The manager was right, however, and there was some salt in Tahourdin even here. Having taken up his false position, of his own free will, he was not to be chaffed out of it at theirs. He was not to be bullied out of it. He might suffer, but he would never fly from what after all was mere badinage, though of a peculiar brand. That much must be allowed. It was not the kind of chaff the jackeroo had come in for at school, though new boys at a public school plumb a very fair depth in this respect, and Tahourdin had been of the type to touch bottom. But in those days he had been freely kicked; an occasional blow would have been almost a comfort in these. They did not descend to that: he was so obviously a weakling; and their nice abstention from physical violence was an unconsciously cruel reminder of the fact. They did not visit him with the traditional torments reserved for the conventionally robust “new chum.” They did not put him on the dangerous horses. They merely mangled his somewhat peculiar patronymic whenever they addressed him. They merely discussed him in the third person as though he were not present, when he was; and that so freely and fully, amid so brisk a competition in insult, obscenity, and brutal wit, that blood and tears would rise together in the end, and the wretched youth rush choking from the room.
Once, however, he behaved differently; and the single instance must suffice to justify all generalities. If these be too strong — but the one little incident shall speak for itself.
It was a Sunday afternoon not three weeks after Tahourdin’s arrival. The heat was an outrage on man and beast. Half-naked and unkempt, with face and arms not merely sunburnt, but red raw and swollen from the burning, Tahourdin lay stretched upon his bed in the full tide of a hard-earned and duly grateful siesta. To him enter the highvoiced overseer and the big buffoon of a Hutchinson. They wake him up. He suffers this without complaint. They criticise his clothes, his trunks, his boots, his razor (a fruitful item, being in scarcely visible request), and, lastly, his home photographs upon the wall. All this he endeavours to take as he still half-believes that it is meant; but the photographs are different. At each word he winces; the more, because it is the one pretentious portrait, that of the favourite sister in her Court train, on which these vultures settle. Their vulgarity is intolerable: speak he must.
“I say, dry up!”
Not the slightest notice.
“Say what you like about anything else, but have some respect for a fellow’s people. Do you hear me? Do you hear, I say?”
They heard, but did not heed. The photograph was that of a fine young woman in compulsory white, with rounded arms and shapely neck, eyes bright from the day’s ordeal, yet not without a hint of tears, and in the upper lip contemptuous impatience of this last infliction at the photographer’s hands. Face and form appealed equally to the connoisseurs, whose insolent admiration was the final outrage. Comment capped comment, not gross exactly, not absolutely coarse, yet inconceivably boorish and underbred; until Tahourdin, his protests ignored, had torn the frame from the wall, and leapt afoot like a thin flame.
“You-cad!” he roared. “Take off your coat and come outside!”
It was the big storekeeper whom he faced, the fellow who had gone the further in clownish disrespect; and Ajax and the lightning were better matched. The absurdity of the thing silenced both aggressors. Yet at the second glance it did not look so very absurd. Tahourdin was rolling up his sleeves, and his arms were indeed like the pipe-stems to which this very enemy had often likened them. But his face, fiery enough before, was now literally blazing with present passion and long arrears of resentment combined.
“You’ll give me a hiding,” he continued. “I know that well enough. Do you think I care? I’ll mark you first! I’ll mark you for this! I’ll mark you-”
And he repeated his most opprobrious epithet, unpresentable adjective and all; and what would have become of him in the next five minutes it is happily unnecessary to speculate, for at this juncture the manager arrived upon the scene, demanding an explanation of the row, which was duly given in the overseer’s falsetto.
“You young fool,” said Glover, “what do you mean by calling Hutchy a name like that? Do you know what you deserve?”
“Yes, and I want it. Don’t stop him. I can take all he gives me. But, by Jove, I’ll mark him first!”
“My good little ass, he didn’t mean any harm. Did you, Hutchy?”
