The leader sagged at the knees, and Blair, discovering himself a free man, turned to observe the hugger collapse with ’Enerybeyond, the boot upraised for a second blow.
“Iain’t got no time just now, ’Enery,” Blair snarled, “but when I ’aveI’ll do you up, boots and all, for trying to spoil this scrap. No one told you to interfere.”
Dugdale was still engaged in a heart-to-heart argument, and the policeman, recovering from his sickness, lurched to his feet to continue the combat. He was mightily sick, but very game.
“Takeyer time now, Giles, me lad,” Blair counselled pleasantly. “I don’t forget how you made me whitewash the jail, but I bear no malice, I don’t. Takeyer time-takeyer time!”
Giles took his time. His introduction to Fred Blair had taken place some two years earlier, and consequently he knew precisely the little man’s prowess. Swaying for a moment or two, he wiped away the imaginary lights dancing before his eyes, and then called on Mr Watts in the King’s name.
“Better do a bunk, Mister Watts,” Blair advised.
Waiting, the little terror saw Dugdale floored by a straight left which produced generous admiration for the giver of it. He saw, too, the sunlight glint on handcuffs and waited no more. The policeman was caught bending. Also he was caught unawares, and the impact of Blair’s boot sent him sprawling on his face for a yard or two beyond the gasping, prostrate Dugdale.
“Git away, Dug- I’ll manage ’em,” Blair roared.“ ’Enery, Mister Dugdale’s ’orse.”
The tumbled one was rising, but received a swinging blow against his ear which sent him down again. The second man was tripped and flung with amazing rapidity into the arms of the anxious, uncertain Mr Watts. The two station hands cheered. Then Dugdale was lifted on Tiger and the reins thrust into his hands. He was feeling giddy and sick, and almost without sense; almost but not quite, for he had sense enough to urge the grey into a smart canter along the track to the Washaways.
The leader now returned to active service. The three policemen were mad, fighting angry, for their horses had been freed from the stockyards and the prisoner was speeding away on the only horse then at the homestead.
They pummelled and fought the little bullocky till blood flowed in streams from all combatants, and till eventually superior force and superior weight bore Blair to the earth; whereupon, at long last, he was handcuffed in no gentle fashion. One eye closed, the other was closing. A broad grin developed in spite of his awful face. He said:
“For that, gentlemen all, I’ll whitewashyer blasted jail three times. It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Flash Harry Deals the Cards
FROM THURLOW LAKE to the Washaways was twenty six miles. Six miles west of the Washaways was One Tree Tank and a hut where lived a rider named Flash Harry. It was from Flash Harry that Dugdale hoped to secure a fresh mount.
Now, while the rider of Tiger still felt a little dazed-while his jaw ached and bore the mark, rapidly colouring, of the policeman’s fist-there was no real excuse for Dugdale’s forgetting the telephone wire. Not beingan habitual criminal, the cutting or breaking of the single wire between Thurlow Lake and Barrakee never entered his mind. It is probable, too, as he himselfadmits, that if he had thought of the telephone he still would have felt secure, since the possibility of further troopers barring his way was remote. But the fact was that the country was alive with policemen, all engaged, or till just then engaged, in closing in upon Sinclair before he met Knowles and his death.
Henry Lockyer was about thirty years old, tall, lank, and dark, with a hint of China in his make up. He wore brown elastic-sided riding boots, kept always in the highest condition of polish, white moleskin trousers, ever white, a black silk shirt, a sky blue kerchief, and a wide brimmed felt hat which he only removed when he went to bed.
Flash Harry was eating a late lunch-he had been out all day-and a police trooper was sitting down to a pannikin of tea and a slice of brownie, his tunic removed for ease, his peaked cap on the table beside him.
“What beats me isall this hullabaloo about a bloke who knocks a nig,” Flash Harry was saying. “Why, when I was over in West Australia a few years ago, me an’ a feller called Purple Joe shot seventeen of ’emafore breakfast one morning.”
