TWO SIDES OF A STORY.
A scandal had come to Birralong; a scandal that ate its way into the
peace and contentment of the township; a scandal which introduced into
the simple existence of the district a discordant, jarring note, common
enough in more crowded centres of population, but absent up to that
moment from the annals of the sober, clean-living inhabitants of the
bush township. And the men who gathered on Marmot's verandah to settle
all the problems and the squabbles of the locality, met to marvel and to
wonder; for they who, in their wisdom, had anticipated all things; they
who had solved all questions affecting the welfare of the district; they
who had laid bare the skeleton of every secret for miles around--had met
and heard, in painful and perplexed silence, the story of a greater
secret than they had yet encountered, and a secret beside which, as it
were, they had been living for months past without even dreaming of its
existence.
When first it came to them through the medium of a floating shred of
gossip that had filtered through to the Carrier's Rest, they were too
much affected for words. Only could they sit and smoke in silence, each
man turning the story over and over in his mind until his pipe went out,
and under cover of the smokeless silence he slipped away into the
darkness and went home, mournful and abashed; until at last Marmot
awakened from the reverie into which he had fallen, and discovered that
he was alone as well as silent.
By the next evening they had recovered somewhat, and discussed the story
in all its detail, grown the richer and more comprehensive by the
silence of the night before. Each one had some little touch, some
poignant item, to add to the general outline; and when they separated
that night, the shred of gossip had become the completed romance which
lived ever afterwards in the traditions of the township.
The hero was Slaughter; the heroine Nellie Murray; and the theme, the
shattering of idyllic bliss by the deceit of a faithless lover.
From the day of the schoolmaster's death Slaughter had been a greater
conundrum than ever to the men of Birralong. His visits to the store had
become less and less frequent, and his bearing, when he did come, more
and more distant and reserved. Not even the story of the diggers'
arrival and dispersing interested him; not even the audacity of the
robbery of the miner's gold from the constable's cottage, and the
fruitlessness of the subsequent chase after the robbers, moved him. He
listened silently and listlessly to the account of Tony's departure with
his mates to seek for a fresh fortune in the place of the one they had
lost. Only twice had he manifested any attention to what was said on the
verandah when he was present. He had become animated and attentive when
the conversation turned on the fact that while Tony had ridden out to
Barellan to see Ailleen on his first return from the diggings, he had
neither gone out nor mentioned her name on his second return to the
township--the occasion of the great billiard contest. It was recalled by
some one how quickly he had come back from the one visit he had made,
and how short his answers had been to all questions put to him, and the
opinion which had been formed and was generally expressed was that the
cause of it all was young Dickson and the precedence he had taken over
Tony in the affections of Ailleen. When Slaughter heard that he had
sniffed, as he usually did before delivering himself of a sweeping
condemnation of all womankind, and looked round on his companions with
eyes that were peculiarly bright--but he said nothing.
The other occasion when he showed any interest in the conversation was
when it was said that Tony and his two mates on setting out for the
second time to the gold-fields had taken young Murray with them as well,
Dickson having paid for his share in the stores and tools of the party.
That piece of information had apparently affected Slaughter almost more
than the other, and although he had not spoken--as Smart put it, he
seemed to have swallowed his tongue--there had been a light in his eye
and an expression on his face that had escaped no one.
And yet none of them had had wit enough to understand the significance
of it all--until the bald fact of the revealed secret came to them.
Each one claimed then that he had seen, noted, and understood the
peculiarity of Slaughter's behaviour on the two occasions, but he had
held his peace lest he should be doing an injustice to a
fellow-townsman. Never before had Birralong been so unanimous in forming
an opinion nor so generous in respecting another's fair name. But lost
time was made up in the fulness of opportunity that was now offered.
