Kitabı oku: «By Blow and Kiss», sayfa 10

“So,” he said. “And if I refuse to satisfy you – and I fancy it is you and not her who needs satisfying – what then?”

Ned laughed scornfully. “Then there will be nothing more to be said, and Miss Lincoln can draw her own conclusions.”

Steve stood silent a moment, and then he looked at Ess. “Will you take my word for it, Ess? There is no woman in the hut.”

She uttered a glad cry. “I knew it was wrong, Steve. I – ”

“Then you can have no objection to letting us see who is there. You will not deny there is somebody, I suppose?” said Ned.

Steve turned on him furiously. “I will let you see nothing. What infernal right have you to come shoving in here?

“The right of any decent man to see that a girl is not fooled by a blackguard,” Ned said, coolly. “To go no further than that, I have right enough.”

“Steve,” Ess cried piteously, “what need to talk of rights? Surely you will admit my right to know who is in there.”

“I will admit the right of no one – not even you, Ess,” Steve said, with his head up. “To doubt my word, that has never been refused by man or woman or child. I give you my word there is no woman in the hut.”

“Perhaps there is a back way or a window, and she has slipped out,” sneered Ned. Then his tone changed to an angry key. “What’s the use of bluffing? The game’s up, and you know it. You’re clever enough with women, we all know, but you can’t well bring two of them face to face and fool them at the same time.”

“I’ll pay you for that and for this night’s work, Ned Gunliffe,” said Steve, savagely. Then he turned to Ess. “What is it to be, Ess? Will you believe me – or not?”

“And before she answers,” said Ned, “she may take my word, and set the two to choose from. Last night, Miss Ess, I saw a woman come from this door at daybreak, and I saw Steve Knight, and I heard them speak, and I heard her promise to be here to-night. That I will swear to. I brought you here to-night knowing the woman would be here. Whether I am right or not, you can judge for yourself.”

“Steve,” Ess said in a voice half choked with sobs, “tell me it isn’t true. Tell me it’s all a mistake. Let us see who is in there. Stevie, can’t you see how you’re hurting me? Can’t you see how my love is fighting to believe you, and you won’t let it? Have you none of the love left for me that my heart is craving and aching for? Steve, Steve.”

“Your love must fight for its own hand, Ess,” said Steve, sternly. “I can give you no help.”

“You can give me no help, Steve?” she cried wonderingly. “No help?”

“I think we may go,” said Ned Gunliffe. “There is no more to be said, is there?”

A cold doubt was springing up, and flooding and chilling her heart. She made a last effort to choke it back. “Tell me there was no woman with you last night – that there is no one else you love – ”

Ned Gunliffe interrupted her. “For God’s sake, do not lower yourself any more to that man,” he cried passionately. “I cannot stand by and listen to it; and remember there is another woman there listening to it.”

His words caught her and held her rigid, her face pale, and her fingers gripped and shaking on the riding switch she carried.

“A last word,” she said hoarsely. “Can you deny all he has said? Is it true? Yes or No?”

Steve stood silent, and swiftly the chill waters of doubt were swept away in a boiling surge of rage and shame. She drew herself erect, and her voice vibrated with scorn and passion. “I can go then? I can tell myself that I have sunk to being merely another of your conquests – that, even as you held me in your arms, you were smiling to yourself to think I had been caught as easily as any of them – that you went with my kisses hot on your lips straight to another woman – that wherever I go I am to be pointed and laughed at behind my back as one more of Fly-by-Night’s girls. Oh, I could hate myself, even as I hate you.”

Steve took a step forward and held his arms out to her. “Will you let me speak to you alone for one minute, Ess?” he said. Even in that faint light she could see something of his sunken eyes and haggard cheeks. But she could see also his half-dressed appearance, his feet thrust into unlaced boots, the jacket flung over his shoulders without a shirt beneath, and the meaning was driven home to her by Ned Gunliffe’s words – “Aren’t we keeping you from your – from the woman you have just left?” he said sneeringly.

