THE chiefs had met in council, and cast their plans, and outlined their
campaign. The council itself was not an impressive affair, although
large issues hung on it; in fact, it had a decidedly casual appearance.
The boss was there, sitting in his sulky and leaning out, resting
heavily on one arm. The manager stood with his foot on the step, and
his fingers drumming a tattoo on his knee, and Scottie slowly and
carefully whittled tobacco from a flat cake, and hardly raising his
eyes from the operation.
They all looked as if they had met by chance, and were lazily passing
the time of day. From the shade of her tent, Ess watched them stand so
for ten minutes, and wondered why they idled there. The boss was not
given to idling, she knew. Too heavy to walk or ride at a rapid pace,
he relied on his trotters and his sulky to get him over the ground, and
she rarely saw him that he was not tearing off somewhere or sitting
with the reins gathered up ready to move on, while the horses gleamed
with sweat, and their sides heaved quickly.
But he stood there now for fully ten minutes, and then Ess saw the
council break up. Casual it may have looked, but actually it decided
the fate of some twenty to thirty thousand sheep, the ownership of
Coolongolong station, and—if she had only known it—incidentally, of
Ess’s own life.
The tank was almost dry. Only a tiny pool of foul, thick, muddy water
remained in the middle of a stretch of clay that ran from dry, cracking
cakes round the outside edge to slimy, greasy, sticky mud near the
centre. For days now a gang of men had done little else but toil in the
gluey mess, black and fouled to the waists and the armpits with hauling
out the sheep that were too weak to extricate themselves. A small army
of men worked at top pressure cutting down the trees—all the men of the
station and extra hands hired in the township. They lived in calico
tents that shone white in the glare of the sun, and at nights their
fires flickered and danced in the darkness. All day long the ring of
the axes and the wail of the sheep went on under the pitiless sun; the
dust lifted lazily, and eddied thick under the feet of everything that
moved; the mirage danced and quivered out on the plains.
Ess was fascinated with it all—fascinated, and day by day growing more
fearful. She was coming to understand better what lay behind all this
activity of man and placid indifference of Nature. She could appreciate
better what every twenty-four hours meant as she saw the increasing
numbers of the sheep that had to be dragged from the mud of the tank,
and noted the thinning of the remaining trees, and she began to fear
this cruel, relentless sun, and scorching air, and hot, dry barren
earth.
The boss was whirling past her tent when he saw her, and pulled his
horses down to a fretful walk.
“You’re looking tired, my dear,” he called. “Don’t let the sun get you
down, you know. Come over to the station any time. We’re making a move
to-morrow, back to the hills. It’s the last ditch you know, but we’ll
win through at that, we’ll hope. We’re not beaten yet—not beaten yet,”
and he slacked his reins and disappeared in a smother of dust.
Ess sent a scribbled note to Steve that night, asking him to come over,
as they would be moving off next day.
Steve had dropped in on their camp-fire circle on several of the past
nights. Ess made welcome any of the men who cared to come and sit and
chat with her and her uncle, for the old boss’s words stuck in her
mind. “Cheer the boys up—it all helps” he had said, so she was doing
the little she could to help.
Most of the men were shy and quiet, but she set herself to draw them
out, and led them to talk about the sheep, and the weather, and their
work—things they knew well, and were interested in, and at home with,
and could make talk on.
And Steve came over alone, or with the others, and every time he came
she was a little the more glad of his coming.
His wit was so keen and his tongue was so sharp that she enjoyed
talking with him, and the play and fencing of words and ideas
brightened and livened her, she told herself.
Usually, she had to admit ruefully, she had the worst of the bouts of
fence, and only the night before she had again suffered defeat.
They had been arguing over the sentiment of the verses to the refrain
of “He travels the fastest who travels alone,” she attacking and he
defending it.
“It’s a most abominably selfish creed,” she cried.
“The writer wasn’t concerning himself with the ethics of it—he was
merely stating the fact,” he retorted.
“I don’t admit it is a fact,” she said.
“Few women will admit the truth of what they don’t like,” he said, and
“That is mere instinct,” she answered, “because mostly what they like
is good, and the truth is good surely.”
“Sometimes truth is only a point of view,” he said.
“Nonsense—truth is truth, as right is right.”
“Then how do you account for it that I claim this writer’s words as the
truth, and you claim them to be untruths? The world judging it might be
divided as we are. How can you say which is the truth?”
