It was coming up the Murrumbidgee that Fergus Carrick first heard the
name of Stingaree. With the cautious enterprise of his race, the young
gentleman had booked steerage on a river steamer whose solitary
passenger he proved to be; accordingly he was not only permitted to
sleep on the saloon settee at nights, but graciously bidden to the
captain's board by day. It was there that Fergus Carrick encouraged
tales of the bushrangers as the one cleanly topic familiar in the mouth
of the elderly engineer who completed the party. And it seemed that the
knighthood of the up-country road had been an extinct order from the
extirpation of the Kellys to the appearance of this same Stingaree, who
was reported a man of birth and mystery, with an ostentatious passion
for music and as romantic a method as that of any highwayman of the Old
World from which he hailed. But the callow Fergus had been spared the
romantic temperament, and was less impressed than entertained with what
he heard.
On his arrival at Glenranald, however, he found that substantial
township shaking with laughter over the outlaw's latest and least
discreditable exploit, at the back-block hamlet of Yallarook; and then
it was that young Carrick first conceived an ambition to open his
Colonial career with the capture of Stingaree; for he was a serious
immigrant, who had come out in his teens, to stay out, if necessary, for
the term of his natural life.
The idea had birth under one of the many pine trees which shaded the
skeleton streets of budding Glenranald. On this tree was nailed a
placard offering high reward for the bushranger's person alive or dead.
Fergus was making an immediate note in his pocketbook when a hand fell
on his shoulder.
"Would ye like the half o' yon?" inquired a voice in his own tongue; and
there at his elbow stood an elderly gentleman, whose patriarchal beard
hid half the buttons of his alpaca coat, while a black skull-cap sat
somewhat jauntily on his head.
"What do you mean?" said Fergus, bluntly, for the old gentleman stood
chuckling gently in his venerable beard.
"To lay a hold of him," replied the other, "with the help o' some
younger and abler-bodied man; and you're the very one I want."
The raw youth stared ingenuously.
"But what can you know about me?"
"I saw ye land at the wharf," said the old gentleman, nodding his
approval of the question, "and says I, 'That's my man,' as soon as ever
I clapped eyes on ye. So I had a crack wi' the captain o' yon steamer;
he told me you hadna a billet, but were just on the lookout for the best
ye could get, an' that's all he'd been able to get out o' ye in a five
days' voyage. That was enough for me. I want a man who can keep his
tongue behind his teeth, and I wanted you before I knew you were a
brither Scot!"
"Are you a squatter, sir?" the young man asked, a little overwhelmed.
"No, sir, I'm branch manager o' the Bank o' New South Wales, the only
bank within a hunder miles o' where we stand; and I can offer ye a
better billet than any squatter in the Colony."
"Indeed? I'm sure you're very kind, sir, but I'm wanting to get on a
station," protested Fergus with all his tact. "And as a matter of fact,
I have introductions to one or two stations further back, though I saw
no reason to tell our friend the skipper so."
"Quite right, quite right! I like a man who can keep his tongue in its
kennel!" cried the bank manager, rubbing his hands. "But wait while I
tell ye: ye'd need to work for your rations an any station I ever heard
tell of, and I keep the accounts of enough to know. Now, with me, ye'd
get two pound a week till your share o' the reward was wiped off; and if
we had no luck for a year you'd be no worse off, but could go and try
your squatters then. That's a promise, and I'll keep it as sure as my
name's Andr' Macbean!"
"But how do you propose to catch this fellow, Mr. Macbean?"
The bank manager looked on all sides, likewise behind the tree, before
replying under his breath: "By setting a wee trap for him! A bank's a
bank, and Stingaree hasna stuck one up since he took to his trade. But
I'll tell ye no more till ye give me your answer. Yes or no?"
"I'm afraid I don't even write an office hand; and as for figures----"
Mr. Macbean laughed outright.
"Did I say I was going to take ye into the bank, mun?" cried he.
"There's three of us already to do the writin' an' the cipherin,' an'
three's enough. Can you ride?"
"I have ridden."
"And ye'll do any rough job I set ye to?"
"The rougher the better."
"That's all I ask. There's a buggy and a pair for ye to mind, and mebbe
drive, though it's horseback errands you'll do most of. I'm an old
widower, living alone with an aged housekeeper. The cashier and the
clerk dig in the township, and I need to have a man of some sort about
the place; in fact, I have one, but I'll soon get rid of him if you'll
come instead. Understand, you live in the house with me, just like the
jackeroos on the stations; and like the jackeroos, you do all the odd
jobs and dirty work that no one else'll look at; but, unlike them, you
get two pounds a week from the first for doing it."
Mr. Andrew Macbean had chanced upon a magic word. It was the position of
"jackeroo," or utility parlor-man, on one or other of the stations to
which he carried introductions, that his young countryman had set before
him as his goal. True, a bank in a bush township was not a station in
the bush itself. On the other hand, his would-be friend was not the
first to warn Fergus against the futility of expecting more than a
nominal salary as a babe and suckling in Colonial experience; and
perhaps the prime elements of that experience might be gained as well in
the purlieus of a sufficiently remote township as in realms unnamed on
any map. It will be seen that the sober stripling was reduced to
arguing with himself, and that his main argument was not to be admitted
in his own heart. The mysterious eccentricity of his employer, coupled
with the adventurous character of his alleged prospects, was what
induced the lad to embrace both in defiance of an unimaginative
hard-headedness which he aimed at rather than possessed.
With characteristic prudence he had left his baggage on board the
river-steamer, and his own hands carried it piecemeal to the bank. This
was a red-brick bungalow with an ample veranda, standing back from the
future street that was as yet little better than a country road. The
veranda commanded a long perspective of pines, but no further bricks and
mortar, and but very few weather board walls. The yard behind the house
was shut in by as many outbuildings as clustered about the small
homesteads which Fergus had already beheld on the banks of the
Murrumbidgee. The man in charge of the yard was palpably in liquor, a
chronic condition from his general appearance, and Mr. Macbean
discharged him on the spot with a decision which left no loophole for
appeal. The woman in charge of the house adorned another plane of
civilization; she was very deaf, and very outspoken on her introduction
to the young gentleman, whose face she was pleased to approve, with the
implied reservation that all faces were liars; but she served up the
mutton of the country hot and tender; and Fergus Carrick, leaning back
after an excellent repast, marvelled for the twentieth time that he was
not to pay for it.
"A teetotaler, are ye?" said Macbean, mixing a third glass of whiskey,
with the skull-cap on the back of his head. "And so was I at your age;
but you're my very man. There are some it sets talking. Wait till the
old lady turns in, and then you shall see what you shall see."
Fergus waited in increasing excitement. The day's events were worthier
of a dream. To have set foot in Glenranald without knowing a soul in the
place, and to find one's self comfortably housed at a good salary before
night! There were moments when he questioned the complete sanity of his
eccentric benefactor, who drank whiskey like water, both as to quantity
and effect, and who chuckled continuously in his huge gray beard. But
such doubts only added to the excitement of the evening, which reached a
climax when a lighted candle was thrust in at the door and the pair
advised not to make a night of it by the candid crone on her way to bed.
"We will give her twenty minutes," said the manager, winking across his
glass. "I've never let her hear me, and she mustn't hear you either. She
must know nothing at all about it; nobody must, except you and me."
The mystification of Fergus was now complete. Unimaginative as he was by
practice and profession, he had an explanation a minute until the time
was up, when the truth beat them all for wild improbability. Macbean had
risen, lifting the lamp; holding it on high he led the way through baize
doors into the banking premises. Here was another door, which Macbean
not only unlocked, but locked again behind them both. A small inner
office led them into a shuttered chamber of fair size, with a broad
polished counter, glass swing-doors, and a formidable portal beyond. And
one of young Carrick's theories received apparent confirmation on the
spot; for the manager slipped behind his counter by another door, and at
once whipped out a great revolver.
"This they provide us with," said he. "So far it is our only authorized
defence, and it hangs on a hook down here behind the counter. But you
march in here prepared, your pistol cocked behind your back, and which
of us is likely to shoot first?"
"The bushranger," said Fergus, still rather more startled than
reassured.
"The bushranger, of course. Stingaree, let us say. As for me, either my
arms go up, or down I go in a heap. But supposing my arms do go
up--supposing I still touch something with one foot--and supposing the
floor just opens and swallows Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree! Eh? eh? What
then?"
