THE BOUNDARY-RIDER OF THE YELKIN PADDOCK
Picture the Great Sahara. The popular impression will do: it has the
merit of simplicity: glaring desert, dark-blue sky, vertical sun, and
there you are. Omit the mirage and the thirsty man; but, instead, mix
sombre colours and work up the African desert into a fairly desirable
piece of Australian sheep-country.
This, too, is a simple matter. You have only to cover the desert with
pale-green saliferous bushes, no higher than a man's knee; quite a
scanty covering will do, so that in the thickest places plenty of sand
may still be seen; and there should be barren patches to represent
the low sand-hills and the smooth clay-pans. Then have a line of
low-sized dark-green scrub at the horizon; but bite in one gleaming,
steely speck upon this sombre rim.
Conceive this modification of the desert, and you have a fair notion
of the tract of country--six miles by five--which was known on
Bindarra Station as the 'Yelkin Paddock,' the largest paddock in the
'C Block.'
Multiply this area by six; divide and subdivide the product by wire
fences, such as those that enclose the Yelkin Paddock; water by means
of excavations and wells and whims; stock with the pure merino and
devastate with the accursed rabbit; and (without troubling about the
homestead, which is some miles north of the Yelkin) you will have as
good an idea of the Bindarra 'run,' as a whole, as of its sixth part,
the paddock under notice.
The conspicuous mark upon the distant belt of dingy low-sized
forest--the object that glitters in the strong sunlight, so that it
can be seen across miles and miles of plain--is merely the
galvanised-iron roof of a log-hut, the hut that has been the lodging
of the boundary-rider of the Yelkin Paddock ever since the Yelkin
Paddock was fenced.
A boundary-rider is not a 'boss' in the Bush, but he is an important
personage, in his way. He sees that the sheep in his paddock 'draw' to
the water, that there is water for them to draw to, and that the
fences and gates are in order. He is paid fairly, and has a fine,
free, solitary life. But no boundary-rider had ever stopped long at
the Yelkin hut. The solitude was too intense. After a trial of a few
weeks--sometimes days--the man invariably rolled up his blankets,
walked in to the homestead, said that there was moderation in all
things, even in solitude, and demanded his cheque. The longest
recorded term of office in the Yelkin Paddock was six months; but that
boundary-rider had his reasons: he was wanted by the police. When,
after being captured in the hut, this man was tried and hanged for a
peculiarly cold-blooded murder, the Yelkin post became even harder to
fill than it had been before.
During the Australian summer following that other summer which
witnessed the events of the previous chapters, this post was not only
filled for many months by the same boundary-rider, but it was better
filled than it had ever been before. Moreover, the boundary-rider was
thoroughly satisfied, and even anxious to remain. The complete
solitude had been far less appreciated by the gentleman with the rope
round his neck; for him it had terrors. The present boundary-rider
knew no terrors. The solitude was more than acceptable; the
Crusoe-like existence was entirely congenial; the level breezy plains,
the monotonous procession of brilliant, blazing days, and the life of
the saddle and the hut, were little less than delightful, to the new
boundary-rider in the Yelkin. They were the few pleasures left in a
spoilt life.
There could have been no better cabin for 'a life awry' (not even in
the Bush, the living sepulchre of so many such) than the Yelkin hut.
But it was not the place to forget in. There are, however, strong
natures that can never forget, and still live on. There are still
stronger natures that do not seek to forget, yet retain some of the
joy of living side by side with the full sorrow of remembrance. The
boundary-rider's was one of these.
The boundary-rider saw but few faces from the home-station; none from
anywhere else. But, one glowing, hot-wind day, early in January, a
mounted traveller entered the Yelkin Paddock by the gate in the south
fence. He was following the main track to the homestead, and this
track crossed a corner of the Yelkin Paddock, the corner most remote
from the hut. He did not seem a stranger, for he glanced but
carelessly at the diverging yet conterminous wheel-marks which are the
puzzling feature of all Bush roads. He was a pallid, gaunt,
black-bearded man: so gaunt and so pallid, indeed, that no one would
have taken him at the first glance, or at the second either, for
Alfred Bligh.
Yet it was Alfred--straight, virtually, from his sick-bed. As soon as
he could stand (which was not for weeks) he had been taken on board
the steamer. The voyage, it was hoped, would do him good, and he was
bent on going--to find his wife. It did not do him much good; the eyes
that swept at last the territory of his father-in-law were the sunken,
wistful eyes of a shattered man.