She could not answer this, so swiftly struck at a side issue. “Badness
is worse than untruth, and if the principle is bad, why glorify it in
verse?”
“But I say it is true; if you admit the truth, to attack the badness,
you’re saying the truth is bad.”
“The truth may be a very bad truth,” she cried triumphantly. “It often
is. You are a truth, but you may be very bad. You’ll notice I spare
you, and don’t say you _are_.”
“Thanks. But my badness again is a point of view. Here, as I am, if I
marry three wives, I’m very bad; if I’m a Mormon or a Turk, I may still
be a good one.”
“We’re leaving the subject,” she said; “I began by saying it was an
abominable sentiment. It is.”
“Reiteration isn’t argument,” he returned coolly.
“What authority has he for a statement of the sort?”
“Some writings are on conviction, not authority. This may be one; or it
may be from experience.”
“Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest, et
cetera,” she quoted. “How can that be experience? He hasn’t been to
them.”
“Not the physical ones, if there are such, but mental ones possibly.
Have you never touched a Gehenna or a Throne?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“You will some day,” he said; “every woman does, and unfortunately she
usually drags a man or men along with her.”
“But if she drags him there, he travels the faster for it. Therefore
the writer is wrong.”
“Cleverly turned,” he admitted. “But I fancy the Throne the writer
speaks of is Success. It appears so from the context.”
“You said the writer probably spoke from experience. You admit that he
has that, and has travelled fast and far to Success?”
“Decidedly so,” he agreed.
“Then I have you,” she cried, clapping her hands in triumph. “You know
that he is married?”
“Yes,” said Steve, grinning at her. “But he travelled his fastest and
farthest _before_ he married. You must admit that.”
“I don’t. I don’t know enough of his work or current opinions of it.”
“You know that he made his name and his way to Success before he
married?”
“I know you agree with him because it’s an excuse for your own possible
wickedness. And I hope you’ll always be forced to travel alone and
prove the truth or untruth of your theory.”
Steve dropped the bantering tone he had used throughout, and leaned
forward to look hard at her.
“That’s hitting below the belt,” he said, and rose abruptly. “And
you’ve missed your best argument. To travel fast and far is not
everything; it may be a very little thing compared to a corner in a
dark humpy; and the ‘warm hearthstone’ be worth far more than all the
‘high hopes.’”
Then he said good night smoothly, but abruptly, and went. And Ess that
night was not a little thoughtful—and sorry.
She was afraid that he might stay away this last night, and because all
the time in camp had been so happy for her, she had no wish for him to
take away unhappy thoughts of it.
So she scribbled her note, “Come over to-night. Sorry I was rude last
night, but remember our compact. E.L.,” and folded it and wrote his
name boldly on the back, and gave it to her uncle to read and to carry
to Steve. “I was a little unkind last night, uncle,” she said, “and I
don’t want to be that.”
When he came over this last night, she smiled at him and asked “Have I
apologised enough for my rudeness?” and “The compact is more to me than
the rudeness,” he told her.
“Very well,” she said gaily. “Now I’ve an endless string of questions
to ask. Uncle here never understands that I don’t know as much about
sheep and the rest of it as he does, and he gives the most meagre
information. Now you tell me all sorts of wonderful things—not too
wonderful, I hope. I always had my doubts about the stories of the
foxes biting the tongues out of the live lambs, and not making another
mark on them. Is that strictly true, uncle?”
“Too true, unfortunately,” said Scottie. “Ye’ll see plenty o’ them if
ye see a lambin’ season here.”
“How perfectly horrible,” she said. “But I wanted to ask about this
drive. How do you do it? Do you men walk behind or ride?”
“We ride, thank Heaven,” said Steve, fervently. “I tell you my legs are
aching to get a grip on a saddle again. This sheep work doesn’t suit
me, and I’m sick of the sight and sound and stench of the brutes. Give
me a good horse on the hillsides, and the cattle charging
to—er—billy-oh, and there’s something in it.”
“Never mind the cattle now,” she said; “tell me about the sheep. Can I
help drive them?”
“I’ll lend you my stockwhip,” said Steve. “All you have to do is ride
behind the mob and crack the whip. And it’s _so_ easy to crack a
stockwhip.”
“Now I know you’re fibbing,” she said accusingly. “Because uncle warned
me, one day I had his, that I might cut my head off with it. Didn’t
you, uncle?”
“Maybe no cut it off a’thegither,” said Scottie, “but ye can gie
yersel’ a nasty bit slash wi’t.”
