“Tell us the idee, Father,” the Stormbird pleaded, obviously careful of his speech.
Father Ryan paid Mrs Bumpus and lighted a cigar of the kind which her husband always boasted was the best Havana procurable.
“I understand the back of Windee is afire. I’m after thinking every man of us will be needed. I intend going along to do what I can, and I know quite well that you all would consider yourselves insulted if I went without you when men are wanted.”
“My...! Yes, Pardray, uv course,” drawled the Stormbird. “Uv course!”
“Naterally,” interjected a second man.
“Don’t you men be such fools as to go away from here this time of night! Have a drink on me!” shrilled Mrs Thomas, slipping off her barrel and coming towards the group via the bar counter, needed as a stay. She brought up against the Stormbird, who, stooping, leered down on her.
“Yous ain’t meanin’ no offence, are yous?” he asked softly.
Mrs Thomas sat on the floor and began to weep.
From out of the evening twilight beyond the door Mr Bumpus’s motor-hooter told them he was waiting.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Man and Dog
PICTURE A CIRCLE one mile in diameter, as dry as the Sahara, as bare of bush and tree as that great region, and the loose ankle-deep dust covering it finer than any on the Sahara, almost as fine as flour. In the centre of the circle a great earth tank, windmill, and watering troughs, and near it a ramshackle structure by courtesy called a hut. Across the circular desert a fence cutting it exactly in halves. On one side of the fence a slow-moving, milling mass of sheep from which the red dust floats upward in a long slant to the south, with a horseman on the outer edge of the mass moving slowly in a larger arc, to and fro, keeping the mass in one place hard against the fence. On the other side of the fence a similar mass of sheep, moving, ever moving, as a dull white circular disk, and—on that side farthest from the fence, and therefore farthest from the horseman—a single slow-trotting dog.
In this manner Ned Swallow and his Kelpie bitch held some six thousand sheep until help should arrive.
Beyond the hut, towards the hills, four saddle-hacks raced about the fenced horse-paddock measuring precisely one square mile in area. It was noted by the solitary man that horses always galloped so when rain was approaching, but when the sun went down this evening their liveliness was not caused by the approach of rain, but by the huge menacing cloud rising from earth to sky-vault in the north. Even the horse ridden by Ned Swallow telegraphed nervousness to his rider.
In the north-east sky hung a great mass of clouds, blue-black underneath, its west and southern edges wonderfully deep and brilliantly lit in tones ranging from white, through gold, to purple by the sun already sunk before the mulga-line horizon. The mass was passing slowly eastward. From it lightning flickered and thunder grumbled, and here and there from its black base hung diaphanous veils of falling spray, hanging but a short distance from the main cloud body, as though the spray was turned into gas or steam when it met the heated air nearer the earth. From this cloud, forty minutes before, had fallen the demon, fire.
Here and there over the remainder of the sky space sailed the iceberg clouds as seen earlier in the day by Bony, so mighty in aspect that it seemed wonderful they did not crash on the world from their very weight.
The galahs were retreating from Carr’s Tank to their roosting-places among the eastern hills. The last battalion left in the magic light that in a few minutes would be gone. Above, so high that the sunlight still held it, flew a giant eagle, no larger, as seen from the ground, than a gnat. From all sides the kangaroos came hopping in to drink, unhurried, as yet unfearful of the smoke-cloud to the north. And from the north the wind blew gently, very softly, but steadily.
Now the light on the plain died down. The edge of the scrub appeared to rush away from the man and vanish in the gathering darkness. Up from the now invisible plain eastward rose the range of hills, to remain visible for yet a little longer—hills that seemed to rest on a carpet of dark grey velvet. Constantly Swallow’s eyes searched the hills generally, and one thrusting spur in particular, for round the spur lay the track from Windee. At the last second, just before the shadows of the plain swept upward to envelop the hills, the watching man saw a rapidly lengthening ribbon of dust rise from the top to half-way down the spur, and then, cut out, become lost in the rushing shadows. Relief was coming.