"It would be great," cried Fergus. "But could it be done?"
"It can be, it will be, and is being done," replied the manager,
replacing the bank revolver and sliding over the counter like a boy. A
square of plain linoleum covered the floor, overlapped by a border of
the same material bearing a design. Down went Macbean upon his knees,
and his beard swept this border as he began pulling it up, tacks and
all.
The lamp burned brightly on the counter, its rays reflected in the
burnished mahogany. All at once Fergus seized it on his own initiative,
and set it on the floor before his kneeling elder, going upon his own
knees on the other side. And where the plain linoleum ended, but where
the overlapping border covered the floor, the planks were sawn through
and through down one side of the central and self-colored square.
"A trap-door!" exclaimed Fergus in a whisper.
Macbean leant back on his slippered heels, his skull-cap wickedly awry.
"This border takes a lot o' lifting," said he. "Yet we've just got to
lift it every time, and tack it down again before morning. You might try
your hand over yonder on the far side."
Fergus complied with so much energy that the whole border was ripped up
in a minute; and he was not mistaken. A trap-door it was, of huge
dimensions, almost exactly covered by the self-colored square; but at
each side a tongue of linoleum had been left loose for lifting it; and
the lamp had scarcely been replaced upon the counter when the bulk of
the floor leaned upright in one piece against the opposite wall. It had
uncovered a pit of corresponding size, but as yet hardly deep enough to
afford a hiding-place for the bucket, spade, and pickaxe which lay there
on a length of sacking.
"I see!" exclaimed Carrick, as the full light flooded his brain.
"Is that a fact?" inquired the manager twinkling.
"You're going to make a deep hole of it----?"
"No. I'm going to pay you to make it deep for me----"
"And then----"
"At dead o' night; you can take out your sleep by day."
"When Stingaree comes----"
"If he waits till we're ready for him----"
"You touch some lever----"
"And the floor swallows him, as I said, if he waits till we are ready
for him. Everything depends on that--and on your silence. We must take
time. It isn't only the digging of the hole. We need to fix up some
counterpoise to make it shut after a body like a mouse-trap; we must do
the thing thoroughly if we do it at all; and till it's done, not a word
to a soul in the same hemisphere! In the end I suppose I shall have to
tell Donkin, my cashier, and Fowler the clerk. Donkin's a disbeliever
who deserves the name o' Didymus more than ony mon o' my acquaintance.
Fowler would take so kindly to the whole idea that he'd blurt it out
within a week. He may find it out when all's in readiness, but I'll no
tell him even then. See how I trust a brither Scot at sight!"
"I much appreciate it," said Fergus, humbly.
"I wouldna ha' trustit even you, gin I hadna found the delvin' ill worrk
for auld shoulders," pursued Macbean, broadening his speech with
intentional humor. "Noo, wull ye do't or wull ye no?"
The young man's answer was to strip off his coat and spring into the
hole, and to set to work with such energy, yet so quietly, that the
bucket was filled in a few almost silent seconds. Macbean carried it
off, unlocking doors for the nonce, while Fergus remained in the hole to
mop his forehead.
"We need to have another bucket," said the manager, on his return. "I've
thought of every other thing. There's a disused well in the yard, and
down goes every blessed bucket!"
To and fro, over the lip of the closing well, back into the throat of
the deepening hole, went the buckets for many a night; and by day Fergus
Carrick employed his best wits to make an intrinsically anomalous
position appear natural to the world. It was a position which he himself
could thoroughly enjoy; he was largely his own master. He had daily
opportunities of picking up the ways and customs of the bush, and a
nightly excitement which did not pall as the secret task approached
conclusion; but he was subjected to much chaff and questioning from the
other young bloods of Glenranald. He felt from the first that it was
what he must expect. He was a groom with a place at his master's table;
he was a jackeroo who introduced station life into a town. And the
element of underlying mystery, really existing as it did, was detected
soon enough by other young heads, led by that of Fowler, the keen bank
clerk.
"I was looking at you both together, and you do favor the old man, and
no error!" he would say; or else, "What is it you could hang the boss
for, Fergy, old toucher?"
These delicate but cryptic sallies being ignored or parried, the heavy
swamp of innuendo was invariably deserted for the breezy hill-top of
plain speech, and Fergus had often work enough to put a guard upon hand
and tongue. But his temperament was eminently self-contained, and on the
whole he was an elusive target for the witticisms of his friends. There
was no wit, however, and no attempt at it on the part of Donkin, the
cantankerous cashier. He seldom addressed a word to Carrick, never a
civil word, but more than once he treated his chief to a sarcastic
remonstrance on his degrading familiarity with an underling. In such
encounters the imperturbable graybeard was well able to take care of
himself, albeit he expressed to Fergus a regret that he had not
exercised a little more ingenuity in the beginning.
"You should have come to me with a letter of introduction," said he.
"But who would have given me one?"
"I would, yon first night, and you'd have presented it next day in
office hours," replied the manager. "But it's too late to think about it
now, and in a few days Donkin may know the truth."
He might have known it already, but for one difficulty. They had digged
their pit to the generous depth of eight feet, so that a tall prisoner
could barely touch the trap-door with extended finger-tips; and
Stingaree (whose latest performance was no longer the Yallarook affair)
was of medium height according to his police description. The trap-door
was a double one, which parted in the centre with the deadly precision
of the gallows floor. The difficulty was to make the flaps close
automatically, with the mouse-trap effect of Macbean's ambition. It was
managed eventually by boring separate wells for a weight behind the
hinges on either side. Copper wire running on minute pulleys let into
grooves suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, and
powerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. The
lever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reached
by thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward on a
spring.
It may be conceived that all this represented the midnight labors and
the constant thought of many weeks. It was now the beginning of the cool
but brilliant Riverina winter, and, despite the disparity in their
years, the two Scotsmen were fast friends. They had worked together as
one man, with the same patient passion for perfection, the same delight
in detail for its own sake. Almost the only difference was that the old
fellow refreshed his energies with the glass of whiskey which was never
far from his elbow after banking hours, while the young one cultivated
the local excess of continual tea. And all this time the rascally
Stingaree ranged the district, with or without his taciturn accomplice,
covering great distances in fabulous time, lurking none knew where, and
springing on the unwary in the last places in which his presence was
suspected.
"But he has not yet robbed a bank, and we have our hopes," wrote Fergus
to a faithful sister at Largs. "It may be for fear of the revolvers with
which all the banks are provided now. Mr. Macbean has been practising
with ours, and purposely put a bullet through one of our back windows.
The whole township has been chafing him about it, and the local rag has
risen to a sarcastic paragraph, which is exactly what we wanted. The
trap-door over the pit is now practically finished. It's too complicated
to describe, but Stingaree has only to march into the bank and 'stick it
up,' and the man behind the counter has only to touch a lever with his
foot for the villain to disappear through the floor into a prison it'll
take him all his time to break. On Saturday the cashier and the clerk
are coming to dinner, and before we sit down they are to be shown
everything."
This was but a fraction of one of the long letters which Fergus
despatched by nearly every mail. Silent and self-contained as he was, he
had one confidante at the opposite end of the earth, one escape-pipe in
his pen. Not a word of the great secret had he even written to another
soul. To his trusted sister he had never before been quite so
communicative. His conscience pricked him as he took his letter to the
post, and he had it registered on no other score.
On Saturday the bank closed at one o'clock; the staff were to return and
dine at seven, the Queen's birthday falling on the same day for a
sufficient pretext. As the hour approached Fergus made the distressing
discovery that his friend and host had anticipated the festivities with
too free a hand. Macbean was not drunk, but he was perceptibly blunted
and blurred, and Fergus had never seen the pale eyes so watery or the
black skull-cap so much on one side of the venerable head. The lad was
genuinely grieved. A whiskey bottle stood empty on the laden board, and
he had the temerity to pocket the corkscrew while Macbean was gone to
his storeroom for another bottle. A solemn search ensued, and then
Fergus was despatched in haste for a new corkscrew.
"An' look slippy," said Macbean, "or we'll have old Donkin here before
ye get back."
"Not for another three-quarters of an hour," remarked Fergus, looking at
his watch.
