WITH its extra load the boat was perilously deep in the water; it had
picked up the other people off a patch of high ground, where they had
been cut off, and were being threatened by the still rising waters; but
the current carried them towards the township with little more exertion
than was required to keep the boat pointing the right direction and to
dodge the flotsam that at times swept dangerously near their overloaded
craft.
But they came at last to the bridge and swept past the end of it, and
their line was caught by the watchers on the bridge, and they were
hauled into safety and helped stumbling with weariness up the slope to
the township, and hot food and drinks pressed on them, and the
hospitality of the whole township flung wide to them.
Trooper Dan and Mrs. Dan were waiting with the others to see the
landing, and Mrs. Dan ran to Steve. “Man alive, Steve,” she said,
“you’re like a walkin’ corpse. You’re just fair beat. You must come to
us and stay a day or two, Steve. There’s a bed all ready for you.”
Steve straightened his shoulders and laughed.
“I’m fit as a trout,” he said jauntily; “nothing wrong with me. And
there’s Miss Ess there—Scottie’s niece. It might be better if you took
her than let her go to the hotel. Where’s Scottie?”
“Off riding up and down the east bank in case you were carried in
higher up,” said Mrs. Dan. “Steve—is it _the_ girl?”
“It’s the girl we went to look for,” he said, pretending to
misunderstand her. “Miss Ess—Scottie’s niece.”
But Mrs. Dan laughed in his face and darted to her husband. “Dan, come
an’ help,” she said hurriedly. “We must take the girl with us. Back me
up now, and if we don’t get her, I’ll never forgive you—never.”
“Niver’s a long word, mavourneen,” he said. “But come on an’ we’ll try.”
“She’s coming with us,” said Mrs. Dan to the ones who were helping Ess
up the bank. “We’ll care for her till her uncle comes.”
Ess, a little confused by all this bother and welcome, looked at her.
“It’s very good of you all,” she faltered. “Couldn’t I go—isn’t there
an hotel?”
“Ye can’t,” said Dan, promptly. “What am I to be after tellin’ your
uncle when he comes back, if I let ye go to a hotel? We’ve got
everythin’ ready, an’ your uncle will be comin’ straight there to look
for you.”
Mrs. Dan slipped a hand under her arm. “You don’t know me, my dear, but
that doesn’t count these days. I know your uncle, and I’d like you to
come. And I’m a friend of Steve’s.” She said the last words in the
girl’s ear, and at the hint of colour that drained in her pale face and
the soft “Very well—I’ll come,” Mrs. Dan was flushed with a sense of
coming victory.
So Ess went with Mrs. Dan and swallowed the food they gave her, and let
Mrs. Dan help her to undress and bathe and to stumble into bed, with
the sleep closing her eyes before she had lain down. She slept there
for a solid twelve hours, and never even heard her uncle come in and
stand looking at her with wet eyes, or felt the kiss he dropped lightly
on her cheek.
Mrs. Dan woke her at last, and gave her food and warm soup, and made
her lie down again, although she protested that she was all right now
and had slept enough. And even as she protested her eyes closed
drowsily, and she snuggled back in the warm blankets, and was asleep
again in five minutes.
Mrs. Dan seized the chance thrown to her hand by Scottie’s call, and
proceeded to make the most of it and to extract some information to
work on. But she could hardly have found a man so hard to fossick
anything from. Scottie was not given to gossip or idle talk at any
time, and the merest suspicion that he was being pumped was enough to
re-double his native caution.
Mrs. Dan talked first about the flood and the damage it had caused, and
the good the rain had done the country. She passed from that on to the
narrow escape Ess and Dolly had had, and how thankful she was they had
been found in time.
Scottie thanked her and thanked her again for her kindness in taking
Ess in. Mrs. Dan seized the opening.
“I could never let a pretty young girl like that go to an hotel by
herself,” she said warmly, “and of course we didn’t know when you’d be
in again. But there’s nothing to thank me for. It’s glad I am to have
her, and I took to her the first minute I set eyes on her.” She laughed
lightly. “But it’s not me or you will have the keeping of her long, Mr.
Mackellar—she’s too pretty a face for that.”