“Of course I didn’t,” said the burly storekeeper, looking hurt, for the evil word was rankling, and not the less because he had no desire to make Tahourdin swallow it with his teeth. Indeed, the man was less brute than boor; he also spoke the truth. He had not seriously exceeded the limits of legitimate “chiack.”
“You hear that, Tahourdin?” continued Glover, not unkindly. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, my word, to take a fellow up like that. Cad! That’s a nice word to chuck about! It may do in the old country, but it won’t do here.”
“I’m ready to pay for it, right or wrong!”
“But you sha’n’t. I won’t let you. No more would Hutchy. I’ve known him for years, and he’s one of the best. I thought you were a good sort, too, Tahourdin, until to-day! I thought we were all good pals! It isn’t my idea of being pals to fly at a chap like that, and call him a cad when he didn’t mean any harm. Is it yours? We’d better leave you to think it over.”
But Tahourdin was quite unable to think. He was dazed by the new light in which the manager had placed his conduct and Hutchinson’s side by side. Glover had spoken kindly; he might be right; at any rate, he had put Tahourdin pretty effectually in the wrong; and the sense of this, after such a scene and such humiliation, was more than he could bear. He could have borne it if he had bled for it. But to be put in the wrong, and yet let off, was as the very hand and seal to his dishonour; and flinging himself on the bed where they had found him, Tahourdin wept like the child he was.
The others were already laughing it off.
“But I believe he would have marked you, Hutchy! He meant having a jolly good try. By the way, what did I tell you about his grit? He’s got some, after all, you see; he’d have taken his hiding standing up.”
The overseer squeaked dissent.
“I don’t think it, Mr. Glover; he’s a fiddlin’ little fraud, if you ask me. He didn’t know what; he was doin’ of just now; he was in too much of a stink. You try him in cold blood, and he’ll back out every time.”
“You mean out of a fight?”
“Out of anything you like.”
“You don’t think he’ll ever show any more spunk than he did this afternoon?”
“He’ll take jolly good care never to show as much.”
“Oh; and what’s your opinion, Hutchy? Do you agree with George Symes?”
The storekeeper was in a somewhat delicate position.
“I do and I don’t,” said he. “Of course I wasn’t going for the cove; what’s more, he knew it. Still, I must say he ran his risk.”
“So you don’t think it was a genuine challenge?”
“I don’t know what to think of it.”
“But you also wouldn’t trust Tahourdin in a tight place?”
“No, I’m hanged if I would!”
The manager looked from one to the other of his friends, and shook his head.
“I’m sorry for you two chaps! You’re hopelessly wrong, both of you. That young ass has got the right stuff in the right place — not too much of it — but enough. He takes too much notice of himself; he’s got a lot of rot to be knocked out of him still. But if he stays here long enough he’ll turn up trumps, and when you least expect it, you bet!”
“Do you bet, old man?” inquired the cracked voice, slily.
“I’m perfectly willing to back my opinion.”
“How much for?”
“Five notes.”
“Done with you,” squeaked Symes.
“And with me?” said Hutchy.
“Another five!”
“Done again,” cried the storekeeper. “But look here: how long are we to giv
e him to play up in? He’s only here for the fun of the thing, and don’t you forget it. He may chuck it, after this.”
“Give him six months,” said Glover, “and I think he’ll stay them out. If he doesn’t make you change your opinion in that time-”
“The bet’s off?”
“Not it! I’ll pay up. But you must both play a bit lighter in the meantime; give the poor fellow a rest now and then, or you’ll spoil his nerve. I know it was me that started it, but I’m rather sorry now that I did. I don’t ask you to let him off altogether; he doesn’t deserve that; only don’t you two have quite such an almighty down on him. And I’ll win my money yet — five notes from each of you — let’s make another note of that.”
And Tahourdin thought it all came of his having shown fight at last; that was part of the comic little tragedy; but the really serious part was to follow soon enough.
