AND even as Ess installed herself as sick nurse at the Ridge there was
being enacted over at the township another sick-bed scene, which was
still closer bound up with the threads of her own life.
Mrs. Durgan was sinking fast. The doctor had been called in hot haste,
and the woman’s child was born, and died, and the mother walked with
faltering steps on the very brink of death.
She still lay in the bedroom of the house next the police station, and
the trooper’s wife was still attending her. The doctor had told her
that the end was very near, that there was not the slightest hope, and
that he must go now. So he left her there, and went out and strapped
his instrument case to the saddle, and mounted and rode down the quiet
dusty street, to carry himself and his skill and his instruments for
long miles across parched plain and hardly discernible tracks, to where
some other sufferer was patiently waiting the relief he rode so hard
with.
And although the lake-level plains, with the mirage gleaming on the
horizon, and the pleasantly cool trees and bushes all looking innocent
and peaceful enough, there was no doctor, whoever tended the wounded
under fire or carried a stricken soldier back into the friendly shelter
of the trenches, who faced a greater risk or took more chances with his
life than this rough out-back doctor in the wide-brimmed hat and the
red-dusty clothes.
If the horse he rode put its foot in one of the rabbit holes that
riddled the plains; if he dismounted to walk and stretch his
saddle-weary limbs, and the horse broke away and left him; even if he
strayed off the track, which was so faint that a man who was not a
bushman would examine the ground for it in vain, the patient out there
might wait and wonder why the doctor hadn’t come when he promised, and
suppose that some more urgent case had detained him. And if the doctor
were missed in time, and the black trackers laid on, and no rain came
to wash out his tracks, and no dust storm blew over them and hid them,
he might be found alive—or dead. But in a country where the sheep tanks
are the only water within hundreds of miles; where the same tanks are
merely holes scooped in the plain, with nothing to mark them until you
are right on them; where an ordinary paddock is ten miles across, and
you may walk forty miles round the fence and see no soul, and have to
cross into the next paddock and repeat the walk; where the sun is
beating down like iron flails; where the ground underfoot is hot enough
to burn the soles of the boots off the heat-rotted stitches; where
every drawn breath dries the moisture out of a man’s body, the man who
is lost and without water does not walk far or live long.
So a doctor in the back country has to be a bush man who can find an
unerring way by dark or light, a rider who, when his own horse is
knocked up, must be able and willing to sit any half-broken brute he
can pick up, or at a pinch swim a flooded river “running a banker,”
with whirling tree trunks and drowned bullocks to add to the hazard, as
well as a man brave enough to count life and death risks as nothing
worth the counting; who on every round he makes must ride, with his own
life in the hollow of his hands and the strength of his knee-grip, to
keep the flame of life alive in other people; and, lastly, a man who
has body strength and endurance to sit in the saddle, to ride, to walk,
to drive, or to swim through a long day; on again through the night,
and, if need be and the case is urgent enough, to take the road and
start over again. A doctor is a doctor, but in the outside country he
is a great deal more—or he is a great deal less.
So the doctor left Mrs. Durgan, first, because he could do no more for
her, and second, because at the end of some of those long miles there
was someone else he could do perhaps everything for.
And Mrs. Dan Mulcahy saw him go and went back to the death-bedside to
do her little best to carry out his orders and ease the sufferer over
the end—as women so often have to do in the outside country.
Mrs. Durgan was lying still, breathing noisily, and white to the lips,
that were tinted pale blue. Only her fingers were never still, and
plucked at the coverlet and twisted themselves ceaselessly. Mrs. Dan
wiped the perspiration from the damp forehead, and moistened the
tight-drawn lips, and took her seat beside the bed.
Now and again she slipped noiselessly from the room and pushed a pot on
the fire, or pulled it back and threw a billet of wood on. And when the
trooper, her husband, came in, bringing the sergeant with him to
dinner, she served the meal, and took her own with her, and went back
to the sick room and closed the door, so that the murmur of voices
should not disturb the woman.
And presently the sick woman opened her eyes and lay looking steadily
at the roof over her, and Mrs. Dan saw the light of reason again in the
eyes that had looked blank as the shuttered windows of an empty house
for days and nights on end.
“She will recover consciousness just before the end,” the doctor had
said. “Give her a spoonful of this, and she may speak and tell all she
can before she goes.”
