When the broad glare of the morning sun broke through the dingy windows
of the hut, Deirdre started from the cramped position in which she had
fallen, her head leaning wearily against a box.
She was aghast to find that she had been asleep. As she woke with a
startled exclamation, a hand went out to her. Her eyes met Davey's.
It was as if that encounter in the valley of shadows had brushed all
misunderstandings from the love that was like the sun between them.
Deirdre had wrestled with death for possession of him. Her eyes still
bore the shadow of the conflict. Davey was wan and vanquished. He knew
that she had wrested his spirit from the darkness on which it had been
drifting, and the knowledge made a serene joyousness in him.
Speech deserted them; they had no voices to talk with. Just this gazing
of eyes on eyes told all that there was to tell.
Later on she went from his side and began to move about the hut,
gathering the brushwood into the hearth, raking over the ashes and
making the fire again. His eyes followed her.
The hut was shabby and disorderly by daylight. Conal had used it when he
was mustering, and there was a heap of rusty irons in the corner, a few
hoarded tins and half-empty jars of grease on the shelves, some old
clothes, worn-out boots and green-hide thongs behind the door. The bunk,
with its sheepskins, and a table made of a rough hewn plank on three
poles set in the floor, were the only furniture. Deirdre found a bundle
of rags on the shelf near the hearth, and searched for the bottle of
liniment which she knew was kept for use if any of the men got a broken
hand or a kick from a beast in the stock-yards.
Davey knew where Conal had stowed these things while they were working
there together. He tried to help Deirdre to find them. She was at his
side in an instant.
"You mustn't move," she said, a compelling tenderness in her voice.
He fell back.
The touch of her hands was a shock of joy. His face turned up to her,
wan with weakness, radiant at her near presence. His eyes went through
hers.
"Deirdre!"
The cry was a prayer also.
She bent over him; her arms encircled him. From that first kiss of
conscious lovers she withdrew a little tremulously.
"Oh, you must be still," she cried. "If the bleeding begins again you'll
never be strong. You must lie quiet now, and I'll see if I can find some
food. There's sure to be flour and some oatmeal about."
"On the shelf in the corner by the hearth," Davey said. "And there was
tea in a tin there a day or two ago."
She found them and they breakfasted on a weak gruel and tea without
milk. She had helped Davey on to the bunk against the wall and spread
the sheepskins under him when the Schoolmaster and Teddy came into the
yard. Farrel carried a bag of food and a couple of blankets strapped to
his saddle.
Deirdre met him out of doors. The sight of her reassured him. She told
him what had happened during the night--of Davey's long stillness and
insensibility, and of Conal's coming a few hours before the dawn.
The Schoolmaster went into the hut.
"Father says "--Deirdre went straight to Davey--"he doesn't believe it
was Conal fired that shot at you."
Her eyes went out to him troubled and beseeching.
"I can't help thinking it was, myself, though I'd be glad not to. He's
been such a big brotherly sort of man to me always, Conal, and it hurts
to think he could do a thing like that."
She continued after a moment.
"Father says, Conal came in after you'd gone last night. He'd been
drinking, but his voice told him that he didn't do it. As soon as he
knew you'd come after me, the way you were, he rode out after you for
fear you mightn't have been able to reach here. Do--do you think it was
Conal, Davey?"
Davey turned his face to the wall. He could not bear to hear her defence
of Conal--her solicitude and desire to think well of him in spite of
everything. He had no doubt in his own mind. The memory of that
whistling shot from the dark trees, the agony of his long ride through
the hills, came back to him.
"All I know," he said bitterly, "is that I was looking for him before I
left the town to tell him what mother had told me about the raid McNab
and the old man and M'Laughlin were getting up. At the Black Bull they
said they'd been baiting Conal--about me--and he'd gone out looking for
me--promising to do for me. Some one said he'd gone to the store. I went
there and Joe Wilson told me he'd seen Conal riding out an hour earlier.
I thought I'd catch him up on the road. It was from the trees by the
creek the shot came, and Red took fright."
"There's nobody else got a grudge against you, Davey?"
"Not that I know who'd want to settle me that way. McNab, of course,
hasn't got any love for me."
"You went up to the store and straight out along the road past the
Bull?" the Schoolmaster asked.
"Yes, but I'd seen McNab in the bar a couple of minutes before. It
couldn't have been him."
Farrel threw out his hand with a gesture of doubt and disappointment.
"Deirdre says she's heard Conal say that he'd do for you, Davey," he
said, "but she didn't think he meant it. Just his hot-headed way of
talking! McNab must have maddened him, filled him up with drink. I can't
tell you how it goes against the grain to believe he could have done a
thing like this, and yet--it looks like it."
"Was he back when you came away this morning?" Deirdre asked.
"No," the Schoolmaster replied.
"Ask him when he comes in, whether he did, or did not fire at Davey,"
she said. "I'll take his word. Will you, Davey?"
"Yes." Davey's tone was a little uncertain.
The Schoolmaster went to the door again.
Davey called him back with a restless movement.
"What are you going to do about those beasts?" he asked querulously.
"They're better here than at Steve's, but of course if M'Laughlin gets a
tracker it wouldn't take him long to find them. Teddy's got them in the
four-mile paddock this morning, but they ought to be moving."
"Perhaps Conal"--the Schoolmaster began.
