Deirdre's spirits rose as White Socks climbed the steep track of the
foothills. She drew the strong, sweet leafy smells of the trees with
eager breaths. Tying her hat to the saddle, she threw back her head to
the sunshine, exclaiming with delight to see the red and brown
prickly-shrub blossom out among the ferns, sunlight making the young
leaves hang upon the saplings in flakes of translucent green, ruddy-gold
and amber.
She talked to Socks and called to the birds that flitted across the
track. It was so good to be in the hills again, climbing the long,
winding path through the trees. She wanted to catch the sunshine in her
hands; it hung in such yarns of palpable gold stuff across the track.
She sang softly to herself, gazing into the blue haze that stood among
the near trees.
The valleys were steeped in sun mists. Her little horse ambled easily
through them, and when he climbed the steep hill sides, she slipped from
his back and walked beside him, asking him again and again, if it were
not good to be going to Steve's, to the paddocks where Socks himself had
flung up his heels an unbroken colt, and all the gay, careless days of
her childhood had been spent. She felt as if they were leaving the reek
and squalor of the Wirree River for ever.
And yet the vague uneasiness McNab's words had evoked hovered in her
mind. His eyes, gestures, ugly writhing smile, kept recurring to her.
She was anxious to get to the Schoolmaster and give him McNab's message,
to know what he would make of it. What harm was it McNab could do her
father? She knew that Dan feared him, in a curious, watchful way. And
the trouble that was coming to him. What had McNab meant by that? This
business Conal was on, what was it? Why had she been told nothing about
it? The way McNab had talked to her, too, disquieted her.
All day a premonition of trouble haunted her. She urged the chestnut on.
When they splashed through a creek at midday, she let him stand for a
few minutes in the middle of it, dip his patchy white nose into the
clear, cold water, and sough it up noisily. A little further on, near a
gully in which the mists were unfathomable, the trees, grey as sea
lichen in its depths, she sat down by the roadside and ate her sandwich
of bread and cheese and had a drink from her bottle of milk.
Davey and she had often made excursions to Long Gully when they were
children to hear the bell-birds. They dropped mellow notes through the
stillness of the trees that climbed the gully's steep sides. Davey and
she had crept warily through the undergrowth, on the look-out for
snakes, and had sat still for hours behind a fallen tree, listening for
the plomp, plomp, plomp of the shy birds' notes of purest melody thrown
into the pool of the silence.
A dead tree stood near the edge of the track. Deirdre remembered that
there had been a magpie's nest in it, and that the "maggies" would swoop
down on her and on Davey in the springtime, if there were young birds in
the nest, screaming and flapping their wings, and sometimes getting in a
peck which brought the blood to her freckled face or to Davey's. She
glanced up to see if the magpies were about that day; but they were not.
So gaunt and tall the dead tree stood. Its branches seemed to strike
against the sky. They rattled with the sound of bones in the wind. The
sun and thrashing winter storms had bleached it, and there were black
wales and scars where a fire had eaten into the wood above the hacked
zone that the axe of a settler had made when he ring-barked it years
ago. As long as she could remember the dead tree had stood there, gaunt
and ghostly, with the tangle of living trees behind it. They were clad
with their shifting, whispering garment of leaves all the year round,
and decked with flowers in the springtime. But the dead tree was naked.
It might have been an avenging spirit of the wilderness, it stood with
an air of such tragic desolation by the wayside.
There were dead trees all along the hill roads; scores of them in the
paddocks. The ripping crack and thunder of their crashing to the earth
could be heard in the dead of night sometimes. When they thought of it,
country folk moved from under a dead tree. Deirdre looked up at this
one. It seemed to waver in the wind. She shook the crumbs from her
skirt, and caught the chestnut's bridle.
Scarlet-runners were overhanging the bank on that turn of the road, near
where the school had been, when she passed. The chimney of the hut was
still standing, though the wild creepers had thrown long vines about it.
Supple-jack had clambered over the half-dozen twisted fruit trees; it
threw its shower of feathery, seeding thistle-down over the dark-leafed
apple branches.