“Then I’ll cut you a long pole, and you can prod them in the ribs, and
punch them up with it,” said Steve.
“Why prod them and crack whips at them?” asked Ess. “Is there any need
to hurry them?”
“Need enough,” said Steve. “See here....” He dropped on one knee and
picked up a stick, and scratched lines in the sand: “Here’s the camp,
here’s the line of the hills, and here’s the valley leading to the
Ridge. The hills in the back of the Ridge have the most feed left, and
have some fairly level patches, so we’re pushing the sheep for there.
You know how far it is to the valley leading to the Ridge, and you know
there’s no water between here and there. And the sheep are weak enough
now, _and_ they’re getting weaker every day, _and_ the longer they take
to get there, the more will die on the road. So you see there is some
need to hurry them. You’ll see some mighty unpleasant and apparently
cruel work this next day or two, and I don’t know but what your uncle
is making up his mind to send you to the station till it’s over.”
He glanced at Scottie as he spoke, but Ess spoke quickly.
“Uncle is going to do nothing of the sort,” she said. “I want to go
right through this thing and see everything. I’m not going to be chased
away when I don’t want to go.”
“We’ll let you do one day,” said Scottie, “and then you’ll mebbe go on
ahead. I’ll likely be sending Blazes back to the Ridge then.”
“What time do we start, uncle?”
“We’ll be off at the first glint o’ licht,” said Scottie. “You can get
some breakfast from the cook after we’re gone, an’ he’ll tak down the
tent and pack it.”
“May I ride then? But who’ll drive the buggy back?”
“I can ride back after we make camp and bring it on,” said Steve; “we
won’t move very far each day.”
“That’ll do,” said Scottie.
Steve had been sitting fastening a new cracker to his whip, and when he
had finished Ess took it and tried to handle and crack it, he putting
her grip right and showing how to hold and swing it, and the two of
them laughing and playing like children with a toy. Steve praised her
quickness in learning, and she was pleased out of all proportion at the
praise. And when he left her that night she said: “I’m sorry we’re done
with Mulga Camp. I’ve been so happy.”
It was still dark next morning when Ess heard the shouts and whip
crackings, and bleating of the disturbed sheep, and when she emerged
from her tent soon after light there was nothing to be seen of them but
a heavy dun bank of dust on the horizon. She hurried over to the tent
and cart where Blazes was busy packing up. “We’re completely left
behind, Blazes,” she called. “Do let’s hurry and catch them. They’re
ever so far away.”
“’Tain’t so fur, miss,” said Blazes; “you sit down an’ eat these chops,
and we’ll soon be off after ’em, and catchin’ ’em.”
Ess ate her breakfast and helped Blazes to pack and take down her tent,
then watched him take the horses down to water, and let him help her to
the saddle. They trotted off over the broad track of the innumerable
pointed dots of the sheep’s footprints, and as they came near to the
dust Blazes swung well out on the flank of it. “We’ll dodge as much o’
that as we can,” he said; “it’s too like breathin’ solid sand to ride
behind it.”
“But don’t the men have to ride behind it and in it?” asked Ess.
“They do, but we don’t,” said Blazes; “so we ain’t goin’ to.”
“What are those men doing with the carts?” asked Ess, pointing to one
or two carts that zigzagged back and forth across the plain in the rear
of the sheep.
“Pickin’ up skins,” said Blazes, briefly. They passed one or two of
those ghastly red heaps, with the busy crows already at work, and Ess
shuddered in spite of herself.
Through the dust she could see the horsemen looming dimly, and hear the
clamour of cracking whips and barking dogs, and the scuffling rushes of
the driven sheep. More horsemen were strung along the length of the
sides of the moving droves, the whips snapping and lashing at the
laggards.
As Blazes and Ess passed along the line they heard a hail and saw a dim
figure waving through the haze. “How d’you like it, Miss Lincoln?”
called Steve Knight, pushing his way out to them. His horse was wading
knee deep in a slow-moving river of dirty grey backs, and carefully
picking his way so as not to tread on the sheep that crowded under his
hoofs.
“Seems to me that veil of yours is a useful idea,” commented Steve, as
he emerged beside them, and tried to spit the dust from his lips. His
face was coated and grimed thick, and nobody could have told the colour
of his clothes, his hat, or even of his horse, for the clinging red
layer.
“Aren’t you dreadfully thirsty?” asked Ess. “I know I am, in spite of
my veil, and I’ve only just caught up, and have kept fairly clear of
the dust.”
