It was some moments before Moya looked higher than that hand, and it
prepared her for a worse face than she found waiting for her own. The
face was fierce enough, and it poured a steady fire upon the girl from
black eyes blazing in the double shade of a felt wideawake and the
overhanging mallee. But it was also old, and lined, and hunted; the man
had grown grey in prison; whatever his offences, there was rare spirit
in a last dash for freedom at his age. Moya had not thought so before.
She was surprised that she should think it now. The last thing that she
had expected to feel was an atom of real sympathy with the destroyer of
her happiness. And yet it was the first thing she felt.
"Please don't look at me like that," she begged. "I wish you no harm,
believe me!"
There was a pause, and then a first stern question.
"Who sent you here?"
"Nobody."
"Rot!"
"It's the truth."
"How else did you find me?"
"I saw you yesterday in the hut; you know that; you saw me."
"This is not the hut."
"No, but as you weren't there I looked for your tracks. And I found
them. And here I am."
Shaggy brows rose above the piercing eyes.
"I thought you didn't come from the bush?"
"Nor do I; but I have heard a good deal about tracking, this last day or
two; and I had luck."
"You've come all this way alone?"
"Absolutely."
"Then nobody else knows anything about it. That's certain. But they will
know! You'll be followed, and I shall be found!"
"I don't think so; they'll think I've gone somewhere else."
The convict gave her a long look, and his hawk's eye gleamed; then he
turned his attention to the dapple-grey. It was over a minute before he
spoke again.
"Do you know who I am?" he then asked.
"Captain Bovill."
He smiled wickedly.
"And nothing else?"
"Oh, yes," said Moya, sadly; "I know what else you are, of course. His
father!"
"So he's had the pluck to tell you, after all?"
"He should have told me at once."
"And lost you?"
"He hasn't lost me yet!" cried Moya impulsively, but from her loyal
heart none the less.
"Then why break away from him like this? Wasn't his word good enough?"
"I haven't broken away," said Moya, "from him. I couldn't. I've come to
tell you why. They've taken him to prison!"
"Taken _him_!"
"On your account. They know he helped you. That's all they do know."
The convict stared; but, in the perpetual twilight of the mallee that
was the only fact to which Moya could have sworn. She could make nothing
of the old man's expression. When he spoke, however, there was no
mistaking his tone. It was hard and grim as a prison bell.
"In his turn!" said he. "Well, it'll teach him what it's like."
"But it isn't his turn," cried Moya, in a fury; "what has he done to
deserve such degradation, except a good deal more than his duty by you?
And this is all the thanks he gets! As though he had taken after you!
How can you speak like that of him? How dare you--to me?"
So Moya could turn upon the whilom terror of a colony, a desperado all
his days, yet surely never more desperate than now; and her rings
flashed, and her eyes flashed, and there was no one there to see! No
soul within many miles but the great criminal before her, whose turn it
was to astonish Moya. He uncovered; he jerked a bow that was half a
shrug, but the more convincing for the blemish; and thereafter hung his
cropped head in strange humility.
"You're right!" said he. "I deserve all you've said, and more. He has
treated me ten thousand times better than I deserve, and that's my
gratitude! Yet if you had been half a lifetime in the hulks--in
irons--chained down like a wild beast--why, you'd _be_ one, even you!"
"I know," said Moya in a low voice. "It is terrible to think of!"
"And God bless you for admitting that much," the old man whined, "for
it's few that will. Break the law, and the law breaks you--on a wheel!
Talk about the wrongs of prisoners; they have neither wrongs nor rights
in the eyes of the law; it's their own fault for being prisoners, and
that's the last word."
"It is very terrible," said Moya again.
"Ah, but you little know how bad it is; and I'm not going to tell you.
It's worse than your worst dreams, and that must do for you. The
floggings, the irons, the solitary confinement in your irons with the
blood running down your back! No, I said I wouldn't, and I won't. But
it's hard to hold your tongue when you're talking to a lady for the
first time in thirty years. And to think of a young lady like you coming
all this way, alone too, to say a kind word to a double-dyed old rogue
like me! It's the most wonderful thing I ever heard of in all my days. I
can't think why you did it, for the life of me I can't!"
"It was to tell you about your son," Moya reminded him.
"Ah, poor fellow! God help him, for I can't."
"Are you quite sure?" said Moya gently, and for once rather nervously as
well.
