CHAPTER II. A DINNER FOR FIVE
CHAPTER III. IN PUSH SOCIETY
CHAPTER IV. THE OLD STATION
CHAPTER V. THE COMING OF THE HEIRESS
CHAPTER VI. A COACH ACCIDENT
CHAPTER VII. MR. BLAKE’S RELATIONS
CHAPTER VIII. AT THE HOMESTEAD
CHAPTER IX. SOME VISITORS
CHAPTER X. A LAWYER IN THE BUSH
CHAPTER XI. A WALK IN THE MOONLIGHT
CHAPTER XII. MR. BLAKE BREAKS HIS ENGAGEMENT
CHAPTER XIII. THE RIVALS
CHAPTER XIV. RED MICK AND HIS SHEEP DOGS
CHAPTER XV. A PROPOSAL AND ITS RESULTS
CHAPTER XVI. THE ROAD TO NO MAN’S LAND
CHAPTER XVII. CONSIDINE
CHAPTER XVIII. THE WILD CATTLE
CHAPTER XIX. A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
CHAPTER XX. A CONSULTATION AT KILEY’S
CHAPTER XXI. NO COMPROMISE
CHAPTER XXII. A NURSE AND HER ASSISTANT
CHAPTER XXIII. HUGH GOES IN SEARCH
CHAPTER XXIV. THE SECOND SEARCH FOR CONSIDINE
CHAPTER XXV. IN THE BUFFALO CAMP
CHAPTER XXVI. THE SAVING OF CONSIDINE
CHAPTER XXVII. THE REAL CERTIFICATE
CHAPTER XXVIII. A LEGAL BATTLE
CHAPTER XXIX. RACES AND A WIN
CHAPTER I.
IN THE CLUB.
It was a summer’s evening in Sydney, and the north-east wind that comes
down from New Guinea and the tropical islands over leagues of warm sea,
brought on its wings a heavy depressing moisture. In the streets people
walked listlessly, perspired, mopped themselves, and abused their
much-vaunted climate. Everyone who could manage it was out of town,
either on the heights of Moss Vale or the Blue Mountains, escaping from
the Inferno of Sydney.
In the Cassowary Club, weary, pallid waiters brought iced drinks to
such of the members as were condemned to spend the summer in town. The
gong had sounded, and in ones and twos members shuffled out of the
smoking-room, and went in to dinner. At last only three were left
talking at the far end of the big, empty smoking-room, like three small
stage conspirators at the end of a very large robbers’ cavern.
One was a short, fat, red-faced man, who looked like a combination of
sea-captain and merchant, and who was the local representative of a big
English steamship company. His connection with the mercantile marine
had earned him his nickname of “The Bo’sun.” By his side sat Pinnock, a
lean and bilious-looking solicitor; the third man was an English
globe-trotter, a colourless sort of person, of whom no one took any
particular notice until they learnt that he was the eldest son of a big
Scotch whisky manufacturer, and had £10,000 a year of his own. Then
they suddenly discovered that he was a much smarter fellow than he
looked. The three were evidently waiting for somebody. The “Bo’sun” had
a grievance, and was relieving his mind by speech. He walked up and
down between the smoking-room chairs, brandishing a telegram as he
talked, while the attorney and the globe-trotter lay back on the lounge
and admired his energy.
“I call it a shame,” he said, facing round on them suddenly; “I could
have got up to Moss Vale for a day or two, and now old Grant of Kuryong
wires me to meet and entertain a new chum. Just listen to this: ‘Young
Carew, friend of mine, on _Carthaginia_. Will you meet him and show him
round; oblige me—W. G. Grant.’ I met the old fellow once or twice at
dinner, when he was in town for the sheep sales, and on the strength of
that he foists an unknown callow new chum on to me. People are always
doing that kind of thing.”
“Leave his friend alone, then,” said Pinnock; “don’t have anything to
do with him. I know his sort—Government House young man the first week,
Coffee Palace at two shillings a night the second week, boiler on the
wharf the third week, Central Police Court the fourth week, and then
exit so far as all decent people are concerned.”
The Bo’sun stuffed the telegram into his pocket and sat down.
“Oh, I don’t suppose he’ll be so bad,” he said. “I’ve asked him here
to-night to see what he’s like, and if he’s no good I’ll drop him. It’s
the principle I object to. Country people are always at this sort of
thing. They’d ask me to meet an Alderney bull and entertain him till
they send for him. What am I to do with an unknown new chum? I’d sooner
have an Alderney bull—he’d be easier to arrange for. He’d stop where he
was put, anyhow.”