Steve made a grimace. “I’m thirsty—I believe you,” he said, “but the
day’s hardly begun, and it’s early to bother about thirst yet. But
you’d best push ahead and catch Blazes up. He’ll go ahead to where
we’ll halt to-night, and he might scratch a cup of tea for you. I must
be shovin’ ’em on. Wouldn’t care to take the whip and have a smack at
’em, would you?”
She shook her head. “Poor brutes,” she said.
He laughed. “The sheep or the men?” he asked.
“Both,” she said. “I’m sorry for you both.”
“All in the day’s work,” he said, and turned to the sheep again. “Get
well out from the dust,” he shouted to her, “and canter till you’re
clear.”
The spot selected for the night’s camp was by an old well, nearly a
mile wide of the line of march the sheep were taking to the hills.
The well was almost dry, and would provide barely enough water for the
horses and men, and when Blazes got up the first bucketful, he looked
at it ruefully.
“Seems ter me we won’t need to put no tea in that,” he remarked;
“pretty near thick enough an’ black enough as it is.”
Ess inspected it gravely. “I should rather say it will need a lot of
tea in it, to kill the taste it looks like having,” she said.
Ess and Blazes were acting advance guard, and none of the others had
arrived, although, far off on the horizon, they could see the dust
cloud that heralded the coming of the sheep. Blazes had brought a load
of wood from the last camp—there was not a stick or a chip or twig in
sight on the glaring, sun-scorched plain round the well—and immediately
got to work preparing a meal for the riders, who would arrive later on.
Ess insisted on helping him, although he tried to protest. “I dunno wot
your uncle would say to see you stabbin’ round wi’ that knife,” he
urged. “Choppin’ up sheep carcases ain’t no work for a girl.”
“There are some parts of the world—and even of Australia, Blazes—where
they’d tell you that, and all sorts of cooking, was a woman’s work, and
decidedly not a man’s.”
“Mebbe,” said Blazes. “But ’tain’t the way ’ere, an’ I don’t see it’s
right. I can easy manage myself. I’d ’ave brought my ’elper along, but
knowin’ how stiff the sheep was, I knew they’d be glad of ’im there to
give a ’and, so I said as I’d do without ’im. But I didn’t think you’d
go messin’ yourself up like this.”
By the time the vanguard of the sheep was abreast of them out on the
plain, the first of the meal was ready for the men, who began to canter
out from the moving dust cloud towards them, and for the next hour they
were fed in relays, and pile after pile of chops and pot after pot of
tea vanished rapidly.
Ess’s face was scorching and her knees trembling under her when her
uncle and Steve Knight rode up.
“Making myself useful, you see, uncle,” she called gaily, and Scottie
Mackellar looked at her dubiously.
“So I see, lass,” he said, “but I doubt if it’s wise for you to be
workin’ in that sun.”
“It’s all right,” she assured him. “Blazes rigged a sort of shelter
with the tent, and I’ve kept under that mostly, and helped manufacture
chops. But now I’m coming to have some tea with you, if Blazes will let
me spell off.”
They sat round the cook cart, from the top of which Blazes had rigged
the tent as an awning, and ate their meal in the roughest sort of
picnic fashion. Ess had a box to sit on, but the two men simply
squatted tailor-wise with a plate between their knees.
“Lord, but that’s good,” said Steve Knight, sipping at the hot tea, and
blowing it impatiently. “Worst of hot tea is it’s so tantalising. A man
wants to lift the billy to his head and swallow a quart of it right
down, instead of taking dainty little sips at it like a lady at an
afternoon tea party.”
“I’m sure the ladies would feel flattered at the comparison,” laughed
Ess, “if they could see you holding a black tin billy-can with both
hands, and gulping out of it, and blowing on the tea like a grampus
between gulps.”
“If the ladies had been bucketing about in a red-hot sun on a red-hot
saddle, over red-hot sand all day, I’m thinking they’d gulp too,”
retorted Steve.
“And the poor sheep have the same sun and sand, and nothing to drink,”
said Ess, pityingly.
“Poor sheep!” snorted Steve. “Silly staggering blighters. Here we’re
working ourselves to death just to persuade them to hurry up to their
chance of salvation in the hills, and they go crawling along, and
standing up to look at you, and trying to run the wrong way, while we
sling whip-cracks and cusses at ’em till our arms, lips, and language
are stiff.”