"Sure? Of course I'm sure! Why, what can I do?" cried the other, with
sudden irritation as suddenly suppressed. "Hiding--hunted--with every
hand against me but yours--I'd help him if I could, but I can't."
"So he's to go to prison instead of you?"
Moya spoke quietly, but with the more effect; indeed, she was herself
beginning to feel surprised at her success with a desperate man in vital
straits. He was more amenable than she had imagined possible. That he
should parley with her at all was infinite encouragement. But now there
came a pause.
"I see what you're driving at," he cried savagely at last. "You want me
to give myself up! I'll see you--further."
The oath was dropped at the last moment--another strange sign--but the
tone could not have been stronger. Yet the mere fact that he had seen
her point, and made it for her, filled Moya with increasing confidence.
"I don't wonder," she had the tact to say. "How could you be expected to
go back--to that--of your own free will? And yet what can be worse than
waiting--waiting till----"
"I'm taken, eh? Is that what you want to say? They shall never take me
alive, curse them; don't you trouble about that!"
The tone was stubborn, ferocious, blood-curdling, but at least it was in
keeping with the blazing eyes and the great jowl beneath. Moya looked
steadily at the bushranger, the mutineer, the indomitable criminal of
other days; more remained of him than she had fancied. And to think that
he had soft answers for her!
She made haste to earn another.
"Please--please--don't speak like that! It is dreadful. And I feel sure
there is some middle course."
"I'm no believer in middle courses!"
"That I know. Yet--you have suffered so--I feel sure something could be
done! I--that is my people--have influence--money----"
"They can keep their money."
Moya begged his pardon. It was not an act in which she excelled. Yet
nothing could have been sweeter than her confusion, nothing finer than
her frank humility.
"I was only wondering if there was anything--anything--we could any of
us do! It would be understood so well. His father! Surely that would be
enough! I know the Governor. I would think nothing of going to him. I
honestly believe that he would pardon you both!"
Moya felt the black eyes burning, and for once her own eyes fell; indeed
she was a wondrous picture of beauty and youth and enthusiasm, there in
that place, in her dainty blouse and habit, with the dull green mallee
above and all around her. But they were a yet more extraordinary pair,
the old bushranger of a bygone day, and the Melbourne beauty of the
present.
"So you believe that, do you?" said the former sardonically.
"From the bottom of my heart."
"Suppose you were wrong?"
"I would move heaven and earth."
"Then jump on your horse!"
"Why?"
"I'm coming with you--to the police-barracks!"
It was like a dream. Moya could have rubbed her eyes, and soon had to do
so, for they were full of tears. She sobbed her thanks; she flung out
both hands to press them home. The convict waited grimly at her horse's
head.
"Better wait and see what comes of it," said he. "And think yourself
lucky worse hasn't come of it yet! I'm not thinking of myself; do you
know where you are? Do you know that this is Blind Man's Block? Haven't
you heard about it? Then you should thank your stars you've a good old
bushman to lead you out; for it's like getting out of a maze, I can tell
you; and if you'd been warned, as I was, I don't think you'd have
ventured in."
Moya had never realised that it was into Blind Man's Block she had
plunged so rashly. Nor did the discovery disturb her now. She was too
full of her supreme triumph to dwell for many moments upon any one of
the risks that she had run for its accomplishment. Neither did she look
too far ahead. She would keep faith with this poor creature; no need to
count the cost just yet. Moya set her mind's eye upon the reunion at the
police-barracks: her advent as the heroine of a bloodless victory, her
intercession for the father, her meeting with the son.
The prospect dazzled her. It had its gravely precarious aspect. But one
thing at a time. She had done her best; no ultimate ill could come of
it; of that she felt as certain as of the fact that she was sitting in
her saddle and blindly following an escaped criminal through untrodden
wilds.
Suddenly she discovered that she was not doing this exactly. She had not
consciously diverged, and yet her leader was bearing down upon her with
a scowl.
"Why don't you follow me?" he cried. "Do you want to get bushed in Blind
Man's Block?"
"I wasn't thinking," replied Moya. "It must have been the horse."
Bovill seized the bridle.
"It's a fool of a horse!" said he. "Why, we're quite close to the fence,
and it wants to head back into the middle of the block!"
Moya remarked that she did not recognise the country.