"Oh, yes, I forgot, Conal--he'll take them."
Davey fell back.
"Why can't you take them yourself?" he inquired.
The Schoolmaster met his eyes for a moment.
"Lost my nerve," he said, with a little grating laugh, and turned out of
doors.
Deirdre's eyes sparkled with anger.
"Oh," she gasped, breathlessly, "how dare you, Davey? How dare you?"
Davey, morose anger in his eyes, stared at her.
"You're angry because he let me go out last night," she said. "Don't you
know he's almost helpless, that he can just see dimly in the broad
daylight. All the world's going dark to him, and it's breaking his
heart--eating the strength and the soul and the courage out of him, to
stand by and let others do things for him."
Consciousness of what he had done came slowly to Davey.
"Oh, it was mean and cruel and cowardly to hurt him like that!" Deirdre
cried passionately, and ran out into the sunshine after her father.
When she came back into the hut Davey, with a tense white face, was
standing near the door.
"I ought to be flayed alive--but I didn't know, I didn't understand," he
said.
There was no quieting or comforting him.
"Will he ever forgive me? Do you think he will, Deirdre?" His face was
clammy with the sweat of weakness. "It was more than Conal did--that.
Conal wouldn't have done it."
Deirdre went for the Schoolmaster. He came into the hut again. He and
Davey gripped hands. Then the Schoolmaster led him to the bunk again and
stretched him out on it.
"It's all right, my boy! All right!" he said, brokenly. "You lie still
now and let Deirdre look after you."
Davey's vigorous youth rebelled at the days of idleness which followed.
The wound knitted quickly; his weakness vanished as it mended.
Conal had disappeared. No one had seen or heard of him since the night
of the Wirree races. The Schoolmaster and Deirdre had accepted his
disappearance as silent proof of his having fired the shot that had
almost cost Davey his life.
When they went back to the shanty Steve talked incessantly about Conal.
Although no more had been heard of M'Laughlin and the threatened raid
had never been made, he was not easy about that half hundred head of
newly-branded beasts in the Narrow Valley paddock.
At the end of the week Davey took the bit between his teeth.
"I'm going to take that mob to the Melbourne yards," he said. "We can't
run them any longer in the Valley."
"It's too risky, Davey," the Schoolmaster said. "McNab's too quiet to be
harmless, and there's only one man could run the mob with safety."
"And that's Conal?" Davey asked.
"There's not a man in the country like Conal with cattle. He knows every
by-path and siding on the ranges. Then he's hail-fellow-well-met with
the men on the roads. There's not one of them would give him away," the
Schoolmaster said.
"I could run them." The line on Davey's mouth tightened. "And safer than
Conal, I've been thinking. Some of the cows have father's brand on them.
Most of the calves ought to have the D.C. by rights, I suppose. They've
got the cut of our Ayrshires, though Conal's done the double M's pretty
neatly on them.
"What's the old man's will be mine some day, and so they're in a sort of
way my cattle too. I can say, I don't think Ayrmuir had any right--not
much anyway--to them, if we couldn't get them. The old man wouldn't risk
a couple of horses on the off-chance. Rosses and Morrisons lost three
horses when they had a go for 'em, besides there isn't a man on our
place could have yarded them. Conal got them. We were with him. You can
hold his share for this batch when I bring it to you. But I'm going to
drive, saying they are Donald Cameron's cattle. So they are, most of
them. I'll be driving my own cattle as a matter of fact, though it may
be realising on the estate, a forced loan from the old man, you may say.
My name will carry me through and when the deal's over I can make it
right with father. I'm going home."
"Can't think what Conal means, leavin' 'em so long," Steve muttered
irritably.
"We can't have them on our hands any longer!"
Davey's voice was short and irritable too.
"You're right, Davey." The Schoolmaster spoke slowly, thoughtfully.
"What you say makes the getting rid of them sound easy, but I hardly
like the idea of--"
"Taking your share, after the way I've put it?" Davey interrupted. "But
as far as I'm concerned they're Conal's beasts, and your's--and
mine--because we got them. Nobody else could, and they weren't any good
to anybody eating their heads off in the hills. But for all the world
it's as if I had contracted with you to do it on behalf of the estate.
Ayrmuir gets a third of the profits. I'll hand it over to the old
man--and as likely as not he'll be glad enough to see it, for a couple
of dozen breakaways and scrubbers he never expected to make a penny out
of again."
The Schoolmaster's gesture of impatience was one of resignation also.
"It's a specious argument, Davey," he said, "but I wish to heaven you'd
kept clear of the whole business."
That evening Davey called Deirdre and they wandered down the hillside,
watching the sun set on the distant edge of the plains that stretched,
northwards and inland, from the rise beyond Steve's.
"I'm going to-morrow," he said, and told her of the promise he had made
his mother. "I feel it's up to me to carry this job through, but when
it's over I'm coming back--going home. When I come back will you marry
me, Deirdre?"
"Yes," she said simply. "But if you'd only give up going, Davey!"
Davey's face had a look of his father for the moment, a sombre
obstinacy.
"There's something in the game," he said. "You're on your mettle to
carry it through when you've begun. But you needn't worry. I'll be all
right. My story'll be good enough if there is any trouble."
Deirdre sighed.
"But I can't bear the thought of your going," she said. "If only you
wouldn't!"