At last, Lady Bridget heard the unmistakable sound of cattle in the
distance--the low, multitudinous roar of lowing beasts and tramping
hoofs and the reverberating crack of stock-whips. It came from the
gidia scrub. She knew that they had been mustering
SCRUBBERS--otherwise, wild cattle from the broken country at the foot
of Moongarr Range.
She left the hammock and went again to the veranda railing. Looking
along a side path from the Chinaman's garden she saw that Mrs Hensor
and her boy--the yellow-headed urchin of about six--were hastening
towards the Bachelors' Quarters. The woman carried a basket of
vegetables, the boy hugged a big pawpaw fruit which he held up proudly
as his mother responded in her free-and-easy, rather sulky fashion to
Lady Bridget's stiff nod. 'It's for the House,' cried the child. 'Fo
Wung said I was to bring it up.'
Lady Bridget made a wry face--she did not like pawpaws.
'Very well, Tommy, and if you're good you can have what's left
tomorrow.'
'That's all right,' responded Tommy in bush formula.
'Have you seen anything of your master--or the postman?' asked Lady
Bridget of Mrs Hensor.
'I believe Mr McKeith is coming on ahead with Harry the Blower,' said
Mrs Hensor. 'Look sharp, Tommy, the cattle will be at the yard
directly, and I've got my dinner to cook for the whole lot of them,
seeing that some visitors aren't good enough for the house.'
The woman pointed her last sentence by a malicious glance at the
mistress of Moongarr.
'I suppose that is what your master keeps you here for--to cook for the
visitors at the Quarters, Mrs Hensor,' said Lady Bridget, with incisive
sweetness.
Mrs Hensor flushed scarlet, but she checked an impudent reply. Pulling
Tommy angrily along, she hurried up to the four-roomed, zinc-roofed
humpey and its lean-to kitchen, protected by a bough shade, which lay
between the head-station and the gully, with the stockyard close to it,
and which constituted her domain. It annoyed Mrs Hensor to hear McKeith
called her master. She always spoke of her late husband as having been
the Boss-mate on that--to him fatal--exploring expedition. Also, she
resented having all the bachelors 'dumped down'--as she phrased it--on
her, while the 'Ladyship's swell staff' was spared the trouble. At
present the Bachelors' Quarters was fairly full. Mr Ninnis,
store-keeper and overseer in the owner's absence, abode there
permanently, and just now, there were Zack Duppo, the horse-breaker,
and a young man from Breeza Downs--a combined cattle and sheep station
about fifty miles distant--who had come to help in the mustering and to
collect any beasts strayed from the Breeza Downs' herd.
The gully crossing lay below the boulders of rock at the head of the
lagoon. Presently, two horsemen appeared on the rise. One was McKeith;
the other Harry the Mailman--otherwise the Blower--a foxy, browny-red
little man on a raw-boned chestnut, carrying his mail-bags strapped in
front and at the side of his saddle.
Lady Bridget supposed they had met at the turn-off track just above the
crossing. McKeith was carrying a leather mail-bag, from which he
appeared to have extracted a bundle of letters, with one hand. He held
his bridle and coiled stock-whip in the other. He was listening to the
mailman, who seemed to be talking animatedly. As they neared the house,
he gave the usual COO-EE, that set all the dogs barking, and put the
Chinaman-cook and black-boys on the alert.
The riders passed by the end of the veranda where Lady Bridget stood.
McKeith looked up at her. He seemed preoccupied and angry, and merely
nodded to his wife, but did not take off his hat as he had done in
earlier days--and, somehow, to-day she noticed the omission.
'All right, eh, Biddy?' he called out casually. 'Here's your mail--I've
taken out mine,' and he pitched the leather bag, with the string cut
and the official red seal broken, on to the veranda at her feet. 'I
say--you might bring the whisky out to the back veranda. I daresay you
could do with a nip, eh, Harry?'