Steve swung round on him with a bitter oath and jerked a revolver from his pocket. “Get back,” he snapped at him; “get back, you hound, or I’ll shoot you as you stand. D’you think I can’t see your hand in this? D’you think I don’t see the game you’re playing?”

He took another step forward, but Ess stepped to meet him.

“He is going,” she said, “and I am going with him. He is right, and we are keeping you from – from her.”

She laid a bitter emphasis on the last word, and at that his rage caught fire from hers and flared through him like flame through a dead gum.

“Then go with him,” he snarled, “and let him keep you if he can. He’ll find it hard to do, if you shed all your loves as easy as you shed mine.”

Her anger twisted his words to even more than they were ever meant. “Keep me,” she panted, “you hound – ” and lifted the whip she carried and struck him full across the face. “Do you think all men and women are light-o’loves like yourself? He has asked me to marry him, and although I did not answer before, I’ll answer him now – Yes, if he will have one who has soiled herself to think she ever loved you.”

And now the leaping flame of his rage died down and hid itself behind light and mocking words, even as the searing red heart of the fire cloaks itself under light and feathery ash.

He stood and looked at her for ten long heart-beats, and then his taut figure slacked, he half turned and lounged back a step, and threw his head up with a mocking laugh.

“So-ho, that’s it?” he cried. “You turn the trick then, Ned? I congratulate you on the win – if not on the way you played the hand.”

“Take your congratulations with you to – where you’ll end,” said Ned Gunliffe.

Steve laughed again. “To where I’ll end? So the game’s not played out with me yet. Perhaps you plan the wedding day for the day I’m hanged. But I may cheat you yet, Ned, and live to send you a wedding present. A neat design, say, of hands clasped through a hangman’s noose.”

“Let us go,” said Ess in low tones to Ned Gunliffe. She felt weak and exhausted, and near the point of breaking down.

“Or, perhaps,” said Steve, “you would prefer me to wait here till you can make sure of me. Are the troopers waiting below, may I ask?”

Ned Gunliffe turned his head. “You are free to go – for all of us,” he flung back.

“Thank you,” said Steve. “Fortunate for me, I suppose, that we were not married. The gallows would have been needed then to free her, and you’d have brought the troopers with you.”

They went down the hill together, leaving him still standing there, laughing softly, but horribly.

CHAPTER XIV

The two went back to where they had left the horses, and mounted and rode back in the rapidly growing light without speaking any word, and it was not till they were descending the slope of the Ridge to the houses that Ess broke the silence.

“There is no need to speak of this night to anyone,” she said dully. “I will tell my uncle what I think I need, and no more.”

“Very well,” he said briefly, and after a little he went on, “Of course you will understand, Miss Ess, that I hold you in no way to what you said of myself back there. You were overwrought, and I understand, although you had better know that I will still hope.”

“The word I gave I will keep,” she said, “if you still wish it, as indeed I can hardly expect.”

“Wish it?” he exclaimed ardently. “It is the one wish – ” he checked himself and finished quietly, “But I will say no more now. You have passed through enough for one night.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said in the same dull tones; “nothing matters – now.”

Scottie was shocked and amazed when he saw her again. “Are ye ill, lass?” he said. “Ye’re lookin’ like a ghost.”

“No, I’m not ill,” she answered. “Please take no notice of me. I’m upset over something – that’s all.”

“Ye’d tell me, lass, if it was onything I could help ye in?” he said very tenderly.

Her lip quivered. “Yes, uncle, I would tell you. But it’s nothing you can help me in. Nobody can help me.”

Later that evening, when they were sitting together, Scottie pretending to read, but covertly and anxiously watching her, and she sitting with her sewing idle in her lap and her eyes set on nothing, she roused herself and said, “I’ve broken everything off with Steve Knight, uncle. Please don’t ask me any questions, or make it any harder for me. It is all over now.” She waited a little to offer him the chance to speak, but beyond a low “Vera weel, lass,” he said nothing.

