It was early next morning that Cameron's cart with its slowly moving, heavy grey horse drew up before Steve's, and Mrs. Cameron herself got down from it.
The Schoolmaster was pacing the long kitchen. He had not been still a moment since Pete M'Coll brought his news. Pete had gone back to the Wirree to see if anything more had been heard of Davey, whether he was to be brought back to the district for trial, or was being held in Melbourne. The story of his arrest had come through on the vessel that brought stores to Port Southern, but it was very vague. A rumour had reached theAlbatrossan hour or two before she was sailing that a young man saying he was David Cameron—Young Davey—Cameron of Ayrmuir's son, had been arrested for cattle-stealing, and that he and a nigger were being detained on the charge. Pete had not returned, but the Schoolmaster set about making preparations for a journey. Deirdre had packed his tucker bag; his blanket was rolled up to strap on his saddle.
"Which way are you going?" Deirdre asked.
She knew that the schooner would probably be gone before he could reach the Port, and that it would continue its passage along the coast to Rane before turning back and making for Port Phillip. He had thought of all that too.
"I'll ride," he said.
"What are you going to do," she asked anxiously.
"I don't know!"
Out of the chaos of his thoughts no plan of action had yet formed.
Then Mrs. Cameron came. Deirdre brought her into the kitchen.
"It's Mrs. Cameron, father," she said, and left them.
Farrel turned in the direction of her voice. He made a movement towards Mrs. Cameron, who was standing just within the doorway. His hand went out with a seeking motion.
"I ... I can't see you," he said, a little querulously.
Her hand met his.
She knew from his face the desperate and troubled state of mind he was in, and he, hers, from her fluttered breath and the sob that went with it.
"I've come to ask you to keep a promise," she said.
"Yes?"
"You remember the promise?"
For a moment he did not remember any words—any formal undertaking; but he knew to what she referred.
"You said ... long ago," her voice was scarcely audible, "that if ever you could do anything for me or mine—"
"Yes," he said. "If ever I can do anything, I want to."
She sank into a chair. Her hands flew to her bonnet strings. She untied them.
"You know what it is I want you to do?" she asked.
"Yes."
He felt for his chair. It was near the one she had taken. He sat down and turned his face towards her. He could just see a dim outline of her against the morning brightness. To him she was a grey figure with a heavy black shadow about her. He strained to meet her eyes again. The very magic of them seemed to illumine her face for him, show him its beautiful outlines. And yet perhaps, he did not see them at all. It was all memory and vivid imagining that gave him the illusion. He did not see her face, thin and lined with pain and loneliness, the patience and vague disappointment that had come to dwell in her eyes.
"I want you to get the boy off for me ... to have this charge removed," she said, tremulously.
The Schoolmaster knew that this was what he had meant to try to do; but now that she had asked him, he told himself that it must be done. The means employed to lift the burden of blame from Davey's shoulders he knew—would have to be very sure ones. Davey, himself, would not say anything to implicate Conal or anyone else. Evidently the story of his droving for Donald Cameron had not carried much weight.
"Yes," the Schoolmaster said, "I will."
He had no doubt of himself now that she had appealed to him.
"Oh," she cried, after a few moments. "I knew that it was some mischief to us McNab was planning. I can see it all now. I thought it was you, or Conal, he was trying to get at. McNab told Donald that cattle were being moonlighted—most of them Ayrmuir breakaways and wild cattle—at the back of our hills. But he did not know that Davey was droving for Conal, not till he asked me this morning, and I told him. I didn't know myself till a few days ago, when Davey came to me after church. Then he said he'd been working with Conal, and I begged him not to any more, and told him what his father and McNab were trying to do. He promised to come home, but he never came. I was afraid to tell his father for fear he'd never forgive him, and every day I thought Davey'd be coming in the gate. McNab knew, of course. Everybody else in the Wirree seems to have known, but us, that Davey was with Conal. It was to bring our pride in the dust, to make Davey's father the shamed and disgraced man he is, he did it. But Where's Conal? How is it he's not there with Davey? Why did Davey ever go in for this business? Why are you in it? I thought that you would never be doing anything again that would bring you under the law."
The distress and reproach in her voice hurt him.
"I thought so too," he said bitterly.
He did not attempt to excuse himself; and the sightless eyes that gazed at her did not accuse.
His mind was back to the subject between them.
"This is the concern of two men, I and another," he said. "Davey was no more than a hired drover. Besides—"
"Where is Conal?" Mrs. Cameron asked.
"Away."
His tone forbade further inquiry.
There was silence a moment.
"How does Mr. Cameron take it?"
"He's broken altogether."
"Would he"—the Schoolmaster hesitated—"would he consent to say that Davey was droving for him. There were D.C. cows in the mob."
Mrs. Cameron hesitated.
"I think he would do anything—anything in the world to get the boy off," she said.
"I don't know that it would do ... whether it would work," the Schoolmaster said a little wearily. "Probably Davey has said that he was putting the mob through for his father. He said he would if anything happened. If inquiries are made, will you tell Mr. Cameron to back up the story ... it's the only chance. Davey may have been only detained until it could be ascertained whether he is Donald Cameron's son and whether Cameron authorised him to sell the cattle. It would be a splendid opportunity to spoil McNab's game, if it could be done.... But if, for some reason I don't know of yet, it can't be worked, there's another way."
"You mean you'll say you were responsible. Davey was only a drover with you," Mrs. Cameron asked.
"Yes."
She uttered a little cry.
"It was what I meant you to do, but I can't bear to think of it," she said.
She covered her face with her hands.
The Schoolmaster was thinking deeply too; the iron of despair had entered his soul.
"What will it mean?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Three years hard labour on the roads of the Colony or other place as the judge may direct," he quoted, his voice a little uncertain.
"Tell me," she said, rising, a tide of feeling carrying fire to her eyes, dignity to her figure and a subtle timbre to her voice, "would you rather I had not come? Would you rather I had let Davey take his punishment? I'm not sure that he does not deserve it in spite of what you say."
"No!" Farrel cried, passionately.
He grasped her hand. His face fell over it.
"It is the best thing in the world ... for me ... to do something for you," he said.
Mrs. Cameron caught her breath when for a moment he carried her fingers to his lips.
"You'll look after Deirdre," he said, "if—"
"Yes."
She stood uncertainly looking at him, a pitiful, quivering emotion in her eyes; then she moved away.
"Good-bye," he said, mechanically, hearing the brush of her garments as she left the room.
"Good-bye," she said.
Deirdre saw that Mrs. Cameron's cheeks were wet with tears when she climbed into the buggy again. She did not speak, but drove silently away.
Deirdre had been rubbing Bess's nose and feeding her with handfuls of grass. When she went back to the kitchen her father was sitting with his arms over the side of his chair, his head on them. She flew to him; her arms entwined him. But he pushed her away, with unconscious roughness.
"Go away!" he whispered.