The trooper’s wife moved quietly, but very quickly, to the door, and
opened it and beckoned to the two men, and laid her fingers on her lips
as a sign for silence. And the two rose and slipped the boots from
their feet, and in stocking soles crept into the room and took their
stand behind the screen that was placed close beside the bed, and
between it and the door, while Mrs. Dan brought the medicine and held
it to the woman’s lips.
“Drink this,” she said gently. “It will help you and make it easier.”
The woman swallowed. “I’m goin’, ain’t I?” she said calmly; and Mrs.
Dan whispered “Yes,” for in “the outside” men and women are more used
to the thought of facing death than the people of the cities are, and
there is not held to be the same need to lie to them and cheat them
about their end.
“The baby?” asked the woman.
“It died,” said Mrs. Dan.
“Died?” said the woman. “Dead—he’s ...” she caught back the word.
“Seems like I bin sayin’ that a lot o’ times,” she said. “I remember
now—he’s dead, an’ how he was—killed.”
The two men behind the screen exchanged swift glances, and the sergeant
busied himself with the pencil. And Mrs. Dan knew what they were doing,
and she thought of Steve, and how her husband believed his guilt even
against his own wishes, and she could hardly bring her tongue to frame
the questions that would bring the guilt home to the man who had been a
friend to her and hers, or declare him innocent and free.
“You saw it done?” she said at last. “Can you tell me who did it?”
The woman slowly turned her eyes—the strength to turn her head was gone
from her, even as the strength to speak was going like running water.
“You sure I’m goin’?” she asked, and again Mrs. Dan said “Yes.” “No
mistake—no hope,” persisted the woman, and Mrs. Dan shook her head.
“Please tell me if you can,” she said, “before it is too late. You
haven’t long now, and you may lift the guilt from an innocent man.”
“I’m glad o’ that,” said the woman, “for I’m goin’ where I s’pose I’ll
pay for it. I killed him myself.”
The horror of the thing gripped the trooper’s wife like a hand on her
throat, shutting off her speech. Then she thought of Steve, and joy
lifted the hand. “You did it yourself?” she repeated clearly, so that
behind the screen there could be no mistake.
“Yes,” said the woman. “Gi’ me another sip from that bottle, an’ I’ll
tell you.” Mrs. Dan gave her the sip—and wiped her lips.
“I heard him comin’ that night,” said the woman, speaking clearly, but
with gasping efforts. “I went to let him in—an’ I gave him the rough o’
my tongue. He spoke back—an’ said he could go’n find another
woman—who’d speak decent to ’im. It made me mad—an’ the child comin’
an’ all. I picked up the broom beside the door an’ hit ’im an’ knocked
’is ’at off, an’ hit ’im again.... He fell off the steps, an’ when I
went to pick ’im up, his head lolled, limp an’ slack-like, same as I’ve
seen a rabbit’s when its neck was broke.... His neck was broke, wasn’t
it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Dan, mechanically, “his neck was broke.”
“Ah.... I knowed I was right,” said the woman, with curious
complacency. “Well, I didn’t ... break it ... did I? I only hit ’im
light like.... He broke it hisself, didn’t ... he?”
And those were the last words she spoke.
“Did you get it all down?” asked Mrs. Dan, eagerly, when she came again
to the next room.
“We got it all,” said the sergeant. “You might read this through and
sign it, if you think it’s same as you heard.”
Mrs. Dan read it, and signed her name beneath the sergeant’s and her
husband’s, and bundled him out forthwith to send a telegram away to
headquarters.
“And tell everybody you meet,” she commanded. “God forgive me, if it’s
a sin to feel glad, with the poor creatur lying there in the next room,
but if it is I can’t help it. When can we get word to—to Thunder Ridge,
Dan? I want them to know first minute they can. They was all so sure it
wasn’t Steve Knight. And who was right about that same—me or you?” she
finished triumphantly.
“You were right,” said Dan, soberly, “an’ it’s meself was never so glad
to own it.”
“I’ll have to ride out to the Ridge and call the men in,” said the
sergeant. “It’s been an out-an-out wild-goose chase, hasn’t it? Wonder
what that thick-headed fool wanted to bolt for, and make all this fuss.”