Scottie murmured something unintelligible into his teacup. (Mrs. Dan
had made him wait to drink a cup of tea, and took care to give it to
him scalding hot, so that he could not be too quick over it and go
before she had pumped him dry).
“And didn’t I hear some word of her being engaged already?” she asked.
This was a pure shot in the dark, except for the half light she had
from Steve’s remarks about the girl he had lost being engaged.
“She was—she’s not now,” said Scottie, briefly. This did not help much,
for she did not know if the engagement referred to was to Steve or the
other man.
“That might be as good a thing as it might be a bad,” she said.
“There’s only one thing worse for a girl than breaking her engagement,
and that’s keeping to it—if they’re not likely to be well matched.”
Scottie made no reply but to gaze absent-mindedly at her.
“Was it any secret who she was engaged to, or that she was engaged?”
she asked.
“No,” said Scottie, slowly, and applied him to his cup again.
Mrs. Dan fidgeted. She told Dan afterwards that she had never been so
tantalized in her life, nor made so to feel that she was an inquisitive
gossiping busybody. “Not a thing would the man tell me except what I
asked him point-blank; and then he’d dodge it if he could.” And Dan had
laughed at her.
“Who was it, Mr. Mackellar? I’m not asking out of idle curiosity,” said
Mrs. Dan. “I’ll be having a talk with her soon, and I might be able to
help her. You know a woman can often tell and ask another woman things
she can’t or won’t a man.”
“It was Ned Gunliffe,” said Scottie. Mrs. Dan mentally clapped her
hands.
She dropped the subject as lightly as she could, so as to take a new
line.
“He’s a man I don’t know much of—well or ill,” she said, “but I’ve no
doubt Miss Ess will have acted wisely.”
“I’m glad ye’re sure o’ that,” said Scottie, drily. Mrs. Dan felt
uncomfortable. “But aren’t you?” she asked.
“Me?” said Scottie, with a slight air of surprise. “I’m never sure what
a woman is doin’, right or wrong; or what she’s thinkin’.”
“Small blame to you,” said Mrs. Dan. “For she often doesn’t herself.
Miss Ess has been living down in the cities most of her time, I hear?”
Scottie made no reply. He was acting on the truism that “if no
questions are asked, no lies need be told,” and he improved on it by
adding “and no truths.”
“She’d find the men out here a thought rough after being used to folks
with city ways,” said Mrs. Dan, “although you’ve some real well-spoken
an’ well-educated men at Thunder Ridge—Ned himself is that, and so is
Aleck Gault and Steve Knight. Though Steve’s the best o’ the bunch to
my way of thinkin’. Don’t you think so?”
“He’s the best horseman we have,” said Scottie.
“He’s more. He’s the best and the whitest man on the Ridge,” cried Mrs.
Dan. “You know I think a lot o’ Steve. He once did something for Dan
and me that I’ll never forget. And I’d give a hand to help him.”
Scottie said nothing, and laid his empty cup down carefully. Mrs. Dan
saw her chance slipping away. “You like Steve yourself, don’t you? You
don’t believe he’s as bad as some make out?”
“I’ve kenned waur,” said Scottie, non-committally.
“Would you have anything to say against it if you knew Steve was in
love with Miss Ess, or she with him?”
“There’s nae need tae answer that till I ken they are,” said Scottie,
smiling calmly.
“Do you think they are?” said Mrs. Dan, desperately.
“It hardly matters what I think—it’s what they think themselves that
counts,” returned Scottie, imperturbably, and moved to the door.
When he had gone Mrs. Dan sat down and fanned herself with a weekly
paper. “What a man,” she said to herself. “Oh, what a man. He’d drive
me mad in a night. I feel as if I’d been slapped and told to mind my
own business. And what have I got for it all? She was engaged to Ned
Gunliffe—and I could have had that for the asking from any man on
Thunder Ridge to-day or, I suppose, anyone in the township in a week.
And it’s broken off. I’d have got that from Steve or from her
presently, for a hint of a question. I could swear at myself.”
So the attempt to pump Scottie dry failed—possibly because he was dry
by nature.
Mrs. Dan had more success with Ess herself when the time came for a
confidential chat.
“I believe I have to congratulate you on your engagement,” she said
brightly.