An angry pain at his grief, at Mrs. Cameron who in some way had been the cause of it, surged through Deirdre.
Pete M'Coll rode into the yard. He threw his bridle over the hitching post.
"Any news?" Deirdre asked.
He shook his head and went into the kitchen.
Later the Schoolmaster called Steve in. She heard Steve's voice raised complainingly, her father's, with settled determination, against it. Her heart was sore. Why was he not telling her his plans as he was telling Steve?
She heard him arranging to take Pete with him to Melbourne.
"I'm going too, father," she cried, flashing into the kitchen. "What have I done that you shouldn't tell me what you are going to do. You're talking to every one else, and my heart's breaking."
The Schoolmaster drew her into his arms. "You're not coming, dear," he said. "You're best out of this. I want you to wait here with Steve till Davey comes back."
"And you too, father?"
He held her close in his arms.
"Yes, me too, of course, darling."
He crushed her face against his.
"It's great times we've had together, my darling, isn't it?" he asked. "I don't like going without you, but it's better. It's great times we've had together ... and now I'm an old blind devil that wouldn't be able to look after you properly in the town. It's not a nice place for a girl to be going about in, and I'd be no good to look after you—no more than a burden. Pete here'll be my guide and take me by the track round the swamp to Melbourne. He says he couldn't do the short cut across the swamp, but he knows the roundabout track all right. We'll have to be busy on Davey's account then. You'll be a good wife to Davey, won't you, darling? And happy as the day's long when he gets back. But you do love me, too, don't you, darling black head? For God's sake say you love me."
His voice broke.
Deirdre flung her arms about him, reckless of all but that some trouble within had forced that cry. There was a bitter undertone in his words that she did not understand, although she associated them in some way with Davey's mother and the disturbance and mental turmoil into which Davey's arrest had put him.
"I love you," she cried, "more than all the world—more than Davey, more than anyone or anything in it!"
He stooped and kissed her.
"What a jealous brute I am," he murmured, "to have taken that from you."
"There's nothing you haven't told me?" she asked, searching his face.
"No," he replied, turning his face from her and burying it in her hair.
"You haven't told me anything at all of what you're going to do to get Davey off," she said sharply.
"Oh, well," he parried. "I don't know ...I haven't decided ... it will depend upon circumstances."
He recognised the anxiety of her voice.
"You aren't going to try and get him off by putting yourself in his place, are you?" she asked, doubtfully. "You've really been less in the thing than he has, and he's young and strong and—"
"Oh no," the Schoolmaster laughed lightly. "I wouldn't try to do that!"
He went out to the stable-yard. When the Kangaroo was saddled, he took Deirdre in his arms again.
She watched him cantering down the road on the great raking grey, towards the inland plains, Pete M'Coll, on one of Steve's horses, a few yards behind him. The thought of that cry of his troubled her. Why had he said: "For God's sake, say you love me!"
The flood of her love for him rose and filled her, the love of all those early years, when he had been mother, brother and playfellow. Little pictures of his tenderness, of his gay good-fellowship, of his care, flitted before her. Because for years it had moved so tranquilly, she had scarcely realised the depth and power of that passionate affection, but now that he had called for it, showed his need of it, as he had never done even in the old days, it surged tempestuously.
"So the Schoolmaster's swearin' young Davey Cameron was no more than a hired drover to him," said McNab.
He was talking to Steve.
"What's that you're saying?"
Deirdre came to the doorway.
McNab had just arrived. A skinny, raw-boned boy from the Wirree was taking his horse and cart to the stables. She had seen it draw up a few minutes before and wondered why McNab had come. She had heard Steve's greeting to him and McNab's reply.
"Oh, there you are, Deirdre," he said, shuffling towards her and holding out his hand. She disregarded it, looking into his eyes.
McNab was in a good temper. The smile wrinkling the skin about his mouth told that he had some secret cause for being well pleased with himself and the world at large. He could afford to forgive her.
"What's that you were saying about father?" she asked.
"Haven't you heard? Why it's out of the world you are here, Steve. It's the talk of Wirreeford this business of young Davey duffin'! And the Schoolmaster says it's none of Davey Cameron's business, but his. I wasn't sure Farrel was in it meself, before—had me suspicions of course—but nothing to go on. Conal's business I knew it was; but the devil who gave him long legs knows where he is. He knew when to leave. Smells a sinking ship like a rat at sea, Conal does."
Neither Deirdre nor Steve spoke. McNab's eyes wandered from one to the other of them. He continued, chuckling, as though enjoying the joke:
"He's saying—the Schoolmaster—that Young Davey was a good stockman, and when he quarrelled with his father he gave him a job and was paying him wages, reg'lar, till he got something else to do, or went home again. And there was no more to it than that. Davey, of course, tried to bluff things out at first; but there was an information out, signed by Cameron, so the story wouldn't wash that he was on D.C.'s business."
Deirdre clenched her hands as McNab giggled; there was a malicious, slow glimmer in his eyes as they rested on her.
"When Cameron got a suspicion someone was liftin' cattle from the back hills, he was busy enough givin' information —keen enough to catch the moonlighters! But he didn't reck'n on his boy being taken in charge of a mob.
"Troopers in Melbourne didn't believe Davey's yarn about being his father's son, seein' they'd got Donald Cameron's written word against mobs coming from the South to the markets thereabouts. Farrel's story is a good 'un. He says he struck a bargain with Donald Cameron, as agent for Maitland & Co., stock and store dealers, of Cooburra, New South Wales, a couple of years ago. These beasts were to have gone over the border when next some of Maitland's stockmen were in the South; but the rivers were down, the stock rollin' fat, and prices up, so he thought it a pity to lose the market, and sent Young Davey with 'm round the swamp to Melbourne yards, not telling him details of the deal. Davey havin' had a difference with his father was glad of the job; it's a sort of challenge to Cameron. Clever of the Schoolmaster! I wonder what D.C.'ll do about it He can see it's a let-off for Davey, if he stands to it, a let-off for the Schoolmaster too. If he doesn't—well, I think Davey, 'n your father, my dear, 'll spend a bit of time on the roads.
"The queer part of the business is that though half a dozen men's beasts may be in the mob, the brands've been so neatly faked, no one can swear to 'em. All the clear skins've got Maitland's brand on. So the charge of cattle-stealin' 'll stand or fall be what Cameron says—or does. A couple of white-faced cows with D.C. on 'm are the only give-aways in the lot!"
"He won't put his own son away," blurted Steve.
"P'raps! P'raps not!"
McNab fidgeted.
"Hardly likely!" Deirdre cried.
"Mick Ross 'n Bud Morrison were in here, couple of nights ago," Steve went on. "And they said they'd swear blind none of their beasts were in the lot. All the hill settler's 'd be prepared to do the same, they said—rather than put Davey or the Schoolmaster in a fix."
"Y—es," snarled McNab, "so I'm told!"