Deirdre had meant to take Socks into the clearing, and let him feed on
the wild oats and clover matting it, while she investigated the forlorn
chimney and the fruit trees and flowers growing near where her garden
had been, seeking in the tangled undergrowth for the flowers she had
planted long ago. She had thought she would sit on the edge of the well,
listen for the great green frogs to go dropping into the water, and
weave her dreams of the old times for awhile, watching the sunlight make
a patchwork of dancing light with the shadows the leaves of the fruit
trees cast on the beaten yard about the doorway of the hut. But she went
straight by with scarcely a glance at the grey chimney and the tangled
garden greenery, across which a tall, sweet English rose nodded gaily.
She only stopped a moment to pull a trail of scarlet-runners from the
bank near the house.
She wondered if Davey had remembered the place and the flowers when he
passed the day before. She looked down at the scarlet flowers with a
little smile, as she pinned them into her dress.
But thought of the flowers and of Davey lasted only a moment. She was
eager to ask the Schoolmaster for an explanation, and to hear from him
what they had to fear from McNab.
When she saw Dan, with the sun behind him, coming towards her on his big
grey nag, whose nose was so like a kangaroo's that they called him "the
'Roo," she quickened her pace, her heart swelling with love at the sight
of him, and at the thought of the concern which had sent him back along
the road to meet her.
She lifted her face to his with a breathless little glad sob when she
came up to him.
"What is it?" he asked, his anxiety leaping instinctively at the sight
of her face.
"Perhaps I'm foolish," she said quickly. "It's something McNab said
before I left this morning. It wasn't so much what he said, but the way
he said it. And I've been thinking of it all the way--wondering what he
meant. Is there any harm he could do us?"
"What did he say?" Farrel asked.
"He came just as I was going," Deirdre told him, "and he seemed annoyed
that you didn't tell him you were going to-day--said there was something
particular he wanted to talk to you about. Then just as I was going, he
said: 'It was a mean trick clearin' out without lettin' me know--such
old friends as we are too, and me wanting to stand by him in any little
bit of trouble that's coming to him. But I'll be coming up to see him
one of these days soon--sooner than he thinks p'raps.' It wasn't so much
what he said as the way he said it, made me think--"
Deirdre hesitated, looking at her father's face. She knew that he was
troubled, that there was enough in this to disturb him without telling
him what else McNab had said to her.
They rode on in silence, the horses brushing.
The Schoolmaster's head was bent in thought. He rode in easy, slouching,
negligent fashion, and seemed to have forgotten he was not alone.
Deirdre spoke first. Her voice had a quick, low-toned intensity.
"I made up my mind on the way, to-day, to ask you what this business is
Conal's on, and if you are with him, or not?" she said. "I ought to
know. I'm not a child, and I'm with you whatever it is. I have an idea;
but you ought to tell me, more than ever now that McNab----"
"Has his suspicions."
The Schoolmaster looked into her steady eyes.
"Are you in this with Conal?" she asked.
"I wasn't until last night," he said. "I changed my mind suddenly and
joined him."
"What made you?" she inquired breathlessly.
He did not reply.
"I know--it was that necklace!" The reason had come to her instantly.
"I'm a good-for-nothing now, Deirdre," he said low and bitterly.
"There's mighty little I can do ... and there'll be less presently. I
want enough money to get us away from here--and keep us by and by
when--"
He did not say it, but she knew that he meant when the night of
blindness had fallen on him.
"It was because you were afraid for me," she murmured. "Afraid because
of that necklace, who it might have come from, afraid--"
He nodded.
"And if you get the money we can go away from here and never come back
to the Wirree River any more?"
The Schoolmaster smiled. He was surprised at the eagerness of her voice.
"Yes," he said, "but that was what was bothering me. I thought you would
not like to be leaving the place. You were always wanting to come back
when we were away before."
"Oh," a little fluttering sigh went out of her, "but I'll be glad to go
now! Tell me what you're going to do?"
"There's moonlight to-night, and we want to get a mob of wild cattle,"
he said quietly. "A couple of hundred are eating their heads off in the
scrub above Narrow Valley. Do you remember when we were living here,
riding up the range, sometimes we'd start a cow, or steer, and it would
plunge away through the brushwood, scared as a rabbit! After the fires
more breakaways joined the mob. We lost a couple of cows--- so did
Steve--others did too. Well, I told Conal about these beasts a while
ago. He made up his mind to get them. He and Steve's black boy 've run
up a stockyard near McMillan's hut in Narrow Valley, and Conal and he
mean to take the mob with that lot of Maitland's cattle he brought down
for fattening, not this, but last trip, up by the Snowy River into New
South Wales."