“And I’ve promised to marry Ned Gunliffe,” she continued, “although I’d rather it wasn’t spoken of just yet.”

Scottie sat in silence turning over the two items, and trying to find a possible reason for them.

“I’ll no ask questions, Ess,” he said at last, “but I hope ye’re no just goin’ on hearsay, or on tales ye may have heard. Whiles things get sair distorted, an’ it’s hard tae judge. I’m loathe to think Steve wad hae gie’n ye cause – ”

“No more loathe than I was,” she said bitterly. “But I’m not acting on hearsay. I’ve seen him, and – everything is ended. Let us say no more, please.”

Scottie was a good deal worried by all this, but he wisely decided to let things take their course, and wait for what turned up. He had other worries enough on his hands at that time too, and for the next few days Ess was left a good deal to herself.

The work of keeping the sheep together, and of protecting them from dingoes and foxes, and at the same time letting them have a chance to find feed enough to let them live, was keeping all the hands of Coolongolong hard at work.

The hills were about burnt and eaten bare, and pool after pool was drying up, while the heat and the “dry spell” showed no signs of breaking. Everyone still spoke of it as “the dry spell,” and none were willing to call it “the drought.”

That had been spoken of and warned against often enough before, but for years now it had always broken in time, and the rains had come to turn the hills and plains into plentiful pastures and an abundance of feed. There had been good season after good season, and many of the places out back had stocked and stocked till now, when the pinch came, owners began to wonder if they had not overstocked, and if it would not have paid better not to have eaten the pastures out so bare.

Sinclair, the boss, drove often up to Thunder Ridge, and as far into the hills as his sulky and trotters would take him.

He stayed often at the Ridge for the night, and Ess was always glad to see him and listen to the cheery word he still had, in spite of the black disaster that was creeping near him again.

“We won the first round,” he said to her once. “We got them into the hills, and you know how near a thing that was. Well, we’re not done, and we might win through yet – might win through yet.”

“If only the rain would come,” she said, looking out on the aching sun glare. “I’m so tired of the sun and things.”

“You’re looking worn,” he said kindly. “You mustn’t let it get you down, my dear. It’s not much of a place for a woman, I know, and I wouldn’t let my own come into it just now. They’d be willing enough to come if I’d let them, but it’ll be time enough for that when I can’t afford to send them down to the sea for the summer. They tell me they’ve had good showers again round the coast.”

“Oh, and not a drop here,” she cried. “Isn’t it hard?”

“It’s hard, it’s hard,” he said. “But it’s a hard country, one way and another.”

“I’ve heard that before, so often,” she said, “and I’m beginning to see it for myself. I wonder you don’t try to find a station where the seasons and the country are kindlier.”

“We’re like they say a sailor gets about the sea,” he said. “We curse it at times, but we get it in our bones, and we wouldn’t live happy away from it. And it’s not always like this. It can batter a man to his knees one time, and, if he has grit to keep on fighting, as like as not it turns round and lifts him to his feet, and showers treasure on him with both hands. A blow and a kiss, my dear – a blow and a kiss.”

“And can one still love the thing – or the one – that gives the blow?” she said in a low voice. She was thinking of another blow. He looked keenly and long at her.

“Yes,” he said softly, in tones to match her own; “and – it’s queer enough we’re built perhaps, but so that the kiss does come, we may love the giver the more for the blow that came before.”

“I wonder,” she said absently.

“No need to wonder, my dear,” he said gently. “Take it from me, that’s an old man, and has seen and taken a many blows and not too many kisses – if there’s any good in the heart of a man or a woman, the kiss wipes out the blow, and is the sweeter for it.”

“But a blow to one’s heart, to one’s pride, to love,” she said, leaning forward and speaking breathlessly. “Can that be forgotten, or should one be ashamed to forget it?”