“An’ wasn’t it a wise man he was to bolt?” said Mrs. Dan, defiantly,
“when my own husband, that knows him well, went firing off his pistol
at him, an’ believed up to the minute the poor woman spoke that it was
Steve that did it. I’m a policeman’s wife myself, an’ well I know the
police would have held him guilty an’ helped to hang him if you’d
caught him, an’ the woman hadn’t had the strength an’ the wits to speak
the truth with the last breath out of her lips.”
“Well, well,” admitted the sergeant, “it looked black enough, I’ll
admit, an’ I suppose some men have swung for less evidence.”
When the sergeant brought the word to Thunder Ridge, there was no one
about the place except the cook, Aleck Gault, and Ess. Aleck had been
moved over to the house and into Ess’s room, while she took possession
of her uncle’s camp bed in the outer room, and sent him off to sleep in
the bunkhouse with the men.
When the sergeant rode up, he saw Blazes, and told him the news, and
Blazes came over to the house hot foot to retail it.
Ess met him at the outer door, and seeing his wild excitement, motioned
him to caution. “Aleck is asleep,” she said. “He had rather a bad
night, and I don’t want to disturb him.”
“The John ’Op sergeant ’as just brought word, Miss—’e didn’t do it—the
woman’s confessed. Ain’t that great? We’ll ’ave ’im back in no time
mark my words. An’ won’t we give ’im the Long Yell, neither——”
“But who didn’t do what, and who’ll be back?” interrupted Ess.
“Eh, wot? Why, Steve didn’t. We knowed it all along, o’ course, but
there’s the cussed Johns chasin’ ’im over the ’ills, an’ a warren out
to arrest ’im—an’ wot for? Wot for? For a thing ’e’d no more to do with
than I ’ad. It’s a cussed shame. It’s a disgrace to the country.”
Blazes was beginning to work himself into a violent passion. “Who the—I
mean who are they to go chivvyin’ a man? I’ll go ’n give that
sergeant——”
“Wait a minute, Blazes,” cried Ess. “You haven’t told me anything about
it, except that Steve didn’t do it.”
Blazes dropped his rage and apologised, and then gave her the whole
story. It was a little confused, and Ess walked over and interviewed
the sergeant herself.
When Aleck woke she gave him his broth, and quietly asked him if he
could hear some good news without getting excited.
But the words had barely left her lips when Aleck struck in, “About
Steve? They’ve caught the man who did it? Tell me quickly, please.”
“His wife did it herself,” said Ess. “It was more or less an accident.
They quarrelled, and he fell off the steps and broke his neck. The
woman confessed to striking him, and then she died.”
Aleck dropped back on the pillows he had raised himself from. “Lord,
Miss Ess, if you only knew how good that sounds to me.” His face was
glowing and his voice thrilled with pleasure. “I’ll see him soon. He’ll
come the minute he can, especially if he hears I’m hurt.
Steve—Lord—Stevie lad, won’t I shake the hand off him.”
“You must be quiet and not talk too much,” warned Ess. “You know it’s
bad for you to get excited.”
“Tell me everything about it, please, then,” he pleaded, “every scrap.
I’d rather have had this than——” he broke off and tried to steady his
voice, and Ess saw a suspicion of tears in his eyes. His emotion moved
her to the heart, and she turned and pretended to busy herself about
the room, telling him all the particulars the sergeant had given her.
“Thank you,” he said. “You mustn’t mind me getting worked up like this
over it, please. I’m an awful kid about Stevie, you know. I feel as if
I could howl like a kid, though why Heaven knows—’tisn’t anything to
howl about, is it? This leg must be weakening my intellect.”
Ess noticed the flush of fever in his cheeks, and tried to calm him.
“It’s no good,” he declared; “I’ve got to talk, or I’ll bust. You
imagine if it was Ned that had been blamed for this, and what you’d
feel like if you heard he was cleared of every suspicion of it. Well,
Stevie’s more to me than a man is to a girl—yes, I know you’ll grin at
that, but you don’t rightly know what men are to each other out here.
He’s my mate—we’re mates, and good mates. The marriage service says
something about the pair forsaking all to cleave to each other. But it
doesn’t say a man must forsake his mate. They’d have to alter the
marriage service for us out here if it did—a man with a mate wouldn’t
stand for it.” He went on talking and laughing excitedly, till at last
Ess said, “Aleck, I’m sure it’s bad for you to talk so much. Now stop,
or I’ll go away and leave you to talk to the flies.”
