After the sales on the following Friday, when the dust of the yards was
heavy in the air, and the stock horses stood in irregular, drooping
lines outside the Black Bull and Mrs. Mary Ann Hegarty's, Davey made his
way to where on an open space of land the church had been built.
Wirreeford had out its lights--garish oil flares and rush candles--and
the little fires lighted before the doors of the houses to keep off sand
flies and mosquitoes, smouldered in the dusk, sending up wreaths of blue
smoke.
He had made up his mind as to what he was going to do. During the week
Conal had been mustering and branding the cows and calves drafted from
the scrub mob. Davey had worked with him, and many of the calves he had
scarred with Maitland's double M. were the progeny of his father's
cattle. Half a dozen cows bore the D.C. brand under their thick hair.
Conal had wanted to pay him off. He had told Davey that there was no
need for him to burn his fingers with this business, and that he could
run the mob to the border, or to Melbourne, across the swamp, if the
south-eastern rivers were down; but he was short-handed, Davey knew; a
sense of obligation urged him to stick to Conal until the whole of the
mob they had moonlighted together was disposed of.
Conal had insisted on getting the cows and calves into a half-timbered
paddock below Steve's, the day before, and had run a hundred of
Maitland's fattened beasts with them. He meant to make a start and have
the mob on the roads early next morning.
There was a race-meeting in the long paddock behind McNab's that Friday.
Conal and he had come into the Wirree to show themselves before starting
off on their overland journey. Almost every man in the countryside was
there.
Davey wondered why the Schoolmaster had not come down to the township
with Conal and himself. He had been a different man since their return,
very silent, scarcely stirring from his chair in the back room, while
Deirdre hovered, never very far from him, anxious and protective as a
mother-bird.
She had not told him what had happened while Conal and he were away--how
the Schoolmaster had said to her one day, suddenly:
"It's very dark, Deirdre. Is there going to be a storm?"
The sunshine was blank and golden out of doors.
"No," she had said, laughing. "There's not a sign of one."
"Where are you?" he asked, his voice strange and strained.
"Why, I'm here just beside you," she replied.
He put out his hands.
"I can't see you," he said. "It's the dark, Deirdre! My God ... it's the
dark."
For a long time he had sat staring while she knelt beside him, crying,
murmuring eagerly and tenderly, trying to soothe and to comfort him. But
from that time the dimming and obliterating of the whole world had begun
for him.
The heavy darkness had passed. It was not all night yet, but a misty
twilight. He had forbidden her to speak of it, so that Davey did not
know. Conal and Steve had guessed, but Davey's mind, busy with its own
problems, was slower to realise what was going on about him. It had
roused every loyal and fighting instinct in him to see his mother with
that look of suffering on her face; his father in the way of becoming
McNab's prey--losing all that he had gained through years of toil and
harsh integrity by falling into the pigs' trough McNab had set for him.
It was that stern righteousness of his, his sober, stolid virtue, which
had given Cameron the place in the respect and grudging homage of the
countryside that his wealth and property alone would not have won for
him; they had cloaked even his meanness with a sombre dignity and
brought him the half-jesting title of the Laird of Ayrmuir.
Davey led his horse into the paddock beside the church where the
vehicles which had brought the hill folk to the township were standing.
The horses out of the shafts, their heavy harness still on their backs,
were feeding, tethered to the fence, or to the wheels of the carts and
buggies.
He stood beside the high, old-fashioned buggy that had brought Mary and
Donald Cameron to Wirreeford. He rubbed his hand along Bessie's long
coffin-box of a nose, and told her on a drifting stream of thought that
he had decided to go home, to ask his father to forgive him, and that he
meant to try to get on with him again. Her attitude of attention and
affection comforted him.
The people began to come from the church. They stood in groups by the
doorway talking to each other. One or two men came into the paddock to
harness-up for the home journey. Davey put the mare into her shafts. He
was fastening the traces when Mary Cameron came round the back of the
buggy. A catch of her breath told that she had seen him.
"Davey!" she cried.
He saw her face, the light of her eyes.
"Mother!" he sobbed.
His arms went round her, and his face with the rough beard--such a man's
face it had become since it last brushed her's--was crushed against her
cheek.
"I'm coming home," he said, his voice breaking. "Not now, not to-night,
but in a little while. I'll ask the old man to forgive me and see if we
can't get along better."
"Davey! Davey!" she cried softly, looking into his face, a new joy in
her own. "Oh, but they are sad days, these! Have you heard what they are
saying of your father? They tell me that you have been over the ranges."
"Yes," Davey said. She scarcely recognised his voice. "It's because of
father--because of what they're saying--I'm coming home. I won't have
them say it ... after all he's done ... do you think I'm going to let
him lose it, if I can help it."
There was a passionate vibration in his voice.
"How did it happen? I saw you on Friday and followed you home."
"Oh, my boy!" Her hand trembled on his shoulders. "It was you then?
What's come to your father I don't know at all. He's not the same man he
used to be. It's that man at the Black Bull. He's got hold of him--I
don't know how ... but he's been drinking there often now, and he never
used to be a drinking man--your father. I think it was his
disappointment with you at first ... I'm not blaming you, Davey. It
wasn't to be expected you'd do anything but what you did. I'm not
blaming you. But there were the long evenings by ourselves, after you'd
gone. He sat eating his heart out about it before the fire, and I
couldn't say a word. He was thinking of you all the time--but his pride
wouldn't let him speak. He was seeing the ruin of his hopes for you. He
meant you to be a great man in the district. Then McNab began talking to
him. Your father thinks McNab's doing him a good turn in some way, but I
feel it's nothing but evil will come to us from him. The sight of the
man makes me shiver and I wonder what harm it is he is planning for us."
Her voice went to Davey's heart.