“We’re speaking in parables, my dear,” the boss said, “and that’s not always wise. Straight speech and a straight road are always good things, though they don’t often run between the hearts of an old man and a young maid – the worse for the maid, maybe. But here’s my last word on it. If ever your heart, and your pride, and your love and life are beaten down into the dust, they can be raised up and healed by a kiss, given and taken, on the lips.”

“Thank you,” she said, and that was all. But to herself she said bitterly, “He doesn’t know – he can’t know.”

There was one thing that, in her secret heart, Ess was thankful for – to the work that kept the men out on the hills. She saw little of Ned Gunliffe, and although she had told of her engagement to him, and some of the men had shyly congratulated her, she was glad to have them out of the reach of their well-meant words on the subject, or of the sly and homely jests they would offer, little guessing how they hurt her.

Scottie had heard something of the night ride she and Ned Gunliffe had taken, and although he said nothing to her, he did speak, and speak sharply, to Ned.

“Understand,” he said sternly. “I’ll have nae strayvagin’ the hills by night or by day wi’ station horses an’ station men; on no business and no excuse. A man here is paid tae wark, an’ every minute he can spare from sleepin’ or eatin’, an’ every ounce o’ energy an’ strength he’s got, belongs tae the station, an’ the sheep, an’ cattle that’s sair needin’ it. An’ if I hear o’ ony man ridin’ but where he’s bid, he gets his cheque an’ his walkin’ ticket that same day.”

And now, just when he could ill spare a rider, Scottie lost one of his boldest and best, and Aleck Gault was carried in to the Ridge from the hills with a broken leg.

He had been out with two other men – Dolly Grey, who had been brought up to the Ridge from the back paddocks, where now there were no sheep to ride boundary on, and Whip Thompson.

They were pushing back into the hills in search of some of the sheep that were constantly straying in the rough country, for all their efforts to shepherd them, and when they came to the Cupped Hands, a wide bowl-shaped depression with a series of ridges running up one side, exactly like the fingers of the hands, the three men separated. Aleck and Whip rode round one side of the cup each, so as to see down into the hollows that lay outside the “Hands,” while Dolly Grey rode straight through to pick up any sheep that might be hidden there, or between the finger ridges. He was half-way through when the two men on the edges heard him yell and saw him spur his horse to a gallop. They saw, too, the tawny streak that flashed over the ground and amongst the boulders, and it did not need Dolly Grey’s warning yell of “Dingo” to tell them what it was. They circled round the edges, riding hard to intercept the chase, and volleying cracks from their stockwhips to keep the dog from turning up over the sides and down into the broken country below.

“Yoicks, tally-ho,” screamed Dolly, his hat flying and his shirt sleeves fluttering in the wind. He was on a good horse, but a dingo is a fast traveller when it is pressed, and for a little it held its own. Then Dolly began to gain, and he thundered up between two of the ridges with the spurs stabbing his horse’s sides at every leap, and his stockwhip slashing at the flying dog.

“Loose your stirrup – take your stirrup to him,” Aleck Gault shouted, and sat down and rode hard for the point where the ridge ran up and over the edge of the Cupped Hands. The grade was telling on the horse, and he was blowing hard, and the dog was gaining as they swept up and over the edge of the depression, and went racing down the other side. Dolly was still slashing with the whip, but the dog ran without swerving under the cruel cuts. “Wot was the good o’ that?” as Whip Thompson said afterwards to the contrite Dolly. “You might ha’ cut ’im in two ’alves wi’ that, an’ the ’alves would ha’ kep’ on runnin’.”

But Aleck Gault was up with the chase now, and, although the going was rough enough to make most men thankful of a full knee-grip and both stirrups, he was bending over and unslipping a stirrup leather as he rode. He shot past Dolly, running the stirrup iron to the end of the leather as he went. The ground was dipping sharply; it was littered with boulders and loose stones, and rotten with rabbit holes, but the men went down it as hard as the horses could put foot to ground, leaving them to go with a loose rein and pick a path, and carry their own and their riders’ necks unbroken.