'That I can, Mr McKeith. Riding along these plains is dry work. Good
day, Ladyship. I'm a bit behind time, but I lost an hour looking for a
hole to fill my water bag at--And then I could not drink out of it--for
a demed old pleuro bullock had got there first and died in it. My word,
Boss, you'll be in a fix if it don't rain before long.'
McKeith made an angry gesture. He spoke sharply to the horses. The two
men rode round the kitchen-wing and dismounted at the paling fence,
which made the fourth side of the little square. The back veranda of
the new house, with steps ascending to it, in the middle, the Old
Humpey, with its veranda, along one side, the kitchen and store
building along the other, and a rough slab and bark outhouse beyond it.
Native-cucumber vines and other creepers partially closed in the older
verandas. In the centre of the square was a small flower bed with a
flowering shrub in the middle.
Lady Bridget brought the whisky decanter from the dining room to the
back veranda, and McKeith mounted the steps, the mailman remaining
beside them. A canvas water-bag, oozing moisture, hung from the
rafters, and there were tumblers on a table beneath it. McKeith took
the decanter from his wife's hand, too preoccupied, it seemed, even to
notice the little satirical smile on her lips. She was thinking how
funny it seemed that she should be playing Hebe to Harry the Blower.
She soon realised, however, that serious things had happened. As
McKeith mixed a liberal allowance of whisky with water from the
water-bag and handed it to the mailman, he asked curtly:
'This isn't one of your blowing yarns, Harry? You're positive about the
fact?'
'Saw the thing with my own eyes, Boss. As fine a team as ever I'd wish
to own, lying with their throats cut, and the trees black with crows
all round. There was the dray-load all turned over, and two cases
prized open. I bet that the rum-kegs and spirits that couldn't be
carried off, are buried in some handy dry water-hole close by. I saw
two or three empty brandy bottles with the heads of 'em smashed to show
that the rascals had wet the wool before starting off.'
McKeith cursed in his throat. 'No sign of my men?'
'Scooted clean out of the scenery--the whole lot. I reckon that's what
they shook hands on with the Union chaps, and that the natural
consequences of absorbing your grog will be another woolshed or two
burned down before long. Here's your health, Boss, and the Ladyship's.'
And the mailman gulped down his 'nobbler' and turned to remount the
lean chestnut, which was standing hitched to the palings, observing
cheerfully:
'Well, so long, Sir. Go'day, Ma'am. This sort of argufying ain't going
to carry my mail-bags along the river.'
'Go up to the Quarters and ask Mrs Hensor for a feed,' called McKeith.
'And look here, Harry, you can tell them at the Myall Creek out-station
as you go by, to have two good horses ready in the yard for me. I'm off
to Tunumburra to put the police on to those devils straight away.'
'All right, Boss. You'll find it will take some tall calculatin'
though. Them Unionists are getting too strong for the police to tackle.
Windeatt up at Breeza Downs is in a mortal funk, and sending word
everywhere for a squad of Specials to protect his woolshed.'
'It seems,' said Lady Biddy to her husband, when the mailman had gone,
'that there might be some use after all for Luke Tallant's Maxims.'
'It seems that Jim Steadbolt has been taking his revenge,' he answered,
'and that I must be in the saddle in an hour's time. Mix me a drink,
Biddy, and order in some grub, while I go and have a bath.'
He looked as if he needed one. The dust of the drafting camp was caked
upon his face and clothes. His was the appearance of a man who had been
riding hard after stock and sleeping, between his blankets only, under
the stars.
Lady Bridget mixed him his drink and went to see Chen Sing in the
kitchen. When she came back, Colin was in the front veranda. He had
tumbled the rest of the letters and papers out of the mail-bag, and was
hastily and eagerly scanning the last LEICHARDT'S TOWN CHRONICLE.
'Any news, Colin?'
'I don't know, I was looking to see if the Government were going to act
against the strikers--I see they are sending troops.'