“But New South Wales is not West Australia,” the trooper observed with a grin. “And King Henry wasn’t a wild nigger exactly.”
“Aw well, I suppose a bloke-”
Flash Harry paused in the supposition he was intending to put forward. The telephone bell rang four times, which was the ring for him; for all the huts were on the single line and each hut had its own particular ring. Languidly he got to his spurred feet and stalked to the instrument. A moment later, turning to the trooper, he said:
“One of your blokes at Thurlow Lake wanting to talk to you.”
For several minutes the trooper was engaged at the phone. Flash Harry heard references to Dugdale and Blair and McIntosh, and became interested; so, when the other resumed his seat, he inquired:
“What’s gone wrong now?”
“Seems to have been a brawl at Thurlow Lake,” the trooper told him. “Some of our fellows were instructed to arrest Dugdale, the late sub-overseer, but Blair and McIntosh barged in and Dugdale got away. He’s heading here, and I’ve to arrest him.”
“What for? What’s he done?”
“Dunno properly. Appears Dugdale has a wallet belonging to Clair. Clair and Sergeant Knowles met beyond the Paroo and Clair is dead-shot.”
“Humph!” Flash Harry regarded the youthful trooper thoughtfully. Then: “Well, you won’t have much difficulty in collaring Dugdale. He can’t cross the Washaways now-they’re running a banker.”
“Still, orders is orders, and Dugdale’s got to be apprehended. I am just going to sit here and arrest him when he walks in.”
“Humph!” Again Flash Harry looked thoughtfully at his visitor. A silence fell between them: the trooper looking forward to making an easy arrest when three of his mates had failed; Flash Harry devising ways and means of outwitting the trooper and conveying a warning to the man from whom he had invariably received courtesy and kindness. And Dugdale’s attitude to him had been the more appreciated because Flash Harry was veryselfconscious about his mixed ancestry.
The talk during the next hour was desultory. The second hour’s waiting found the troopertunicked andhatted, his horse saddled and waiting for emergencies out of sight behind the chaff-house. From where they sat they could see along the straight open track for some three miles, and dusk was falling before they espied the white gelding coming at a slow, tired walk.
“He’ll be here in ten minutes,” estimated the trooper.
“Yes-in ten minutes,” Flash Harry agreed. “I’ll put on the billy. He’ll want a drink of tea.”
The trooper continued to watch the coming horseman. He heard the rider fill the billy from the petrol-tin bucket, heard, too, more wood being put on the glowing coals of the fire. Firelight flickered on the interior walls of the hut. No one saw Flash Harry get something hard and sinister looking from a small tin trunk.
So they sat, one on each side of the table, and waited. The minutes passed slowly, till eventually they could hear the grey gelding’s hoofs softly thudding. Whilst they could plainly see Dugdale dismount, he could not see them distinctly within the hut. He walked stiffly towards them. The trooper silently rose to his feet, handcuffs ready, anticipating easy victory. And then came Flash Harry’s drawling voice:
“Better sit down, old boy, or you’ll flop down.”
The trooper looked sideways at the owner of the drawling voice, and stared with dazed wonder right into the barrel of a revolver. Dugdale entered the hut. Again Flash Harry spoke, saying something about tea being made shortly.
“Oh!”
At the threshold Dugdale paused, taking in the scene with narrowed eyes and quickly taut muscles. The trooper was fascinated by the intimidating barrel, which never wavered. Flash
Harry’s eyes gleamed beyond the small black circle, and in them the trooper saw deadly determination. The newcomer walked across to the fireplace which was behind Flash Harry.
“What’s the great scheme, Harry?” he asked.
“Oh, some feller rang up from Thurlow Lake giving orders that you were to be arrested,” Flash Harry replied evenly. “This is my hut, and there is no arrests going to be made inside it. It follows that, as I am king within these four walls, things go as I want ’emto go. Where are you heading for?”