"I know, mother," he said. "But it'll be all right soon. The old man'll
pull up when I come home. I'll tell him I mean to be all he wants me to
be. I was a fool before, though I don't think I could go on in the old
way even now. But he'll be reasonable if I go the right way about asking
him. I've a deal more sense than I had. I've sobered down a lot ... can
see things straighter. I won't be having any dealings with McNab
again--and I'll get father to cut him. The pair of us'll be more than
equal to him. But I've got to finish my job with Conal first ... it
wouldn't be playing the game to leave him just now."
"Is it Conal you've been working with, Davey?" her eyes went up to his
anxiously.
"Yes," he said.
"Your father's been talking a lot about this work of Conal's," she went
on, a troubled line in her forehead. "He says the Schoolmaster's in it
too. McNab's been talking to him about it, and they mean to interfere in
some way. He's talked a good deal about it when he didn't know he was
talking, driving home in the evenings. But McNab's making a fool of him
for his own purposes, and to do harm to Mr. Farrel, I think. I was
trying to tell your father that, but he wouldn't hear me. Oh, why have
you got yourself mixed up with duffing and crooked ways, Davey?"
"What did he say?" Davey asked.
"I don't remember all of it." She swept her brow with a little weary
gesture. "It was all mumbling and muttering, and I couldn't hear half
what he said--but it was to do with cattle. And to-day McNab came over
to the yards as soon as we arrived and I heard him say: 'I've got word
where there's a mob with brands won't bear lookin' into, to-night. I'll
tell M'Laughlin, and he'll get a couple of men to work with him. If
you'll come round to the parlour we can fix up what's to be done.'"
Davey jerked his horse's bridle, pulling him round to mount.
"I meant to take you home myself to-night, mother," he said. "But I'll
have to find Conal and tell him this. There's no time to lose."
"I'll be all right, Davey," she said tremulously; "I'll go and wait for
your father at McNab's. He's there now. And we're quite safe with Bess
taking us home. She knows every inch of the way."
Davey kissed her hurriedly.
He turned out of the church paddock towards Hegarty's. There was a dance
in full swing, and he thought that Conal might be there. But although a
new fiddler was in his element and most of the young people in the
district jigging, Conal was not. He went back along the road to McNab's.
Outside, in the buggy, Mary Cameron was sitting. She turned and smiled
when he rode up to her. Her face had a shy happiness, but the patience
and humility of her waiting attitude infuriated him.
He swung off his horse and opened the door of McNab's side parlour.
Cameron was sitting at the small, uneven table, a bottle of rum and
glasses before him. McNab on the other side of the table, leaning across
it was talking to him, his voice running glibly. The light of an oil
lamp on the table between them showed his yellow, eager eyes, the
scheming intensity of the brain behind them, the lurking half-smile of
triumph about his writhing, colourless lips. M'Laughlin, leaning lazily
back in his chair, his long legs stretched under the table, sat watching
and listening to him.
McNab sprang to his feet with an oath when he saw Davey in the doorway.
"Mother's waiting for you outside," he said, lifting Donald Cameron by
the elbows and leading him to the door.
He turned on McNab with his back to it.
"I'll be looking after my father's affairs from this out," he said. "And
you remember what I promised you if you interfered with me again ...
you'll get it sure as I live."
He slammed the door.
Donald Cameron, stupid with McNab's heavy spirits, was unprepared for
this masterful young man whose rage was burning to a white heat. He went
with him as quietly as as a child.
Davey helped him into the buggy.
"Keep him away from McNab," he said to his mother, "and I'll be home as
soon as I can."
She smiled, the shy, happy smile of a girl, nodded to him, and they
drove off.
Davey went back into the bar of the Black Bull, with its crowd of
stockmen, drovers, shop-keepers and sale-yard loungers.
"Where's Conal?" he asked. "Does anybody know if he's left the town
yet?"
There was a roar of laughter.
"He was looking for you an hour ago, Davey," a drunken youngster yelled
gaily. "Was in here, 'n McNab gave him a turn about the Schoolmaster's
girl--"
"McNab was tellin' him you'd made-up to marry her. You should have heard
Conal go off," somebody shouted.
"Where is he?" There was a sharpness about Young Davey's question that
nobody liked.
"Who? McNab?"
"No, Conal!"
McNab had come into the bar and was standing watching him, his face
livid.
"Round somewhere lookin' for your blood," the same jovial youngster, who
had first spoken, cried.
"Seen him go up towards the store a while ago, Davey," Salt Watson said
slowly.
No one smelt mischief brewing quicker than he. He had seen McNab's face.
He knew Young Davey's temper and the sort of man he was growing. He knew
Conal, too, and that no love was lost between them. It was an urgent
matter would send Davey looking through the town for Conal that way, he
guessed, and knowing something of the business they had in hand, as an
old roadster always does, imagined the cause of the urgency.
McNab looked as if Davey's anxiety to find Conal had taught him
something too.
Davey flung out of the bar. He straddled his horse again and went flying
off down the road to the store.
Conal was not there. Someone said he had been, and set out for the hills
an hour earlier. Davey made off down the road again, doubling on his
track, past the Black Bull. He thought that he would catch up to Conal
on the road, and that they would be back at Steve's before M'Laughlin
and his men were out of Wirreeford.
The culvert over the creek that he had watched Bess shy at and take in
her own leisurely fashion a week before, was not half a mile from the
outskirts of the township. The creek banks on either side were fringed I
with wattles and light-woods. As the mare rattled across it there was a
whistling crack in the air. Davey pitched on her neck. Terrified, she
leapt forward. He clung to her, swaying for a while, yet never losing
his grip.
He knew that someone had shot him from the trees by the culvert. There
was a sharp pain in his breast; blood welled from it.