It was just before Christmas that the news came in. Tahourdin first heard of it at dinner on the 23rd of December, and, in his growing confidence, was not ashamed to express his delight that there were bushrangers once more, after all these years (“for my benefit,” said Tahourdin), in New South Wales. His little aside was taken more seriously than he expected. The three sat looking at him. As a matter of fact, they had made their arrangements to nip across country to Ivanhoe races on Christmas Day; the jackeroo only was to be left behind; but this startling rumour threatened to upset all their plans.
It seemed that another station, within but fifty miles, had been stuck up in quite the old fashion: masters and men (to say nothing of some ladies) imprisoned in an underground dairy: and the place looted in a style worthy of bygone traditions. The miscreants had disappeared for the time being. None knew whence they had sprung; but they were hiding in the midst of stations, and were certain to descend upon another ere long; their choice a toss-up, so far as station-folk could judge.
“Of course I shall chuck the races,” said Glover, gloomily. “George and Hutchy can go; but I must stay here. Not that they’re the least likely to trouble us; that’s the nuisance of it.”
“Then why not leave me, as you intended?” asked Tahourdin, in a flutter. “If we’ve nothing worth robbing, what harm can they do?”
The trio looked at him.
“Rot!” said Glover.
“But I mean it. They’re not likely to come here. You say so yourself. If they did come, they’d have to go empty away.”
“There are always the horses.”
“They would need running up.”
There was a pause which left Glover looking at the other two.
“How about my bet?” said he.
Tahourdin took this to refer to the races.
“You don’t win it yet,” said Symes.
“But I will!” cried Glover. “I’ve a jolly good mind to take Tahourdin at his word, and leave him in sole charge.”
“Do!” pleaded Tahourdin.
And in the end he did.
But meanwhile no more had been heard of the bushrangers, and it was even doubted whether the original report was not a mere canard. Such things are peculiarly common in the bush, where most intelligence travels by word of mouth, and gains inevitably in the process. Either to soothe his conscience (as it seemed, indeed, to Tahourdin), or for both reasons, the commanding Glover was the first to express incredulity in the matter. Tahourdin was only too thankful to take his opinion for even more than it was worth; the other two, however, seemed doubtful. As for the rank and file of the station hands, they were never informed of the rumour; in old days it had been the rank and file of station hands who had shown a dangerous sympathy with such desperadoes.
So said Glover, and he seemed to know, though he was not the man to trust too implicitly to his own opinion. This was shown in the precautions which he took in the face of his own conviction. He helped Tahourdin to carry his bed into the store under cloud of the night of Christmas Eve. The store was a log-hut standing by itself. In it was a rack of shot - guns, and Tahourdin was given the key of a drawer full of cartridges. Before daylight the trio went off, with a led horse which the odious Symes, a magnificent horseman, was to mount in person for the Maiden Plate; before midnight, if their horseflesh could do it, they would all three be safe and sound again on G-Block.
There are many reasons why Tahourdin is never likely to forget his Christmas on that station. The day was unique in his short experience, first because he had it wholly to himself, and secondly by reason of the incredibly hot wind which blew from dawn to dewless eve. This wind had been blowing all the week, but it surpassed itself on Christmas Day. It came from the Equator in one steady burning blast, as from some fiery furnace of the gods or the gates of hell itself. It heated everything, indoors and out, with a heat independent of the sun. The water in the ewers might have come fresh from the hot tap, the bed-linen from the ironing-board. In the kitchen the Chinaman used his apron to lift a latch, and could have cooked the Christmas dinner on the four-hundred-gallon tank outside, without burning a stick. The men dozed in their hut; the crows hid in the pines; and on the homestead veranda, with the station to him self and the day his own, Tahourdin could almost feel the blood sparkling in his veins.
This is the surprising property of the hot north wind six hundred miles inland. It does not enervate like damp or sluggish heat. It scorches the nostrils and cracks the lips, but is almost bracing in its effect upon a healthy body and a sanguine soul.