Deirdre laughed. His disgust and disappointment delighted her.
"You didn't reckon on that, did you, Mr. McNab," she said.
She went off down the road to the paddock where Steve's two milking cows were, and presently, drove them, one swinging before the other, into the yard at the back of the shanty. She was easier in her mind than she had been since the Schoolmaster had gone—even since Davey rode out of Narrow Valley. But the sight of McNab disturbed her. She bailed and leg-roped the cows. Wondering why he had come, as she milked, and the milk fell with a gentle swish into the pail between her knees, she could not believe that it was merely to bring them the good news that Davey and the Schoolmaster were likely to get off.
She turned the cows into the paddock beside the bails and took the pail of warm, sweet-smelling milk indoors.
When she went into the kitchen McNab was sitting in the big chair by the fire. He looked up at her. The firelight showed his face and the smile that glimmered on it. He seemed to be remembering, and with triumph, that other night when he had sat there.
Steve, crouched on the bench opposite him, was shivering and sobbing.
Deirdre put the milk in its place.
"What's the matter? What have you done to him?" she cried, facing McNab.
He took a heavy chain from his pocket. It clanked with a dull, slow sound.
Steve started from his chair.
"Oh, send him away, Deirdre, send him away!" he sobbed.
Deirdre knew the meaning of the trick. She had heard it often. It was an old dodge to discover escaped convicts, this clanking of a chain near them. A man who had worn irons never forgot the sound they made, and whenever he heard it would start and tremble. The rage that burned to a white heat kept her silent a moment.
"You'd never 've thought it, would you, Deirdre? Him a lag, and you a lag's daughter?" McNab chuckled.
"It's a lie!"
"Is it? You ask—Uncle Steve. It's been a puzzle to me, more'n eighteen years, why two chaps from the Island never came for the help that was promised 'm, and they with a reward out against them. I knew they'd got safe up the river because a boat was found on the bank, beyond where M'Laughlin's is now. I meant to touch a bit of that reward, too, but it's never too late to mend, as they say."
"You'd never send us back to the Island?" Steve cried. "You'd never do that, McNab?"
"Wouldn't I?"
McNab laughed softly. He was enjoying the spectacle of Steve's whimpering, the trembling of his withered limbs—the sense of power that it gave him.
"You—" Deirdre gasped; but anger choked her.
"There, now," he interrupted. "I wouldn't be calling me names, if I were you, Deirdre. After the pretty way you treated me a month or two ago, too. Would you be forgettin', my dear? It would be a pity to make an enemy of me, as I said once before. It's a bad enemy I make, they say, and a nasty temper I've got when I'm roused. But there's nothing I wouldn't do for you, Deirdre. You can twist me round your little finger if you like."
The firelight was in his eyes.
"See here, Steve," he said. "I've got something to say to Deirdre. She's a sensible girl, got her head well-screwed on. We're old pals, me 'n Deirdre. You go outside while I talk things over with her. We'll see what can be done."
Steve scuttled across the room. He was crying helplessly, and pulled his coat sleeve across his nose as he went to the door.
"Now," McNab said genially, "you sit there, Deirdre, and we can talk."
Deirdre took the chair Steve had left. She sat very stiff and straight in it. She knew what was coming. There were fear and loathing in her eyes. But McNab only saw how great and dark they were, how red the curve of her lips, how full of vigour and grace the lines of her strong, young body.
"You know what'll happen if it's known Farrel's an escaped convict?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Port Arthur, irons 'n the rest of it! Well, nobody need know, lest I like. There's a couple of lads can prove who Steve and y'r father are, but they won't—lest I like."
"What are you going to like? That's what I want to know," Deirdre cried, her hands gripping the arms of the chair.
"Depends on you, my dear!"
He leant forward.
There was appeal in her eyes. But her eagerness, her hunted wild-bird air only stirred in McNab a lust for the capture and taming of her.
"If you promise to marry me, nothing'll be heard of it," he said.
Deirdre was not surprised. She had expected something like what he had said. The sound of it stunned her nevertheless.
"P'raps the Schoolmaster'll get off this affair of the cattle, but that's only three years," McNab said. "The other'd be till the expiration of his sentence, probably for the end of his life, my dear; 'n Steve—a month or two'd be the end of him! You're the price of their freedom. You pays y'r money and takes y'r choice, Deirdre."
Deirdre did not hear him. After all, she was thinking, this was a proposition. She was even grateful for it. Anything seemed better than helplessness, hopelessness—the terrible prospect of not being able to avert this ultimate catastrophe which threatened Dan. All that had been sensitive to joy or sorrow in her seemed dead. She realised only one overwhelming necessity. One fact, crowding out all others, filled her mind. Thad McNab had said that Dan would have to go back to the Island and that she could prevent it. She did not think of Davey at all, except to remember, vaguely, that she had promised to marry him, and that now she was going to break her promise and say that she would marry McNab, if—
She looked at him as he sat by the hearth. Misshapen, with unkempt, brakish hair and beard, turning grey, wrinkled and withered, he was no mate for her glowing youth! But what did that matter? She saw the Schoolmaster's face as she had last seen it—the dear, thin, eager face with deep lines, drawn by the sleepless ache of his heart, on it. She knew now why there had been an underlying grief and bitterness in what he said when he went away; knew that he must have been afraid of recognition and its consequences. But Mrs. Cameron had required him to save Davey. It was all plain now. Yet Deirdre realised that what he had done he would probably have done without her having to ask for it. What part had Mrs. Cameron had in his life that she could command him—that she dared ask him to lay down his life for her? What had she done for him? In the old time the Schoolmaster had said: "We owe her more than either you or I can hope to repay, Deirdre." But surely he had paid—on the night of the fires if at no other time. And now—
McNab's gaze on her recalled her mind to what he had said.
She met it steadily, unwaveringly.
Yes. She would marry him, if—Her thought went back on its track. If what? Yes, if Dan got off—if he did not get the three years. If he had to go to prison for three years, then it would be no use to marry McNab. He could not help Dan then. For three years he would have to live in a prison, wear filthy, hideous clothes, work like a beast of burden.
"I'll tell you this day week," she said.
"Think you'll know then how the trial's goin'," he snarled. "Well, there's an end to three years, don't forget, my pretty, and if he gets an acquittal on this, the other'll come out, unless—"
She measured him with her eyes.
"You marry me the day he is free of this charge—if he gets free—or on the day he gets his three years—if he's goin' to get them, and you don't want 'm to be for life."
He leaned forward, his voice husky with eagerness.
"If you change y'r mind, my dear, of course I can change mine."
He laughed uneasily, his fingers twitching.
"But I'll give you till this day week to make up y'r mind which it is to be. Then you give me y'r answer. Is it a bargain?"
"Yes," Deirdre said. She was dull and weary—beaten.
He rose from his chair and shuffled towards the door.