“No, oh no,” cried Ess, hotly. “That—that’s over—it’s broken off.”
Mrs. Dan looked at her gravely. “I’m sorry for that,” she said, “the
more by reason because Steve is a friend of mine.”
“But it isn’t—nobody knew—I mean I thought everybody knew it was Ned
Gunliffe I was engaged to,” said Ess, in confusion.
Mrs. Dan missed nothing of the confusion nor of the flurried words, and
before Ess finished speaking had the whole plot of the story clear in
her mind. “But it isn’t”—Steve. “Nobody knew”—about the engagement to
Steve. So—Steve and she were engaged secretly; they had quarrelled; the
girl had immediately become engaged to Ned Gunliffe, and now that was
broken off. The conversation she had had with Steve some time before
helped her of course to piece the thing together. The next thing to do
was to find if Ess were still in love with Steve—she was sure enough he
was with her.
So she talked of all the odd things under the sun and dropped Steve’s
name casually, and led the conversation round to the rescue from the
flood and the part Steve had played in it. And Ess told with sparkling
eyes of the struggle of the boat against the current, and her
overwhelming joy when it drew in to the tree.
“Ah, and I know Steve would have been just as glad to see you,” said
Mrs. Dan.
She saw the girl’s face fall. “No,” she said slowly, “I hardly remember
getting into the boat or what he said; but he didn’t say much
afterwards. He scarcely spoke all the way back.”
Under her breath Mrs. Dan made uncomplimentary remarks about the absent
Steve.
“He’d have seen you were worn out and didn’t want to talk,” she said.
“No,” said Ess, “it wasn’t that, because I spoke and thanked him, and
he just barely answered, and no more. And I was sorry for it because I
wanted to be friends with him again. I—” her voice sank till Mrs. Dan
could barely hear, “I was once unkind and rather cruel to him, and he
hasn’t forgiven it.”
Ess was sitting on the sofa, and Mrs. Dan crossed the room to her, and
sat beside her and laid a hand on her knee.
“My dear,” she said very kindly, “I know well how cruel a girl can be;
and the more she loves, the more she’s hurt, and the crueller she can
be. But a man forgets the cruel parts if kindness follows.”
“But if the man doesn’t want the kindness—if he doesn’t care?” said
Ess, with her voice trembling.
“My dear, my dear, can you be so foolish?” said Mrs. Dan, tenderly.
“Won’t you tell me the whole story, dear? Maybe I could help you
better. It won’t pass my own lips again, not even to Dan. And maybe it
will help you to the tellin’ if I give you this first. Steve loves you,
girl; worships the ground you tread. I’ve seen him myself start and
change colour and tremble at the thought and the word of you, when I
spoke it not knowin’ who it was I spoke of, but the girl the heart of
him was breakin’ for. There, there now, my dear, tell me all about it
an’ let me help.”
Ess was weeping quietly in her arms when she finished, but presently
she sat up and dried her eyes, and steadied her voice and told the
whole pitiful tale. She made no attempt to spare or excuse herself in
any way. She told of her shame and anger at the proof she had found of
his guilt, and of his refusal to clear himself, although he denied it.
She told of the blow she had struck him—and Mrs. Dan’s eyes looked down
on her bowed head with a curious hardness at the telling of that—and of
her promising herself to Ned there in his hearing because—because—she
hardly knew why, except, perhaps, that she was so angry with him, and
thought that it might hurt him. She told, too, how the engagement had
fretted her, and how she had broken it off, and how she had longed to
make it up again with Steve and be friends, even if he would have her
for nothing more. And Mrs. Dan’s eyes were soft and wet with tears when
she finished, and she comforted her, and petted and mothered her as
best she knew.
“It’ll all come right, my dear,” she said. “And now don’t let’s talk
about it more for the minute. I want to think it over, and I’ve got
little Danny to give his bath. Wait here while I do that—or would you
like to help me?”
So Mrs. Dan went and fetched in little Danny from the office where he
played while his father pretended to work, and did a deal more play
than work himself; and enjoyed it more than the child, maybe.