Scottie Mackellar had been munching at his bread and meat, and
swallowing his hot tea in silence. “How are they making out, uncle?”
she asked him.
“No’ very good,” said Scottie. “They’re beginnin’ tae drop in droves,
an’ they’re too weak tae more than crawl. We’re keepin’ them on the
move through the nicht.”
“Forced marching, you see,” said Steve; “it’s do or die with them now.
If we can get them into the hills by to-morrow night we may pull them
through; if not——” he broke off and shrugged his shoulders.
“Are ye going back for that buggy to-night?” asked Scottie.
“Yes,” said Steve, “I’ll start inside half an hour.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t drive it instead of riding to-day,” said
Ess, in dismay. “You must be dead tired, and will have little enough
rest to-night, as it is.”
“Hutt!” said Steve, lightly. “I’ll be glad of a straight-on-end canter,
after dodging about like a cat on hot bricks all day. And the drive
back here in the buggy will be a rest enough from the saddle, and I’ll
get an hour or two’s sleep when I get here.”
“I wish—I wish I might ride over and drive back with you,” said Ess.
“Do you think I might, uncle?”
“Please yersel’, lass. If it’s no tirin’ ye too much.”
“Good,” said Steve, enthusiastically. “The sun’s down now, and it’ll be
a bit cooler. I’ll get the horses, and we’ll start right off.”
“I don’t quite see how you know your way,” said Ess, a quarter of an
hour after they had started, and had settled down to a long, steady
canter.
Steve laughed. “Look down,” he said; “don’t you see the sheep tracks?”
“I don’t,” she confessed; “it’s too dark to see anything but a blur of
sand.”
“Look up, then,” he answered; “the stars aren’t blurred anyway, and
they point the way. I wish they weren’t so confoundedly bright. A bank
of thick black cloud would mean a lot to me just now.”
“You’re thinking of rain?” said Ess.
“Does one think of anything else these days?” he said. “And now,
to-night, rain would mean more to me than ever it did.”
“Why more than yesterday?” she asked.
“Wait till we’re driving back and I can talk in comfort, and I’ll tell
you,” he said, and thereafter they rode in silence, the shuffling
hoof-beats in the sand and the creak of saddlery the only sounds that
broke the stillness.
“There’s the clump of trees we were camped at,” he said presently. “And
there’s the buggy. We’ll find the horses near—hark! There they are,” as
the buggy horses neighed loudly.
“Now we’ll have a cup of tea,” he said. “I haven’t got to-day’s dust
out of my throat yet, and I don’t suppose you have.”
He leaped from his horse and helped the girl down, and fastened the
reins to the buggy wheel. In three minutes he had collected a handful
of sticks, started a fire, and stood the billy beside it, tilted the
water into it from a waterbag, and left it to boil while he went off
after the buggy horses. It was boiling when he came back, and he
dropped a handful of tea in it and lifted it off the fire.
“Cups,” he said, and produced them from his pocket. “Sugar,” he tipped
a screw of paper from a cup. “Milk—you must imagine ... and there you
are,” dipping a cupful of tea out and putting it beside her. “Spoon——”
he picked up a twig and handed it to her. “Everything kept on the
premises you see.”
In ten minutes they had finished their tea, the buggy horses harnessed
in, and Ess’s horse fastened to the buggy with a leading rope. “We must
train him to follow as mine will always do,” said Steve; “I simply
fasten my rein back to my stirrup, and there you are.”
“Now,” said Steve, when they had started and were bowling along at a
rapid trot, “I was going to tell you why I’m more anxious than ever for
rain.”
“I warn you I’ll expect something thrilling after these preliminaries,”
she said.
“Thrilling enough if you’re anything of a gambler,” said Steve. “You
know, and have seen something, of the struggle going on to battle the
sheep through. Well, I’m sitting into the game and taking a hand to
play out against the weather and the country. I had a long talk with
the old boss to-day, and I’ve made a deal with him for some of his
sheep. I’ve bought some thousands of them—I don’t know just how many
exactly.”
“Bought sheep?” said Ess, in some astonishment. “But surely this is a
bad time to buy sheep—when you see them dying under your eyes.”
“Bad time for an investment,” said Steve, “but a good time for a
gamble. The odds are long, but the stake is more worth the winning.