"Then I'll go and get the house ready for you," he cried, gleefully. "I'm not afraid what y'r answer'll be. Oh, you're snared, my pretty bird, and there's no way out for you, if you'd keep Dan Farrel, as he calls himself, out of the darbies, and him in his blindness, going to the Island again! It's taken a heap of schemin' to get you—but I set my mind on you when I saw you a slip of a girl coquettin' with Conal, at Hegarty's—the night you came back to the Wirree."
The desolation of her attitude reassured him.
"Good-bye, my pretty," he said in the doorway. "And someday, when y'r my wife, Deirdre, you'll kiss me good-bye."
He went out with a chattering clatter of laughter.
Steve came back to the kitchen.
"Have you been able to manage him, Deirdre?" he asked, feverishly. "What have you said to him? To go back there—"
His face worked pitifully; his hands twisted over each other.
"You don't know what it is like. I'd kill myself rather than go back, Deirdre. And your father! What'll he do? It'll be worse for him than for me. He's got you to think of. What did McNab say? Will he do anything for you, Deirdre? He said he would do anything in the world for you. And you'd want him to help us, wouldn't you? You wouldn't let Dan and y'r old Uncle Stevie, go over there again?"
"It'll be all right," she said, looking past him. "You mustn't think of it any more, Stevie. It was just to worry you, he said that."
"Oh, it's a wonderful girl you are!" He clung to her hand, fondling it, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Nobody here to save us, your father and me, but you, Deirdre! And you to deal with McNab—send him away with a smile—pleased with himself."
No idea of the terms McNab was likely to have made with her occurred to him.
"If only there'd been someone here to help us," she cried passionately. "If only father, or Davey, or even Conal, had been here! But to have had to meet it alone."
Her voice broke. She began to cry, finding relief in utter abandonment. Steve put his arms round her, trying to comfort her.
"Deirdre! Deirdre!" he muttered distressfully. "Don't cry! It's your father's own girl you are. So brave! Meetin' the devil himself with your clear eyes, 'n me no more than a shiverin' old corpse where he is!"
Deirdre lifted her eyes. She looked into the pathetic quiveringly childish, old face bent over her.
"It's the best thing you could have said to me—that I'm my father's own girl, Uncle Stevie," she said, "My father's girl shouldn't be crying like this when there's work—and a lot of thinking to do."
"There's bad news from Cameron's, Deirdre."
Steve came in from the road.
A bullock wagon had just passed from the Wirree. Deirdre had seen it halt up. She had seen the bullocks standing with dumb, dull patience under the yoke, swinging their tails to keep the flies off. Some of them had gone down on their knees by the roadside, while the teamster had a drink and yarned with Steve. Then she had heard the cracking of the teamster's whip, his oaths and calls to the beasts, and the creaking of the heavy, blue-washed cart as it went on again.
"What is it?" she asked breathlessly, thinking of Davey.
"Old Cameron," Steve said. "Johnny Watson says he was found dead on the road by Long Gully—a tree fallen on him—this morning."
"Steve!"
There was horror, and yet a vague relief, in her exclamation.
"Johnny says, Cameron went down to the Black Bull yesterday evening, and there was trouble between him and McNab—McNab having let him in for this cattle stealin' case, knowing Davey was in it," Steve went on. "But Thad got round him somehow, telling him that he didn't know Davey was in it, and he'd get off, anyhow, bein' Cameron's son. Buttered the old man up that way. Conal and the Schoolmaster'd be nabbed for sure, he made out. They were good enough friends when they parted only he'd had more'n a jugful, and a couple of the boys had to give him a leg-up to his horse. The brute must've shied at the dead tree near the gully, the ground was cut up round it. It fell on them both. Mrs. Cameron found 'm this morning."
"I'll go and see if there's anything I can do for her."
Deirdre took her hat down from behind the door.
Steve went on talking of Donald Cameron, muttering in his vague, childish fashion.
"However he came to get in with McNab I can't make out," he said. "There weren't no two greater enemies a while back. Oh, he was as mean as you make them, D.C., but he made his mark in the country."
Deirdre had on her hat.
"I'm going, Steve," she said. "I won't stay unless Mrs. Cameron's got no one with her; but the Rosses and Mrs. Morrison are sure to be there."
"Right, Deirdre!" he replied.
She took her bridle from its nail by the door, and went into the paddock beyond the stable, calling the chestnut. He heard her cry: "Coup lad! coup laddie!" and saw the white-stocking, at her call, come galloping across the newly-green grass, gilded with sunshine. She slipped the bridle over his head, brought him into the yard, saddled him and turned out to the road.
With thoughts of the tragedy that had befallen Mrs. Cameron, as she went along the winding track under the trees, were woven wonderings as to how Donald Cameron's sudden death would affect Davey and the Schoolmaster.
It was on the roadside by the Long Gully that Mr. Cameron had died. The old tree by the gully had fallen at last, and on Donald Cameron. At Rane, while Dan and she were living there, a man had been killed by a falling tree, but it was strange that Davey's father should have died in this way, she thought, he who had been the first settler in the hills.
She wondered if he had ring-barked the tree—score its living green wood—if he had killed it, and in turn it had killed him, pinning him to the earth with its great bulk of dead and rotting timber. She could see Davey's father, heavy, squarely-built, in shabby, dark clothes, lying beneath it, his grey hair blood-dabbled, his face bruised and blackened. The man who had conquered the wilderness had lain there, on the very road he had made, broken, cast aside—a thing that life had done with. It was as if the wilderness had taken its revenge.
She slipped from the chestnut's back in a sunny clearing and gathered a handful of freckled and golden-eyed, white honey-flowers, twisted some tendrils of creepers and blades of ferns among them, and tied them together with a long piece of grass.
When she came in sight of the weatherboard house crouching against the purple wall of the hills, Deirdre realised again what Donald Cameron had done. The cleared paddocks spread round it on every side. An orchard climbing the slope to the left showed in dark leafage against the grey and green of the forest. Cattle dappled the furthest hillside. The barns and sheds and stables behind the house formed a small village. He had made it, cleared the forest for it. He had done all this, she realised, and so much besides, and now he was dead, the man of iron will and indefatigable energy.
There were two or three of the neighbours' carts in Cameron's yard.
Deirdre opened the gate and shut it when she and White Socks had passed through. She hung the chestnut's bridle over a post by the barn, and lifted his saddle.
Speckled fowls and handsome buff and yellow pullets stalked about the yard, pecking industriously even under the legs of the Ross's and Morrison's horses, which, with harness looped back on them, their noses deep in fodder bags, stood beside the carts. In the brilliant sunshine, on a wood-stack, struck against the clear blue sky, a black rooster crowed at intervals.
Mrs. Cameron's sitting-room was in semi-darkness. Deirdre heard the hushed talking, exclamations and sound of weeping as she went into it.
"It's you, Deirdre!" Mrs. Cameron said when she saw the girl. Her voice was flat and tired; she seemed to have scarcely strength enough to speak.