"Any minute!" retorted Macbean, with a ribald epithet. "I invited
Donkin, in confidence, to come a good half-hour airly, and I'll tell ye
for why. Donkin must ken, but I'm none so sure o' yon other impident
young squirt. His tongue's too long for his mouth. Donkin or I could
always be behind the counter; anyway, I mean to take his opeenion before
tellin' any other body."
Entertaining his own distrust of the vivacious Fowler, Fergus commended
the decision, and so took his departure by the private entrance. It was
near sundown; a fresh breeze blew along the hard road, puffing cloudlets
of yellow sand into the rosy dusk. Fergus hurried till he was out of
sight, and then idled shamelessly under trees. He was not going on for a
new corkscrew. He was going back to confess boldly where he had found
the old one. And the sight of Donkin in the distance sent him back in
something of a hurry; it was quite enough to have to spend an evening
with the cantankerous cashier.
The bank was practically at one end of the township as then laid out;
two or three buildings there were further on, but they stood altogether
aloof. The bank, for a bank, was sufficiently isolated, and Fergus could
not but congratulate himself on the completion of its ingenious and
unsuspected defences. It only remained to keep the inventor reasonably
sober for the evening, and thereafter to whistle or to pray for
Stingaree. Meanwhile the present was no mean occasion, and Fergus was
glad to see that Macbean had thrown open the official doors in his
absence. They had often agreed that it would be worth all their labor to
enlighten Donkin by letting the pit gape under his nose as he entered
the bank. Fergus glanced over his shoulder, saw the other hurrying, and
hurried himself in order to take up a good position for seeing the
cashier's face. He was in the middle of the treacherous floor before he
perceived that it was not Macbean in the half-light behind the counter,
but a good-looking man whom he had never seen before.
"Didn't know I was invited, eh?" said the stranger, putting up a single
eye-glass. "Don't believe it, perhaps? You'd better ask Mr. Macbean!"
And before it had occurred to him to stir from where he stood agape, the
floor fell from under the feet of Fergus, his body lurched forward, and
came down flat and heavy on the hard earth eight feet below. Not
entirely stunned, though shaken and hurt from head to heel, he was still
collecting his senses when the pit blackened as the trap-door shut in
implicit obedience to its weights and springs. And in the clinging
velvet darkness the young man heard a groan.
"Is that yoursel', Fergy?"
"And are you there, Mr. Macbean?"
"Mon, didn't it shut just fine!"
Curiously blended with the physical pain in the manager's voice was a
sodden philosophic humor which maddened the younger man. Fergus swore
where he lay writhing on his stomach. Macbean chuckled and groaned
again.
"It's Stingaree," he said, drawing a breath through his teeth.
"Of course it is."
"I never breathed it to a soul."
"No more did I."
Fergus spoke with ready confidence, and yet the words left something on
his mind. It was something vague but haunting, something that made him
feel instinctively unworthy of the kindly, uncomplaining tone which had
annoyed him but a moment before.
"No bones broken, Fergy?"
"None that I know of."
"I doubt I've not been so lucky. I'm thinkin' it's a rib, by the way it
hurts to breathe."
Fergus was already fumbling in his pocket. The match-box opened with a
click. The match scraped several times in vain. Then at last the scene
sprang out as on the screen of a magic-lantern. And to Fergus it was a
very white old man, hunched up against the muddy wall, with blood upon
his naked scalp and beard, and both hands pressed to his side; to the
old man, a muddy face stricken with horrified concern, and a match
burning down between muddy fingers; but to both, such a new view and
version of their precious hole that the corners of each mouth were
twitching as the match was thrown away.
Fergus was fumbling for another when a step rang overhead; and at the
sharp exchange of words which both underground expected, Fergus came on
all fours to the old man's side, and together they sat gazing upward
into the pall of impenetrable crape.
"You infernal villain!" they heard Donkin roar, and stamp his feet with
such effect that the floor opened, and down through the square of light
came the cashier feet first.
"Heaven and hell!" he squealed, but subsided unhurt on hands and knees
as the flaps went up with such a snap that Macbean and Carrick nudged
each other at the same moment. "Now I know who you are!" the cashier
raved. "Call yourself Stingaree! You're Fowler dressed up, and this is
one of Macbean's putrid practical jokes. I saw his jackal hurrying in to
say I was coming. By cripes! it takes a surgical operation to see their
sort, I grant you."
There was a noise of subdued laughter overhead; even in the pit a dry
chuckle came through Macbean's set teeth.
"If it's practical joke o' mine, Donkin, it's recoiled on my own poor
pate," said the old man. "I've a rib stove in, too, if that's any
consolation to ye. It's Stingaree, my manny!"
"You're right, it is, it must be!" cried the cashier, finding his words
in a torrent. "I was going to tell you. He's been at his game down
south; stuck up our own mail again only yesterday, between this and
Deniliquin, and got a fine haul of registered letters, so they say. But
where the deuce are we? I never knew there was a cellar under here, let
alone a trap-door that might have been made for these villains."
"It was made for them," replied Macbean, after a pause; and in the dead
dark he went on to relate the frank and humble history of the hole, from
its inception to the crooked climax of that bitter hour. A braver
confession Fergus had never heard; its philosophic flow was unruffled by
the more and more scornful interjections of the ungenerous cashier; and
yet his younger countryman, who might have been proud of him, hardly
listened to a word uttered by Macbean.
Half-a-dozen fallen from the lips of Donkin had lightened young
Carrick's darkness with consuming fires of shame. "A fine haul of
registered letters"--among others his own last letter to his sister! So
it was he who had done it all; and he had perjured himself to his
benefactor, besides, betraying him. He sat in the dark between fire and
ice, chiefly wondering how he could soonest win through the trap-door
and earn a bullet in his brain.
"The spree to-night," concluded Macbean, whose fall completely sobered
him, "was for the express purpose of expounding the trap to you, and I
asked you airly to take your advice. I was no so sure about young
Fowler, whether we need tell him or no. He has an awful long tongue;
but I'm thinkin' there's a longer if I knew where to look for it."
"I could tell you where," rasped Donkin. "But go on."
"I was watching old Hannah putting her feenishing touches to the table,
and waiting for Fergus Carrick to come back, when I thought I heard him
behind me and you with him. But it was Stingaree and his mate, and the
two of us were covered with revolvers like young rifles. Hannah they
told to go on with what she was doing, as they were mighty hungry, and I
advised her to do as she was bid. The brute with the beard has charge of
her. Stingaree himself drove me into the middle of my own trap-door,
made me give up my keys, and then went behind the counter and did the
trick. He'd got it all down on paper, the Lord alone knows how."
"Oh, you Scotchmen!" cried the pleasant cashier. "Talk of your land of
cakes! You take every cake in the land between you!"
It seemed he had been filling his pipe while he listened and prepared
this pretty speech. Now he struck a match, and with the flame to the
bowl saw Fergus for the first time. The cashier held the match on high.
"You hear all the while?" he cried. "No wonder you lay low, Carrick; no
wonder I didn't hear your voice."
"What do you mean by that?" growled Fergus, in fierce heat and fierce
satisfaction.
"Surely, Mr. Macbean, you aren't wondering who wagged the long tongue
now?"
"You mean that I wagged mine? And it's a lie!" said Fergus, hoarsely; he
was sitting upon his heels, poised to spring.
"I mean that if Mr. Macbean had listened to me two months ago we should
none of us be in this hole now."
"Then, my faith, you're in a worse one than you think!" cried Fergus,
and fell upon his traducer as the match went out. "Take that, and that,
and that!" he ground out through his teeth, as he sent the cashier over
on his back and pounded the earth with his skull. Luckily the first was
soft and the second hard, so that the man was more outraged than hurt
when circumstances which they might have followed created a diversion.
In his turn the lively Fowler had marched whistling into the bank, had
ceased whistling to swear down the barrel of a cocked revolver, and met
a quicker fate than his comrades by impressing the bushranger as the
most dangerous man of the quartette. Unfortunately for him, his fate
was still further differentiated from theirs. Fowler's feet glanced off
Carrick's back, and he plunged into the well head-first, rolling over
like a stone as the wooden jaws above closed greedily upon the light of
day.