The beginning of the story was vague and uncertain, and, as no
particular interest attached to it, it was practically left alone. The
interest of Birralong commenced with the alarm Murray and Murray's wife
experienced with regard to Nellie. With a big family and a small
selection, there was neither time nor inclination on their part to mince
matters, and Nellie had been questioned severely and pointedly. An
obstinate silence was the only result, and her parents losing patience,
she had been left in a room with a locked door in order to acquire the
necessary sense to answer what she was asked. Instead, however, of
learning the folly of obstruction, she found that the window was open;
and when her parents returned, many hours afterwards, to renew their
inquiries, they found that Nellie had vanished.
Disliking the idea of publicity--a mistake for which Birralong soundly
condemned them--they had kept their own counsel for days--days when, as
Marmot impressively pointed out, Slaughter had visited the store and
displayed that taciturn manner which was so easily understood under the
light of subsequent revelations.
As the days passed and no sign was given by the missing Nellie, and
anxiety began to be manifest in the Murray household, a message was
brought by a boy, who said he had received it from a man on the road,
that Mrs. Murray would do well to hurry to Slaughter's at the
Three-mile. Disbelieving, yet alarmed, Murray, his wife, and a neighbour
who happened to be at the selection at the time, set off in a
spring-cart to the Three-mile.
They found Nellie there and brought her back; and then the news leaked
out, and Murray came to the township, with blazing hate in his eyes,
asking to be shown where Slaughter was, and calling for his son to come
home and help him exact retribution for the betrayal of his child.
But no one knew where Slaughter was; no one had seen him in the township
for days; and, as far as could be learned, there were no signs of his
having been at the Three-mile for days; while Nellie held her peace,
even when her baby came and died, and she almost followed it.
That was the story Birralong heard, and nightly was the gathering on
Marmot's verandah entranced with the discussion of it, and the
considering of all the _pros_ and _cons_ concerned in it. Aggravation
was given to their interest by the arrival of the periodical letter for
Slaughter; and, having discussed the matter for some evenings, it was at
length determined to send out word to Murray, so that he should be ready
to start whenever warning was sent that Slaughter had come in for his
mail. There was a possibility that the meeting between the two would be
picturesque, and Marmot and his friends had an eye to the picturesque in
that respect. They were almost outraged when the messenger returned with
Murray's reply, for it dispelled immediately any prospect of
entertainment; Murray replied that they could mind their own business.
And the next evening Slaughter came in.
They had only just gathered together when he rode up on his old scraggy
horse. He threw the reins over one of the posts as he got down from the
saddle, and walked on to the verandah with an air of unconcern that made
every man look at him open-mouthed.
"Got any letters for me?" he said to Marmot, ignoring the rest.
"Post-office's shut," Marmot replied curtly, as he stood up. "You can
come to-morrow."
He forgot for the moment the unfriendly answer Murray had sent in to his
message, and the murmur of approbation that passed round the assembly at
his words pleased him.
"It was never shut before," Slaughter said, looking him straight in the
face.
"Well, it is now," Marmot retorted; and sat down again.
On a small rack above the counter, just in a line behind Marmot's head
when he was standing, was displayed the letter Slaughter had come for,
and as Marmot sat down he saw it. He pushed past into the store and took
it from the rack. As he turned to the door, he faced the men standing
round Marmot.
"Put that back, or----" Marmot began loudly.
"Get out of my way," Slaughter shouted, as he advanced towards them with
angry eyes and closed fists.
They had seen such an expression on his face once before; and as they
did then, so did they now, as they fell apart and allowed him to pass
out. As he reached his horse, he faced them again.
"You mind your own affairs," he said, with a snarl in his voice; and
before they could find an answer for him, he mounted his horse and rode
away.
"Well!" Marmot exclaimed, when at length he found words. "What game's
this, I'd ask?"
Smart, from the end of the verandah where he had been watching Slaughter
ride through the township, laughed as he answered--
"Old Cold-blood's waking up. As the missus says, them freezers is always
the worst when they thaws."
"Seems to me," Cullen observed solemnly--"seems to me the drought ain't
the only trouble in the district; and old Cold-blood, coming here
listening to all we've got to say, has got in ahead of us somehow, and
is playing a lone hand for all he's worth. He's bluffed Murray."