Deirdre kissed her with quivering lips, and eyes welling.
The room was full of people. She did not see who they were at first in the half dark.
"If only Davey were here!" Mrs. Cameron cried.
Deirdre knelt beside her.
"Perhaps he'll come," she whispered.
"Did you gather the flowers for his father?"
Mrs. Cameron's eyes had fallen on the little bouquet in Deirdre's hands.
"I brought them for Davey," Deirdre said.
Mrs. Cameron's hands quivered in hers.
"We must keep her cheerful, not let her spirits get down," one of the visitors said in Deirdre's ear.
Jessie Ross brought in tea, and some newly-made scones.
"You must eat this now, dear, to keep up your strength," Mrs. Ross said to Mrs. Cameron, taking a chair beside her.
Mrs. Ross talked of her milking, and the calves she had poddied during the wet weather; and the other women, gathering round, talked in serious and melancholy fashion of their milking and the calves they had had trouble with during the winter. They gave each other recipes for cream cheese, and jam, and cakes to be made without eggs.
"And I've discovered a sure way of making hens lay in the winter," said Mrs. Ross.
"Have you?" replied Mrs. Cameron, listlessly.
"Yes, indeed, and I'll tell you just what it is, Mary!"
"Oh, it's of no interest to me now, with Davey away and his father gone," Mrs. Cameron cried.
She kept her hold of Deirdre's hand.
"To think of him—Davey's father—in there, Deirdre —lying so still and cold, he that was so strong and nobody could break, or turn," she said. "You haven't seen him yet. You must come with me."
"Presently, dearie, but you must drink your tea and eat this little bit of scone first," Mrs. Ross said.
The neighbours talked again nervously, cheerfully, in subdued tones, of the weather, the sales, and what the men of their households were saying about things in general.
"We mustn't let her brood," they said anxiously to each other.
Mrs. Cameron did not seem to hear or notice them. When she stood in the silent room with Deirdre looking down on the white-sheeted figure of Davey's father, she turned to the girl with a sharp cry.
"It's a sad, sad thing to be parting from your life's mate, Deirdre," she said. "To think that he should have died like that ... after all that he's done—he that made this hill country. To have gone without a word from anyone, or a clearing-up of the misunderstandings between us. And Davey not to see him again!"
She broke down and sobbed utterly.
Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Morrison took her, each by an arm, and led her back to the sitting-room. The hum of strained, subdued and cheerful conversation began again.
Mrs. Cameron went to the door with Deirdre.
"If only they'd let me be, child!" she cried, kissing her. "If only they'd let me be. It's very good of them all to bother, but if only they'd let me be!"
As the chestnut padded softly along the track home to Steve's, Deirdre wondered again what effect Donald Cameron's death would have on Davey and Dan. It would make Davey a rich man, she knew. Donald Cameron had been reputed wealthy when she and the Schoolmaster first came to the hills, and he had not been drinking long enough to have squandered much money. "It would take more than a gallon of rum to make old Cameron loosen his purse strings," she remembered having heard Conal say.
To Dan and to her it would make very little difference in the end. There would still be McNab. The train of her thought snapped. For a moment, with all her passionate youth, she envied Donald Cameron his stillness.
A night and a day remained before she would have to tell McNab that she had made her choice. Every beat of the chestnut's hoofs on the soft roadside drove what he had said into her brain. She knew no more now than she did a week ago what was going to happen to Davey and the Schoolmaster, or how the case was going. Perhaps less, since Donald Cameron's death. But her mind was made up as to what McNab's answer would be. She had never really had any doubt as to what it must be, and had asked for time as one asks to have the window open before settling down to passing the day in a dark and airless room.
Deep in her mind there was still, however, a vagrant hope, a fairy, child-like thing, a phantom assurance of the impossibility of what was demanded of her, a belief, like thistle-down, as faint and fragile, that something unheard of, miraculous, would happen to help her, and at the same time save Dan and Steve and Davey.
The big kitchen was very quiet. The log that had been smouldering on the open hearth all day broke. Deirdre swept back the scattered embers and thrust the broken ends of wood together. Flames leapt over them, lighting the room.
They penetrated the shadows that bulked, huge and shapeless, at the end of it, revealing a hoard of store casks and boxes piled almost to the roof and half-cloaked with hessian bags sewed together. The barrel of a rifle slung on the walls glimmered for a moment; the firelight showed stirrup irons and miscellaneous harnessing gear, halters and bridles hung over a peg near the door, a couple of horse-shoes nailed to it, and two or three hams in smoke-blackened bags with bunches of herbs beside them, strung up to the rafters.
A tallow dip cast a halo of garish light about Deirdre where she sat sewing; a broad gleam touched the crockery on the shelves behind her. The high-backed arm-chair in which Steve lay, slack and nodding drowsily, was drawn up before the fire.
The door to the bar, reached by a step from the kitchen, was open. A dip burned on the bench there, too, giving the dingy windows of the shanty a gleam for wayfarers. It was a wild night; the wind blowing from the south-west beat against the doors and rattled the windows of the frail building. The doors were all shut though it was still early.
Steve at last fell asleep in his chair. His heavy-laboured breathing had the sound of a child sobbing. Deirdre looked up from her work, again and again, troubled by it. It increased her sense of desperation to hear him. The sound became unendurable. She got up at last and awakened him.
"Hadn't you better go to bed, Uncle Steve," she said, impatiently. "You'll catch your death of cold like this. It's too late for anybody to be coming our way now—and a bad night. I'll lock up."
"Yes, Deirdre," he murmured sleepily; "it's a bad night and too late for anybody to be coming our way."
She pulled the bolts across the doors at the front of the shanty and locked and bolted the door from the bar into the kitchen; then she took his arm, and helped him out of his chair. He had fallen back into it, nodding drowsily again. She led him over to his room, which opened off the kitchen.
"I'll see the lights and the fires are out," she said, "but I want to finish a bit of mending before I go to bed."
"Right," he murmured. "Right, Deirdre!"
The noise of the wind carried off the droning tones of his voice; but it was only a few moments before she heard his heavy breathing again.
The Schoolmaster's sock which she was darning dropped from her hand.
She stared into the darkness beyond the dip-light. She did not want to go to bed—to be alone in the darkness with her thoughts. In the kitchen she heard the creaking gossip of the fire and the whisper of falling embers. Besides, she wanted to keep her hands and brain busy. In the darkness there would be only the voice of the wind in her ears, and that was like the crying of her heart. She listened to the wind now. A mournful, passionate thing, it murmured about the house, rising wildly, desperately, in blasts of sudden rage, and fell back into a thin, pitiful wailing of helplessness and despair. She was afraid to listen long, afraid of what this communicating, interpreting murmur might do with her reason. Yet the wind was with her, she thought. The wind knew her heart—the wind was the voice of her heart crying out there in the darkness.
