INJURY

It was not Theodore, however. It was a man whom Moya was thankful not to

have seen before. Nor was the face more familiar to Rigden himself, or

less unlovely between the iron-grey bristles that wove a wiry mat from

ear to ear, over a small head and massive jaws. For on attracting their

attention the man lifted his wideawake, a trick so foreign to the normal

bushman that Rigden's eyebrows were up from the beginning; yet he

carried his swag as a swag should be carried; the outer blanket was the

orthodox "bluey," duly faded; and the long and lazy stride that of the

inveterate "sundowner."

"Eureka Station, I believe?" said the fellow, halting.

"That's the name," said Rigden.

"And are you the boss?"

"I am."

"Then Eureka it is!" cried the swagman, relieving himself of his swag,

and heartily kicking it as it lay where he let it fall.

"But," said Rigden, smiling, "I didn't say I had any work for you, did

I?"

"And I didn't ask for any work."

"Travellers' rations, eh? You'll have to wait till my storekeeper comes

in. Go and camp in the travellers' hut."

Instead of a thank-you the man smiled--but only slightly--and shook his

iron-grey head--but almost imperceptibly. Moya perceived it, however,

and could not imagine why Rigden tolerated a demeanour which had struck

her as insolent from the very first. She glanced from one man to the

other. The smile broadened on the very unpleasant face of the tramp,

making it wholly evil in the lady's eyes. So far from dismissing him,

however, Rigden rose.

"Excuse me a few minutes," he said, not only briefly, but without even

looking at Moya; and with a word to the interloper he led the way to the

station store. This was one of the many independent buildings, and not

the least substantial. The tramp followed Rigden, and in another moment

a particularly solid door had closed behind the pair.

Moya felt at once hurt, aggrieved, and ashamed of her readiness to

entertain any such feelings. But shame did not remove them. It was their

first day together for two interminable months, and the afternoon was to

have been their very very own. That was the recognised arrangement, and

surely it was not too much to expect when one had come five hundred

miles in the heat of January (most of them by coach) to see one's

_fiance_ in one's future home. This afternoon, at least, they might have

had to themselves. It should have been held inviolate. Yet he could

desert her for the first uncleanly sundowner who came along! After first

telling the man to wait, he must needs show his strength by giving in

and attending to the creature himself, his devotion by leaving her alone

on a verandah without another soul in sight or hearing! It might only be

for the few minutes mentioned with such off-hand coolness. The slight

was just the same.

Such was the first rush of this young lady's injured feelings and too

readily embittered thoughts. They were more bitter, however, in form

than in essence, for the notorious temper of the Australian Bethunes was

seldom permitted a perfectly direct expression. They preferred the

oblique ways of irony and sarcasm, and their minds ran in those curves.

A little bitterness was in the blood, and Moya could not help being a

Bethune.

But she had finer qualities than were rife--or at all events

conspicuous--in the rank and file of her distinguished family. She had

the quality of essential sweetness which excited their humorous

contempt, and she was miraculously free from their innate and

unparalleled cynicism. At her worst she had warm feelings, justly

balanced by the faculty of cold expression. And at her best she was

quick to see her faults and to deplore them; a candid and enthusiastic

friend; staunch at your side, sincere to your face, loyal at all costs

behind your back.

It was this loyalty that came to her rescue now: she stood suddenly

self-convicted of a whole calendar of secret crime against the man whom

she professed to love. Did she love him? Could she possibly love him,

and so turn on him in an instant, even in her heart? Oh, yes, yes! She

was a little fool, that was all; at least she hoped it was all. To think

that her worst faults should hunt her up on the very heels of her frank

confession of them! So in a few minutes sense prevailed over

sensibility. And for a little all was well.

But these minutes mounted up by fives and then by tens. And the verandah

was now filled to blindness and suffocation by the sunken sun. And there

sat Moya Bethune, the admired of all the most admirable admirers

elsewhere, baking and blinking in solitary martyrdom, while, with a grim

and wilful obstinacy, she stoically waited the pleasure of a back-block

overseer who preferred a disreputable tramp's society to hers!

The little fool in her was uppermost once more. There was perhaps some

provocation now. Yet a little fool it indubitably was. She thought of

freckles. Let them come. They would be his fault. Not that he would

care.

Care!

And her short lip lifted in a peculiar smile; it was the war-smile of

the Bethunes, and not beautiful in itself, but Moya it touched with such

a piquant bitter-sweetness that some of her swains would anger her for

that very look. Her teeth were white as the wing of the sulphur-crested

cockatoo, and that look showed them as no other. Then there was the

glitter it put into her eyes: they were often lovelier, but never quite

so fine. And a sweet storm-light turned her skin from pale rose to

glowing ivory, and the short lip would tremble one moment to set more

unmercifully the next. Even so that those who loved and admired the

milder Moya, feared and adored her thus.

But this Moya was seldom seen in Toorak, or, for that matter, anywhere

else; and, of course, it was never to show itself any more, least of all

at Eureka Station. Yet it did so this first, this very afternoon, though

not all at once.

For the next thing that happened she took better than all that had gone

before, though those were negative offences, and this was a positive

affront.

It was when at last the store door opened, and Rigden went over to the

kitchen for something steaming in a pannikin, and then to his room for

something else. He passed once under Moya's nose, and once close beside

her chair, but on each occasion without a look or a word.

"Something is worrying him," she thought. "Poor fellow!"

And for a space her heart softened. But it was no space to speak of;

intensified curiosity cut it very short.

"Who can the horrid man be?"

The question paved the way to a new grievance and a new resolve.

"He ought to have told me. But he shall!"

