In the yard Conal told the Schoolmaster of McNab's arrival.
"Settles us," Farrel said shortly. "That's what he came to do. And we
can't afford to let him think there's anything on. He's given his
suspicions to M'Laughlin most likely and the delay to-night'll give them
time to get the word out about us along the road. So all we can do is
lie low, play civil to McNab, let him think he's on the wrong track.
Then when this blows over--in a couple of months, perhaps--"
Conal swore bitterly.
"I could have wrung his neck when I saw him. It was all I could do to
keep me hands off him," he said.
"Don't be giving the game away, Conal," the Schoolmaster cautioned.
"Mind, we're not taking chances."
"It'll be a couple of hours to moonrise after dark," Conal said
restively, glancing at the waning sky. "If you could keep him busy,
playing cards and drinking--let him think we weren't upset at seeing him
and he Seems to be settlin' down and looking foolish findin' we're all
about--I might walk out after a bit. I could get the beasts, with Davey
and that blithering half-breed. Sally's easily worth a couple of men
with cattle."
"Do you think I'm likely to be able to keep McNab so busy, he wouldn't
notice you were walking out?" the Schoolmaster asked, impatiently. "You
and Davey had better come in and hang round loose presently."
He went towards the house.
His greeting of McNab was as lukewarm, negligent and friendly as it
always was. Deirdre saw no flicker of anxiety in his face. McNab's eyes
were quick and keen on it for the first few minutes, but finding no
trace of repressed excitement, not a spark of the impatience he
expected, but only a whimsical smile to convey that the Schoolmaster
knew why he had come, and was amused at the reason, he dropped into the
chair he had taken and sought to cover the unexpectedness of his visit
by unusual affability.
He was sitting in Steve's chair by the fire when Farrel came into the
room that was kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, and living-room in
general at Steve's. Deirdre slipped out with a jug for water as the
Schoolmaster came in. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw her talking to
Conal in the yard.
When she returned, her laughter and gaiety surprised him. She set a jug
of grog between Steve and McNab on the table near NcNab's elbow. The
Schoolmaster swore beneath his breath when he saw McNab's eyes on her.
He trembled with rage when he heard Deirdre talking to McNab; but her
eyes met his reassuringly. He caught their message, calm and purposeful.
He knew that she was playing the woman to McNab, and why. The knowledge
angered and humiliated him.
Davey and Conal came into the long, barely-lighted room. They threw
themselves on a bench near the door. Conal, taking a pipe from his belt,
smoked morosely. Davey did not look at McNab, and McNab took no notice
of him, enjoying his position of importance by the fireside, and
chuckling over the gay chatter Deirdre threw to him.
"We eat our heads off, up here, Mr. McNab," she said. "And sleep! Davey
and Conal there, to see them yawning over their supper to-night you'd
think they'd never seen a bed for weeks. They've been saying they're
going to turn in early because they've to go off mustering first thing
in the morning, and father and Steve would have sat here dozing by the
fire for a while, and then gone off to bed too. I was thinking I would
have to take out my sewing and talk to the cat ... till it was a decent
hour to be saying my prayers. But now p'raps you'll have a game of cards
with me, though I don't suppose Conal and Davey'll go to bed early now,
seeing we've got company."
Davey sat bolt upright against the wall. It froze the blood in his veins
to hear her on such terms of easy familiarity with McNab. Conal shifted
uneasily.
"But we can get along without them, can't we?" Deirdre asked blithely.
"There's no need for them to be sitting up trying to be polite, is
there?"
"None at all."
McNab chuckled. He thought he was getting on very well with Deirdre and
that she was playing him off against Conal and Davey in a spirit of
pique.
"Right. Good-night, McNab, see you in the morning," Conal said angrily.
He swung out of the room. Davey followed him.
"And now for the business that brought you, McNab. Mighty kind of you to
have come after me with it?"
The Schoolmaster sat down before Thad McNab, facing him squarely, his
one eye played on McNab's shifty face. There was just the faintest
ironical emphasis in his voice.
McNab stirred uneasily.
"Fact is," he began, his eyes shifted under the Schoolmaster's gaze.
"Fact is--we're wanting a school in the Wirree," he plunged desperately.
"Before you go away I thought--I thought, not knowing exactly what your
plans were, I'd have a talk to you about it. The place is gettin' a bad
name with the children growing up not able to make more than a mark for
their names. In the hills, of course, you taught the first generation,
as you might say, so the older ones can teach the others coming on, but
down there it's different. We've never had any school or school
teachers. The people can't pay enough--just a few of them--to make it
worth your while ... but if we built a school, got 'em all together ...
it might be a good thing, I'd maybe put up the money for the
school--maybe--"
He fidgeted in his seat. He did not want to commit himself too far, and
yet he was irritably conscious of the weakness of his explanation unless
he did. He had a suspicion than Dan Farrel was laughing at him up his
sleeve too. An ill-humour was rising in him.