The task set Ned Swallow and his dog by the Fire Demon was not a light one. One flock of sheep he could have managed to work into the mile-square horse-paddock with the help of his dog. But his dog was urgently required to keep in one place the second flock of sheep in the other paddock. To have attempted to box the two flocks, to have endeavoured to put the dog’s flock through the gate beside the dam to mix with the one he held, meant that they would lose either one or the other. One of the flocks, knowing of the attempt to hold them, would have broken away for the scrub and the miles of grass which lay in the present path of the fire. And, once there, the fire would sweep on them, chase them to the south boundary fence of the paddock, and there devour them at its will.
Swallow’s chief anxiety was the rapidly falling darkness. His dog, he knew, would not fail. It would shepherd the great flock it was sent to shepherd all night long, and not one animal would break. He, a mere man, would be less efficient than the dog. His limited eyesight would be a handicap that all his knowledge of sheep and all his bushcraft could not overcome. He would be unable to see a sheep break away, and unable, therefore, to block it and turn it back.
Along half the section of the northern horizon flickered a ruddy glow, dark red for long periods and here and there suddenly brightening into vivid scarlet, silhouetting the tops of the outstanding trees. A beam of light, brilliant and yellow, moved up and down as a searchlight on a warship, and told the anxious guardian that the car was crossing the many water-gutters that cut the track at the foot of the hills.
Presently the beam grew steady, became pointed at him as a single star of hope, a star that magically grew in size and brightness to first-magnitude dimensions, and told Swallow that the car was at last on the open plain and would reach him in a few minutes.
The plaintive baaing from the tens of hundreds of sheep drowned the roar of the racing engine, but by the continuous sound Swallow knew he still had his flock in hand.
Then he saw a star of the fifteenth magnitude burst into sight just below the edge of the blackest shadow that denoted the hills. It winked, disappeared, shone, disappeared, shone, and faded time after time, but always sinking lower to the plain. A second star of the fifteenth magnitude flashed into being, to pass through the same evolutions as the first; and Swallow wanted to shout, would have shouted, had he dared risk stampeding the sheep, for he rightly guessed that these two far-away stars were the head-lights of motor-cycles.
The lights of the car began to fall on the milling sheep, swing away, return, ever more distinctly revealing them and the dust column rising above them. Alertly Swallow watched and slowly trotted to and fro in the arc that hemmed in the flock to the fence. He saw the car pull up beside the hut. He heard then, above the chorus of complaining sheep, the low hum of the engine, and knew when the engine had been shut off to permit the occupants to listen.
Of all the men whom Swallow thought might reach him first, the very last to be thought of, if at all, were Dot and Dash. Yet it was they who reached Carr’s Tank first. Their hurried plan to escape the law had been formulated before the sun had set, and before they had reached the eastern slopes of the hills. Arrived at the summit of the hill road when dusk was deepening, Dash almost wrecked the truck against a giant boulder when he saw to the north the great whirling cloud of black smoke set on a crimson base.
“It kinda looks as if we’re in fer a rough passage,” Dot gave out as his opinion.
“If we can get to Quaker’s Swamp before the fire sweeps south and blocks us, it will certainly block for a while the police and
their trackers, Dot.”
“I guess you is right, old son,” Dot agreed. “Still, we gotta keep going like greased lightning if we want to keep ahead of them trackers. Me, I’m not afraid of the bulls, nor was I ever feared of Sheriff Dawlish back in ole Arizonee, but I kinda shiver at these yere Australian black trackers. Blood’ounds ain’t in it. Injuns are blind men compared with ’em.”
“Still, with two good horses, which I am sure Ned will not see us take, we’ve a good chance,” countered Dash cheerfully. “Besides, you’ve been right up into the Northern Territory this way twice before, and know the location of the water-holes.”
“You’re right there, ole feller. Still, I maintain that if we’ ad gone on to Windee and said’ ow-de-do to Sergeant Morris, ’e could have done little but bark if we kept our mugs shut. Providin’, that is, ’e wants us to tell ’im if we seen Marks that day.”
“My dear Dot,” Dash said, returning to his grandiloquent mode of speech, “I am not in the slightest degree perturbed as to that affair. We finalized it—as one would say in the quartermaster’s office—most satisfactorily. The only fly in our ointment is the Third Person. As I pointed out to you before, our bolting as we do lays the scent, no matter how faint, to us and away from him. Believe me, our actions have been dictated by pure altruism, and no man has made a greater sacrifice than I.”
