Sergeant Harkness had his barracks to himself. To be sure, the cell was
occupied; but, contrary to the usual amenities of the wilderness, such
as euchre and Christian names between the sergeant and the ordinary run
of prisoners, with this one Harkness would have nothing to do. It was a
personal matter between them: the capital charge had divided them less.
Constable and tracker had meanwhile been called out on fresh business.
That was in the middle of the day. Since then the coach had passed with
the mail; and Harkness had been pacing his verandah throughout the
sleepiest hour of the afternoon, only pausing to read and re-read one
official communication, when Moya's habit fluttered into view towards
four o'clock.
"Well, I'm dished!" exclaimed the sergeant. "And alone, too, after all!"
He hastened to meet her.
"Where on earth have you been, Miss Bethune? Do you know there's another
search-party out, looking for _you_ this time? My sub and the tracker
were fetched this morning. I'd have gone myself only----" and he jerked
a thumb towards a very small window at one end of the barracks.
"Mr. Rigden?" said Moya, lowering her voice.
"Yes."
"So you've got him still! I'm glad; but I don't want him to know I'm
here. Stay--does he think I'm lost?"
"No. I thought it better not to tell him."
"That was both wise and kind of you, Sergeant Harkness! He must know
nothing just yet. I want to speak to you first."
And she urged the dapple-grey, now flagging sorely, towards the other
end of the building; but no face appeared at the little barred window;
for Rigden was sound asleep in his cell.
"We're all right," said Moya, sliding to the ground; "we stopped at a
tank and a boundary-rider's hut, but not the Eureka boundary. I didn't
get out the same way I got in, you see--I mean out of the Blind Man's
Block."
"Blind Man's Block! Good God! have you been there? You're lucky to have
got out at all!"
"It wasn't easy. I thought we should never strike a fence, and when we
did I had to follow it for miles before there was a gate or a road. But
the boundary-rider was very kind; he not only gave me the best meal I
ever had in my life; he set me on the road to you."
Indeed the girl was glowing, though dusty and dishevelled from head to
foot. Her splendid colouring had never been more radiant, nor had the
bewildered sergeant ever looked upon such brilliant eyes. But it was a
feverish brilliance, and a glance would have apprised the skilled
observer of a brain in the balance between endurance and suspense.
"What on earth were you doing in Blind Man's Block?" asked Harkness,
suspiciously.
"I'll tell you. I'll tell you something else as well! But first you must
tell me something, Sergeant Harkness."
"I believe you know where he is," quoth the sergeant, softly.
"Do _you_ know _who_ he is?" cried Moya, coming finely to her point.
Harkness stared harder than ever.
"Well, I thought I did--until this afternoon."
"Who did you think it was?"
"Well, there's no harm in saying now. Rightly or wrongly, I only told
Mr. Rigden at the time. But I always thought it was Captain Bovill, the
old bushranger who escaped from Pentridge two or three weeks ago."
"Then you thought wrong," said Moya, boldly.
Nevertheless she held her breath.
"So it seems," growled the sergeant.
"Why does it seem so?"
It was a new voice crying, and one so tremulous that Harkness could
scarcely recognise it as Miss Bethune's.
"I've heard officially----"
"What have you heard?"
"You see we were all informed of Bovill's escape."
"Go on! Go on!"
"So in the same way we've been advised of his death."
"His--death!"
"Steady, Miss Bethune! There--allow me. We'll get in out of the sun; he
won't hear us at this end of the verandah. Here's a chair. That's the
ticket! Now, just one moment."
He returned with something in a glass which Moya thought sickening. But
it did her good. She ceased giggling and weeping by turns and both at
once.
"So he's dead--he's dead! Have you told Mr. Rigden that?"
"No; I'm not seeing much of Mr. Rigden."
"I am glad. I will tell him myself, presently. You will let me, I
suppose?"
"Surely, Miss Bethune. There's no earthly reason why he should be here,
except his own obstinacy, if you'll excuse my saying so. He was remanded
this morning; but Mr. Cross of Strathavon, who signed the warrant
yesterday, and came over for the examination this forenoon, not only
wanted to take bail, but offered to find it himself. Wanted to carry him
off in his own buggy, he did! But Mr. Rigden said here he was, and here
he'd stick until his fate was settled. Would you like to see him now?"