Aleck was almost alongside the dog, and was swinging the stirrup high for a blow, when he heard a warning yell from Dolly Grey. “Ware – ” and the next second he found himself sliding full speed over a smooth slab of stone, as wide and as steeply pitched as the roof of a house. He was just conscious of the long harsh scrape of the horse’s hoofs beneath him, of the violent wrenching side lunge of its leg to save itself toppling and keep it straight, and he was down and in full gallop again. It was over before he could draw a breath, and he had no time or need to interrupt the swing of the stirrup that began at the top of the rock and ended half-a-dozen strides below it.

Straight and hard and true he hit with the full strength of his arm, and in the same breath his horse was down and rolling head over heels, and he was down with it.

“You finished ’im,” said Whip Thompson, when he recovered enough to sit up. “But ’e dash near finished you. You turned ’im over, and ’e mixed up in your ’orse’s feet an’ – wallop. Must ’ave been heavy gorged to be run down so quick. ’Ow d’you feel? The ’orse is all right.”

Aleck tried to move his leg, and grunted at the pain.

“Broken,” he said, feeling it tenderly. “Nice job to get back to the Ridge with a broken leg. Get this boot off and slit my trouser leg up, Whip, and don’t stand there glaring like a stuck pig, Dolly. See if you can find a couple of straight sticks for splints; and kill your own dingo next time, please.”

And when he was brought in to the Ridge – fainting twice on the way – and Scottie came to see him, all he had to say was “I’m dead sorry, Scottie; I know you can’t well spare a man these days.”

He was more cheerful when Ess came over to see him, and he grinned at her and exulted openly. “You’ll have to nurse me, Miss Ess,” he said. “And Ned or any other man can say what he likes. Every man is wanted on the work just now, so you’ll have to tend the job.”

“But you’re forgetting Blazes,” she said mischievously.

“Blazes!” he ejaculated. “To blazes with Blazes. Fancy Blazes doing sick nurse! And, besides, his time will be fully occupied making chicken broth and jellies, and nourishing soups and things.”

“But you won’t need stimulating foods,” said Ess with a solemn face. “They’d make you feverish. Low diet and not too much of it for you, Aleck. A little gruel and perhaps a milk pudding now and then. Fortunately we’ve plenty of tinned milk.”

“Tinned milk nothing,” said Aleck, firmly. “This is my leg that’s broke, isn’t it? Well, I know what’s good for my own leg, don’t I? And don’t you imagine I don’t know all about what a sick chap gets. I’ve never had a turn myself, but I’ve read heaps of books about it, and I know just how the beautiful nurse has to hold the patient’s hand and soothe his fevered brow with cool fingers, and so on. D’you think my brow is getting fevered now, Miss Ess?”

Ess laughed a little, but then frowned anxiously. It was just after he had been brought in, and Scottie was finishing re-tying the splints, after satisfying himself that the setting was all right. Aleck’s face was grey and drawn, and the sweat stood in heavy beads on his forehead, but he still talked cheerfully.

“Only thing wrong about this,” he said, in aggrieved tones, “is your being engaged to Ned. You ought to fall in love with me, and marry me and live happy ever after. That’s what the nurse always does in the very best books.”

Then he quietly fainted again.

Aleck never knew how she had flinched under his gay badinage of engagements and marrying. But she undertook to nurse him, and resisted as stoutly as he did the suggestions that he should be taken down to the township, where a doctor could more easily be brought to him.

“I don’t want any doctors,” he said. “You’re a good enough surgeon for me, Scottie, and know as much about broken limbs as any doctor” (as indeed Scottie did). “And, besides, a doctor would take all the credit of mending it. This is going to be Miss Ess’s job, and if she brings it out that I have to dot-and-carry-one with a short foot or a shin as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, I – I’ll marry her to pay her out.”

“I can nurse him,” said Ess. “I’ll be glad to be so useful.”

She might have been even more glad if she could have foreseen the result of Aleck’s staying at the Ridge.