"It isn't as you may say, permitted by law," he continued. "But most of
the cattle men who can do it, do--even the squatters when they get a
chance. Down here they don't think scrub cattle worth the getting.
Rosses staked a couple of horses a month or two ago, and lost a good dog
after this mob. Cameron doesn't think them worth his while, so why
shouldn't we have them if we can get them. If we get a couple of beasts
with brands on them, among the wild ones, it may be worth drafting them
out and driving them back to the hills. But the hair grows thick on
scrub cattle; there's no need to be brand hunting. If Conal weren't such
a fine stockman, we couldn't do it. There's nobody like him.
"When we pull off this deal, we'll go away, you and Conal and I. If the
price of cattle keeps up there'll be enough to divide among the three of
us--Davey's got to have his share if he's in. Conal's offered him a
third to work with him to-night, and run the mob through to the border.
He's a man short. I've been trying to persuade Davey to keep out of
it--but there's a lot of Donald Cameron in him--he's as obstinate as a
mule. Says he wants a job, and has got one, and that's enough for him
for the present."
They had come within sight of Steve's shanty on the brow of the hill.
When they drew rein before Steve's, Conal lounged out of the house. The
dogs that had started up snarling at the approach of horses stretched
themselves again in the dust by the verandahs, and lay with their heads
low on their forelegs. Deirdre stood a moment looking about her. Her
face, under the flat little yellow straw hat crossed by a red ribband
that tied under her chin, was very winsome, her eyes bright with tears
and laughter. When she saw Steve in the doorway, she ran to him and
threw her arms around him.
"Oh, it's good to be here again, Uncle Stevie," she-cried.
He chuckled delightedly.
"There's a woman you are, Deirdre. A woman y've grown!"
"What else would I grow?" she asked gaily.
"It's good to be anywhere you are, Deirdre!" Conal said, coming up and
standing beside them, all his love in his eyes.
She laughed, glancing up at him, and Steve laughed to see the way the
wind blew. Davey by the open door, watched them; but Deirdre did not see
him.
When she moved to go in, he stood away from the door for her to pass. He
saw the scarlet-runners that she had tucked into her gown under her
chin. She heard the catch in his breath, and hesitated.
Conal saw her hand go out to him. He saw Davey take it, but he did not
see the eyes she turned on him, nor hear her say with a tremulous quiver
of the lips:
"They're saying they're glad to see me! Will you not say so too, Davey?"
The Schoolmaster, coming back from the stables, called Conal.
"McNab's been to see Deirdre," he said. "He's got an idea something's in
the wind, she seems to think. It's just as well we fixed for to-night,
Conal. It won't give him any time to get busy. But hadn't you better be
getting down to cover before it's much later?"
"It's only a couple of miles, by the track Teddy goes. There's time
enough yet," Conal replied, his eyes on the open door, gaping dark
against the brightness of the sunshine.
Davey followed Deirdre indoors.
"Teddy's bringing in the horses now. You'd better get in and have
something to eat. Send Davey to me," Farrel said impatiently.
Conal crossed the verandah.
It was in the wide, low-roofed kitchen that he found Davey. Deirdre was
standing near him. Only the glow of the firelight lighted the great
room; but that was sufficient to show him the sombre, steadfast gaze
with which Davey regarded the girl, and something subdued in the droop
of her figure, a something of emotion, humiliation in her averted head.
"Dan wants you," he said to Davey.
Davey had stared at Deirdre as though he were trying to read in her face
what his heart ached to know, and she had been waiting for him to read
and know, waiting for the first sound of his voice with a tremulous
expectancy. A moment more might have ended the year-long griefs and
heartache between them. But Conal spoke, and Davey wheeled out of the
kitchen.
Conal strode over to the table near which Davey bad been. He swung his
leg over it, and watched Deirdre as she put cups and saucers, plates and
knives on one end of it. She cut some bread and buttered it.