Nothing had been heard of Gladys. Granville, indeed, had written to
Bindarra, but there had been no reply. Of this Alfred had not been
informed. From the first moments of returning consciousness he had
expressed himself strongly against writing at all.
So, as he crossed the corner of the Yelkin Paddock, all he knew was
that Gladys had sailed for Australia six months before.
'If she is here, she is here,' he muttered a hundred times; 'and there
will have been no warning of my coming to frighten her away. If she is
not here--if she were dead----'
His eyes dropped upon the bony hand holding the reins.
'Well, it would be an easier matter to follow her there than here. It
would take less time!'
But, as often as this contingency presented itself, his thin hand
involuntarily tightened the reins. Indeed, the nearer he got to the
homestead the slower he rode. Many a thousand times he had ridden in
fancy this last stage of his long, long journey, and always at a
hand-gallop; but, now that he was riding it in fact, he had not the
courage to press on. He let his tired horse make the speed, and even
that snail's pace was, at moments, too quick for him.
At the hour wherein he needed his utmost nerve to meet his fate--his
nerve, and the stout heart that had brought him, weak as he was, from
the opposite end of the earth, were failing him.
The gate in the west fence was in sight, when Alfred, awaking from a
fit of absence, became aware that a man with a cylinder of rolled
blankets upon his back (his 'swag') was tramping along the track to
meet him. For a moment Alfred's heart thumped; he would know his fate
now; this man, who was evidently from the home-station, would tell
him. Then he recognised the man. It was Daft Larry, the witless
stockman, who, being also stone deaf, was incapable of answering
questions.
Larry was a short man, strongly built though elderly, and probably
less old than he looked. He had a fresh complexion, a short gray
beard, and eyes as blue (and as expressionless) as the flawless
southern sky. He recognised Alfred, stood in his path, threw down his
swag, put his hands in his pockets, and smiled delightedly; not in
surprise; in mere idiotic delight. On beholding Alfred, this had been
his invariable behaviour. They had beheld one another last a year ago;
but last year and yesterday were much the same date to Larry.
'I like a man that is well-bred!' exclaimed Larry, with a seraphic
smile, his head critically on one side. On beholding Alfred, this had
been his invariable formula.
Alfred stopped his horse.
Daft Larry cocked his head on the other side. 'You're not one of the
low sort!' he went on.
Alfred smiled.
'_You're_ well-bred,' continued Larry, in the tone of a connoisseur.
Then, wagging his head gravely: 'I like a man that's not one of the
low sort; I like a man that is well-bred!'
That was the end, as it always had been. Larry picked up his swag with
the air of a man who has proved his case.
Alfred had ridden on some yards, when a call from the idiot made him
stop.
'Look there!' shouted Larry, with an ungainly sweep of the arm.
'Dust-storm coming up--bad dust-storm. Don't get catched, mister--you
aren't one of the low sort--not you!'
Daft Larry had been known to give gratuitous information before,
though he could not answer questions. Alfred, instead of riding on,
now looked about him. There was sense enough in the warning; though
Larry, apparently, did not mind being 'catched' himself, since he was
plodding steadily on, leaving the station, probably for good, as he
periodically did leave it. There was every indication of a dust-storm,
though the sun still shone brilliantly. The hot-wind had become wild
and rampant. It was whipping up the sandy coating of the plain in
every direction. High in the air were seen whirling spires and cones
of sand--a curious effect against the deep-blue sky. Below, puffs of
sand were breaking out of the plain in every direction, as though the
plain were alive with invisible horsemen. These sandy cloudlets were
instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the larger clouds that were
lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds of sand were becoming
more and more the rule.
Alfred's eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the
boundary-rider's hut still gleaming in the sunlight. He remembered the
hut well. It could not be farther than four miles, if as much as that,
from this point of the track; but it was twelve miles at least from
this to the homestead. He also knew these dust-storms of old; Bindarra
was notorious for them. Without thinking twice, Alfred put spurs to
his horse and headed for the hut. Before he had ridden half the
distance, the detached clouds of sand banded together in one dense
whirlwind; and it was only owing to his horse's instinct that he did
not ride wide of the hut altogether; for, during the last half mile,
he never saw the hut until its outline loomed suddenly over his
horse's ears; and by then the sun was invisible.
'I never saw one come on quicker!' gasped Alfred, as he jumped off and
tethered his quivering horse in the lee of the hut.