Here Gillespie, the globe-trotter, cut into the conversation. “I knew a
Jim Carew in England,” he said, “and if this is the same man you will
have no trouble taking care of him. He was a great man at his
’Varsity—triple blue, or something of the sort. He can row and run and
fight and play football, and all that kind of thing. Very quiet-spoken
sort of chap—rather pretends to be a simple sort of Johnny, don’t you
know, but he’s a regular demon, I believe. Got into a row at a
music-hall one night, and threw the chucker-out in among a lot of
valuable pot plants, and irretrievably ruined him.”
“Nice sort of man,” said the Bo’sun. “I’ve seen plenty of his sort,
worse luck; he’ll be borrowing fivers after the first week. I’ll put
him on to you fellows.”
The globe-trotter smiled a sickly smile, and changed the subject.
“What’s old Grant like—the man he’s going to? Squatter man, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, and one of the real old sort, too,” interposed Pinnock,
“perfect gentleman, you know, but apt to make himself deuced unpleasant
if everything doesn’t go exactly to suit him; sort of chap who thinks
that everyone who doesn’t agree with him ought to be put to death at
once. He had a row with his shearers one year, and offered Jack Delaney
a new Purdey gun if he’d fire the first two charges into the shearers’
camp at night.”
“Ha!” said Gillespie. “That’s his sort, eh? Well, if this Carew is the
Carew I mean, he and the old fellow will be well met. They’ll about do
for each other in the first week or two.”
“No great loss, either,” said the Bo’sun. “Anyhow I’ve asked this new
chum to dinner to-night, and Charlie Gordon’s coming too. He was in my
office to-day, but hadn’t heard of the new chum. Gordon’s a member
now.”
“What’s he like?” said Gillespie. “Anything like the gentleman that
wanted the shearers killed?”
“Oh, no; a good fellow,” said the Bo’sun, taking a sip of sherry. “He
manages stations for Grant, and the old man has kept him out on the
back-stations nearly all his life. He was out in the Gulf-country in
the early days—got starved out in droughts, swept away in floods, lost
in the bush, speared by blacks, and all that sort of thing, in the days
when men camped under bushes and didn’t wear shirts. Gone a bit queer
in the head, I think, but a good chap for all that.”
“How did this Grant make all his money” asked Gillespie. “He’s awfully
well off, isn’t he? Stations everywhere? Is he any relation to Gordon?”
“No; old Gordon—Charlie’s father—used to have the money. He had a lot
of stations in the old days, and employed Grant as a manager. Grant was
a new chum Scotchman with no money, but a demon for hard work, and the
most headstrong, bad-tempered man that ever lived—hard to hold at any
time. After he’d worked for Gordon for awhile he went to the diggings
and made a huge pile; and when old Gordon got a bit short of cash he
took Grant into partnership.”
“It must have been funny for a man to have his old manager as a
partner!”
“It wasn’t at all funny for Gordon,” said the lawyer, grimly. “Anything
but funny. They each had stations of their own outside the partnership,
and all Gordon’s stations went wrong, and Grant’s went right. It never
seemed to rain on Gordon’s stations, while Grant’s had floods. So
Gordon got short of money again and borrowed from Grant, and when he
was really in a fix Grant closed on him and sold him out for good and
all.”
“What an old screw! What did he do that for?”
“Just pure obstinacy—Gordon had contradicted him or something, so he
sold him up just to show which was right.”
“And what did Gordon do after he was sold up?”
“Died, and didn’t leave a penny. So then Bully Grant wheeled round and
gave Gordon’s widow a station to live on, and fixed the two sons up
managing his stations. Goodness knows how much he’s worth now. Doesn’t
even know it himself.”
“And has he no children? Was he ever married?”
The lawyer lit a cigarette and puffed at it.
“He went to England and got married; there’s a daughter. The wife’s
dead; the daughter is in England still—never been out here. There’s a
story that before he made his money he married a bush girl up on the
station, but no one believes that. The daughter in England will get
everything when he dies. A chance for you, Gillespie. Go home and marry
her—she’ll be worth nearly a million of money.”
“I’ll think about it,” said the globe-trotter.
As he spoke a buttony boy came up to the Bo’sun.
“Gentleman to see you, sir,” he said. “Mr. Carew, sir.”