There was a light in her eyes, a colour in her cheeks. She had watched
Davey go with a little gesture of impatience, a fluttering sigh. Conal
saw that. She turned to him gaily, poured out tea for him, chattering,
but avoided his eyes. He watched her with a smouldering suspicion.
Suddenly he leant forward and caught her hand. His swart, leathern face
swung towards her; the brilliant, hawk eyes of Conal, the Fighter, leapt
into hers.
"You're to marry me, Deirdre," he said, his voice hoarse and throbbing
in his throat.
She shrank from him with a little breathless exclamation.
"Don't do that," he cried passionately. "Don't look at me like that,
Deirdre."
"Conal!" she gasped.
In his eyes rose the appeal of dumb, unfathomable, devouring tenderness.
"Say you'll love me ... say you will, Deirdre," he begged.
His face was turned towards her, humble and mysteriously moved, a strong
light in his eyes.
So absorbed were they that they did not hear, or if they heard, paid no
attention to the grind of wheels on the gravel before the shanty, the
yelping and snarling of dogs that announced the arrival of a vehicle at
Steve's, and such late arrivals were not usual.
"I've had my way with women. They've told you tales of me, I know,"
Conal pleaded. "But there's never a woman I've cared for but you,
Deirdre. And you--" he broke off impatiently, "there's no telling you
how I care for you. I haven't got words. Besides, it chokes me to speak
of it; raises a storm in me that there's no holding. By and by when this
is all over, we'll go away--you and the Schoolmaster and me. Oh, I'll be
a good husband. You'll give me y'r word, won't you, Deirdre?"
There were voices in the bar beyond, but they did not heed them. Conal
was thinking only of her and his pleading.
"Conal dear," Deirdre said. "If you wouldn't talk like this any more!"
Her eyes fell from his. He snatched her hand from the flower under her
chin where it had fallen.
"Is it him you love?" he asked fiercely, jerking his head in the
direction of the back door by which Davey had gone out. "Is it? Tell me.
I'll let no man come between you and me, Deirdre. I'll kill him if he
tries to."
The door from the tap-room, with the sunlight splashing on the benches
and bottles behind it, opened, and Steve and the new arrival came into
the kitchen.
"And who is it y'll be killing now, Conal?" asked McNab genially.
He glanced from Conal to Deirdre.
"You, if you don't get out of my way," yelled Conal, quivering with
rage.
Brushing past McNab, he flung out of the room, his spurs jingling. They
heard the irons on his boots click on the stones of the yard.
"There now," cried Steve tremulously. "He's been making love to you, has
he, Deirdre? All the boys'll be making love to you, Deirdre! And now
here's Mr. McNab come up to see the Schoolmaster ... most partic'lar."
He was altogether flustered at this unexpected visit of McNab's, and at
his wits' end what to say next. Dan was in the paddock with the black
boy, bringing in the horses for the night's work, and here was McNab on
the top of it all.
Deirdre's wits were quicker to work than his.
She realised what McNab's being in the shanty that night might mean to
the Schoolmaster, Conal, Davey and herself.
She smiled at him. McNab had not seen her smile like that except at
Conal, and that was on the night of the Schoolmaster's return, at the
dance at Hegarty's.
"Why there's a surprise to play on me, Mr. McNab?" she cried merrily.
"You to be coming up the hills to-day and never say a word about it this
morning. There I was, riding along by myself, and might have had a seat
in the cart beside you."
McNab hardly knew what to make of her greeting. He imagined that she had
been thinking over his attentions of the morning, and was feeling
flattered by them--for after all was he not Thadeus McNab and, the
gossips said, the richest man in the country side, not excepting Donald
Cameron himself, if the truth were known. He thought that she was
willing to coquet with him, and that, too, the hint about the gold chain
might not have been in vain.
He warmed to her smile, preened himself and gave himself half a dozen
gallant airs on the spot. Every male instinct in him responded to her
effort to be charming.
"And now everybody's had tea but me," she continued. "So we can just sit
down and have some together."
McNab sat down beside her at the big table on which she had spread a
white cloth.
A generous and genial glow suffused him. For the moment he forgot the
reason of his visit. Deirdre had put it all out of his head with that
smile of hers. The sound of her merry voice set every fibre of him
tingling and thrilling as his fibres had never tingled and thrilled
before.