He laughed happily. “All right, Miss Boss, I’ll dry up. But I’d like to
write a note to Steve—no, never mind though, he’ll understand without
that, and he’ll be here just as hard as a horse can hammer across the
Toss-Up track when he hears I’m crippled. And don’t you worry about me
being excited. ’Tisn’t near as bad for me as lying here fretting my
soul to fiddle-strings wondering if he was all right, and if he’d need
me and I couldn’t go. I was going to clear out and join him, and help
him get away, too, soon as he was fit to travel.”
“Fit to travel?” said Ess, slowly.
“Yes,” said Aleck. “Soon as his wounds healed up.” He stopped abruptly
and looked at her. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that. He said not to,
and we agreed it might worry you for nothing.”
Ess felt a curious sense of sickness stealing over her. She remembered
again the haggard look in Steve’s face.
“When was he hurt?” she asked as steadily as she could. “And what—was
it anything serious?”
“He fell just after he left here,” said Aleck, “and he cut himself, and
I fancy cracked a rib or two. Nothing much if he could have laid up and
had the things tended properly. But he’d no bandages and little
water—he’d to be careful about going near water you see, knowing the
trackers would be watching there—and the things got inflamed and so on.
And scrambling about on his feet didn’t help.”
So he had been wounded and suffering when she met him, Ess thought, and
he had never said a word, and—and she had struck him—struck her whip
across his face. She shivered. Then she remembered that woman in the
hut and hardened her heart. “But wasn’t someone looking after him?” she
asked. “You know you said he was in good hands.”
“Yes,” said Aleck, “I fixed that.”
“You—_you_ fixed it?” she said breathlessly. “How did you—who was it——”
“Steady, steady, Miss Ess,” said Aleck. “I’m talking too much. I
shouldn’t have said as much, perhaps. But do you know,” he went on,
looking curiously at her, “I was ass enough to think once—you don’t
mind my saying it to you? I wouldn’t to anyone else—that you were
rather fond of Stevie and—well, I was surprised when I heard about you
and Ned.”
“I was—fond—of him, Aleck,” she said a trifle jerkily. “But—well, you
know I’m to marry Ned.”
Aleck grunted.
“Was it a girl was looking after him?” she said, trying to speak
carelessly.
“I’d much rather you didn’t ask me anything about that, Miss Ess,” said
Aleck. “I shouldn’t have spoken of it at all, perhaps. I’ve no right to
speak of what is really Steve’s business. You mustn’t mind my saying
so.”
“Of course not,” she said.
After a little she said, “Aleck, if Steve comes he’ll be able to look
after you, so I think I’ll go down to Coolongolong for a bit. Mr.
Sinclair has often asked me, and I’d like to go—I’ve never seen it yet.
They tell me they have a bit of irrigated land, and a garden, and some
green trees. I’m dying to see something cool and fresh and green again.”
Aleck was tempted to object strongly, but he caught a glimpse of her
face, and suddenly saw that she was looking pale and worn.
“Good notion,” he said briskly. “I’m all right now, and Steve’ll see to
me all right. When will you go?”
“Well, when do you think Steve will be here?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” said Aleck. “Soon as he hears he’s clear, I suppose. When
did that woman confess to it?”
“This morning,” said Ess. “The sergeant came straight out.”
“Then Steve would most likely hear late to-night,” said Aleck. “He’d
have to go down to the township and get a horse, and he’ll be over
to-morrow morning, I expect.”
“Mr. Sinclair is to be up to-night or to-morrow morning,” said Ess. “So
I think I might go back with him.”
As soon as she could she went off and feverishly packed a few things.
She was in a panic at the thought of meeting Steve, and determined if
possible to steal away before he came.
Perhaps he would not come. Surely he would be ashamed to meet her after
their last meeting. But she remembered again—and flushed with a little
spark of anger again at the memory—his mocking speech and laughter at
their parting. Very likely he would come, if only out of sheer bravado.
She clenched her hands angrily, and wondered if it would not be
cowardly to run away from him, although if she stayed it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to treat him as if nothing had ever
happened, and others might remark her behaviour if she deliberately
avoided speaking to him, as she felt she would have to do.
She hesitated long, and fought the thing out with herself, and finally
decided that she would wait till he came, would treat him with
indifference, and make it very plain to him that he was nothing and
less than nothing to her, and then go down to the station, and so get
away.
She went back and told Aleck that she had decided to wait until she
could hand over her nurse-ship.
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