Meanwhile the dividing door was once more shut; and now the better part

of an hour had passed; and the only woman on the station (she might

remain the only woman) had carried tea through the verandah and advised

Moya to go indoors and begin. Moya declined. But no one ever sat in the

sun up there. Moya said nothing; but at length gave so short an answer

to so natural a question that Mrs. Duncan retreated with a very natural

impression, false for the moment, but not for so many moments more.

For presently through the handful of pines, red-stemmed and resinous in

the sunset, there came the jingle of bit and stirrup, to interrupt the

unworthiest thoughts in which the insulted lady had yet indulged. She

was thinking of much that she had missed in town by coming up-country in

the height of the season; she was wishing herself back in Toorak. There

she was somebody; in Toorak, in Melbourne, they would not dare to treat

her thus.

Her fate was full of irony. There she could have had anybody, and,

rightly or wrongly, she was aware of the fact. No other girl down

there--or in Melbourne, for that matter--was at once a society belle, a

general favourite, and a Bethune. The latter titles smacked indeed of

the contradiction in terms, but their equal truth merely emphasised the

altogether exceptional character of our heroine. That she was herself

aware of it was not her fault. She had heard so much of her qualities

for so many years. But all her life it had been impressed upon her mind

that the Bethunes, as a family, were in a class by themselves in the

southern hemisphere. In moments of chagrin, therefore, it was only

natural that Moya should aggravate matters by remembering that she also

was a Bethune.

A Bethune engaged to a bushman who dared to treat her thus!

Such was the pith and point of these discreditable reflections when the

jingle of approaching horse put a sudden end to them. Moya looked up,

expecting to see her brother, and instinctively donning a mask. She

forgot it was in the buggy that Theodore had been got out of the way,

and it was with sheer relief that her eyes lit upon a sergeant and a

trooper of the New South Wales mounted police, with fluttering puggarees

and twinkling accoutrements, and a black fellow riding bareback in the

rear.

They reined up in front of the verandah.

"We want to see Mr. Rigden," said the sergeant, touching the shiny peak

of his cap.

"Oh, indeed!"

"Is he about?"

Moya would not say, and pretended she could not. The sudden apparition

of the police had filled her with apprehensions as wild as they were

vague. The trooper had turned in his saddle to speak to the blackfellow,

and Moya saw the great Government revolver at his hip. Even as she

hesitated, however, the store door opened, and Rigden locked it behind

him before sallying forth alone.

"Yes, here he is!" exclaimed Moya, and sat like a statue in her chair.

Yet the pose of the statue was not wholly suggestive of cold

indifference and utter unconcern.

"Glad to find you in, Mr. Rigden," said the sergeant. "We're having a

little bit of sport, for once in a way."

"I congratulate you. What sort?" said Rigden.

"A man-hunt!"

And there were volumes of past boredom and of present zest in the

sergeant's tone.

"That so?" said Rigden. "And who's the man?"

The sergeant glanced at the young lady. Rigden did the same. Their

wishes with respect to her were only too obvious. Moya took the fiercer

joy in disregarding them.

"I'd like to have a word with you in the store," said the sergeant.

"No, no!" said Rigden hastily. "Sergeant Harkness--Miss Bethune."

It was a cold little bow, despite this triumph.

"Miss Bethune will be interested," added Rigden grimly. "And she won't

give anything away."

"Thank you," said Moya. And her tone made him stare.

Harkness touched his horse with the spurs, and rode up close to the

verandah, on which Rigden himself now stood.

"Fact is," said he, "it oughtn't to get about among your men, or it's a

guinea to a gooseberry they'll go harbouring him. But it's a joker who

escaped from Darlinghurst a few days ago. And we've tracked him to your

boundary--through your horse-paddock--to your home-paddock gate!"

Rigden glanced at Moya. Her eyes were on him. He knew it before he

looked.

"Seen anything of him?" asked the sergeant inevitably.

"Not to my knowledge. What's he like?"

"Oldish. Stubby beard. Cropped head, of course. Grey as a coot."

"Height 5 ft. 11 in.," supplemented the trooper, reading from a paper;

"'hair iron-grey, brown eyes, large thin nose, sallow complexion, very

fierce-looking, slight build, but is a well-made man.'"

A dead silence followed; then Rigden spoke. Moya's eyes were still upon

him, burning him, but he spoke without tremor, and with no more

hesitation than was natural in the circumstances.

"No," he said, "I have seen no such man. No such man has been to me!"

"I was afraid of it," said Harkness. "Yet we tracked him to the

boundary, every yard, and we got on his tracks again just now near the

home-paddock gate. I bet he's camping somewhere within a couple of

miles; we must have another look while it's light. Beastly lot of sand

you have from the home-paddock gate right up to the house!"

"We're built upon a sandhill, you see," said Rigden, with a wry look

into the heavy yellow yard: "one track's pretty much like another in

here, eh, Billy?"

The black tracker shook a woolly pate.

"Too muchee damn allasame," said he. "Try again longa gate."

"Yes," said the sergeant, "and we'll bring him here for the night when

we catch him. You could lend us your travellers' hut, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes."

"So long then, Mr. Rigden. Don't be surprised if you see us back to

supper. I feel pretty warm."

And the sergeant used his spurs again, only to reign up suddenly and

swing round in his saddle.

"Been about the place most of the afternoon?" he shouted.

"All the afternoon," replied Rigden; "between the store and this

verandah."

"And you've had no travellers at all?"

"Not one."

"Well, never mind," cried the sergeant. "You shall have four for the

night."

And the puggarees fluttered, and the stirrup irons jingled, out of sight

and earshot, through the dark still pines, and so into a blood-red

sunset.