I’ve bought on peculiar terms. I’ve had a few hundred pounds put away—I
made it once on a turn of the hand, and always saved it for a fling at
something worth while—and I’ve paid that for a proportion of the total
number of sheep the boss has left at the next lambing season. If half
his sheep pull through I’ll double or treble my money. If they all or
nearly all die, I lose the lot. By the way they’re travelling to-day,
and the looks of them, it’s a toss-up whether they reach the hills; so
I may be broke, and the game finished by to-morrow night. If they are
not into the hills by then it’s hopeless for them. If they are, I win
the first hand, and they may manage to hold on till the rain comes, or
at least enough of them to bring me back my money.”
“It is thrilling,” said Ess, “and thank you for telling me. It makes
the whole thing doubly interesting for me—and I wish you luck.”
“Thanks,” he said; “I don’t want you to mention this to anyone. I’ve
told your uncle, but I’d rather not tell the others.”
“Very well,” she promised, “I’ll say nothing. But, do you know,”
looking at him quizzically, “I’m rather surprised to hear that a man
like you has managed to save some hundreds. It was agreed that we could
be frank to each other, so you see I’m taking full advantage of it:
Honestly, I thought you were such a reckless profligate spendthrift
that I imagined you frightfully hard up.”
“You’re quite right, and I usually am,” he admitted. “But I always had
this little lot banked away for just such a chance as this. It was an
awkward amount you see—too big to splash on a spree, and not enough to
do anything big with. It just fits in here.”
“But why take such a heavy risk with it?” she asked. “Surely there were
safer things to do with it?”
“Have you ever gone to a horse race?” he asked.
“Yes, but I don’t see——”
“Then you’ve had a bet on a race—a shilling, or a box of chocolates, or
a pair of gloves, perhaps?”
“Yes,” she admitted again.
“Then you know how much more interesting the race is when you have a
bet on. Same thing with cards, a game’s mighty poor fun unless you play
for coins or counters. Well, the sheep here are the coins and counters
in the game we’re playing out, and I want to have my stake on the table
along with the rest. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand, although I don’t need anything of my
own in this to give me an interest. I’m hugely, tensely interested as
it is, and I want to see the sheep pull through, and the boss and all
of you win, as if every sheep were my own.”
“That’s because you have the personal interest,” he said. “Because your
uncle and every soul you know here is doing nothing else, and thinking
of nothing else, but whether we’re going to win, and how we’re going to
win.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she said, “and I confess I am keener than ever
since I’ve met the boss, and will be more so since I’ve heard of the
personal interest you have in it.”
“Thank you,” he said laughingly, “that’s a very pretty compliment. I
see you know how to pay them even if you jump on a man for paying them
to you.”
“You’re too greedy for them,” she laughed, “or you’d know that the
interest would be added the same if it were Whip or Blazes, or any of
the others had bought the sheep.”
“Now I suppose that serves me right,” he said, with a sigh of mock
resignation. “I should have been content to take the compliment, and
gloat over it in secret.”
“Isn’t it a beautiful night?” she said serenely. “Excuse the
transparent method of changing the personal conversation.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said, “that when a woman runs away from a subject,
it’s usually because she’s afraid of it.”
“And you might have noticed,” she countered, “that when she does start
to run away she can’t be persuaded or lured into facing it again—till
she’s ready. It’s a beautiful night.”
“Yes,” he said a trifle bitterly, “but a beautiful night out here is
mostly like a beautiful woman, sweet and caressing maybe, so long as
she wins her game, but hard enough and bitter enough back of it.”
“I certainly can’t twist a compliment out of that,” she said drily;
“I’d be interested to know whether you think me ugly, or merely bitter
and hard.”
“You’re pretty enough,” he said bluntly, “but I’ve no doubt you could
and would be hard enough if the occasion arose.”
“This is being frank with a vengeance,” she said ruefully. “But I
suppose I brought it on myself. I can only hope, then, the occasion
will not come.”
“Perhaps,” he said gently, “it might be more useful if you hoped I’d
prove a false prophet—perhaps you’ll remember that one day, and some
poor devil may have reason to thank me for the suggestion.”
“Aren’t those the lights of the camp?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “and I’m sorry to see them. Please take that as it’s
meant, and don’t spoil it by being nasty.”
“Very well,” she said quietly, “I have enjoyed it too.”
They drove into the camp and separated, she to her tent and he to
snatch an hour’s sleep on the ground, without further word than a
simple “Good night.”
But Ess lay long that night and thought of their talk. And always her
thoughts came back to the one point, and over and over she asked
herself “_Would_ I be hard—would I be hard if....”
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