She shivered, trying to banish the strange, fantastical ideas that swarmed upon her.
How to pass the night—this long night in which she must not think, or feel. To-morrow McNab would be coming. "You pays y'r money and you takes y'r choice, Deirdre," he had said. She saw his face as he had spoken, his twisted, sallow face, the glimmering of his malicious eyes, with the smile that spilled over from them. She had made her choice. She had set her mind to it. There must be no wavering. If the Schoolmaster got off, she must marry McNab; if he was sentenced to three years imprisonment there would perhaps be time to scheme and out-manoeuvre him. She would set her wits to that. But she could not think of the next day. She must think of Davey, or Dan, or Steve—any of them. There must be no shrinking, shrieking, or failing. What had to be done, had to be done, and the first thing that had to be done was to give McNab her word.
She picked up the sock she had been mending again. The needle slipped backwards and forwards, across, under and over, the dark threads. She worked steadily.
The voice of the wind drew her mind again. It tugged gently and then carried her away on its plaintive wailing. Her hands fell in her lap as she listened. Her heart swayed; it went out to the wind again.
There was a clatter of a horse's hoofs on the road. The sound startled her; but it was not until she heard the dogs barking in the yard that she realised some late rider had come to Steve's, that there would be food and drink, and probably a shakedown, to get ready. She waited for the sound of footsteps on the verandah and a rap on the door of the bar. The back-door flung open, and on a gust of wind and rain, a tall, gaunt figure swung into the kitchen.
"Conal!" Deirdre cried, and flew to him.
In her gladness at seeing him the past was a blurred page. She forgot it when she saw him in the doorway, his weather-beaten face turned to her. Her confidence in him, all the old joyous affection, rushed over her.
His face was shining with rain, his hair and beard wet. From the way his breath came and went, and the muscles were whipped out from his neck, she knew that he had been riding hard.
"They tell me Davey and Dan are on trial in Melbourne," he said.
"Yes."
"What happened? What's been doing, Deirdre?" he gasped. "I've only just heard of it. It's taken me a couple of days to get here. I don't know anything but what I've told you. Thought p'raps you could tell me something before I go up to them. And give me something to eat and drink.... I haven't had anything since yesterday morning."
He wrenched off his wet coat and dropped into Steve's chair.
He had a gauntness that Conal used not to have. But his eyes, those eyes of fierce tenderness, were the eyes of the big brotherly man who had been the companion of so many of her and the Schoolmaster's wanderings.
She quickly put some food on the table for him, set the kettle on the bar over the fire, and while he was eating told him what she knew of Davey's arrest and Dan's going to swear Davey's innocence of the charge brought against him.
"Why did he do that? Davey was more in it than he was," Conal asked savagely.
"I don't know," Deirdre hesitated. "Yes, I do, Conal. It was because Mrs. Cameron—"
"Oh, that was it, was it?"
Conal went on eating, hungrily.
"What do they say about here? Do they think Davey'll get off and Dan'll have to pay?"
"You've heard of Mr. Cameron's death, Conal?" Deirdre asked. "They say that'll make all the difference. Davey can't very well be accused of stealing his own cattle, and McNab—"
"What has he got to say about it? Of course it's his hand in it all."
"He says ... I'm the cause...."
Her voice faltered.
"What's that?"
Conal's knife and fork clattered to the table.
"Did you know ..." she asked, "did you know, Conal, Steve and father came from the Island over there?"
He moved, uneasily.
"No," he said, but uncertainly. "Who says so?"
"McNab. He did the chain trick here on Steve—scared him to death when he was by himself one afternoon. Seems he wasn't quite sure before, but Steve in his fright gave him all the proofs he wanted. And McNab's promised to use all he knows against father and Steve unless—Says he only put the troopers on to this cattle business to get you and Davey out of the way, though he had another score to work off against Mr. Cameron, too. But he says he always suspected ... about Steve and father, and was only waiting for a chance to be sure of it to make me ... make me marry him."
"By God—"
Conal spun from his chair. His oaths startled the birds from their night perches under the roof.
"He'll not do that, Deirdre!" he cried. "Not while there's life in me. Rot him—the crawler! To come here scaring the wits out of you. I'll screw the last breath out of him, before—"
He made for the door. Deirdre went after him. She put her hand on his arm.
"You'll do no good now, Conal," she said. "You're done yourself. Rest till morning. Then you can go to McNab. If he knows there's a man about to stand by me, p'raps he won't dare to do what he said."
Conal jerked himself away from her.
"No, I'll swear he won't!"
"But you'll do nothing at all if you go now," she urged, "and I'll have nobody without you. If you'll only rest and sleep now and go in the morning, it'll be better. You'll be able to put the fear of God into McNab perhaps if he sees you strong and ready to make him do what you want."
"Sleep?" He cursed under his breath. "Do you think there's any sleep'll come to me when I think that McNab—a filthy, damned swine like McNab—could come near you. I'd kill him—kill him if he touched a hair of your head."
Her hands fell from him.
Conal's face was distorted with rage. His words brought back memory of the shot that had almost killed Davey.
Conal guessed what her movement meant.
"Do you still believe"—he lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. "Do you still believe I fired that shot in the dark, Deirdre?"
"Did you, Conal?" she asked simply.
He turned from her with a gesture of disappointment.
"Oh, it was in anger, and when you weren't sure of what you were doing, I know," she cried.
He opened the door.
"You're not going to-night?" she asked.
"No. You're right. It'll be better to wait till the morning," he said, with, for Conal, a strange quietude. "I want to give the mare a rub down and a feed. Are there any bones for Sally? Throw a shakedown by the fire for me. I'll be in directly."
Conal was early astir. Deirdre heard him moving in the kitchen and then out of doors.
When he came in again, she had spread a cloth on the end of the table. Bacon and eggs were spluttering in a shallow pan on the hearth, a pot of porridge was ready for him, the kettle steaming.
Conal's face was sombre; it was easy to see that he had not slept and that his mind was set to a plan of action. He ate without speaking, and got up to go.
Ginger was standing saddled by the door, her reins trailing beside her. She cropped the young grass that showed vivid green blades about the water barrel, and was nourished by the drips from the roof spouts and leakages from the barrel itself. Deirdre heard the click, click of Ginger's snaffle, the chirping of young birds under the roof, while Conal was eating. There was a solemnity, a wrapped-up purposefulness about him this morning; she dared not ask him what he was going to do.
It was a fresh morning with frost in the air. A sparkling rime lay out on the grass in the paddocks and spread under the straggling shade of the sheds and the stables in crisp white patches. The sunshine splashed golden over the hills; it lay in long shafts of purest brilliance on the paddocks and across the stable yard.
Conal went out of doors; Deirdre followed him.
"Conal," she cried.
There was appeal in her voice.
He had gathered Ginger's reins in his hand. The mare turned her head, her great beautiful eyes on Deirdre.
