Deirdre and the black boy drove their straggling herd into the stockyard
in the narrow bush clearing, walled by trees, an hour or two before
dawn.
The stock-yards which Conal had put up at the end of Narrow Valley were
invisible to any but those who knew the winding track that led over the
brow of the hill and through the heavy timber on the spur, to the old
hut at the foot of it. Teddy was pulling the rails of the outer-yard
into place and Deirdre was going towards the hut. Socks at her heels,
his bridle over her arm, when a horseman rode out of the opening into
the valley, by which they had come.
She recognised the red horse, but did not know that it was Davey riding
till he was almost level, and dropped to his feet. He swayed against the
horse's side, clutching his reins.
"It's a shame ... no one to bring the brutes but you," he said weakly.
"I came--soon as I knew."
Deirdre put her arm out to him. They walked slowly towards the hut.
Davey became weaker. She drew the horses by their reins behind them,
keeping her eyes on him. The ground rocked under his feet.
"We're just there--another minute and it'll be all right," she said, and
called Teddy.
He had seen Davey Cameron's red horse coming into the clearing, and ran
up to her, chattering with fright at the sight of Davey's limp figure.
"Put the horses up in the shed--leave the saddles on," she said quickly.
"You go back, tell boss--cows all right--Davey very sick man, here."
Although an hour earlier nothing would have induced the boy to brave the
darkness alone, it was not many moments before he was up on his weedy,
half-wild nag and streaking away towards the cover of the trees and the
threadlike track which wound uphill along the spur.
Deirdre opened the door of the hut. Davey took a step or two into it and
fell forward. She set the brushwood on the hearth alight, and threw some
broken branches over it to make a blaze. There was no stir in Davey when
she knelt beside him, and a pool of blood lay on the floor where he had
fallen.
She ran out of doors for water. In the semi-darkness of the hut it was
difficult to find anything to put water in, but there was a pannikin
near the water barrel and she filled that and tore pieces of calico from
her petticoat to bathe his wound.
Groping along the shelves near the fireplace she found the end of a
thick rush and tallow candle. She did not light it at first because the
fire had sprung up and was lighting the room, showing its meagre
equipment, the branding irons and a saddle flung down in a corner, a
bunk against the wall with a couple of sheepskins over it, a table with
two or three pannikins and a black bottle on it. There was a drain of
some spirit in the bottle. She poured it carefully into a pannikin and
held it to Davey's lips.
His immobility frightened her. She lit the candle and held it close to
his face. Under the leaping yellow flames it had the mask-like stillness
and pallor of death.
"Davey! Davey!" she screamed with terror, creeping up beside his heavy,
still body.
"Oh, you mustn't die, Davey--you mustn't!" Even as she sobbed she
thought he was dead.
She put the spirit on his lips again.
"Oh, I've done all that I can--all that I know to do. Won't you look at
me, Davey? My heart's breaking. You've not gone, Davey? You wouldn't
leave me. It's me, Deirdre, your sweetheart, that's with you! Won't you
look at me?... Won't you open your eyes? I can't bear it--if you don't
speak to me."
"Davey!" She caught him by the shoulder, shaking him roughly. "I won't
let you go! I won't let you die!" she cried.
He fell back from her hands.
She threw herself across him sobbing brokenly. Pressing her face close
to his, she leant over him, murmuring and trying to revive him with a
breathless agony of grief and tenderness.
"Oh, come back to me! Oh, you will not die. You will not die and leave
me," she moaned. "Deirdre, that loves you. Your sweetheart, Davey!"
The cry died away.
In her frenzy she had not heard the door open. Spent with anguish she
laid her head against Davey's still one. She felt rather than saw that
someone was there in the hut behind her. She turned. Conal was standing
in the doorway.
She stared at him. He might have been an aparition, so strange he
looked, there in the doorway, with the glimmering night behind him.
There was something stricken, aghast, about him. He gazed at her as if
the tragic woe of her face were a revelation to him.
"He's dead--and it's you that have killed him, Conal," she said, at
length.
"You--love--him, Deirdre?" Conal asked.
So slow and dreary their voices were that they seemed to be talking in
their sleep.
"Yes," she said, "and it's my heart that's dead with him."
"I didn't know you felt like that--about him, Deirdre," Conal said, a
humble, awkward air about him.
That it was Davey lay there dead did not seem to trouble him. It was of
Deirdre he was thinking in a mazed, dazed way, and the thing she had
said to him.
"You've done what no woman could forgive you, Conal." A vibrating
passion had come to her voice. "I never want to see you again as long as
I live."
Conal stared at her a moment; then he swung heavily out of the hut into
the yard. He had the gait of a drunken man. She heard him stumble over
something in the yard, strike his head against a post. Then the sound of
his horse's hoof-beats in the clearing died away.
Deirdre looked down at the still figure beside her. In spite of what she
had said she could not believe that Davey was dead--that all that young,
strong body would not move again, that Davey's eyes would not open and
look at her with the eager, questioning glance she had known. Something
of the horror of his stillness had passed; she moistened his lips with
the spirit. Putting her arms round him she gathered him up against her,
put his head on her bosom and leaned over him, crooning softly, as
though he were asleep. She beguiled herself by saying that he was only
asleep and would waken presently.
"What a long time it is," she murmured. "Do you remember, Davey dear,
the night before father and I went away, and I ran over the paddock to
the corner of the road to see you? I was angry you had gone away without
wanting to see me, yourself.... You kissed me and I kissed you, and I
promised to come back and be your sweetheart and we'd be married some
day.... And the birds laughed. And the red-runners were out by the road.
There was a beautiful sunset, and it got dark soon. You said it was me
you loved and not Jessie. Then I went away ... and it has never been the
same since. But it will be ... when you are well and I can tell you how
much I want you to love me again--"
She laughed softly.
"Do you remember how we used to go home in the cart from school
together, and how we used to trot Lass up the hillsides to make her poor
old sides go like bellows, and you showed me how to blow birds' eggs,
and Jess said I wasn't a little lady to blow birds' eggs."
Her voice ran on with a brooklike tenderness.
"If you'd come back, we could have all those times again, Davey," she
whispered, looking down into his face beneath hers.
Just when there was the faintest shimmer of dawn in the dim windows, a
fluttering breath caught her face. She put the spirit to his lips again.
So, chafing his hands and calling him, with tearful and eager little
cries, she led him as a mother leads a child just learning to walk, from
the valley of the shadows.
Davey opened his eyes. They dwelt on her with a deep, serene gaze. She
smiled and went on crooning to him, half singing, half sighing that
beguiling little melody of tenderness and entreaty. Warmth came back to
him. His breath fell regularly and sweetly. Deirdre took the sheepskins
out of the bunk and put them under him on the floor.
He slept. A faint smile on his mouth, his hand sought hers, the fingers
curled round it. She sat watching him, a mist of awe and joy and
thankfulness gathering in her eyes, because it seemed to her that a
miracle had been accomplished that night in Narrow Valley hut.