And Mrs. Dan bathed him and made Ess help, and took care that she had
the handling of his chubby three-year-old body. And Ess took him on her
knee, and towelled him and wiped his soft skin as tenderly and
carefully as if it were a delicate hand-painted china, and then hugged
and squeezed him as if he were made of unbreakable india rubber. And
when they had got him ready for his bed, and heard him say his prayers,
and fondled him and petted him and kissed him to their heart’s content,
the two women put him to bed, and came back and sat down and looked at
one another, and talked whispered baby-lore and mother-talk, with their
heart-strings still thrilling under the touch of the baby fingers.
And Mrs. Dan told of the other children she had borne—and lost; and of
the manner of their losing, and cried a little, softly, over the
telling, while Ess strove, weeping herself, to comfort her.
“Four of them I’ve had,” Mrs. Dan said, “and only little Danny left.
One by one, and one by one, they went. The first was when Dan was
selectin’ out in the back country, and the sun and the prickly heat and
the furnace air was too much for the baby, and I watched him wilt and
crumple like a flower on a broken stem—till he died. And when the next
one came, Dan scraped the money together, and I went down to the inside
country a piece, and stayed there till he was nine months old, and as
strong and sturdy as a little Turk. And I knew that Dan was fightin’ to
keep the place goin’, and doin’ without proper food and cookin’, and I
thought the child was strong enough to stand the weather and the heat,
especially as the worst of the summer was over. So I went back. And
then the bush fires came, and we had to saddle up and ride, and got
away with our bare lives and what we stood in. And Dan carried the baby
in his arms till we come to the lagoon; and we waded in to the water,
and stayed there with the water to our lips and the heat of the fire
blisterin’ the cheeks of us, and Dan holdin’ the poor mite with just
his head above water and a hat fendin’ off the heat. And he died of
pneumonia, and no doctor to be had till all was over.... We gave up the
selection then, and Dan joined the force and was doin’ well when the
third came. He was stationed in a mining township then, and because it
was down nearer the coast and cooler, I thought the child would be all
right when it came. But I was ill—terribly ill when she came; and I
couldn’t nurse her, and—you can think what I felt when they told
me—there was no drop of fresh milk to be had for miles round, and the
store had but one case of condensed milk, and when they opened it they
found every tin of it was bad. And the baby never got over that first
few days, and it went—the third of them. And now there’s little Danny
there ... and I can never have another. Can you understand how precious
he is to me, and what I’d do or not do for the love of him? And now
listen to this ... listen and remember it, for it may help you to
understand something some day. Danny was took ill two year ago. Dan was
away at the time—away for three days; and there was none of the women
in the place could say what to do with him—one advised one thing and
another another, and I didn’t know myself, and I was near crazy. And a
man rode for the doctor, rode down river after him, and got to where
he’d been, and found he had crossed the river twelve hours before. And
the river was running a banker, but this man rode in and tried to swim
across at the Staked Crossing—and that means more than I can tell you,
or more than you can understand that’s never seen the Staked Crossing
and the river in flood. A log struck his horse before he’d gone
half-way, and it was drowned, and the man was washed back on the same
bank a mile below. And they picked him up half drowned and brought him
to, and as soon as he could stand he took another horse and tried
again——”
“It was brave—brave,” murmured Ess, listening with breathless interest.
“It was brave, for he was, and is, a brave man. And this time he won
through, but, when he came where the doctor had been, he found him gone
again. And he rode his horse to a standstill and borrowed another, and
rode till he found the doctor and brought him back at the gallop—and
the doctor told us he was just in time. And so—well, I have the child,
thanks be to the doctor—and the man that brought him.”
“How you must have thanked him,” said Ess, feelingly.
“Thanked him?” said Mrs. Dan. “He wouldn’t listen to my thanks—laughed
at it, and made light and said it was a little thing for any man to do.
And the same to Dan when he tried to say with words what our hearts was
sayin’. But would you wonder if I’d want to do anything in my power for
him; that there’s nothing, barrin’ my husband’s life and my boy’s, that
I wouldn’t freely give him for the asking; that I’d put my life or my
honour or everything I have or ever hope to have in his bare hands. And
I’ll tell you the man’s name, and some day maybe you’ll remember and
understand why I’m telling it and this story—the man was Steve Knight.”