"It's no good you're saying anything, Deirdre, telling me what to do and what not to do," Conal said roughly.
"I've thought it all out. I know what's got to be done. I'll do it the best way I can."
He understood the prayer of her eyes.
"D'you think I want his blood on my hands?" he asked irritably. "But he's got to let you go, Deirdre. He's got to. There's no two ways about it, and if he says a word about the Schoolmaster or Steve, he'll have to reck'n with me then—and the reckoning'll be a short one. That's the bargain I'm going to make with him. And I'll hold him responsible ... if ever the story gets out. He'll pay all the same and I'll swear that—on the soul of my mother. Do you think my life's worth a straw to me? Do you think if it is a question of yours and Dan's life against McNab's, I can hesitate?"
He threw back his head with the old reckless movement.
"Not much! Lord, I'd take what was coming to me, cheerin', if I thought I'd put things right for the Schoolmaster and you. But if a knocking about'll do Thad any good instead, he's welcome to it. If I can get what I want out of him with a scarin' there'll be no need to go further.
"If I promise him on the reddest oath under the sun, and he's pretty sure I mean it—it'll do instead, perhaps. But I'm not taking any chances of his trickin' me. I can't afford to take chances, Deirdre. If I don't feel I've got him that way—"
She knew what he meant.
"It'll be a long day till you're back, Conal," she said.
He swung into his saddle, and went out to the road. She watched the bay with her long easy stride and Conal swinging above her, till the trees hid them.
There was no doubt in her mind that when Conal let his tongue loose, unleashed the rage in him, McNab would do what he wanted. Conal was not known as "Fighting" Conal for nothing, and he was credited with being a man of his word. Reckless and dare-devil as he was, none knew better than McNab that he cared neither for God nor man when his blood was up, and that he would assuredly do as he said though the heavens fell.
Everybody knew the cringing coward McNab was. More than one of the men he had sold had threatened to wipe off old scores without leave or licence. A threat more or less might not have mattered, but each one intensified McNab's terror of the clutch of iron finger in the night, the swift blade of a knife, the short bark of a pistol. It was easy to scare Steve with a clank of a chain, but the click of a pistol behind McNab turned him livid, a greenish hue spread on his face. Deirdre knew the frenzy of McNab's fear; but she knew, too, his shrewd brain.
While Conal was there he would dominate, convert him into the shaking, shrieking thing McNab became when the fear of violence, or a violent death, took possession of him; but afterwards, when Conal was gone, his brain would get to work—that cunning brain of his, quickened by a sense of his injuries and his spluttering, passionate fear and hate of the man who had humiliated and thwarted him. Deirdre wondered how it would fare with Conal then, whether McNab would outwit him. He would try. He was made that way—McNab—to scheme out of holes and corners. If Conal would have to reckon with him in the end, she realised that it would have been better to let the reckoning be now, before any further mischief was done. Yet her mind shuddered at the thought. She knew that she had meant to delay it.
When Steve came shambling into the yard, blinking at the sunlight, she told him that Conal had returned and that he had gone down to the Black Bull, but would be back by the evening.
He exclaimed all the morning about Conal's coming, and had a thousand questions to ask. Where had Conal been? What had he been doing? Why was it he had gone off the way he did without saying a word to anybody? All of which Deirdre had not thought to ask. But they talked about Conal all the morning. Steve came in from cutting ferns for the cow-shed to ask if Conal was going to stay long. What was he going to do? Was he going up to the trial? Had she told him what McNab had said to them?
Deirdre wanted to be very busy all day so that the time would not seem long till Conal returned.
Steve with his questions made a little current of joyous excitement. Ordinarily the days were very still and empty. She swept and dusted, cooked their food, washed the dishes and sewed, with latterly only anxious thoughts to occupy her mind.
"How is he lookin'—Conal?" Steve asked, coming to the door when she was beating cream into butter in a delft bowl. He had come in as the idea for a new question occurred to him.
"Oh, well," she said, "but he'd been riding hard and was tired out. I think he's a bit thinner than he used to be, and he was awfully hungry."
"You gave him a drop of grog?" he asked, anxiously.
Deirdre nodded.
"He was wet through. I thought he'd have his death of cold to-day."
"But he was all right this morning?"
"Oh, yes."
"Where did he come from?"
She shook her head.
"Hadn't you better finish laying down the ferns," she said. "He may be back sooner than we think—and then you'll want to talk to him."
"Oh, yes!" He shuffled out of doors again.
A moment later he put his head in the window. His shabby, drooping hat was outlined against the blank of sunshine. His face looked in at her, under the shadow of his hat, bright with a question.
"What did he go to the Wirree for, Deirdre?"
"Oh!" She hesitated. "He wanted to see McNab."
"Why?"
Steve chewed the cud of a wondering thought.
"Why did he want to see McNab, Deirdre?"
"He'll tell you when he comes," she said.
The bare kitchen had the musky, warm smell of newly-baked bread and of curdy, sweet buttermilk by the afternoon. Deirdre had made bread and new butter for Conal. She had prepared a good meal for him when he came home in the evening. After she had scrubbed the wooden table until it was of a weathered whiteness, and redded the bricks round the hearth, she looked about for other household tasks to work at so that the day would seem shorter.
It was late in the afternoon when she brushed her hair, twisted it up anew, put on a fresh frock, and sat down to sew until Conal came. Steve went out to the road every now and then to see if there were any signs of him.
Deirdre glanced at the shadows the trees cast. She dared not expect Conal before sunset. Her needle flew in and out of a piece of stiff unbleached linen Mrs. Cameron had given her some time ago. She thought of her when she was afraid to think of Conal and what was happening in Wirreeford.
The sun sank behind the distant line of hills, and the Jackasses on the high branches of a tree by the road laughed their good-night to the sun. She could not restrain her impatience any longer, and went to the road. Her eyes strained to see Conal and his bay horse, forging out of the gloom that was beginning to gather amongst the trees, hanging mysterious, impalpable veils across the ends of the track where the trees met over it, and it dwindled into a wavering thread.
She lay down by the roadside, and pressed her ear to the earth to listen for the sound of hoof-beats, but only the forest murmurs came to her, the moan of the wind in the valleys, the leafy murmur of the trees, the creaking of broken and swaying branches, the faint calling of birds, all confused and mingled in a vague wave of sound.
The last hoot hoot of the jackasses in the misty depths of the hills drifted across the quiet evening air. The cows had gathered against the paddock fence and were lowing plaintively for the evening milking.
Deirdre drove them into the yard and milked. When she had taken the pails indoors, she went again to the road, gazed down into the darkness that had now gathered over the track, and listened for the rapid beat of hoofs on the road.
A glimmer of light in the shanty windows told Deirdre that Steve had lighted up. He came to the door.
"Conal's late, Deirdre?" he called.
"Yes," she replied.
She stood there quite still staring down the road.
"What do you think can have kept him?"
Steve had come out and was standing beside her.