Fergus at once struck matches, and in their light the cashier took the
insensible head upon his knees and glared at his enemy as if from
sanctuary of the Red Cross. But Fergus returned to Macbean's side.
"I never said a word to a living soul," he muttered. "It has come out
some other way."
"Of course it has," said the old manager, with the same tell-tale
inhalation through the teeth. Fergus felt worse than ever. He groped for
the bald head and found it cold and dank. In an instant he was clamoring
under the trap-door, leaping up and striking it with his fist.
"What do you want?"
"Whiskey. Some of us are hurt."
"God help you if it's any hanky-panky!"
"It's none. Something to drink, and something to drink it in, or there's
blood upon your head!"
Clanking steps departed and returned.
"Stand by to catch, below there!"
And Fergus stood by, expecting to see a long barrel with the bottle and
glass that broke their fall on him; but Stingaree had crept away
unheard, and he pressed the lever just enough to let the glass and
bottle tumble through.
Time passed: it might have been an hour. The huddled heap that was
Macbean breathed forth relief. The head on Donkin's knees moved from
side to side with groans. Donkin himself thanked Fergus for his ration;
he who served it out alone went thirsty. "Wait till I earn some," he
said bitterly to himself. "I could finish the lot if I started now." But
the others never dreamt that he was waiting, and he lied about it to
Macbean.
Now that they sat in silence no sound escaped them overhead. They heard
Stingaree and his mate sit down to a feast which Macbean described with
groaning modesty as the best that he could do.
"There's no soup," he whispered, "but there's a barr'l of oysters
fetched up on purpose by the coach. I hope they havena missed the
Chablis. They may as well do the thing complete." In a little the
champagne popped. "Dry Monopole!" moaned the manager, near to tears. "It
came up along with the oysters. O sirs, O sirs, but this is hard on us
all! Now they're at the turkey--and I chopped the stuffing with my ain
twa han's!"
They were at the turkey a long time. Another cork popped; but the
familiar tread of deaf Hannah was heard no more, and at length they
called her.
"Mother!" roared a mouth that was full.
"Old lady!" cried the gallant Stingaree.
"She's 'ard of 'earing, mate."
"She might still hear you, Howie."
And the chairs rasped backward over bare boards as one; at the same
instant Fergus leapt to his feet in the earthly Tartarus his own hands
had dug.
"I do believe she's done a bolt," he gasped, "and got clean away!"
Curses overhead confirmed the supposition. Clanking feet hunted the
premises at a run. In a minute the curses were renewed and multiplied,
yet muffled, as though there was some fresh cause for them which the
prisoners need not know. Hannah had not been found. Yet some disturbing
discovery had undoubtedly been made. Doors were banged and bolted. A
gunshot came faint but staccato from the outer world. A real report
echoed through the bank.
"A siege!" cried Fergus, striking a match to dance by. "The old heroine
has fetched the police, and these beauties are in a trap."
"And what about us?" demanded the cashier.
"Shut up and listen!" retorted Fergus, without ceremony. Macbean was
leaning forward, with bald head on one side and hollowed palm at the
upper ear. Even the stunned man had recovered sufficiently to raise
himself on one elbow and gaze overhead as Fergus struck match after
match. The villains were having an altercation on the very trap-door.
"Now's the time to cut and run--now or never."
"Very well, you do so. I'm going through the safe."
"You should ha' done that first."
"Better late than not at all."
"You can't stop and do it without me."
"Oh, yes, I can. I'll call for a volunteer from below. You show them
your spurs and save your skin."
"Oh, I'll stay, curse you, I'll stay!"
"And I'll have my volunteer, whether you stay or not."
The pair had scarcely parted when the trap-door opened slowly and stayed
open for the first time. The banking chamber was but dimly lit, and the
light in the pit less than it had been during the brief burning of
single matches. No peering face was revealed to those below, but the
voice of Stingaree came rich and crisp from behind the counter.
"Your old woman has got away to the police-barracks and the place is
surrounded. One of you has got to come up and help, and help fair, or go
to hell with a bullet in his heart. I give you one minute to choose your
man."
But in one second the man had chosen himself. Without a word, or a
glance at any of his companions, but with a face burning with
extraordinary fires, Fergus Carrick sprang for the clean edge of the
trap-door, caught it first with one hand and then with both, drew
himself up like the gymnast he had been at his Scottish school, and
found himself prone upon the floor and trap-door as the latter closed
under him on the release of the lever which Stingaree understood so
well. A yell of execration followed him into the upper air. And
Stingaree was across the counter before his new ally had picked himself
up.
"That's because this was expected of me," said Fergus, grimly, to
explain the cashier's reiterated anathemas. "I was the writer of the
registered letter that led to all this. So now I'm going the whole hog."
And the blue eyes boiled in his brick-red face.
"You mean that? No nonsense?"
"You shall see."
"I should shoot you like a native cat."
"You couldn't do me a better turn."
"Right! Swear on your knees that you won't use it against me or my mate,
and I'll trust you with this revolver. You may fire as high as you
please, but they must think we're three instead of two."
Fergus took the oath in fierce earnest upon his knees, was handed the
weapon belonging to the bank, and posted in his own bedroom window at
the rear of the building. The front was secure enough with the shutters
and bolts of the official fortress. It was to the back premises that the
attack confined itself, making all use of the admirable cover afforded
by the stables.
Carrick saw heads and shoulders hunched to aim over stable-doors as he
obeyed his orders and kept his oath. His high fire drew a deadlier upon
himself; a stream of lead from a Winchester whistled into the room past
his ear and over his ducked head. He tried firing from the floor without
showing his face. The Winchester let him alone; in a sudden sickness he
sprang up to see if anything hung sprawling over the stable-door, and
was in time to see men in retreat to right and left, the white pugarees
of the police fluttering ingloriously among them. Only one was left
upon the ground, and he could sit up to nurse a knee.
Fergus sighed relief as he sought Stingaree, and found him with a
comical face before the open safe.
"House full of paltry paper!" said he. "I suppose it's the old
sportsman's custom to get rid of most of his heavy metal before closing
on Saturdays?"
Fergus said it was; he had himself stowed many a strong-box aboard
unsuspected barges for Echuca.
"Well, now's our time to leave you," continued Stingaree. "If I'm not
mistaken, their flight is simply for the moment, and in two or three
more they'll be back to batter in the bank shutters. I wonder what they
think we've done with our horses? I'll bet they've looked everywhere but
in the larder next the kitchen door--not that we ever let them get so
close. But my mate's in there now, mounted and waiting, and I shall have
to leave you."
"But I was coming with you," cried Fergus, aghast.
Stingaree's eye-glass dangled on its cord.
"I'm afraid I must trouble you to step into that safe instead," said he,
smiling.
"Man, I mean it! You think I don't. I've fought on your side of my own
free will. How can I live that down? It's the only side for me for the
rest of time!"
The fixed eye-glass covered the brick-red face with the molten eyes.
"I believe you do mean it."
"You shall shoot me if I don't."
"I most certainly should. But my mate Howie has his obvious limitations.
I've long wanted a drop of new blood. Barmaid's thoroughbred and strong
as an elephant; we're neither of us heavyweights; by the powers, I'll
trust you, and you shall ride behind!"
Now, Barmaid was the milk-white mare that was only less notorious than
her lawless rider. It was noised in travellers' huts and around
campfires that she would do more at her master's word than had been
known of horse outside a circus. It was the one touch that Stingaree had
borrowed from a more Napoleonic but incomparably coarser and crueller
knight of the bush. In all other respects the _fin de siecle_ desperado
was unique. It was a stroke of luck, however, that there happened to be
an old white mare in the bank stables, which the police had impounded
with solemn care while turning every other animal adrift. And so it
fell out that not a shot followed the mounted bushrangers into the
night, and that long before the bank shutters were battered in the
flying trio were miles away.
Fergus flew like a runaway bride, his arms about the belted waist of
Stingaree. Trees loomed ahead and flew past by the clump under a
wonderful wide sky of scintillating stars. The broad bush track had very
soon been deserted at a tangent; through ridges and billows of salt-bush
and cotton-bush they sailed with the swift confidence of a well-handled
clipper before the wind. Stingaree was the leader four miles out of
five, but in the fifth his mate Howie would gallop ahead, and anon they
would come on him dismounted at a wire fence, with the wires strapped
down and his horse tethered to one of the posts till he had led Barmaid
over.