"Presently," repeated Moya. "I want to hear more; then I may have
something to tell you. When and where did this death occur, and what
made you so sure that it was the dead man who came to Eureka? You will
understand my questions in a minute."
"Only I must answer them first," said the sergeant, smiling. "I am to
give myself clean away, am I?"
"We must all do that sometimes, Sergeant Harkness. It will be my turn
directly. Let us trust each other."
Harkness looked into her candid eyes, calmer and more steadfast for
their recent tears, and his mind was made up.
"I'll trust you," he said; "you may do as you like about me. Perhaps you
yourself have had the wish that's father to the thought, or rather the
thought that comes of the wish and nothing else? Well, then, that's
what's been the matter with me. The moment I heard of that old rascal's
escape, like every other fellow in the force, I yearned to have the
taking of him. Of course it wasn't on the cards, hundreds of miles
up-country as we are here, besides being across the border; yet when
they got clear away, and headed for the Murray, there was no saying
where they might or might not cast up. Well, it seems they never reached
the Murray at all; but last week down in Balranald I heard a rum yarn
about a stowaway aboard one of the Echuca river-steamers; they never
knew he was aboard until they heard him go overboard just the other side
of Balranald. Then they thought it was one of themselves, until they
mustered and found none missing; and then they all swore it was a log,
except the man at the wheel who'd seen it; so I pretended to think with
the rest--but you bet I didn't! I went down the river on the off-chance,
but I never let on who I hoped it might be. And what with a swaggy whose
swag had been stolen, and his description of the man who he swore had
stolen it, I at last got on the tracks of the man I've lost. He was
said to be an oldish man; that seemed good enough; they were both of
them oldish men, the two that had escaped."
"The two!" cried Moya in high excitement. "The two! I keep forgetting
there were two of them; you see you never said so when you came to the
station."
"I wanted to keep it all to myself," confessed the crest-fallen
sergeant. "I only told two living men who I thought it was that I was
after. One was my sub--who guessed--and the other was Mr. Rigden."
"Were the two men who escaped anything like each other?"
"Well, they were both old lags from the _Success_, and both superior men
at one time; old particulars who'd been chained together, as you might
say, for years; and I suppose that sort of thing does beat a man down
into a type. However, their friendship didn't go for much when they got
outside; for Gipsy Marks murdered Captain Bovill as sure as emu's eggs
are emu's eggs!"
"Murdered him!" gasped Moya; and her brain reeled to think of the hours
she had spent with the murderer. But all was clear to her now, from the
way in which Rigden had been imposed upon in the beginning, to the
impostor's obstinate and terrified refusal to own himself as such to the
very end.
"Yes, murdered him on the other side of the Murray; the body's only just
been found; and meanwhile the murderer's slipped through my fingers,"
said the sergeant, sourly; "for if it wasn't poor old Bovill I was
after, at all events it was Gipsy Marks."
Moya sprang to her feet.
"It was," she cried; "but he hasn't slipped through your fingers at all,
unless he's dead. He wasn't when I left him two or three hours ago."
"When you _left_ him?"
"Yes, I found him, and was with him all the morning."
"In Blind Man's Block--with that ruffian?"
"He took my horse and my water-bag, and left me there to die of thirst;
but the dear horse turned the tables on him--poor wretch!"
"And you never told me!"
"I am trying to tell you now."
And he let her finish.
But she would not let him go.
"Dear Sergeant Harkness, I can't pretend to have an ounce of pity left
for that dreadful being in Blind Man's Block. A murderer, too! At least
I have more pity for some one else, and you must let me take him away
before you go."
"Impossible, my dear young lady--that is, before communicating with Mr.
Cross."
"About bail?"
"Yes."
"What was the amount named this morning?"
"Fifty pounds."
"Give me a sheet of paper and a stamp, and I'll write a cheque myself."
Harkness considered.