"Of course you don't," was the reply. "You came the devil of a round,
but I'm taking you straight back to the fence. Trust an old hand like
me; I can smell a fence as a sheep smells water. You trust yourself to
me!"
Moya had already done so. It was too late to reconsider that. Yet she
did begin to wonder somewhat at herself. That hairy hand upon the
bridle, it lay also rather heavily on her nerves. And the mallee shrub
showed no signs of thinning; the open spaces were as few as ever, and as
short; on every hand the leaves seemed whispering for miles and miles.
"We're a long time getting to that fence," said Moya at length.
The convict stopped, looked about him in all directions, and finally
turned round. In doing so his right hand left the bridle, but in an
instant the other was in its place. Moya, however, was too intent upon
his face to notice this.
"I'm afraid I've missed it," said he calmly.
"Missed the fence?"
"It looks like it."
"After what you said just now? Oh, what a fool I was to trust you!"
Their eyes were joined for the next few seconds; then the man's face
relaxed in a brutal grin. And Moya began to see the measure of her
folly.
"Hypocrite!" she gasped.
"Don't call names, my dear. It's not kind, especially to your
father-in-law that is to be!"
Moya shuddered in every member except the hand that gripped her
whalebone switch. The gold-mounted handle was deep in her flesh.
"Leave go of my bridle," she said quietly.
"Not just yet, my dear."
The whalebone whistled through the air, and came slashing down upon the
dapple-grey's neck, within an inch of the hairy fingers, which were
nevertheless snatched away. Moya had counted on this and its result. The
animal was off at its best pace; but the desperate hands grabbed Moya's
habit as it passed, and in another instant she was on the ground. In yet
another she had picked herself up, but she never even looked for the
horse; she fixed her eye upon her loathly adversary as on a wild beast;
and now he looked nothing else, with canine jaw and one vile lip
protruding, and hell's own fire in his wicked eyes.
Luckily her grip of the riding-whip had tightened, not relaxed; but now
she held it as a sword; and it helped her to cow a brute who had the
real brute's dread of the lash. But also she was young and supple, and
the man was old. The contrast had never been so sharp; for now they were
both in their true colours; and every vileness of the one was met by
its own antithesis in the other. It was will against will, personality
against personality, in an open space among the mallee and the full
glare of a climbing sun, mile upon mile from human help or habitation.
And the battle was fought to a finish without a word.
Moya only heard a muttering as the wretch swung round upon his heel, and
walked after the dapple-grey, which had come to a standstill within
sight. But she was not done with the blackguard yet. She watched him
remove the lady's saddle, then carefully detach the water-bag, and sling
it about himself by means of the stirrup-leather. Then he mounted,
bare-back; but Moya knew that he would not abandon her without his say;
and she was waiting for him with the self-same eye that had beaten him
off.
He reined up and cursed her long and filthily. Her ear was deaf to that;
but little of it conveyed the slightest meaning; her unchanged face
declared as much. So then he trimmed his tongue accordingly.
"Sorry to take the water-bag; but through you I've forgot mine and my
swag too. Better try and find 'em; they're away back where I camped last
night; you're welcome to the drop that's left, if there is one. You look
a bit black about the gills as it is. Have a drop to show there's no
ill-feeling before I go."
And he dangled the bag before her, meaning to whisk it back again. But
Moya disappointed him. She was parched with thirst, though she only
realised it now. She neither spoke nor moved a muscle.
"Then die of thirst, and be damned to you! Do you know where you are?
Blind Man's Block--Blind Man's Block! Don't you forget it again, because
I shan't be here to remind you; a horse was what I wanted, and was
promised, so you're only keeping that poor devil's word for him. Give
him my blessing if you ever see him again; but you never will. They say
it's an easy place to die in, this here Blind Man's Block, but you'll
see for yourself. A nice little corpse we'll make, won't we? But we'll
die and rot the same, and the crows'll have our eyes for breakfast and
our innards for dinner! And do you good, you little white devil, you!"
Moya remained standing in the same attitude, with the same steady eye
and the same marble pallor, long after the monster disappeared, and the
last beat of the dapple-grey's hoofs was lost among the normal wilds of
the bush. Then all at once a great light leapt to her face. But it was
not at anything that she had heard or seen; it was at something which
had come to her very suddenly in the end. And for a long time after
that, though lost and alone in Blind Man's Block, and only too likely to
die the cruel death designed for her, Moya Bethune was a happier woman
than she had been for many an hour.