Tahourdin, at all events, had never felt so well in his life, and seldom happier. He was getting on better with the others. That was much to him. But it was nothing to his excited pride in the present trust reposed in him. A chance of bushrangers, and his little self left in charge! So he put it in more than one letter that he wrote that day. It was such an opportunity for letter-writing, and such a situation to describe! There was no need to finish these letters at this sitting; it would never do to put them in suspense at South Kensington for a whole week; but he felt that he would thrill them more by writing of a present than of a past danger, and he deemed it legitimate to thrill his people when he was genuinely thrilled himself. And his mood was indeed one of suppressed but intense excitement, as even the Chinese cook might have seen when he showed himself on the veranda, and Tahourdin started to his feet like a guilty man. Then he would reconnoitre the premises at frequent intervals, while early in the morning he put a cartridge into every barrel in the store. But nothing happened, and the poor youth wrote in raptures to the end, while the perspiration ran down his nose and sometimes rattled on the crisp, hot paper, to leave blisters as of contradictory tears, and to dry before the leaf was turned. At the end of each letter a space was left, a space that Tahourdin thought to fill next day with comic lamentations on the anti-climax: so little was his heart of hearts prepared.
And yet he sat up for the others until two o’clock next morning, and only went to bed then because the wind flew round into the south, as the hot wind will at its worst, and he found himself shivering on the veranda before he realized the cause. It was a cloudy night; the change of temperature was sudden and extreme beyond belief; bed became the one place for a sane being, and even there Tahourdin required his rug. The Chinaman had retired hours earlier to his opium-reeking kennel off the kitchen; but at the men’s hut, which, however, was a quarter of a mile away, appropriate festivities had been sustained until past midnight, thereafter to sink from songs and wranglings to sudden silence with the lights still burning. Tahourdin in his innocence had been up to see the cause, and had left the scene in fitting darkness. He need not rely upon the men. It was a pity, because the bell which roused them each morning was slung from the wood-andiron gable of the store, and, though the rope hung outside as a rule, Tahourdin had been at some pains to alter this arrangement for that night. Thus a temporary extension of the bell-rope hung ready to his hand when at length he lay down in the small hours. The store door was locked and bolted; the store window was high up and barred. Tahourdin smiled in premature judgment upon the
folly and futility of it all; and, smiling, fell asleep.
He cannot have slept very long; what awoke him you will possibly guess. It was an unseen hand trying the locked and bolted door. Tahourdin was on his elbow in an instant, trembling horribly, yet exalted in that instant above his normal self.
“Who’s there?” he called, shrilly.
The answer was short and sharp: —
“Open up!”
Tahourdin found the match-box, and lit the candle at his elbow.
“I’m hanged if I do,” he said. “Who are you?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“So will some others,” shouted Tahourdin, and straightway the station - bell rang out upon the night. Outside there fell a pause, a whisper, and a brutal laugh.
“You’re a silly fool, whoever you are. The hut’s baled up, and every man a prisoner; as it happens they’re as drunk as coots, but it’d make no odds if they wasn’t. Open up, curse you, or we’ll open you!”
The door shook and rattled in a horrible manner. Tahourdin was shaking, too, but he cocked one gun, laying two others upon the counter.
“You’re the bushrangers, are you?”
“You can call us what you like; we’ll pay you in a minute!”
“Then I call you a pack of infernal ruffians and cowards; and I tell you this — you may have nobbled the men, but you don’t nobble me!
I’m bolted and barred, and jolly well armed — and I expect my bosses back any minute!
They were to have been here by midnight; they’ll be here before morning, as sure as you’ll swing before you’ve done!”
A louder laugh — a fouler oath.
“You precious innocent! We brought ‘em in ourselves, trussed up like chickens, and they’re now in the hut with the others. So much for your blessed bosses!”
Tahourdin sickened. So he stood alone!
For an instant there seemed but one thing to be done, but for an instant only. If he stood alone, he would fall alone, and after his death the bush world — nay, the world at large — would know him for what he had really been.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 525