It was thus they careered across the vast chessboard of the fenced
back-blocks at dead of night. Stingaree and Fergus sat saddle and
bareback without a break until near dawn their pioneer spurred forward
yet again and was swallowed in a steely haze. It was cold as a sharp
spring night in England. But for a mile or more Fergus had clung on with
but one arm round the bushranger's waist; now the right arm came
stealing back; felt something cold for the fraction of a second, and
plucked prodigiously, and in another fraction an icy ring mouthed
Stingaree's neck.
"Pull up," said Fergus, hoarsely, "or your brains go flying."
"Little traitor!" whispered the other, with an imprecation that froze
the blood.
"I am no traitor. I swore I wouldn't abuse the revolver you gave me, and
it's been in my pocket all the night."
"The other's unloaded."
"You wouldn't sit so quiet if it were. Now, round we go, and back on our
tracks full split. It's getting light, and we shall see them plain. If
you vary a yard either way, or if your mate catches us, out go your
brains."
The bushranger obeyed without a word. Fergus was almost unnerved by the
incredible ease of his conquest over so redoubtable a ruffian. His
stolid Scottish blood stood by him; but still he made grim apology as
they rode.
"I had to do it. It was through me you got to know. I had to live that
down; this was the only way."
"You have spirit. If you would still be my mate----"
"Your mate! I mean this to be the making of me as an honest man. Here's
the fence. I give you two minutes to strap it down and get us over."
Stingaree slid tamely to the ground.
"Don't you dare to get through those wires! Strap it from this side with
your belt, and strap it quick!"
And the bushranger obeyed with the same sensible docility, but with his
back turned, so that Fergus could not see has face; and it was light
enough to see faces now; yet Barmaid refused the visible wires, as she
had not refused them all that night of indigo starlight.
"Coax her, man!" cried Fergus, in the saddle now, and urging the mare
with his heels. So Stingaree whispered in the mare's ear; and with that
the strapped wires flew under his captor's nose, as the rider took the
fence, but not the horse.
At a single syllable the milk-white mare had gone on her knees, like
devout lady in holy fane; and as she rose her last rider lay senseless
at her master's feet; but whether from his fall, or from a blow dealt
him in the act of falling, the unhappy Fergus never knew. Indeed,
knowledge for him was at an end until matches burnt under his nose
awakened him to a position of the last humiliation. His throat and chin
topped a fence-post, the weight of his body was on chin and throat,
while wrists and muscles were lashed at full stretch to the wires on
either side.
"Now I'm going to shoot you like a dog," said Stingaree. He drew the
revolver whose muzzle had pressed into his own neck so short a time
before. Yet now it was broad daylight, and the sun coming up in the
bound youth's eyes for the last time.
"Shoot away!" he croaked, raising the top of his head to speak at all.
"I gave you leave before we started. Shoot away!"
"At ten paces," said Stingaree, stepping them. "That, I think, is fair."
"Perfectly," replied Fergus. "But be kind enough to make this so-called
man of yours hold his foul tongue till I'm out of earshot of you all."
Huge Howie had muttered little enough for him, but to that little
Stingaree put an instantaneous stop.
"He's a dog, to be shot like a dog, but too good a dog for you to
blackguard!" cried he. "Any message, young fellow?"
[Illustration: "Any message, young fellow?"]
"Not through you."
"So long, then!"
"Shoot away!"
The long barrel was poised as steadily as field-gun on its carriage.
Fergus kept his blue eyes on the gleaming ring of the muzzle.
The hammer fell, the cartridge cracked, and from the lifted muzzle a
tiny cloud flowed like a bubble from a pipe. The post quivered under
Carrick's chin, and a splinter flew up and down before his eyes. But
that was all.
"Aim longer," said he. "Get it over this shot."
"I'll try."
But the same thing happened again.
"Come nearer," sneered Fergus.
And Stingaree strode forward with an oath.
"I was going to give you six of them. But you're a braver man than I
thought. And that's the lot."
The bound youth's livid face turned redder than the red dawn.
"Shoot me--shoot!" he shouted, like a lunatic.
"No, I shall not. I never meant to--I did mean you to sit out six--but
you're the most gallant little idiot I've ever struck. Besides, you come
from the old country, like myself!"
And a sigh floated into the keen morning air as he looked his last upon
the lad through the celebrated monocle.
"Then I'll shoot myself when I'm free," sobbed Fergus through his
teeth.
"Oh, no, you won't," were Stingaree's last words. "You'll find it's not
a bit worth while."
And when the mounted police and others from Glenranald discovered the
trussed youngster, not an hour later, they took the same tone. And one
and all stopped and stooped to peer at the two bullet-holes in the post,
and at something underneath them, before cutting poor Fergus down.
Then they propped him up to read with his own eyes the nailed legend
which first helped Fergus Carrick to live down the indiscretion of his
letter to Largs, and then did more for him in that Colony than letter
from Queen Victoria to His Excellency of New South Wales. For it ran:--
"THIS IS THE GAMEST LITTLE COCK I HAVE EVER STRUCK. HE
HAD ME CAPTIVE ONCE, COULD HAVE SHOT ME OVER AND OVER
AGAIN, AND ALL BUT TOOK ME ALIVE. MORE POWER TO HIM!
"STINGAREE."
"To the Vile Dust"
Vanheimert had been in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so far
from the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full of
sand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm which
already shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks there
were none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned browner
and more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket and
ran for the fence as for his life. He had only left it in order to camp
where his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundred
yards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which the
bushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he was
groping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collision
with invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wondering
where the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise to
retrace his steps and try again. And while he wondered a fit of coughing
drove the dust from his mouth like smoke; and even as he coughed the
thickening swirl obliterated his tracks as swiftly as heavy snow.
Speckled eyeballs stood out of a sanded face as Vanheimert saw himself
adrift and drowning in the dust. He was a huge young fellow, and it was
a great smooth face, from which the gaping mouth cut a slice from jaw to
jaw. Terror and rage, and an overpowering passion of self-pity,
convulsed the coarse features in turn; then, with the grunt of a wounded
beast, he rallied and plunged to his destruction, deeper and deeper into
the bush, further and further from the fence.
The trees were few and mostly stunted, but Vanheimert crashed into more
than one upon his headlong course. The sense was choked out of him
already; he was fleeing on the wings of the storm; of direction he
thought no more. He forgot that the run he had been traversing was at
the best abandoned by man and beast; he forgot the "spell" that he had
promised himself at the deserted homestead where he had once worked as a
lad. He might have remembered that the paddock in which he was burying
himself had always been the largest in the district. It was a ten-mile
block without subdividing fence or drop of water from end to end. The
whole station was a howling desert, little likely to be stocked a second
time by enlightened man. But this was the desert's heart, and into it
sped Vanheimert, coated yellow to the eyes and lips, the dust-fiend
himself in visible shape. Now he staggered in his stride, now fell
headlong to cough and sob in the hollow of his arm. The unfortunate
young man had the courage of his desperate strait. Many times he arose
and hurled himself onward with curse or prayer; many times he fell or
flung himself back to earth. But at length the storm passed over and
over his spent members; sand gathered by the handful in the folds of his
clothes; the end was as near as end could be.
It was just then that two riders, who fancied they had heard a voice,
struck an undoubted trail before it vanished, and followed it to the
great sprawling body in which the dregs of life pulsed feebly. The thing
groaned as it was lifted and strapped upon a horse; it gurgled gibberish
at the taste of raw spirits later in the same hour. It was high noon
before Vanheimert opened a seeing eye and blinked it in the unveiled
sun.
He was lying on a blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees.
The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of
barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that
sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a
natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the
sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep
exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every leaf within
Vanheimert's vision bore its little load of sand, and the sand was
clotted as though the dust-storm had ended with the usual shower.
Vanheimert turned and viewed the sylvan amphitheatre; on its far side
were two small tents, and a man in a folding chair reading the
_Australasian_. He closed the paper on meeting Vanheimert's eyes, went
to one of the tents, stood a moment looking in, and then came across the
sunlit circle with his newspaper and the folded chair.
"And how do you feel now?" said he, setting up the chair beside the
blanket, but still standing as he surveyed the prostrate man, with dark
eyes drawn together in the shade of a great straw sombrero.