“’Xactly!” Dot said with sudden warmth. “You make me feel as I did when the lady missionary came to our city at home and held revival meetings which Four-Eyed Brady bet me ten dollars I wouldn’t sit out. Hm! Don’t see no light in Ned’s comfortable Main Street residence—four bed, two recep., kitchen and bath h. and c., thirty-two dollars per month. Must be out.”
“May be after the sheep.”
“Some job if he is.”
Pulling up beside the unlighted hut, both men got out, whereupon Dot shouted for Ned Swallow. Just then Dash thought he heard the voice of many sheep and shut off the engine to hear the better. In the sudden following silence the sound of the two great flocks reached them as a great wave. For half a minute both men listened. The direction of the sound did not vary.
“He’s caught the sheep when they came in to water, and evidently is holding them till help arrives,” pronounced Dash with conviction.
“Sure thing, by the sound of it. Looks as if help or the bulls is gonna arrive quick.”
In the reflected glow of the headlights Dash saw his partner gazing back towards the hills, and, looking back too, saw the wide-spaced glowing stars of the two motor-cycle headlamps. As Dot had said, it meant either the police or help for Ned Swallow—Ned Swallow alone out there in the dark, working to hold six thousand sheep.
“What’s what?” demanded Dot succinctly.
For a moment of two Dash was silent. Then:
“The odds are against the police,” he drawled coolly. “As we cannot muster Ned’s loose horses without his hack, which he is sure to be riding, we had better join him, lend a hand with the sheep, and get a horse apiece when they are mustered.”
“But if it is the police?” objected Dot.
“Well, there will be only two of them, and we are, I fondly hope, two grown men.”
“I should say! Come on! Ned must kinda be getting weary. Bet yew a level dollar ’t ain’t the police?”
“No takers, Dot. You’re on almost a dead certainty.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
“The Place Fer Us”
NED SWALLOW’S SURPRISE was complete when out of the darkness two figures emerged, one of which hailed cheerfully:
“How are you enjoying yer holiday, Ned?”
“Nicely, thank you,” Swallow replied with studied politeness. “Was thinking of you drinking pints in Mount Lion. What about running your truck out hereabouts and throwing your lights on this ruddy mob? Afraid they’ll break in the darkness. Anyways, what blows you out here?”
“Explain, Dot, while I go for the truck,” requested Dash.
Whereupon the little American told Swallow that the police wanted them, but what the hell for they weren’t wise, and didn’t much care. They planned to get away up into the Northern Territory, if only for the sake of annoying Sergeant Morris. It might be he wanted them because they had failed to return Income Tax statements. As though he, of all men, would pay money to the Government so that politicians could go a-gallivantin’ around the world.
“Hear, hear!” Ned agreed heartily. “What kin I do?”
“You can lend us a ’orse each, Ned.”
“You can take yer pick.”
“We knew that, which was why we headed this way,” Dot said emphatically. “We can’t go on for ever on the truck, ’cos we can’t make gas outer mulga scrub. And ole Jeff, ’e’ll get our returns for the last load of kangaroo skins, which’ll pay ’im for the ’orses.”
At a strategic point Dash stopped the truck. The whole flock was clearly outlined in the beam of the lamps. It revealed the rising dust created by the hoofs of the flock guarded by the dog beyond the fence. It cowed, too, the more restless sheep, quietened the vast mass, and turned all heads in its direction. Even the bleating subsided a little, and they were permitted to hear the roaring exhausts of the motor-cycles when they reached the hut. Passing it, the riders came out and straddled their machines close to the three men. Cheerful greetings were exchanged, and Dot and Dash informed of the strike and its results.
Dot chuckled. One lamp’s rays fell on him, and they could see how his button of a nose wrinkled when his face widened in a gurgling laugh. Dash did not even smile. He was thinking and trying to guess exactly how much Marion Stanton knew.
“What’s your next move?” inquired one of the cyclists.
“We_____You had better not know, pardner. The less you know the better for your health,” the little man said, still chuckling.
