Summer had come and gone, and come again before Gerrard received a visit
from Aulain. Early one scorching, hot morning, however, he rode up to
the station, leading a pack-horse, and found his friend busy in the
branding yard with Jim, and some white and aboriginal stockmen. Gerrard
was delighted to see him, and at once ceased his work of branding
calves.
“Come to the house, Aulain. My sister will be so pleased to see you.
Jim, take Mr Aulain's horses to the stable, give them a wash down, and
then turn them out into the river bank paddock.”
“No, don't do that, Gerrard,” said Aulain; “I can't stay for the night.
I want to push on to--to”--he hesitated a moment,--“towards Black Bluff
Creek.”
“Nonsense, man! It's ninety miles from here, and you can't get there
before to-morrow night, although your horse looks pretty fit for
another twenty miles or so. What is the earthly use of your camping out
to-night? I'll take it very badly, I can tell you, and my sister will
feel greatly hurt.”
The ex-inspector began to protest, but Gerrard would not listen, and
so Aulain allowed himself to be overruled. As they walked to the house,
Gerrard could not but notice that his friend seemed very much changed in
his manner. He spoke slowly and constrainedly, and looked at least five
years older than he was when Gerrard had last seen him at Port Denison.
“Fever been troubling you again, Aulain?” he said sympathetically, as he
placed his hand on his shoulder.
Aulain gave a nod. “Oh, nothing very bad. I get a pretty stiff turn now
and again, but there's nothing like hard work to shake it off when you
feel it coming on.”
“Just so. How's the claim going--well, I hope?”
“It's worked out now. But my three mates and I have done very well out
of it. We have taken out four thousand five hundred ounces in a year
and eight months. We sent the gold away by the escort last week, and our
camp is broken up. My mates have gone off in various directions to other
diggings.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I thought I would see what the new field near Cape Grenville was
like. I hear that it is very patchy, but any amount of rich pockets. And
as Black Bluff Creek is on my way, I thought I would pay Fraser a visit,
and see how he is doing. Do you know?”
“Very well indeed.”
“Is he?” and Gerrard was quick to notice the gloomy look that came into
Aulain's eyes, and wondered thereat.
“I am so glad to meet you at last, Mr Aulain,” said Mrs Westonley, as
the two men entered the cool sitting-room. “Tom has a just grievance
against you for not coming to see him when you were only eighty miles
from us. Almost every day for the past year he has been expecting to see
you. But I suppose that washing out gold is too fascinating a pursuit,
and that you could not drag yourself away.”
Aulain smiled. “You are quite right in one way, Mrs Westonley, but wrong
in another. I should have come to Ocho Rios six months ago, but all our
horses died from eating poison bush, and it was only a few weeks ago
that my mates and I were able to buy some from a drover, who was taking
a mob down to Cooktown.”
During lunch the ex-inspector brightened up somewhat, and once smiled
when Mrs Westonley, in alluding to the several visits made by Kate
Fraser to Ocho Rios, said that Jim had fallen violently in love with
her, whereupon the lad laughed, and said he was only as much in love
with her as were Uncle Tom and Mary. Gerrard, who of course knew of
Aulain's rejection by Kate, was at that moment wondering whether his
friend meant to again “try his luck” or had quite got over the affair,
and joined heartily in the general laugh that followed Jim's remark.
“I think she is a delightful girl, Mr Aulain,” said Mrs Westonley; “and
I am looking forward to her next visit. She spent a fortnight with us
the last time, and we felt quite dull and humdrum after she had gone
home to her father.”
Aulain raised his brows slightly, and enquired if Miss Fraser had come
all that distance alone. Surely she would not be so rash!
“Oh, no! She knows how bad these Cape York blacks are, and would not be
so reckless of her life as to come alone. Mr Fraser came with her the
first time, then one of her father's mates was her next escort, and the
last time Tom and Jim went to the Bluff for her, and also went back with
her.”
A fleeting shadow crossed the dark handsome face, but beyond saying
that the blacks were now not so bold as they were two years ago, he
apparently did not take much interest in Miss Fraser's visits to Ocho
Rios. But already his ever suspicious mind was at work about her and
Gerrard.
After lunch, as there was more branding to be done, Gerrard went back to
the stockyard. Aulain wished to come and help.
“Indeed you shall not, Aulain. I'll tell you what you ought to do. You
were saying that you felt inclined for a sea bathe when you camped last
night and heard the surf beating on the beach. Now, you and Jim go and
have a jolly good swim in the surf. Jim will show you a place safe from
sharks.”