"Certainly that could be done," he said at length.
"Then quickly--quickly!"
Yet even when it was done she detained him; even when he put a big key
into her hand.
"_Must_ this go further--before the magistrates--after you have found
him?"
Harkness hardened.
"The offence is the same. I'm afraid it must."
"It will make it very unpleasant for me," sighed Moya, "when I come up
here. And when I've found him for you--and undone anything that was
done--though I don't admit that anything was--I--well, I really think
you _might_!"
"Might what?"
"Withdraw the charge!"
"But those tracks weren't his. Mr. Rigden made them. He shouldn't have
done that."
"Of course he shouldn't--if he did."
"But of course he _did_, Miss Bethune. I've known Mr. Rigden for years;
we used to be very good friends. I shouldn't speak as I do unless I
spoke by the book. But--why on earth did he go and do a thing like
that?"
Moya paused.
"If I tell you will you never tell a soul?"
"Never," said the rash sergeant.
"Then he was imposed upon. The wretch pretended he--had some claim--I
cannot tell you what. I can tell you no more."
It was provokingly little to have to keep secret for lifetime; yet
Harkness was glad to hear even this.
"It was the only possible sort of explanation," said he.
"But it won't explain enough for the world," sighed Moya, so meaningly
that the sergeant asked her what she did mean.
"I must really get off," he added.
"Then I'll be plain with you," cried the girl. "Either you must withdraw
this charge, and pretend that those tracks were genuine, or I can never
come up here to live!"
And she looked her loveliest to emphasise the threat.
"I must see Mr. Rigden about that," was, however, all that Harkness
would vouchsafe.
"Very well! That's only fair. Meanwhile--I--_trust you_, Sergeant
Harkness. And I never yet trusted the wrong man!"
That was Moya's last word.
It is therefore a pity that it was not strictly true.
* * * * *
It was a wonderful ride they had together, that ride between the
police-barracks and the station, and from drowsy afternoon into cool
sweet night. The crickets chirped their welcome on the very boundary,
and the same stars came out that Moya had seen swept away in the
morning, one by one again. Then the moon came up with a bound, but hung
a little as though caught in some pine-trees on the horizon, that seemed
scratched upon its disc. And Moya remarked that they were very near
home, with such a wealth of tenderness in the supreme word that a mist
came over Rigden's eyes.
"Thank God," said he, "that I have lived to hear you call it so, even if
it never is to be."
"But it is--it is. Our own dear home!"
"We shall see."
"What do you mean, darling?"
"I am going to tell Theodore the whole thing."
"After I've taken such pains to make it certain that none of them need
ever know a word?"
"Yes; he shall know; he can do what he thinks fit about letting it go
any further."
Moya was silent for a little.
"You're right," she said at last. "I know Theodore. He'll never breathe
it; but he'll think all the more of you, dearest."
"I owe it to him. I owe it to you all, and to myself. I am not naturally
a fraud, Moya."
"On the other hand, it was very natural not to speak of such a thing."
"But it was wrong. I knew it at the time. Only I _could_ not risk----"
Moya touched his lips with her switch.
"Hush, sir! That's the one part I shall never--quite--forgive."
"But you have taught me a lesson. I shall never keep another thing back
from you in all my life!"
"And I will never be horrid to you again, darling! But of course there
will be exceptions to both rules; to yours because there are some things
which wouldn't be my business (but this wasn't one of them); to mine,
because--well--we none of us have the tempers of angels."
"But you have been my good angel already--and more--so much more!"
They came to the home-paddock gate. The moon was high above the pines.
Underneath there were the lesser lights, the earthly lights, but all
else was celestial peace.
"I hope they're not looking for me still," said Moya.
"If they are I must go and look for them."
"I won't let you. It's too sweet--the pines--the moonlight--everything."
They rode up to the homestead, with each roof beaming to the moon.
"Not much of a place for the belle of Toorak," sighed Rigden.
"Perhaps not. But, of all places, the place for me!"
"You're as keen as Ives," laughed Rigden as he helped her to dismount.
"And I was so afraid the place would choke you off!"
* * * * *