IN THE BUFFALO CAMP.
“You’re just the man I was looking for,” said Hugh, taking in the
stranger with his eyes. “I want to get out to Reeves’s buffalo camp,
and I hear you’re the only man who knows that country at all. Can you
get time to come down with me? I’ll make it worth your while.”
He waited for the reply with a beating heart. If this man failed him he
saw nothing for it but to go back. The stranger lit his pipe with the
leisurely movements of a man who had never been in a real hurry in his
life.
Then he spoke slowly.
“Well, it’s this way, boss, you see. I’m just startin’ off in no end of
a hurry to go and take a team of bullocks to the Oriental to draw
quartz.”
“Can’t you put it off for a while?” said Hugh. “It’s getting near the
wet season.”
“Well, I’d like to go with you, boss, but I couldn’t chuck ’em over—not
rightly I couldn’t.” He stroked his beard and relapsed into thought.
“Let’s go in and get a drink,” said Hugh. “I suppose there is some
square-face inside.”
The square-face settled it. They had one drink, and the stranger began
to think less of the needs of the Oriental. They had another, and he
said he didn’t suppose it’d matter much if the Oriental had to wait a
bit for their stone, and the bullocks were all over the bush and very
poor, and by the time he got them together the wet season would be on.
They had a third, and he said that the Oriental had been hanging on for
six months, and it wouldn’t hurt it to hang on for seven, and he
wouldn’t see a man like Hugh stuck.
So the shareholders in that valuable concern, the Oriental Mine, were
kept in pleasing suspense for some months longer, while the
mine-manager (whose salary was going on all the time) did nothing but
smoke, and write reports to the effect that “a very valuable body of
stone was at grass, awaiting cartage to the battery, when a splendid
crushing was a certainty.” Meanwhile Tommy Prince was gaily journeying
with Hugh down to the buffalo camp.
Prince, a typical moleskin-trousered, cotton-shirted,
cabbage-tree-hatted bushman, soon fixed up all details. He annexed the
horses belonging to the store, sagely remarking that, as Hugh had saved
their owner’s life, he could afford to let him have a few horses. He
also helped himself to pack-saddles, camping gear, supplies, and all
sorts of odds and ends—not forgetting a couple of gallons of rum,
mosquito-nets made of cheese cloth, blankets, and a rifle and
cartridges. They fitted out the expedition in fine style, while
unconscious Sampson slept the sleep of the half-drowned. The placid
Chinese cook fried great lumps of goat for them to eat, heedless of all
things except his opium-pipe, to which he had recourse in the evening,
the curious dreamy odour of the opium blending strangely with the
aromatic scent of the bush.
At daylight they started, and for three days rode through the
wilderness, camping out at night, while the horses with bells and
hobbles grazed round the camp. Tommy Prince steered a course by
instinct, guided as unerringly as the Israelites by their pillar of
fire.
By miles of trackless, worthless wilderness, by rolling open plains, by
rocky ranges and stony passes, they pushed out and ever further out,
till at last, one day, Tommy said, “They ought to be hereabouts, some
place.” So saying, he dropped a lighted match into a big patch of
grass, and in a few seconds a line of fire half a mile wide was roaring
across the plain; above it rose smoke as of a burning city.
“They’ll see that,” said Tommy, “without the buff’loes have got ’em.”
So they camped for the day under a huge banyan-fig tree and awaited
developments. About evening, away on the horizon, there arose an
answering cloud of smoke, connecting earth and sky, like a waterspout.
“That’s them,” said Tommy. They climbed once more into their saddles,
and set out. Just as the sun was setting, they saw a singular
procession coming towards them. In front rode two small, wiry,
hard-featured, inexpressibly dirty men on big well-formed horses. They
wore dungaree trousers, which had once been blue, but were now begrimed
and bloodstained to a dull neutral colour. Their shirts—once coloured,
but now nearly black—were worn outside the trousers, like a
countryman’s smock frock, and were drawn in at the waist by broad
leathern belts full of cartridges. Their faces were half-hidden by
stubbly beards, and their bright alert eyes looked out from under the
brims of two as dilapidated felt hats as ever graced head of man. Each
carried a carbine between thigh and saddle. These were the buffalo
shooters.