"Wha-at?" Marmot exclaimed.
"For why not?" Cullen went on. "He came from over by Murray's;" and he
pointed away in the direction whence Slaughter had come, and which was
also the direction of the Murray selection. "Old Cold-blood's a man of
eddication, and eddication, you take my tip, is the joker in a hand like
this. The old man's right. This ain't our game. We've got our hands full
watching how things go. There's a breeze coming up from somewhere, and
we're best under shelter. Leave them as wants it to take up the
running. Old Cold-blood and the Three-mile ain't our dart."
Ignorant of the commotion his reappearance had created at the store,
Slaughter rode on his way to his selection, from which he had been
absent for a couple of weeks. Barber, before leaving (for the West, as
he told Slaughter at the time, but in reality to lead the raid on the
miner's gold at the constable's cottage), had promised to send a message
to Slaughter to a small township on the north of Birralong, giving him
full particulars as to the whereabouts of the woman whose wrong-doing
was the foundation of their mutual hate. Slaughter had set out for the
northern township at the appointed time, and found a letter awaiting him
from Barber; but instead of containing the information promised, it told
how Barber and his three companions had been attacked at night by wild
blacks, how two of the party were killed, and the others so badly
wounded that they were returning by slow stages to the Three-mile for
rest. The letter concluded by asking Slaughter to ride out to meet them,
as should either break down, the other would not be able to render him
any assistance. This Slaughter had done, meeting Barber and Tap on the
road from the West. They were not travelling quite so slowly as the
letter might have led Slaughter to believe, neither was the condition of
their wounds so serious as the letter implied; but Slaughter neither
expressed nor manifested surprise. It may have been that the presence of
the black-browed Barber awakened memories of a bygone period before his
life was scarred by transverse currents of bitterness; it may have been
that his appearance roused the latent hatred he entertained for the
woman who had crossed and marred his path after those happier years; it
may have been some evil influence the man exhaled, and which affected
his companions;--but immediately he was thrown in contact with Barber,
there came to Slaughter's eyes a dull glow unpleasant to see and as
forbidding as it was foreboding. Matters of everyday note escaped him or
were unheeded; inaccuracies of fact, contradictions of statement, were
alike ignored; only did Slaughter seem to realize and hope for the
prospect of learning how he might attain to the summit of his ambition
by settling that unhappy account of the bygone years.
There were not many words lost in the greeting. Barber said that he and
Tap were coming back to the Three-mile for some more business they had
heard of, and that they wanted to be as quiet and free from interruption
as they had been before. Leave was neither asked nor given; but the
three travelled on together until a day's ride from Birralong, when Tap
and Barber branched off to the right and left, leaving Slaughter to go
on through the township to the selection by himself.
When he arrived at the slip-rails across the end of the track leading
from the road to the selection, he saw by the gleam of firelight from
the open doorway that some one was in the hut. As he entered he saw in
the dim light the figures of Barber and Tap, while nearer the door a
third was standing.
"Well, I'm off," the latter said, as Slaughter went into the hut.
"Hullo," he added, as he met Slaughter face to face. "You back again?"
"Well, what then?" Slaughter answered, with a surly tone and manner.
"This is my own place, isn't it?"
"Oh yes, it's your own place, only I didn't see you here when I last
came over, and they do say in the township----"
"Look here, young fellow," Slaughter exclaimed savagely, "if you come
here as often as I come to Barellan, I'll be satisfied. The less I
see----"
"Dry up," Barber called out. "Dickson came with a message for me. What's
it to you if the boy has doings with me?"
Slaughter said nothing, and Dickson, with an uneasy laugh, looked round
at Barber.
"Of course if the girl comes out, why, we're off," Tap observed.
"What girl?" Slaughter exclaimed quickly.
"Why, the girl Birralong's talking about--the girl--well, you ought to
know," Dickson said.
"I suppose you think you're going to cut the youngster out as well with
the other one, and play up with her," Barber added.
Slaughter, standing by the doorway, looked round from one to the other
slowly.
