Harkness! He must know nothing just yet. I want to speak to you first.”
And she urged the dapple-grey, now flagging sorely, towards the other end of the building; but no face appeared at the little barred window; for Rigden was sound asleep in his cell.
“We’re all right,” said Moya, sliding to the ground; “we stopped at a tank and a boundary-rider’s hut, but not the Eureka boundary. I didn’t get out the same way I got in, you see — I mean out of the Blind Man’s Block.”
“Blind Man’s Block! Good God! have you been there? You’re lucky to have got out at all!”
“It wasn’t easy. I thought we should never strike a fence, and when we did I had to follow it for miles before there was a gate or a road. But the boundary-rider was very kind; he not only gave me the best meal I ever had in my life; he set me on the road to you.”
Indeed the girl was glowing, though dusty and dishevelled from head to foot. Her splendid colouring had never been more radiant, nor had the bewildered sergeant ever looked upon such brilliant eyes. But it was a feverish brilliance, and a glance would have apprised the skilled observer of a brain in the balance between endurance and suspense.
“What on earth were you doing in Blind Man’s Block?” asked Harkness, suspiciously.
“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you something else as well! But first you must tell me something, Sergeant Harkness.”
“I believe you know where he is,” quoth the sergeant, softly.
“Do you know who he is?” cried Moya, coming finely to her point.
Harkness stared harder than ever.
“Well, I thought I did — until this afternoon.”
“Who did you think it was?”
“Well, there’s no harm in saying now. Rightly or wrongly, I only told Mr. Rigden at the time. But I always thought it was Captain Bovill, the old bushranger who escaped from Pentridge two or three weeks ago.”
“Then you thought wrong,” said Moya, boldly.
Nevertheless she held her breath.
“So it seems,” growled the sergeant.
“Why does it seem so?”
It was a new voice crying, and one so tremulous that Harkness could scarcely recognise it as Miss Bethune’s.
“I’ve heard officially — —”
“What have you heard?”
“You see we were all informed of Bovill’s escape.”
“Go on! Go on!”
“So in the same way we’ve been advised of his death.”
“His — death!”
“Steady, Miss Bethune! There — allow me. We’ll get in out of the sun; he won’t hear us at this end of the verandah. Here’s a chair. That’s the ticket! Now, just one moment.”
He returned with something in a glass which Moya thought sickening. But it did her good. She ceased giggling and weeping by turns and both at once.
“So he’s dead — he’s dead! Have you told Mr. Rigden that?”
“No; I’m not seeing much of Mr. Rigden.”
“I am glad. I will tell him myself, presently. You will let me, I suppose?”
“Surely, Miss Bethune. There’s no earthly reason why he should be here, except his own obstinacy, if you’ll excuse my saying so. He was remanded this morning; but Mr. Cross of Strathavon, who signed the warrant yesterday, and came over for the examination this fore
noon, not only wanted to take bail, but offered to find it himself. Wanted to carry him off in his own buggy, he did! But Mr. Rigden said here he was, and here he’d stick until his fate was settled. Would you like to see him now?”
“Presently,” repeated Moya. “I want to hear more; then I may have something to tell you. When and where did this death occur, and what made you so sure that it was the dead man who came to Eureka? You will understand my questions in a minute.”
“Only I must answer them first,” said the sergeant, smiling. “I am to give myself clean away, am I?”
“We must all do that sometimes, Sergeant Harkness. It will be my turn directly. Let us trust each other.”
Harkness looked into her candid eyes, calmer and more steadfast for their recent tears, and his mind was made up.
“I’ll trust you,” he said; “you may do as you like about me. Perhaps you yourself have had the wish that’s father to the thought, or rather the thought that comes of the wish and nothing else? Well, then, that’s what’s been the matter with me. The moment I heard of that old rascal’s escape, like every other fellow in the force, I yearned to have the taking of him. Of course it wasn’t on the cards, hundreds of miles up-country as we are here, besides being across the border; yet when they got clear away, and headed for the Murray, there was no saying where they might or might not cast up. Well, it seems they never reached the Murray at all; but last week down in Balranald I heard a rum yarn about a stowaway aboard one of the Echuca river-steamers; they never knew he was aboard until they heard him go overboard just the other side of Balranald. Then they thought it was one of themselves, until they mustered and found none missing; and then they all swore it was a log, except the man at the wheel who’d seen it; so I pretended to think with the rest — but you bet I didn’t! I went down the river on the off-chance, but I never let on who I hoped it might be. And what with a swaggy whose swag had been stolen, and his description of the man who he swore had stolen it, I at last got on the tracks of the man I’ve lost. He was said to be an oldish man; that seemed good enough; they were both of them oldish men, the two that had escaped.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 179