“The river,” came from Dugdale, making tea in the now boiling billy. “That is, when I’ve had a drink of tea and a bite to eat. I’m dog tired.”
“Righto! Have a feed. The trooper an’me will give each other the glad eye.”
“Then you want to mind your step,” the uniformed man informed Flash Harry. As a policeman he was very much annoyed, but as a sportsman he was optimistic. “When my chance comes, as it will do, things will happen. They’ll happen all right in any case.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Flash Harry remarked calmly. “Somehow things are always happening to me. In my time I’ve whitewashed more jails than I have fingers and toes. In fact, me and Blair are tradesmen.”
“Are your horses in the night paddock?” Dugdale asked.
“Yaas, Mister Dugdale. You’ll have to run ’emin if you want a fresh hack. Better take ‘The Devil’-he’s lively, but he’s a great swimmer, and it’s a lot o’ swimming you’ll have to do if you want to get to the ‘Gutter’.”
“Why, is the flood down the Washaways already?”
“If the water rises another foot, orl them creeks will become a single river. Me and the trooper are going to bet a level pound that both you and The Devil gitsdrownded: at least, I’m going to bet you do, and he is going to bet you don’t.”
“I’m not going to bet he doesn’t get drowned,” the trooper cut in emphatically. “I was down along the Washaways this morning, and they are not to be crossed without wings. You haven’t got a chance in the world, Dugdale, so you may as well tell this idiot to lower his fool gun and you come quietly with me. You’ll be making more rods for your back by carrying on.”
Dugdale sighed. He was cold, stiff, and weary. Whilst still determined to carry out Sinclair’s request, he was heartily sorry that he had ever undertaken it. It seemed preposterous that such a to-do should be made over his possession of a wallet explicitly confided to him by the dying Sinclair; but, having accepted the commission, he was not going to be daunted by the difficulties ahead of him, or the consequences of his defiance of the police.
Whilst he ate and drank, Flash Harry and the trooper maintained the tableau that might well have been labelled “Stalemate”. Never for an instant did either man’s eyes wander nor did the revolver waver. It was a pose trying enough for the stoutest nerves.
“I’ll be getting along, Harry,” Dugdale said at last. “I’m grateful for your assistance, which you might extend long enough for me to catch and saddle The Devil.”
“Well, don’t be too long,”came the drawling voice. “I always have one cigarette every half hour, and I’m sure our friend is dying for a draw, too. This ’ere act finishes directly you’re mounted, ’coswe must give the trooper a sporting chance. Now, about that there bet, it’s a level chance-”
Dugdale was compelled to smile on hearing the half sentence when crossing to the night paddock gate. Yet he wasted no time. Knowing that the paddock in area was only about three hundred acres, he started to cross it quickly with the intention of getting beyond the rider’s mounts and driving them into the catching yards. But luck favoured him for once. The two loose horses were not fifty yards beyond the hut, being attracted to that part of the paddock by the stranger horse ridden by the trooper.
The Devil was a gigantic black gelding, of uncertain temper but of unquestionable courage; and it was almost dark when Dugdale had him saddled and led him towards the hut door after allowing Tiger to go in search of grass.
Flash Harry was as good as his word. Immediately Dugdale was astride The Devil, his gun dropped and the trooper rushed out and dashed for his horse. Out upon the track the black stretched his glossy neck and laid himself out into a hard gallop.
It can be truthfully said that most men are but indifferentbushmen on a dark night. Some there are, however, who can ride a straight course home when caught out in their paddocks after daylight has gone; but one bushman here and there is no less efficient on the blackest night than under the brightest sun. Dugdale was one of these latter, and an added advantage to his keen night vision was absolute knowledge of every single acre of the Barrakee run.
Knowing that the Washaways wereaflood, he realized that the point of his attempted crossing would best be about a mile below the main track, where many of the interwoven creeks formed but three separate channels. The flood having risen to the level of the creek banks, there would be no possibility of fording them, and, whilst the width of the streams was no more than sixty yards, the danger would lie in even a good horse being unable to land on the precipitous banks.