“An’ the better for your ’ealth the sooner you clear out,” was Swallow’s advice. “Run in them ’orses, Jim.” Then, to Dot and Dash: “Give us a hand to get these woollies into the’orse-paddock, an’ I’ll fix you up with saddles. I’ll have to loan you my own, so take care of it.”
The motor-cyclists skidded away to the horse-paddock gate, which they closed behind them. Those with the sheep heard them yell with youthful excitement whilst they tore away through the paddock, in and out of low scrub, curving round scattered boulders, their headlights sweeping in wide arcs, their exhausts roaring. It was the modern way of mustering horses, and far more sporting than doing the job with a hack.
With yells and honking claxons they discovered the four horses at the farther side, and because these animals had become used to being driven into the horse-yards in a corner nearest the hut, they raced for those yards with the yelling fiends behind them.
By that time the partners and Swallow had got the latter’s flock past the windmill and dam, and jammed against the horse-paddock fence. In spite of the darkness and the dust, there was no confusion, each man knowing precisely what to do and where to be in position to edge forward the rapidly milling mob. Thirty minutes after the arrival of Dot and Dash the two flocks were safely within the small horse-paddock, there so easily to be brought out again on the plain if the fire threatened. Six thousand out of thirty thousand sheep were safe.
“Ain’t nothink we kin do till old Jeff gets out here,” Swallow announced whilst the five men drank scalding hot tea outside the ramshackle hut.
“Anyways, whatever we do won’t suit, and, as I heard Bony say the other day, ‘When in doubt do nothing’,” Jim said slowly, a young man hardly twenty. “Clever bloke, Bony! Cleverest half-nig I ever knoo.”
“M’yes,” Swallow agreed. There ensued a silence lasting a full minute, during which all faces were kept eastward, and all eyes were centred on that spot in the hills where first would become visible the lights of the trucks and the car. Swallow spoke again deliberately. “I was forgettin’ Bony,” he said. “Yes, I was forgettin’ Bony.” Turning to Dash, he added: “Some’ows I don’t like your chanc
es of gettin’ clear.”
“Why?” Dash asked imperturbably.
“’Cos wot I recolleck of Bony makes the betting heavily in his favour. When I was in Queensland he was just King Tracker.”
“If he’s put on our trail we’ll give him a good draw,” promised Dot cheerfully.
“Orl right,” Swallow said resignedly. Then, with surging hope in his voice: “I’ll lay you even money he gits you.”
“Right! How much?”
“Ten quid”—eagerly.
“Make’er twenty-five. A level hundred dollars.”
“You’re on. She stands at twenty-five quid.”
“Look! You’ll win if he’s on the first truck. Here it comes,” the second rider announced.
“It may be the car,” Swallow lit his cigarette with care. Then, jumping to his feet: “I’ll take two to one against old Jeff’s car.”
“A quid!” jumped Jim, grinning.
“An’ he’ll have the bulls with him for shore,” Dot said decidedly.
“Course! You blokes git! Come on, give us a hand to saddle the ’orses. Get’em away quick, or I’ll have it again me conschuss when I take Dot’s cash.”
And ten minutes later, when the lights of three motors were leaving the foothills of the range:
“Well, so long, Dash! So long, Dot! Keep agoin’ and keep straight for Darwin,” Swallow advised hurriedly.
“So long, everyone!” Dot drawled.
“We’ll tell’em you headed due west. You ain’t goin’ west, are you?”
“We are!” Dash confided. “Yes, we are going west. Tell them, if you can tell a lie, that we have gone south.”
“You run a danger of the fire pinching you,” the second and more silent cyclist told them.
“We’ll chance that. Well, good-bye, fellows! Thanks for your help.”
“That’s orl right, Dash. Hooroo!”
“Hooroo!”
To the little knot of men standing outside the hut the partners immediately vanished in the darkness. As Dash said they would, they rode due west with the fire now so near that they could see its flickering tongues a bare two miles away on their right flank. To both men came the same thought. If they could clear the path of the fire without turning south to escape it, it would sweep down from the north and for a little while balk pursuit. The fire also would obliterate their horses’ tracks to a very great extent.
The Sands of Windee Page 22
