In her sleep Mary heard the rumble and groan of the wagon as it ground
its way along the rough tracks and crashed over the undergrowth. She
awakened to hear the yelping of dogs, the lowing of cattle, sounds of
men's voices in the clearing. For a moment she believed that her mind
was still hovering in the troubled state of dreams. Then Donald's voice
calling her struck through the drowsy uncertainty. Trembling, she sprang
out of bed and threw Davey's red shawl about her shoulders. She lighted
the dip in a bowl of melted fat and put it on to the table.
"Mary!"
Again his voice, hoarse and impatient, came from the darkness on the
edge of the clearing.
She pulled back the bolts and threw open the door.
"Yes," she called.
Donald loomed out of the darkness. Across the clearing, by the swinging
light of a lantern before the wagon, she dimly saw its white shape, and
the moving backs of cattle.
Her arms went out to Donald when he stood before her.
"Where's the dog?" he asked.
"Dead," she said quietly.
From her eyes and her face as she fell back, he learnt that something
unusual had happened.
"Then there has been trouble?" he said.
She nodded.
He swept his hat off with a great sigh.
"But you're all right, you and the bairn?"
"Yes."
"When the dog did not fly out as we got near the house I thought
something had happened. There are tales in the Port of two men from
Hobart Town, escaped convicts, having taken to the hills. Their boat was
found in the Wirree. I tried to get back sooner, fearing they might come
this way, but the roads were bad and then there were the cattle. I
haven't had an easy minute since I've been away. But we can talk later.
There's a boy come with me, drivin' the cattle. I got a mob, cheap, from
a man whose stockmen had cleared out and left them on his hands. Get us
something to eat ready, I'll bring the wagon up to the shed now. You can
get what you want from it. There's corned meat and oatmeal and flour for
a year. We'll put the cattle into the fenced paddock and then come down.
You can clear out the wagon enough to put a sheepskin or two and a
blanket in it for Johnson."
He turned away and went back into the night.
Mary threw more wood on the fire. As she put on her skirt and bodice,
she heard the wagon labouring, forward.
She was out getting the flour and bacon she wanted from it by the light
of a lantern, when, with a rattling of horns and a thunder of hoofs, the
cattle beat past her along the track behind the sheds. The lantern light
gave a vision of fierce, bloodshot eyes of terror in a sea of tossing
backs, of moving flanks, and branching horns. She heard her husband's
voice, hoarse and yelling, the voice of the strange youth, and the
cracking of whips and yelping of dogs for nearly an hour afterwards as
they tried to get the beasts into the fenced paddock on the hill-top.
It was nearly dawn before Donald and the slight, insignificant-looking
young man he had brought with him from Port Southern had finished their
meal. Then the stockman went to sleep in the wagon, and Donald Cameron
turned to his wife.
"Tell me what happened," he said.
She did so very simply.
"They must have been the same men I heard of in the Port," he said,
breathing hard. "M'Laughlin, the trooper, told me about them ... and
that I had best look out for them up here. There was no telling what
they might do, he said--a desperate pair--would stop at nothing. I am
not sure that I'd better not send Johnson back to tell him that they've
been here and that--"
"You would not do that, Donald?"
"Why not?"
His voice, the suppressed rage of it, was a shock to her.
"A man cannot leave his home in safety with these sort of men about ...
and it is the duty of every honest man to deal as he would be dealt by.
You're a clever woman, and no harm has come to you by them ... but there
are other women who might not be so clever."
"But they were not bad men, Donald; one of them was sick, and the
other--"
"It would be a good thing too, being new in the district, to stand well
with the police," he continued doggedly, "and if they were here, those
two, they would either make back for the Port, or the Wirree, or try to
get to Middleton's. If they're on foot, as ye say, they could not go
fast, and M'Laughlin with horses could catch them up in a day or two.
Which way did they go?"
Mary turned her head away. A sick feeling of grief and disappointment
overcame her. His eyes covered the averted curve of her face and the
line of her neck.
"Which way did they go?" he asked, thickly.
"Donald," she turned to him. "I promised not to send anyone after them.
You know, and I know, that lots of men have been sent out for things
that were not crimes at all, and--"
"You know and you will not tell me?" he asked harshly, as though he had
not heard.
"Yes," she cried.
He took her by the shoulder. His arm trembled.
"I have stood this sort of thing long enough," he said. "On the ship and
in Melbourne it was the same. You were always doing such things,
feeding, or giving your clothes to filthy, ailing gaol-birds and
whiners. I have told you, you could not afford to do it. No respectable
woman can afford to, in a country where every second woman has the
prison mark on her. Show sympathy with lags, and what'll be said next?
You're a lag yourself and that's why your sympathy's with them. Y're my
wife, the wife of a decent man and free settler, I'd have y'r remember
that, and I'll not have it said of you!"
He threw her off from him.
"Which way did they go?"
Keen and compelling, the deep-set eyes, those in-dwelling places of his
will, met hers.
"It was my word I gave, Donald," his wife said, "and I can't tell you."