Her face was very wan to his old eyes; her dark hair blew in tendrils about it.
"I—don't know!"
She saw the anxiety start in his eyes.
"Oh, it's all right!" She took his arm and they went towards the house again.
"He'll be having a game of cards with the boys. It's too soon to expect him, that's all. We'll go in and have supper."
She spread the table and put out the hot dinner she had made for Conal. Steve's hunger increased at the savoury smell of it, and because it was later than they usually had their meal, he ate steadily and with ready relish. Deirdre sat down at the table with him.
"Aren't you going to have anything?" he asked when he saw that she was not eating.
"I'll wait for Conal," she said.
Steve dozed in his chair afterwards. The night that closed in on the forest was of a soft, thick darkness. Deirdre stood in the doorway looking out into it for while. Not a star hung its silver lamp over the hills. The wind crept with slow, uncertain breaths about the shanty. She shut the door.
She carried her work-basket, with the socks that she had been mending the night before, to the table. But she could not work; her hands would not stir. She sat listening, listening, listening.
Steve had taken out his pipe and sucked it, nodding in his chair by the fire. His teeth relaxed their grip as he dozed; the pipe fell on the floor. Deirdre started to her feet as the sound broke the stillness. It wakened him too. He stared stupidly about him with sleep-dazed eyes.
"What's that?" he asked. "Has Conal come yet?"
"No," she said, picking up the pipe. "Perhaps you'd better not wait up for him."
"Yes! Yes!" he muttered testily. "Of course I'll wait."
He sank back into his chair and presently was sleeping again.
Deirdre went back to the table and sat there staring before her, listening fixedly. Hour after hour went by.
A quick breath crossed her lips; she ran to the door and threw it open.
A gust of wind rushed into the room, and it brought the sound of a horse on the road. She slammed the door and went back to the hearth, raked the embers and pulled back the log so that it fell with a shower of sparks and the flames leapt up over the new wood. She moved the pots with Conal's dinner in them nearer the fire, and opening the door again, stood by it waiting.
Ginger swung round the corner, and Conal on her. He was riding low, huddled against her neck. The way he dropped from the saddle drove the breath from Deirdre's body.
He threw out his arms and staggered forward. He would have fallen if she had not been there to hold him. She dragged him indoors leaning against her.
"Steve—Steve!" she called.
The old man was beside her in an instant.
Conal had fallen, his legs crumpling up under him. There was a stain of blood on his clothes.
Deirdre tore them from the place where the blood welled. She put the brandy Steve brought to Conal's lips, and sent Steve for water and rags, telling him where to find the soft scraps she kept together for burns or cuts.
"It's like the wound Davey had," Steve cried, when he saw the way the flesh was ploughed up on Conal's breast, "only nearer the heart."
Conal moaned as the cold water struck him. A damp sweat lay on his forehead.
"It's all up—I'm done for," he muttered. "Give me—your hand, Deirdre—never—never thought I'd reach you—but I couldn't die—there—in the dark—down by the creek."
His voice failed.
"Don't try to talk, Conal dear," she begged. "You'll be all right if you keep quiet—lie still—Davey was."
But there was a greyness about Conal's face, a dimness that Davey's had not had.
"Davey?" he muttered. "Davey—"
His eyes opened; they were the wild, bright eyes, reckless and challenging, of Fighting Conal.
"You—believe—I shot Davey?"
"No." Deirdre bent over him, her breath coming sobbingly. "I don't believe it now, Conal. The same hands that did this to you—did it to Davey, too—"
"A damn', whispering slug in the dark!" he gasped. "It was by the culvert over the creek too—from the cover of the trees—And I know whose hand it was—I saw the slinking hound. By God—why did I let him off? Why did I think I'd got him tight enough."
He sank back against her arm with a spasm of pain. She put the spirit to his lips.
"If only I'd choked—the life out of him, I could die easy. But the mare bolted—I couldn't get her back to him. The lying cur! The bargain was made—I thought I'd got him—that he'd 've made over his last penny to me. Someone kept me talking outside the Bull—it was that kid minds his horses—saying that Ginger'd gone lame—and the next thing was a shot from the creek and McNab scuttling among the trees. Paugh!" he moved impatiently, "Why didn't I do for him while I had the chance."
Superhuman strength animating him for a moment he struggled up, his swart face stiffening, his eyes flashing.
"I can! I'm alive yet—I can, Deirdre."
He swayed and she caught him, breaking the shock of his fall backwards. Blood welled from the open wound; the wet pads had staunched the flow for a moment. Steve brought more water. She dipped fresh linen and rags in it and bound them into place. Conal lay heavy and still.
She bent over him; her eyes turned questioningly to Steve.
She lifted Conal's head on to her knees. The silence was unbroken.
"Conal," she whispered as though she were calling him, "Conal!"
"That you, Deirdre?" he asked huskily, but he did not open his eyes. "If—if you could—kiss me—it's so hard to go—feeling you near—and that you don't care for me at all. If only I hadn't failed you—this time! If only—But it was because of you I didn't want to—kill him—unless—unless it was necessary. It seemed all right—the other way—You won't think badly of me, Deirdre?"
"No, no, Conal dear, but don't try to talk now."
"I've been hard on you—Deirdre—But you won't think ill of me. It's the way men are made—and I didn't understand how it was with you—and Davey—not till that night in the hut. If I hadn't brought trouble between you—you might forgive me."
"Conal, Conal," Deirdre sobbed, the tears streaming over her face. "You're dear to me, yourself—dear in your own way. Haven't you always been—and I haven't been good to you—always. My heart's breaking to hear you talk like this."
She bent over and kissed him.
Conal opened his eyes. The mellow light of serene happiness had drifted into them. They rested on her face as though they were loath to leave it. His long fingers were knotted about her hands.
"I'm happier than ever I was in my life, Deirdre, darling," he whispered. She had to stoop over him to catch the words on his lips, so faint and hoarsely uttered they were, as though the thoughts left him without his lips having power to form them. "Never expected to put my head on your knees—hold your hand—like this. It would never have happened, if I'd lived, so it's good to die. You'll look after Ginger—'ginger for pluck'—dear old devil—never 've got here—but for her. And Sally—good old Sally—not a cattle mong' Like her—countryside."
The ghost of a smile flitted over his lips.
"If only—"
Recollection of McNab came, banishing the peaceful happiness from his face. His eyes blazed. There was a momentary struggle for breath and he fell back fighting for life. Then, on a long sigh, he was still.
Deirdre tried the brandy again. She called him. She felt for his heart. His head was very heavy on her knees. She stared down on the finely chiselled features, so still, upraised before her. Her tears rained over them. The quiet was unbroken but for Steve's crying like a child.
Then Sally, lying crouched against the door of the hut, lifted her voice in a long, mournful howl that told the shrouded hills and all the creatures of them that the soul of her master, Long Conal—Conal, the Fighter—had passed on.