"You'd best talk plain, I take it," he said. "You'll say straight what
you've got to say, or some one will shift out of this camp. What's your
yarn, anyhow?" he added, facing to Dickson.
"That's all right," he answered, grinning uneasily, and shifting his
feet as he made as though to get nearer the door. "It's only borak. It's
a yarn, that's all."
"A yarn put about while you were away--the boy's only chaffing you," Tap
put in.
Slaughter stood by the doorway, looking from one to the other.
"I'll know more than that," he said. "If any man says aught of me
combined with a woman's name, he's got me to deal with, and smart too."
"Well, go to the township, you fool, and ask what's said," Barber
exclaimed.
Dickson, scenting trouble for himself if Slaughter did anything of the
kind, tried to remedy the unexpected development of his remarks.
"It's only borak," he repeated. "I was chaffing. I didn't mean anything.
I thought you liked a joke. It's all right."
Barber laughed at this sudden change of front, for prior to Slaughter's
appearance Dickson had been telling, with great glee, how he had put on
to Slaughter's shoulders the reputation of his own iniquity. He had told
the story with the air of one who knew that he had done something which
would earn the admiration of his listeners; with the air of one who,
mean and cowardly himself, regarded his companions as being similarly
constituted. It was the suggestion of implied meanness that rankled with
Barber, and made him interpose upon Dickson's efforts to beat a hasty
retreat.
"It's a girl at the station, you fool," he said. "The youngster
said----"
"Silence!" Slaughter shouted, as he advanced a step into the hut and
faced the black-browed man, with the gleam in his eyes which had held
the men of Birralong back, and his fists clenched. "You bandy her name,
and----"
"Well, what then?" Barber interrupted.
"You'll deal with me," Slaughter added, facing the other, and meeting
his eyes in as steady and as hard a glance as was given.
The other two occupants of the hut stood silent, watching--Tap from
under his eyebrows, askance; Dickson, with a face that was growing pale
and eyes that were shifty and timid. Barber and Slaughter faced each
other, the one with a heavy, sullen look, the other with a gleam of
fierce anger in his eyes--just as he had looked at Marmot and his
comrades when they essayed to follow him into the schoolmaster's
cottage. Barber, through his growing rage, realized that he had a
different man to deal with than the ordinary run; he remembered also
that to quarrel with Slaughter at the moment would be dangerous to the
scheme he was working. He allowed his eyes to go down before the steady
stare that faced him.
"No one wants to harm her," he said sullenly; and both Tap and Dickson
looked up at Slaughter with a momentary feeling akin to awe--it was the
first time they had seen or heard of Barber wavering.
"No one _shall_ harm her," Slaughter cried. "If any man harms her by
word or deed, he'll have me to answer. Do you hear?" he shouted,
flinging round on Dickson, who started and cowered.
"The boy said nothing," Barber exclaimed. "Come, get out of it," he
added to Dickson, as he went up to him and, taking him by the arm,
roughly, pushed him out of the hut.
Slaughter stood where he was, and Tap slunk out after the others.
"You young fool," Barber said, as he pushed Dickson along towards the
paddock where his horse was, gripping his arm so fiercely that the boy
writhed with the pain of it, and yet was too frightened to cry out, "if
our game goes wrong through your tricks, we'll flay you. You keep out of
sight till I send for you; do you hear?"
Tap came up behind them as Barber was speaking.
"We had best meet somewhere else, and----"
Barber glanced round. If he had given way to Slaughter he was not going
to allow any one else to override him.
"Are you boss of this game or am I?" he said quickly; and Tap held back.
"You ride straight back to Barellan," he added to Dickson. "When I want
you I'll send for you, so you'll be on hand any time; and if you play up
any more tricks till my game's through, look out."
He pushed him away as he spoke, and Dickson hastily caught his horse and
rode off without a word. As he disappeared, Tap said in a cringing
voice--
"He's like his mother--only good for a sneak thief."
"He's the dead spit of his father, if you want to know," Barber answered
savagely; and Tap again slunk back.