'And is Luke Tallant coming at the head of them, in official uniform,
to read the Riot Act?--if there is a Riot Act in Australia. I'd like to
see Luke maintaining the supremacy of the British Crown on the Leura.'
He looked up at her in vague rebuke of her levity, and there was
suppressed tenderness in his eyes, notwithstanding his preoccupation
with his own troubles.
'No, no. But there's something in the paper about Lady Tallant being
ill and having an operation. Poor chap! He wouldn't have been bothering
much about strikes in the Never-Never and the supremacy of the British
Crown, any more than I should in similar circumstances.... Well, there!
I must go and bogey*.'
[*Bogey--in Black's language, 'bathe out of doors']
Sudden compunction overswept Bridget.
'Oh, Colin! You would care... really... even though they had cut the
throats of your four best dray-horses?' But he had disappeared into a
little veranda room, against which a corrugated iron tank backed
conveniently, and in a minute she heard the splash of water.
She picked up the paper and looked at the English Intelligence before
examining her own letters. It was quite true. There was a paragraph
stating that Lady Tallant's health had not improved since her arrival
in England, and hinting at the likelihood of an operation being
advisable. Bridget reflected, however, that Sir Luke would probably
have received a cablegram by this time, one way or other--which would
have put him out of suspense, and, presumably, there had been no later
bad news.
A letter from Molly Gaverick confirmed that item of the English
Intelligence. Rosamond Tallant's condition was certainly far from
satisfactory. Molly, however, seemed much more taken up with a recent
illness of Eliza Countess of Gaverick than with that of Lady Tallant.
Being a tactless and absolutely frank young person, she had no scruple
in proclaiming her hope that 'old Eliza' would make Lord Gaverick her
heir. This was the more likely, wrote young Lady Gaverick, because the
old lady had lately quarrelled with her own relatives, and never now
asked any of her stuffy provincial cousins to share the dulness of
Castle Gaverick and of the house in Brook Street. If she did not leave
her money to Chris Gaverick, there was not, conceivably, anyone else to
whom she would leave it.
'By the way,' Molly continued, as if it had been an afterthought 'Old
Eliza is immensely interested in you and your cow-boy
husband--ranch-owner is what, I suppose, I ought to call him. She asked
Mrs Gildea so many questions about you both that Joan read her your
account of your honeymoon journey through the Bush, and all the rest of
it. How you can endure such a life is incomprehensible to me--but Aunt
Eliza says it shows you've got some grit in you, and that evidently
your husband has cured you of a lot of ridiculous nonsense--I am
quoting her, so don't be offended, and you needn't show this to
Nature's gentleman, which is what Aunt Eliza calls him. I can't help
feeling though, that it's rather a pity you didn't wait a bit before
taking the Irrevocable Step. I don't know whether you ever heard about
Mrs Willougby Maule's death--eleven months after their marriage.'
No, Bridget had not heard. Molly Gaverick was an uncertain
correspondent, and, no doubt, Joan Gildea and Rosamond Tallant, if they
had known of the event, had thought it wiser, in writing to her, to
suppress the news. For a moment, Lady Bridget sat meditating, and all
the blood seemed to rush from her brain to her heart--she could almost
hear her heart pounding. Then she went on again with Lady Gaverick's
letter.
'It was a motor accident--nothing serious at the time, but the baby was
born prematurely, and she lingered a week or two, and then died. I must
do him the justice to say that he seemed to feel her death very much.
It looked as though, after all, the marriage had been quite a success.
Her money gave him a lift and they were going out a good deal in the
political set. She left her quarter of a million to him, ABSOLUTELY. I
heard that some remote Bagallys were going to contest the will, but
they found that they hadn't a leg to stand upon. I wish now that we
hadn't been so sniffy about W.M. As Chris observed with unconscious
cynicism, there's a good deal of difference between a penniless
adventurer and the possessor of quarter of a million. Unattached men
with money can be so useful. As soon as Rosamond Tallant gets
better--if she does--I'll make her ask him to meet us. I know he used
to be a great friend of Luke's....'