He could hear the trooper’s horse thundering along behind him, and found that he could maintain the distance between them without allowing The Devil a slack rein. That was all to the good, because the fresher in wind and muscle The Devil was when they reached the creeks the greater the chances of safely crossing them.
Five miles along the track they came to a wire fence and a gate. Dugdale saw no necessity for putting his horse at either fence or gate, and, with a quiet smile, he dismounted and opened wide the two gates. He was through them and in his saddle when the trooper swept up.
“Now, Dugdale, stop the foolery and submit,” ordered the trooper, bringing out his heavy calibre revolver and kneeing his horse towards The Devil who, under pressure, sidled away.
“Be a sport, Smithy!” coaxed Dugdale. “I opened the gate for you, and I want to shut the gate because the sheep in the two paddocks will get boxed, and Mr Thornton has enough on his hands already without having to draft about nine thousand sheep. Let one of us dismount and shut the gates while the other stands by. Once both are mounted again we stand a level chance.”
“Darn it!” the trooper cried. Being a true sportsman he should never have been a policeman. It was he who dismounted and closed the gates, and not a second before he was comfortably in the saddle did Dugdale spurt The Devil into a lightning getaway. The trooper, however, was determined. He had his duty to perform, and his revolver cracked three times in rapid succession. The first bullet flicked The Devil along his rump; the second tore a strip of trousers and strip of skin across Dugdale’s body just above his belt. The owner of Eucla Station felt as though a crowbar had struck him; The Devil “went to market”.
He screamed and then squealed with pain and outraged dignity; he almost unseated the nauseated Dugdale in a series of evil bucks that so delayed progress that the trooper was almost upon them before Dugdale could master him.
At that point, but a quarter of a mile from the first creek, The Devil was reined off the track into the soft black soil of the flood areas. Only the darkness prevented the determined Smith from again using his weapon, because a mere ten yards separated the two men during the one mile to the chosen crossing.
Praying that The Devil would avoid the box trees, the holes in the ground, and fallen branches, Dugdale suddenly swerved at a left hand angle towards the creek rushing with menacing roar between its tree lined banks. He heard the trooper shouting behind him, but caught not the words. Is it not faith that can move mountains? With such a faith did the young man urge his powerful mount in one gigantic leap far out into the racingwater.
With a mighty splash The Devil sank. With his feet free from the stirrups yet clinging to the saddle, a task demanding all his strength, Dugdale’s body went under, but not his head. He was forced upward by the horse beneath him till only the lower half of his body was submerged whilst The Devil struck out with fearless energy for the farther bank.
And a moment later he heard the trooper’s horse scream in pain when the cruel snags caught it upon their spikes-heard the trooper yell once, and only once-and then he and The Devil were swept round a bend into a temporarily quiet backwater.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Duty-and Common-Sense
THE BACKWATER into which Dugdale was swept was on that side of the creek nearer to Barrakee. The rushing waters of the main stream were invisible to horse and man, and a point of terror to the former. Hemmed in on all sides by the trees, it was impossible to see anything other than the brilliant stars; but Dugdale knew that the jutting point of ground that caused the backwater was a kind of sand bar and the only place where a horse would find a footing.
The Devil, fearful of the roaring stream, hugged the curving bank where its steepness gave him no possible chance of getting out. The man could have managed it, because the water was almost level with the bank lip; but the horse was much like a mouse in a bucket of water. Even when Dugdale got him at last on the inner side of the jutting sand bank, The Devil was forced to use all his tremendous strength to clamber up on dry land.
On the creek bank Dugdale dismounted, his mind centred upon the probable fate of Trooper Smith. That the rash policeman was drowned he thought more than probable; and, knowing of the mass of snags he and his horse had barely missed, Sinclair’s messenger estimated that nowhere else would it be possible to find Smith or his horse. If the snags had not caught their bodies, it would be useless to search for them till daylight came.
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