There was an ominous silence--a moment of suspicion and suspense. A word
from either might have been a spark to the long-hidden train of enmity
between them. Deirdre broke the silence. She threw down a pack of cards
and pulled her chair up to the table.
"All that'll keep till to-morrow, Mr. McNab, won't it?" she asked. "Have
a game of euchre with Steve and me, now. Let's play cut-throat--it's
more exciting. Father can think over what you've said and tell you in
the morning."
"Yes ... yes ... you think it over, Farrel," McNab said eagerly.
He was glad enough to shelve discussion of this urgent matter which had
brought him from the Wirree to talk to the Schoolmaster, seeing that it
was not at all urgent and did not look like it.
Deirdre pushed the bottle of rum between him and Steve. She sat opposite
to them, the broad yellow glare of the dip on her face.
The liquor was already beginning to warm McNab's brain. His head was
steady enough on his shoulders; but there was a glow within him. He
watched the face of the girl before him as in a dream.
Farrel saw the arabesques of red and blue the cards made under the light
as she threw them on the table. He heard her gleeful and triumphant
exclamations. He realised what she was doing for him, was sore and
angry, but there was nothing to do but to play up to her. He sat at the
far end of the table just out of the light: after a while his head
drooped.
Deirdre's laughter flashed.
"Look at father," she cried, "he's dead with sleep!"
Farrel started and stared at her, sleepily.
"It's no good your blinking like an owl and pretending you weren't
taking forty winks. You'd better go to bed and have done with it," she
said.
He struggled to his feet.
"I'm dog-weary," he muttered. "Think I will."
"Good-night," he added after a moment. "And be sure you see the fires
are out before you turn in, Deirdre. You're not to be staying up late,
either! I won't have her getting too fond of the cards, Steve."
He stumbled across the room to the far end where a screen of brushwood
and bagging against the back of the shanty made another small room.
Deirdre laughed again.
"I'm winning all the time," she said gaily, "so they won't want to play
long."
The cards went backwards and forwards across the table to the tune of
her exclamations and the chime of her laughter, the muttered oaths and
exclamations of Steve and McNab. Steve was soggy with drink; but McNab
was not as drunk as he seemed. His eyes caught hers with a curious
expression when the Schoolmaster had gone from the room.
"And who's the man Conal's going to kill for comin' between you,
Deirdre?" he asked.
"How do I know?" she said, a little nervously.
"P'raps it's the man sent you the gold chain," McNab murmured. His eyes
glimmered at her out of the darkness. "They tell me Conal went round
like a madman looking for Pat Glynn to tell him who it was, threatening
to break the last bone in Pat's body if he wouldn't speak."
"Yes, I think it was him," Deirdre said, meeting his eyes. "Conal said
if ever he found him, he'd--"
"Conal's a hot head doesn't mean half he says," McNab muttered.
"But he means that, I'm sure," Deirdre said. "And Conal's so strong.
Look at his hands. He could put them round a man's throat and wring the
life out of it--just as easily as you wring a bird's neck, Mr. McNab.
And he's a dead shot, too, Conal--they say."
"Eh, then it's somebody's neck he'll be wringing, or somebody he'll be
shooting, for sure," McNab said. "For it's not him you'll be marrin',
and it's not him your heart's set on. It's the other."
The quivering of her face, a dilating of the pupils of her eyes that
were wells of darkness, told him that he had scored. He leant forward,
following up his advantage, eagerly.
"And it's not Conal, for all his blustering, I'm afraid of, my pretty,"
he whispered. His eyes were narrowed, the smile in them leaping across
his face. "It's not Conal, for all his blustering, though I dursay y'
think he'd kill me for love of you. And you'd break his heart for love
of somebody else--by way of reward. But it's me all the same that'll get
you."
Deirdre pushed back her chair. Then she remembered the part she had been
playing all the evening. She steadied herself, putting her hands on the
edge of the table, and looked down into McNab's eyes, laughing.
"Why," she cried, "you're as drunk as drunk, Mr. McNab! And so is Steve;
you'd better see each other to bed. I'm going myself."
She went across to the corner-room next the Schoolmaster's, where she
slept. When she had heard Steve shambling before NcNab to the room off
the bar where occasional visitors were put, she went back to the
kitchen, raked over the embers of the fire, and put out a flare that was
burning low in its tin of rancid fat and belching forth streams of heavy
black smoke.
She opened the door of the Schoolmaster's room. The bunk against the
wall on which he slept was empty, the window open. She entered, closed
the door and sat down by the open window.
The moonlight was waning. The silver light in which the forest had been
bathed an hour before, was dimmer, the shadows the house and sheds cast
black against it. Where the light struck dead trees they stood out
wraith-like from the dark wave of the forest.
Listening intently, she heard the distant cracking of whips, the long
lowing, belched and terrified cries of cattle.