“I can't resist that,” said Aulain eagerly. It was just the very thing
he wished--to have a talk with Jim. “But I know the place you mean,
Gerrard. My troopers and I have often bathed there when I was in charge
of the N.P. Camp at Red Beach.”
Jim ran off to catch and saddle a couple of horses, for although the
bathing place was only three miles distant, no Australian would walk so
far (except to catch a horse) when he could ride.
“Take your fishing-line, Jim,” said Mrs Westonley, when he returned
leading the horses, “and catch some bream for supper. No, Mary,
certainly not--you cannot go. No, not even to help Jim to catch and
clean the fish. This is a terrible girl, Mr Aulain,” and with a smile
she drew Mary to her, “I know exactly what she wants to do--ride into
the surf and get wet through.”
“Aunt, you _are_ a wonder. However did you guess?” and Mary, now almost
as tall as Jim, hugged Mrs Westonley's slender waist; “that's exactly
what I did mean to do. But I also meant to catch fish as well.”
“Then you can 'catch' me some guinea-fowl eggs instead, to make egg and
bread-crumb to fry the fish. Mr Aulain, do you know that Tom brought
some guinea-fowl from Port Denison, and now we have hundreds of them?
They are horrid things, though. Instead of laying in the fowl-house in
an ordinary Christian fowl-like way, they go miles away, and of course
the carpet snakes and iguanas, and kookaburras,{*} get most of the eggs
and chicks--except those which Jim and Mary find.”
* Laughing jackasses.
Aulain laughed as he swung his light, wiry figure into his saddle, and
then he and Jim cantered off.
A few hours later, as he and the lad were returning to the station, he
lit his pipe and said:
“So your aunt doesn't care about the beach, and the sea, and the old
Dutch ship buried in the sand, eh, Jim?”
“No, Mr Aulain. She says she cannot look at the sea without
shuddering--it always makes her think of her father and mother, and the
wreck of the _Cassowary_. But Uncle Tom and Miss Fraser like the beach,
and always went there in preference to anywhere else when they went for
a ride.”
Poor Jim, never for one moment imagining the cause of Aulain's interest
in Miss Fraser's movements, was then led on by him to relate nearly
everything that had occurred at the station during her last visit. “Was
she fond of fishing?” Aulain asked. “Oh, yes, and so was Uncle Tom. They
would go out nearly every day either to the beach for bream, or up one
of the creeks for spotted mullet.”
Sometimes he (Jim) and Mary would go with them, and then it would be a
regular all-day sort of fishing and shooting picnic Miss Fraser used
to shoot too, and Uncle Tom was teaching her to shoot from the left
shoulder as well as the right--like he could. Then he went on to say
that next time Kate came to Ocho Rios she, Gerrard and Mary and himself
were all going to Duyphen Point, where there was a small coco-nut grove.
“It will be grand, won't it, Mr Aulain? You see we are going to take
two pack-horses, and our guns and fishing-lines, and will camp there for
three or four days and come back with a load of coco-nuts.”
“It ought to be splendid, Jim. When is it to be?”
“In about a month. Miss Fraser is coming to stay with aunt for three
whole months. Uncle Tom and I are going to Black Bluff Creek for her,
if Mr Fraser can't spare the time to come with her. You see, it's ninety
miles, and you can't do it in one day, because some of the country is
very rough, and none of our horses have ever been shod. Look at this
colt's hoofs,” and he pointed to them; “ain't they an awful size?--real
'soft country' hoofs, and no mistake.”
Aulain gave a short nod, and then became silent, scarcely noticing Jim's
further remarks concerning such interesting subjects as kangarooing,
alligator-shooting, the big tribe of cannibal niggers on the Coen River,
who had killed and eaten sixteen Chinamen diggers, etc., etc.
For the rest of the day he was, Gerrard and Mrs Westonley noticed, very
restless, and the former observed with some surprise that he helped
himself freely and frequently to the brandy; hitherto he had known him
as a somewhat abstemious man in the matter of liquor.
He left soon after daylight, declining Gerrard's pressing invitation to
stay for breakfast on the ground of wishing to “do a good twenty miles
before the cursed sun got too hot,” and somehow the master of Ocho Rios
was not sorry to say good-bye to him, for his manner seemed to have
undergone a very great, and not pleasant change.
“Take care of the niggers, Aulain,” he said as they parted.
The ex-officer smiled grimly, and he touched the Winchester carbine
slung across his shoulder. Then leading his pack-horse, he rode away.