Behind them rode an elderly, grizzled man, whom Hugh had no difficulty
in recognising as Keogh, or Considine. Following him were some seven or
eight packhorses, all heavily laden with hides. And behind the
packhorses rode three or four naked blacks and a Chinaman.
Hugh’s guide at once made himself welcome in his happy-go-lucky style.
He introduced Hugh as Mr. Lambton, from New South Wales. The buffalo
shooters made him welcome after the fashion of their kind; but
Considine was obviously uneasy, and avoided him, riding with Tommy
Prince for a while, and evidently trying to find out what Hugh had come
for.
That night, when they got to the buffalo shooters’ camp, Hugh opened
fire on Considine. The veteran was in a cheerful mood after his meal,
and Hugh wanted to start diplomatically, thinking he might persuade
him. If that failed he would give him the summons; but he would start
with the _suaviter in modo_. When it came to the point, however, he
forgot his diplomacy, and plunged straight into trouble.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve come up here for, Considine,” he said. “My
name’s Hugh Gordon, and I want to find out something about your
marriage with Peggy Donohoe.”
“Well, if that’s what you come for, Mister,” said the veteran, pulling
a firestick out of the fire, and slowly lighting his pipe, “if that’s
what you come for”—puff, puff, puff—“you’ve come on a wild goose chase.
I never knew no Peggy Donohoe in my life. My wife”—puff—“was a small,
dark woman, named Smith.”
“I thought you told my brother that you married Peggy Donohoe.”
“So I might have told him,” assented the veteran. “Quite likely I did,
but I must ha’ made a mistake. A man might easy make a mistake over a
thing like that. What odds is it to you who I married, anyhow?”
“What odds? Why look here, Considine, it means that my old mother will
be turned out of her home. That’s some odds to me, isn’t it?”
“Yairs, that’s right enough, Mister,” said the courteous Considine;
“it’s lots of odds to you, but what I ask you is—what odds is it to me?
Why should I go and saddle myself with a she-devil just when I’m coming
into a bit of money? I’d walk miles to do her a bad turn.”
“Well, if you want to do her a bad turn, come down and block her
getting Mr. Grant’s estate.”
“Yes, an’ put her on to meself What next? I tell you, Mister, straight,
I wouldn’t have that woman tied to me for all the money in China. That
English bloke said there was a big fortune for me in England. Well, if
I have to take Peggy Donohoe with it, it can stay. I’ll live here with
the blacks and the buffalo shooters, and I’ll get my livin’ for meself,
same as I got it all my life; but take on Peggy again I will not. Now,
that’s Domino—that’s the dead finish. I won’t go with you, and I won’t
give you no information. And I’m sorry too, ’cause you seem a good sort
of a young feller—but I won’t do anything that’ll mix me up with Peggy
any more.”
Hugh ground his teeth with mortification. Then he played his next card.
“There’s a man they call Flash Jack—do you know him?”
“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t,” said the sage in a surly tone.
“Well, he told me to ask you to help us. He said to tell you that he
particularly wanted you to give evidence if you can.”
“Want’ll be his master, then,” snarled the old man.
“He said he would put the police on to a job about some cattle at
Cross-roads,” said Hugh.
The rage fairly flashed out of Considine’s eyes.
“He said that, did he?” he yelled. “The rotten informer! Well, you tell
Flash Jack from me that where he can put me away for one thing I can
put him away for half-a-dozen; and if I go into gaol for a five-stretch
he goes in for ten. I ain’t afraid of Flash Jack, nor you either. See
that, now!”
Hugh felt that his mission had failed. He pulled out the summons as a
last resource, and passed it to the old man.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Summons to give evidence,” said Hugh.
“Victoria by the Grace of God,” read the old man, by the flickering
firelight. “Victoria by the Grace of God, eh? Well, see here,” he
continued, solemnly putting the summons in the fire and watching it
blaze, “if Victoria by the Grace of God wants me, she can send for
me—send a coach and six for Patrick Henry Considine, late Patrick Henry
Keogh! And then I mightn’t go! There’ll be only one thing make me go
where I don’t want to go, and that’s a policeman at each elbow and
another shovin’ behind. I’d sooner do a five-stretch than take Peggy
back again. And that’s the beginning and the end and the middle of it.
And now I’ll wish you good night.”