The excitement, and the gallop, had made Alfred's blood tingle in his
veins. It was a novel sensation. He stepped briskly into the hut.
Almost his first sight on entering was the reflection of his own face
in a little mirror, which was neatly nailed to the wall, close to the
door. Alfred had never been vain, but he did pause to gaze at himself
then; for his face was covered with a thin veneer of sand, as a wall
becomes coated with driven snow. He dashed off the sand, and smiled;
and for the moment, with some colour in his cheeks and a healthy
light in his eyes, Alfred scarcely knew himself. Then he turned his
back upon the glass, merely noting that it was a queer thing to find
in a boundary-rider's hut, and that it had not been there a year ago.
The door had been ajar, and the window was blocked up. The sand,
however, had found free entry through the crevices between the
ill-fitting pine-logs of the walls, and already the yellow coating lay
an eighth of an inch thick all over the boarded floor and upon the
rude bench and table.
Alfred sat down and watched the whirling sand outside slowly deepen in
tint. He had left the door open, because otherwise the interior of the
hut would have been in complete darkness. As it was, it was difficult
to distinguish objects; but Alfred, glancing round, was struck with
the scrupulous tidiness of everything.
'Ration-bags all hung up; nothing left about; fireplace cleaned
out--daily, I should say; pannikins bright as silver; bunk made up.
All this is most irregular!' exclaimed Alfred. 'This boundary-rider
must be a curiosity. I never saw anything half so neat during all the
months I was in the Bush before. One might almost suspect a woman's
hand in it--especially in that mirror. Which reminds me, Gladys told
me she was once out here for a week, alone, riding the boundaries,
when they were short-handed. My darling! What nerve! Would to Heaven
you had had less nerve!'
The thick sand rattled in continuous assault upon the iron roof. It
was becoming a difficult matter to see across the hut. But the storm,
and the gallop, had had a curiously exhilarating effect upon Alfred.
His spirits had risen.
'I wish that boundary-rider would come in; but the storm's bound to
fetch him. I want a pannikin of tea badly, to lay the dust inside;
there's as much there as there was outside, I'll be bound. Besides, he
will have news for me. Poor Larry!--the same old drivel! And to think
that I was something like that in my delirium--that I might have been
left like Larry!'
His attention was here attracted by the illustrated prints pasted
upon a strip of sackcloth nailed to the pine-logs over the bunk: a
feature, this, of every bushman's hut. He went over to look at them,
and, the better to do so, leant with one knee upon the bed--the
rudely-framed bed that was so wonderfully well 'made.'
'Ah!' remarked Alfred, 'some of them are the old lot; I remember them.
But some are new, and--why, that's a cabinet photograph down there by
the pillow; and'--bending down to examine it--'good Heavens! it's of
_me_!'
It was a fact. The photograph, fixed so close to the pillow, was an
extremely life-like one of Alfred Bligh. But how had it got there? Of
what interest or value could it be to the boundary-rider of the Yelkin
Paddock? It had been taken last summer, at Richmond; and--oh, yes, he
remembered now--Gladys had sent one out to her father. That was it, of
course. The boundary-man had found it lying about the veranda or the
yard at the homestead (Alfred knew his father-in-law), and had
rescued it for the wall of his hut. No matter (to the boundary-man)
who it was, it was a picture, and one that would rather set off the
strip of sackcloth. That was it, of course; a simple explanation.
Yet Alfred trembled. The photograph was in a far from conspicuous
position; nor did it look as if it had been left lying about. What if
it belonged to Gladys? What if Gladys had fastened it there with her
own hands? What if she came sometimes to the hut--this hut in which he
stood? What if she had spent another week here riding the boundaries,
when her father was short of men?
All at once he felt very near to her; and the feeling made him dizzy.
His eyes roved once again round the place, noting the abnormal
neatness and order that had struck him at first; a look of wild
inquiry came into his haggard face; and even then, as the agony of
surmise tightened every nerve--a sound broke plainly upon his ears. It
was heard above the tinkle of the sand upon the roof: a horse's
canter, muffled in the heavy sand outside.
Alfred sprang to the door. At the same instant a rider drew rein in
front of him. They were not five paces apart, but such was the density
of the flying sand and dust that he could see no more than the faint
outline of the horse and its rider. Then the rider leapt lightly to
the ground. It was the boundary-rider of the Yelkin Paddock; but the
boundary-rider was a woman.
Alfred reeled forward, and clasped her to his heart.
'Gladdie! Darling!'
He had found her.