"Fine!" replied Vanheimert, huskily. "But where am I, and who are you
chaps? Rabbiters?"
As he spoke, however, he searched for the inevitable strings of rabbit
skins festooned about the tents, and found them not.
"If you like," replied the other, frowning a little at the immediate
curiosity of the rescued man.
"I don't like," said Vanheimert, staring unabashed. "I'm a rabbiter
myself, and know too much. It ain't no game for abandoned stations, and
you don't go playin' it in top-boots and spurs. Where's your skins and
where's your squatter to pay for 'em? Plucky rabbiters, you two!"
And he gazed across the open toward the further tent, which had just
disgorged a long body and a black beard not wholly unfamiliar to
Vanheimert. The dark man was a shade darker as he followed the look and
read its partial recognition; but a grim light came with quick resolve,
and it was with sardonic deliberation that an eye-glass was screwed into
one dark eye.
"Then what should you say that we are?"
"How do I know?" cried Vanheimert, turning pale; for he had been one of
the audience at Mrs. Clarkson's concert in Gulland's store, and in
consecutive moments he had recognized first Howie and now Stingaree.
"You know well enough!"
And the terrible eye-glass covered him like a pistol.
"Perhaps I can guess," faltered Vanheimert, no small brain working in
his prodigious skull.
"Guess, then!"
"There are tales about a new chum camping by himself--that is, just with
one man----"
"And what object?"
"To get away from the world, sir."
"And where did you hear these tales?"
"All along the road, sir."
The chastened tone, the anxious countenance, the sudden recourse to the
servile monosyllable, were none of them lost on Stingaree; but he
himself had once set such a tale abroad, and it might be that the
present bearer still believed it. The eye-glass looked him through and
through. Vanheimert bore the inspection like a man, and was soon
satisfied that his recognition of the outlaw was as yet quite
unsuspected. He congratulated himself on his presence of mind, and had
sufficient courage to relish the excitement of a situation of which he
also perceived the peril.
"I suppose you have no recollection of how you got here?" at length said
Stingaree.
"Not me. I only remember the dust-storm." And Vanheimert shuddered where
he lay in the sun. "But I'm very grateful to you, sir, for saving my
life."
"You are, are you?"
"Haven't I cause to be, sir?"
"Well, I dare say we did bring you round between us, but it was pure
luck that we ever came across you. And now I should lie quiet if I were
you. In a few minutes there'll be a pannikin of tea for you, and after
that you'll feel a different man."
Vanheimert lay quiet enough; there was much to occupy his mind.
Instinctively he had assumed a part, and he was only less quick to
embrace the necessity of a strictly consistent performance. He watched
Stingaree in close conversation with Howie, who was boiling the billy on
a spirit-lamp between the two tents, but he watched them with an
admirable simulation of idle unconcern. They were talking about him, of
course; more than once they glanced in his direction; and each time
Vanheimert congratulated himself the more heartily on the ready pretence
to which he was committed. Let them but dream that he knew them, and
Vanheimert gave himself as short a shrift as he would have granted in
their place. But they did not dream it, they were off their guard, and
rather at his mercy than he at theirs. He might prove the immediate
instrument of their capture--why not? The thought put Vanheimert in a
glow; on the blanket where they had laid him, he dwelt on it without a
qualm; and the same wide mouth watered for the tea which these villains
were making, and for their blood.
It was Howie who came over with the steaming pannikin, and watched
Vanheimert as he sipped and smacked his lips, while Stingaree at his
distance watched them both. The pannikin was accompanied by a tin-plate
full of cold mutton and a wedge of baking-powder bread, which between
them prevented the ravening man from observing how closely he was
himself observed as he assuaged his pangs. There was, however, something
in the nature of a muttered altercation between the bushrangers when
Howie was sent back for more of everything. Vanheimert put it down to
his own demands, and felt that Stingaree was his friend when it was he
who brought the fresh supplies.
"Eat away," said Stingaree, seating himself and producing pipe and
tobacco. "It's rough fare, but there's plenty of it."
"I won't ask you for no more," replied Vanheimert, paving the way for
his escape.
"Oh, yes, you will!" said Stingaree. "You're going to camp with us for
the next few days, my friend!"
"Why am I?" cried Vanheimert, aghast at the quiet statement, which it
never occurred to him to gainsay. Stingaree pared a pipeful of tobacco
and rubbed it fine before troubling to reply.
"Because the way out of this takes some finding, and what's the use of
escaping an unpleasant death one day if you go and die it the next?
That's one reason," said Stingaree, "but there's another. The other
reason is that, now you're here, you don't go till I choose."
Blue wreaths of smoke went up with the words, which might have phrased
either a humorous hospitality or a covert threat. The dispassionate tone
told nothing. But Vanheimert felt the eye-glass on him, and his hearty
appetite was at an end.
"That's real kind of you," said he. "I don't feel like running no more
risks till I'm obliged. My nerves are shook. And if a born back-blocker
may make so bold, it's a fair old treat to see a new chum camping out
for the fun of it!"
"Who told you I was a new chum?" asked Stingaree, sharply. "Ah! I
remember," he added, nodding; "you heard of me lower down the road."
Vanheimert grinned from ear to ear.
"I'd have known it without that," said he. "What real bushmen would boil
their billy on a spirit-lamp when there's wood and to spare for a
camp-fire on all sides of 'em?"
Now, Vanheimert clearly perceived the superiority of smokeless
spirit-lamp to tell-tale fire for those in hiding; so he chuckled
consumedly over this thrust, which was taken in such excellent part by
Stingaree as to prove him a victim to the desired illusion. It was the
cleverest touch that Vanheimert had yet achieved. And he had the wit
neither to blunt his point by rubbing it in nor to recall attention to
it by subtle protestation of his pretended persuasion. But once or twice
before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning
the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the
Englishman in the bush learns to expect from the indigenous buffoon.
In the night Vanheimert was less easy. He had to sleep in Howie's tent,
but it was some hours before he slept at all, for Howie would remain
outside, and Vanheimert longed to hear him snore. At last the rabbiter
fell into a doze, and when he awoke the auspicious music filled the
tent. He listened on one elbow, peering till the darkness turned less
dense; and there lay Howie across the opening of the tent. Vanheimert
reached for his thin elastic-sided bushman's boots, and his hands
trembled as he drew them on. He could now see the form of Howie plainly
enough as it lay half in the starlight and half in the darkness of the
tent. He stepped over it without a mistake, and the ignoble strains
droned on behind him.
The stars seemed unnaturally bright and busy as Vanheimert stole into
their tremulous light. At first he could distinguish nothing earthly;
then the tents came sharply into focus, and after them the ring of
impenetrable trees. The trees whispered a chorus, myriads strong, in a
chromatic scale that sang but faintly of the open country. There were
palpable miles of wilderness, and none other lodge but this, yet the
psychological necessity for escape was stronger in Vanheimert than the
bodily reluctance to leave the insecure security of the bushrangers'
encampment. He was their prisoner, whatever they might say, and the
sense of captivity was intolerable; besides, let them but surprise his
knowledge of their secret, and they would shoot him like a dog. On the
other hand, beyond the forest and along the beaten track lay fame and a
fortune in direct reward.
Before departure Vanheimert wished to peep into the other tent, but its
open end was completely covered in for the night, and prudence forbade
him to meddle with his hands. He had an even keener desire to steal one
or other of the horses which he had seen before nightfall tethered in
the scrub; but here again he lacked enterprise, fancied the saddles must
be in Stingaree's tent, and shrank from committing himself to an action
which nothing, in the event of disaster, could explain away. On foot he
need not put himself in the wrong, even with villains ready to suspect
that he suspected them.
And on foot he went, indeed on tiptoe till the edge of the trees was
reached without adventure, and he turned to look his last upon the two
tents shimmering in the starlight. As he turned again, satisfied that
the one was still shut and that Howie still lay across the opening of
the other, a firm hand took Vanheimert by either shoulder; otherwise he
had leapt into the air; for it was Stingaree, who had stepped from
behind a bush as from another planet, so suddenly that Vanheimert nearly
gasped his dreadful name.
"I couldn't sleep! I couldn't sleep!" he cried out instead, shrinking as
from a lifted hand, though he was merely being shaken playfully to and
fro.