The Bo’sun hurried off to bring in his guest, while Pinnock called
after him—“Mind your eye, Bo’sun. Be civil to him. See that he doesn’t
kill a waiter or two on the way up. Not but what he’d be welcome to do
it, for all the good they are here,” he added, gloomily, taking another
sip of his sherry and bitters; and before he had finished it the Bo’sun
and his guest entered the room.
They had expected to see a Hercules, a fiery-faced, fierce-eyed man.
This was merely a broad-shouldered, well-built, well-groomed youth,
about twenty-three years of age; his face was square and rather stolid,
clean-shaven, brown-complexioned, with honest eyes and a firm-set
mouth. As he stood at the door he adopted the wooden expression that a
University man always wears in the presence of strangers. He said
nothing on being introduced to Pinnock; and when the globe-trotter came
up and claimed acquaintance, defining himself as “Gillespie of
Balliol,” the stranger said he didn’t remember him, and regarded him
with an aspect of armed neutrality. After a sherry and bitters he
thawed a little, and the Bo’sun started to cross-examine him.
“Mr. Grant of Kuryong wired to me about you,” he said. “I suppose you
came in the _Carthaginia?_”
“Yes,” said the stranger, speaking in the regulation English University
voice, a little deeper than usual. “I left her at Adelaide. I’m out for
some bush experience, don’t you know. I’ll get you to tell me some
place to stop at till I leave, if you don’t mind.”
His manner was distinctly apologetic, and he seemed anxious to give as
little trouble as possible.
“Oh! you stop here,” said the Bo’sun. “I’ll have you made an honorary
member. They’ll do you all right here.”
“That’s awfully good of you. Thanks very much indeed.”
“Oh! not at all. You’ll find the club not so bad, and a lot better than
where you’re going with old Grant. He’s a regular demon to make fellows
work. It’s pretty rough on the stations sometimes.”
“Ah! yes; awf’lly rough, I believe. Quite frightened me, what I heard
of it, don’t you know. Still, I suppose one must expect to rough it a
bit. Eh, what!”
“Charlie Gordon will he here in a minute,” said the Bo’sun. “He can
tell you all about it. Here he is now,” he added, as the door swung
open and the long-waited-for guest entered the room.
The newcomer was unmistakably a man from Far Out; tall, wiry-framed,
and very dark, and so spare and lean of figure that he did not seem to
have an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere. His face was as hard and
impassive as a Red Indian’s, and looked almost black by contrast with
his white shirt-front. So did his hands. He had thin straight hair,
high cheek-bones, and a drooping black moustache. But the eyes were the
most remarkable feature. Very keen and piercing they were, deep-set in
the head; even when he was looking straight at anyone he seemed to be
peering into endless space through the man in front of him. Such eyes
men get from many years of staring over great stretches of sunlit plain
where no colour relieves the blinding glare—nothing but dull grey
clumps of saltbush and the dull green Mitchell grass.
His whole bearing spoke of infinite determination and self-reliance—the
square chin, the steadfast eyes, telling their tale as plainly as
print. In India he might have passed for an officer of native cavalry
in mufti; but when he spoke he used the curious nasal drawl of the
far-out bushman, the slow deliberate speech that comes to men who are
used to passing months with the same companions in the unhurried
Australian bush. Occasionally he lapsed into reveries, out of which he
would come with a start and break in on other people’s conversation,
talking them down with a serene indifference to their feelings.
“Come out to old man Grant, have you?” he drawled to Carew, when the
ceremonies of introduction were over. “Well, I can do something better
for you than that. I want a mate for my next trip, and a rough lonely
hot trip it’ll be. But don’t you make any mistake. The roughest and
hottest I can show you will be child’s play to having anything to do
with Grant. You come with me.”
“Hadn’t I better see Mr. Grant first?”
“No, he won’t care. The old man doesn’t take much notice of new
chums—he gets them out by the bushel. He might meet a man at dinner in
England and the man might say, “Grant, you’ve got some stations. I’ve
got a young fellow that’s no use at home—or anywhere else for that
matter—can’t you oblige me, and take him and keep him out of mischief
for a while?” And if the old man had had about a bottle of champagne,
he’d say, “Yes, I’ll take him—for a premium,” or if he’d had two
bottles, he’d say, “Send along your new chum—I’ll make a man of him or
break his neck.” And perhaps in the next steamer out the fellow comes,
and Grant just passes him on to me. Never looks at him, as likely as
not. Don’t you bother your head about Grant—you come with me.”
As he drawled out his last sentence, a move was made to dinner; so the
Englishman was spared the pain of making any comments on his own
unimportance in Mr. Grant’s eyes, and they trooped into the dining-room
in silence.