“Steve Knight,” whispered Ess.
“Yes, Steve Knight—Fly-by-Night—careless, laughing, happy-go-lucky
Steve Knight, that you’ll hear tales and love-stories of by the score,
but that never did harm to man, woman or maid, that ever I heard of.”
They sat in silence, without move or stir, and each busy with her own
thoughts, for long after that, and then Ess spoke:—
“Thank you for telling me, and thank you for listening to me, for of
course you’ll blame me for thinking and acting as I did with Steve.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Dan, “I’m older than you, and although you’ve
lived in the cities where you see and learn a lot, I’ve lived in the
out-back, where we don’t see so much, but learn our lessons deep and
hard; and I’ve learned never to blame or praise anything that a man or
a woman does, for love, or through love. If they’ve done right, they’re
above my praise, and if they’ve done wrong, they’ll have their own
punishment, without my blame. Don’t do wrong now, and have to bear the
punishment for it all your days.”
“What can I do?” said Ess, meekly. “Tell me, and I’ll try to do it.”
“It’s easy to tell, though you may not find it so easy to do. See him
and ask him to forget that blow you struck, and ask him to forgive you
for ever doubting him. Don’t be sayin’ it as if it was from the teeth
outwards, but from the very heart of you. Steve’s not the man I take
him for if that doesn’t wipe it off his mind as a dog licks a plate.
It’s not so long since I was telling Steve that if he wanted to make it
up with a woman who had wronged him, to ask _her_ to forgive _him_. But
Steve has more pride than a man ought to have by rights, or than he’s
likely to find of use to him, and I doubt if ever he’d take that easy
way out.”
“I was wrong, and I know it now,” said Ess, submissively. “I’m sure he
wouldn’t have lied to me. There was a mistake somewhere, and he
wouldn’t show me I was wrong because he resented my not believing him.
I’ll try to tell him so, Mrs. Dan.”
“And you’ll never regret it, whatever the result,” said Mrs. Dan.
But after Ess had gone to bed that night Dan gave a word to his wife
that worried her more than she cared to confess.
“Steve’s down in the bar, and drinkin’ like hell’s bells a-ringin’,”
said Dan. “I tried to get him to come up here for an hour, but not
he—the divil a fut of him. And he’s done wi’ Thunder Ridge an’
Coolongolong an’ Connor’s Leap an’ all the likes he told me; an’ he’s
booked his seat on the first coach out that goes when the roads is
passable.”
“I think there’s that here, when he knows it, that’ll hold him longer
than the bad roads,” said Mrs. Dan, complacently.
“The river’s droppin’ fast all day,” said Dan, looking at her, “an’
they’re thinkin’ that wi’ extra horses, maybe, they might be passable
be mornin’.”
“By morning?” said Mrs. Dan, with a gasp of dismay. “He wouldn’t go in
the morning, without bidding us good-bye.”
“He’d go this night widout biddin’ his own father an’ mother good-bye,
the way he is now,” said Dan. “’Tisn’t well he is at all, at all, wid
the eyes shinin’ out av his head like lighted lamps an’ the two
cheekbones of his white face wid a flush on them ye cud light yer pipe
at. His chest wounds opened wi’ the rowin’ he tells me——”
“There’s deeper than his chest wounds opened I’m thinkin’, Dan,” she
said. “But don’t take off your boots yet. Go out and see him, and make
him promise to come an’ say good-bye at least.”
“I’ve done better than that,” said Dan, with calm satisfaction, as he
pulled a boot off. “I’ve fixed it wid them at the stables to tell me
the minute there’s word of the horses bein’ asked for.”
Mrs. Dan had to content herself with that, but as they were going to
bed, she said quietly, “Dan, how was it you kept that back about Steve?”
Dan stared at her, and then his eyes flickered, and she knew that he
understood.
“I never kept back aught about Steve,” he said firmly, “that he didn’t
have my sacred word to keep to myself.”
“It’s all right now—only I wondered,” she said. “But, of course, a
man’s word is his word, though hearts and the heavens break for it.”
“Mine is,” said Dan.
“Anyhow, I hope the flood’s over the roads another day,” said Mrs. Dan,
inconsequently, and a shade uneasily.
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