"No more could I," said Stingaree.
"So I was going for a stroll. That was all, I swear, Mr.--Mr.--I don't
know your name!"
"Quite sure?" said Stingaree.
"My oath! How should I?"
"You might have heard it down the road."
"Not me!"
"Yet you heard of me, you know."
"Not by name--my oath!"
Stingaree peered into the great face in which the teeth were chattering
and from which all trace of color had flown.
"I shouldn't eat you for knowing who I am," said he. "Honesty is still a
wise policy in certain circumstances; but you know best."
"I know nothing about you, and care less," retorted Vanheimert,
sullenly, though the perspiration was welling out of him. "I come for a
stroll because I couldn't sleep, and I can't see what all this barney's
about."
Stingaree dropped his hands.
"Do you want to sleep?"
"My blessed oath!"
"Then come to my tent, and I'll give you a nobbler that may make you."
The nobbler was poured out of a gallon jar, under Vanheimert's nose, by
the light of a candle which he held himself. Yet he smelt it furtively
before trying it with his lips, and denied himself a gulp till he was
reassured. But soon the empty pannikin was held out for more. And it was
the starless hour before dawn when Vanheimert tripped over Howie's legs
and took a contented header into the corner from which he had made his
stealthy escape.
The tent was tropical when he awoke, but Stingaree was still at his
breakfast outside in the shade. He pointed to a bucket and a piece of
soap behind the tent, and Vanheimert engaged in obedient ablutions
before sitting down to his pannikin, his slice of damper, and his
portion of a tin of sardines.
"Sorry there's no meat for you," said Stingaree. "My mate's gone for
fresh supplies. By the way, did you miss your boots?"
The rabbiter looked at a pair of dilapidated worsted socks and at one
protruding toe; he was not sure whether he had gone to bed for the
second time in these or in his boots. Certainly he had missed the latter
on his second awakening, but had not deemed it expedient to make
inquiries. And now he merely observed that he wondered where he could
have left them.
"On your feet," said Stingaree. "My mate has made so bold as to borrow
them for the day."
"He's welcome to them, I'm sure," said Vanheimert with a sickly smile.
"I was sure you would say so," rejoined Stingaree. "His own are reduced
to uppers and half a heel apiece, but he hopes to get them soled in
Ivanhoe while he waits."
"So he's gone to Ivanhoe, has he?"
"He's been gone three hours."
"Surely it's a long trip?"
"Yes; we shall have to make the most of each other till sundown," said
Stingaree, gazing through his glass upon Vanheimert's perplexity. "If I
were you I should take my revenge by shaking anything of his that I
could find for the day."
And with a cavalier nod, to clinch the last word on the subject, the
bushranger gave himself over to his camp-chair, his pipe, and his
inexhaustible _Australasian_. As for Vanheimert, he eventually returned
to the tent in which he had spent the night; and there he remained a
good many minutes, though it was now the forenoon, and the heat under
canvas past endurance. But when at length he emerged, as from a bath,
Stingaree, seated behind his _Australasian_ in the lee of the other
tent, took so little notice of him that Vanheimert crept back to have
one more look at the thing which he had found in the old valise which
served Howie for a pillow. And the thing was a very workmanlike
revolver, with a heavy cartridge in each of its six chambers.
Vanheimert handled it with trembling fingers, and packed it afresh in
the pocket where it least affected his personal contour, its angles
softened by a big bandanna handkerchief, only to take it out yet again
with a resolution that opened a fresh sluice in every pore. The blanket
that had been lent to him, and Howie's blanket, both lay at his feet; he
threw one over either arm, and with the revolver thus effectually
concealed, but grasped for action with finger on trigger, sallied forth
at last.
Stingaree was still seated in the narrowing shade of his own tent.
Vanheimert was within five paces of him before he looked up so very
quickly, with such a rapid adjustment of the terrible eye-glass, that
Vanheimert stood stock-still, and the butt of his hidden weapon turned
colder than ever in his melting hand.
"Why, what have you got there?" cried Stingaree. "And what's the matter
with you, man?" he added, as Vanheimert stood shaking in his socks.
"Only his blankets, to camp on," the fellow answered, hoarsely. "You
advised me to help myself, you know."
"Quite right; so I did; but you're as white as the tent--you tremble
like a leaf. What's wrong?"
"My head," replied Vanheimert, in a whine. "It's going round and round,
either from what I had in the night, or lying too long in the hot tent,
or one on top of the other. I thought I'd camp for a bit in the shade."
"I should," said Stingaree, and buried himself in his paper with
undisguised contempt.
Vanheimert came a step nearer. Stingaree did not look up again. The
revolver was levelled under one trailing blanket. But the trigger was
never pulled. Vanheimert feared to miss even at arm's length, so palsied
was his hand, so dim his eye; and when he would have played the man and
called desperately on the other to surrender, the very tongue clove in
his head.
He slunk over to the shady margin of surrounding scrub and lay aloof all
the morning, now fingering the weapon in his pocket, now watching the
man who never once looked his way. He was a bushranger and an outlaw; he
deserved to die or to be taken; and Vanheimert's only regret was that he
had neither taken nor shot him at their last interview. The bloodless
alternative was to be borne in mind, yet in his heart he well knew that
the bullet was his one chance with Stingaree. And even with the bullet
he was horribly uncertain and afraid. But of hesitation on any higher
ground, of remorse or of reluctance, or the desire to give fair play, he
had none at all. The man whom he had stupidly spared so far was a
notorious criminal with a high price upon his head. It weighed not a
grain with Vanheimert that the criminal happened to have saved his life.
"Come and eat," shouted Stingaree at last; and Vanheimert trailed the
blankets over his left arm, his right thrust idly into his pocket, which
bulged with a red bandanna handkerchief. "Sorry it's sardines again,"
the bushranger went on, "but we shall make up with a square feed
to-night if my mate gets back by dark; if he doesn't, we may have to
tighten our belts till morning. Fortunately, there's plenty to drink.
Have some whiskey in your tea?"
Vanheimert nodded, and with an eye on the bushranger, who was once more
stooping over his beloved _Australasian_, helped himself enormously from
the gallon jar.
"And now for a siesta," yawned Stingaree, rising and stretching himself
after the meal.
"Hear, hear!" croaked Vanheimert, his great face flushed, his bloodshot
eyes on fire.
"I shall camp on the shady side of my tent."
"And I'll do ditto at the other."
"So long, then."
"So long."
"Sweet repose to you!"
"Same to you," rasped Vanheimert, and went off cursing and chuckling in
his heart by turns.
It was a sweltering afternoon of little air, and that little as hot and
dry in the nostrils as the atmosphere of a laundry on ironing day.
Beyond and above the trees a fiery blast blew from the north; but it was
seldom a wandering puff stooped to flutter the edges of the tents in the
little hollow among the trees. And into this empty basin poured a
vertical sun, as if through some giant lens which had burnt a hole in
the heart of the scrub. Lulled by the faint perpetual murmur of leaf and
branch, without a sound from bird or beast to break its soothing
monotone, the two men lay down within a few yards, though out of sight,
of each other. And for a time all was very still.
Then Vanheimert rose slowly, without a sound, and came on tiptoe to the
other tent, his right hand in the pocket where the bandanna handkerchief
had been but was no longer. He came close up to the sunny side of the
tent and listened vainly for a sound. But Stingaree lay like a log in
the shade on the far side, his face to the canvas and his straw sombrero
tilted over it. And so Vanheimert found him, breathing with the placid
regularity of a sleeping child.
Vanheimert looked about him; only the ring of impenetrable trees and
the deep blue eye of Heaven would see what really happened. But as to
what exactly was to happen Vanheimert himself was not clear as he drew
the revolver ready cocked; even he shrank from shooting a sleeping man;
what he desired and yet feared was a sudden start, a semblance of
resistance, a swift, justifiable shot. And as his mind's eye measured
the dead man at his feet, the live man turned slowly over on his back.
It was too much for Vanheimert's nerves. The revolver went off in his
hands. But it was only a cap that snapped, and another, and another, as
he stepped back firing desperately. Stingaree sat upright, looking his
treacherous enemy in the eye, through the glass in which, it seemed, he
slept. And when the sixth cap snapped as harmlessly as the other five,
Vanheimert caught the revolver by its barrel to throw or to strike. But
the raised arm was seized from behind by Howie, who had crept from the
scrub at the snapping of the first cap; at the same moment Stingaree
sprang upon him; and in less than a minute Vanheimert lay powerless,
grinding his teeth, foaming and bleeding at the mouth, and filling the
air with nameless imprecations.
The bushrangers let him curse; not a word did they bandy with him or
with each other. Their action was silent, swift, concerted, prearranged.
They lashed their prisoner's wrists together, lashed his elbows to his
ribs, hobbled his ankles, and tethered him to a tree by the longest and
the stoutest of their many ropes. The tree was the one under which
Vanheimert had found himself the day before; in the afternoon it was
exposed to the full fury of the sun; and in the sun they left him,
quieter already, but not so quiet as they. It was near sundown when they
returned to look upon a broken man, crouching in his toils like a beaten
beast, with undying malice in his swollen eyes. Stingaree sat at his
prisoner's feet, offered him tobacco without a sneer, and lit up his own
when the offer was declined with a curse.
"When we came upon you yesterday morning in the storm, one of us was for
leaving you to die in your tracks," began Stingaree. He was immediately
interrupted by his mate.
"That was me!" cried Howie, with a savage satisfaction.
"It doesn't matter which of us it was," continued Stingaree; "the other
talked him over; we put you on one of our horses, and we brought you
more dead than alive to the place which no other man has seen since we
took a fancy to it. We saved your miserable life, I won't say at the
risk of our own, but at risk enough even if you had not recognized us.
We were going to see you through, whether you knew us or not; before
this we should have set you on the road from which you had strayed. I
thought you must know us by sight, but when you denied it I saw no
reason to disbelieve you. It only dawned on me by degrees that you were
lying, though Howie here was sure of it.
"I still couldn't make out your game; if it was funk I could have
understood it; so I tried to get you to own up in the night. I let you
see that we didn't mind whether you knew us or not, and yet you
persisted in your lie. So then I smelt something deeper. But we had gone
out of our way to save your life. It never struck me that you might go
out of your way to take ours!"
Stingaree paused, smoking his pipe.
"But it did me!" cried Howie.
"I never meant taking your lives," muttered Vanheimert. "I meant taking
you--as you deserved."
"We scarcely deserved it of you; but that is a matter of opinion. As for
taking us alive, no doubt you would have preferred to do so if it had
seemed equally safe and easy; you had not the pluck to run a single
risk. You were given every chance. I sent Howie into the scrub, took the
powder out of six cartridges, and put what anybody would have taken for
a loaded revolver all but into your hands. I sat at your mercy, quite
looking forward to the sensation of being stuck up for a change. If you
had stuck me up like a man," said Stingaree, reflectively examining his
pipe, "you might have lived to tell the tale."
There was an interval of the faint, persistent rustling of branch and
leaf, varied by the screech of a distant cockatoo and the nearer cry of
a crow, as the dusk deepened into night as expeditiously as on the
stage. Vanheimert was not awed by the quiet voice to which he had been
listening. It lacked the note of violence which he understood; it even
lulled him into a belief that he would still live to tell the tale. But
in the dying light he looked up, and in the fierce unrelenting face,
made the more sinister by its foppish furniture, he read his doom.
"You tried to shoot me in my sleep," said Stingaree, speaking slowly,
with intense articulation. "That's your gratitude! You will live just
long enough to wish that you had shot yourself instead!"
Stingaree rose.
"You may as well shoot me now!" cried Vanheimert, with a husky effort.
"Shoot you? I'm not going to _shoot_ you at all; shooting's too good for
scum like you. But you are to die--make no mistake about that. And soon;
but not to-night. That would not be fair on you, for reasons which I
leave to your imagination. You will lie where you are to-night; and you
will be watched and fed like your superiors in the condemned cell. The
only difference is that I can't tell you when it will be. It might be
to-morrow--I don't think it will--but you may number your days on the
fingers of both hands."
So saying, Stingaree turned on his heel, and was lost to sight in the
shades of evening before he reached his tent. But Howie remained on duty
with the condemned man.
As such Vanheimert was treated from the first hour of his captivity. Not
a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were
received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and
supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was
ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last
refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a
tree that it was no longer necessary for him to spend a moment in the
red eye of the sun. He could follow a sufficient shade from dawn to
dusk. His boots were restored to him; a blanket was permitted him day
and night; but night and day he was sedulously watched, and neither
knife nor fork was provided with his meals. His fare was relatively not
inferior to that of the legally condemned, whose notorious privileges
and restrictions served the bushrangers for a model.
And Vanheimert clung to the hope of a reprieve with all the sanguine
tenacity of his ill-starred class, though it did seem with more
encouragement on the whole. For the days went on, and each of many
mornings brought its own respite till the next. The welcome announcement
was invariably made by Howie after a colloquy with his chief, which
Vanheimert watched with breathless interest for a day or two, but
thereafter with increasing coolness. They were trying to frighten him;
they did not mean it, any more than Stingaree had meant to shoot the new
chum who had the temerity to put a pistol to his head after the affair
of the Glenranald bank. The case of lucky Fergus, justly celebrated
throughout the colony, was a great comfort to Vanheimert's mind; he
could see but little difference between the two; but if his treachery
was the greater, so also was the ordeal to which he was being subjected.
For in the light of a mere ordeal he soon regarded what he was invited
to consider as his last days on earth, and in the conviction that they
were not, began suddenly to bear them like a man. This change of front
produced its fellow in Stingaree, who apologized to Vanheimert for the
delay, which he vowed he could not help. Vanheimert was a little shaken
by his manner, though he smiled behind the bushranger's back. And he
could scarcely believe his ears when, the very next morning, Howie told
him that his hour was come.
"Rot!" said Vanheimert, with a confident expletive.
"Oh, all right," said Howie. "But if you don't believe me, I'm sorrier
for you than I was."
He slouched away, but Vanheimert had no stomach for the tea and damper
which had been left behind. It was unusual for him to be suffered to
take a meal unwatched; something unusual was in the air. Stingaree
emerged from the scrub leading the two horses. Vanheimert began to
figure the fate that might be in store for him. And the horses, saddled
and bridled before his eyes, were led over to where he sat.
"Are you going to shoot me before you go," he cried, "or are you going
to leave me to die alone?"
"Neither, here," said Stingaree. "We're too fond of the camp."
It was his first brutal speech, but the brutality was too subtle for
Vanheimert. He was beginning to feel that something dreadful might
happen to him after all. The pinions were removed from his arms and
legs, the long rope detached from the tree and made fast to one of
Stingaree's stirrups instead. And by it Vanheimert was led a good mile
through the scrub, with Howie at his heels.
A red sun had risen on the camp, but in the scrub it ceased to shine,
and the first open space was as sunless as the dense bush. Spires of
sand kept whirling from earth to sky, joining other spinning spires,
forming a monster balloon of yellow sand, a balloon that swelled until
it burst, obscuring first the firmament and then the earth. But the mind
of Vanheimert was so busy with the fate he feared that he did not
realize he was in another dust-storm until Stingaree, at the end of the
rope, was swallowed like a tug in a fog. And even then Vanheimert's
peculiar terror of a dust-storm did not link itself to the fear of
sudden death which had at last been put into him. But the moment of
mental enlightenment was at hand.
The rope trailed on the ground as Stingaree loomed large and yellow
through the storm. He had dropped his end. Vanheimert glanced over his
shoulder, and Howie loomed large and yellow behind him.
"You will now perceive the reason for so many days' delay," said
Stingaree. "I have been waiting for such a dust-storm as the one from
which we saved you, to be rewarded as you endeavored to reward me. You
might, perhaps, have preferred me to make shorter work of you, but on
consideration you will see that this is not only just but generous. The
chances are perhaps against you, and somewhat in favor of a more
unpleasant death; but it is quite possible that the storm may pass
before it finishes you, and that you may then hit the fence before you
die of thirst, and at the worst we leave you no worse off than we found
you. And that, I hold, is more than you had any right to expect. So
long!"
The thickening storm had swallowed man and horse once more. Vanheimert
looked round. The second man and the second horse had also vanished. And
his own tracks were being obliterated as fast as footmarks in blinding
snow. . . .