A TANGLED SKEIN.
The man with the broken thigh lay still on the rough-made stretcher the
men had put up for him before starting, and Tony, sitting on the other
side of the fire, smoked in silence, not moving arm or leg lest by so
doing he should attract the attention of the sufferer and so disturb
him. For the same reason he did not replenish the fire, now burning down
to a glowing mass of embers, which threw out a dull red glare and fell
upon the form of the man where he lay, wrapped in a blanket, and played
weird tricks of shade with the grizzly beard and the unkempt locks that
strayed across the forehead.
Viewed either by firelight or sunlight, it was not a face to hold the
glance, nor to call for a second look, unless the mind were morbid and
animated by a love for the grotesque and devilish. Not even the
unsteady, deceptive glare of the ember light, throwing streaks and
patches of shade, ever changing and ever moving, across the ragged
surface of the beard, could hide the square massiveness of the jaws and
the curve of the hard yet sensuous lips. There was strength in the nose,
strength and cruelty, and the straight black band that formed the heavy
brow added to the repellent expression. Such a face it was that, looking
at it, one understood the man turning with an oath upon those who sought
to aid him in his misery, much as one can understand the fury of an
imprisoned snake which turns back upon itself and plunges its fangs into
its own flesh until it dies, the victim of its own malicious instincts.
As Tony sat watching, the sufferer turned his head from side to side
languidly, and a moan of pain escaped his lips. Tony rose to his feet,
gently, and the man, opening his eyes, looked at him. At once the
expression of pain that was in them as the lids rolled up gave way to a
flash of hate.
"You--damn you!" the man muttered, as he set his teeth.
Tony stepped across to the stretcher and stooped down.
"Don't touch me," the man exclaimed fiercely.
"All right, old chap, I won't hurt you; only I thought I might make you
more comfortable," Tony answered.
"You want to make me comfortable?" the man asked in a scoffing tone.
"Why, yes, if I can," Tony replied.
"Then see here," the man exclaimed. "I've never feared anything yet, and
I don't begin now. I'm close up a dead 'un, but that's nothing. When I'm
dead, I'm gone, and that's all about it. I know, and I don't give a
shearer's curse for it, so don't you fancy I care. It's your maudlin
gospel-millers who get scared at the chance of kicking. You understand?
That's the sort of man I am. I was never afraid and never sorry all my
days, and I'm not going to begin now at the end of them."
His eyes were wild in their gleam and his lips twitched as he spoke.
"Yes; that's all right," Tony said soothingly. "You're as plucky as they
make them, and I like you for it; so go slow and rest, because there
aren't too many like you, and we don't want you to go."
The keen, bright eyes looked steadily for a moment, and then a forced
laugh came from the man's lips.
"_You_ don't want me to go!" he said, with a sneer. "_You!_ Well, see
here, young fellow. There's one thing I'd be sorry for--if I went
without telling you what I've got to say."
"Keep it till the morning," Tony answered.
The man laughed again.
"I shall be fit for planting hours before the morning. You listen while
you may. You'll be interested. Make the fire up, and sit down where you
were. Then I'll talk--and don't interrupt, because I'm pushed for time."
To humour him, Tony threw some logs on the fire, and sat down again in
his old place; and the man lay with his face turned towards him, the
ruddy firelight shedding a brighter glow upon the unkempt hair and
beard, and making the gleam of the eyes more vivid.
"I'll tell you the yarn like a story-book," the man began. "Once upon a
time, there was a woman and two men."
Tony, sitting on the other side of the fire, leaned forward to reach a
burning ember with which to light his pipe, and carelessly puffed at it,
while the man stopped talking, and watched him with a look that was
fiendish in its expression of hate.
"There's no damned interest about this yarn for you, I suppose," he said
harshly, raising his head slightly from the rolled coat, which did duty
for a pillow, and letting it fall again as his mouth contracted with the
pain the movement caused him. "Well, the woman's your mother. Now go on
smoking," he added, with savage emphasis.
Tony looked round quickly.
"Yes; you're waking up now," the man sneered. "I reckon you'll be
interested now."
"How--what do you know----"
"You'll learn what I know when I've told you. Hold your jaw and keep
your ears open. I've not much time to tell you, and I'd be sorry to go
without finishing."
"Go on," Tony said quietly; "I shall not interrupt you."
The gleam in the eyes satisfied him that it was only delirium in the
man's mind; there was only a coincidence in the fact that he spoke of
what Nuggan had hinted at, and what lay nearest to Tony's heart--the
question of his parentage and the dissimilarity between himself and the
other members of the Taylor family.
"I knew you in a moment, knew you by the likeness," the man went on.
"She don't know where you are, but she thinks of me still--me, the man
who----but that ain't part of _this_ yarn. The woman--your mother--was
married, but she's separated from her husband for many years. Separated,
I said, sonny. Separated's good, though you don't know it;" and he
laughed unmusically as he watched the set face Tony had turned towards
him.
"There were two men and one woman, and the woman was married to one of
them, but they both were mad with love for her and mad with hate for
each other. Do you know what hate means, you white-faced boy? Do you
know what it is to hate a man so that you'd go through hell to grip him
by the throat and feel him choking under your hands; so that you'd tear
your own heart out twenty times a day to grind his infernal life into
grey damnation? Do you know what it's like to hate, waking and sleeping,
drunk or sober, always having one object in front of you that you want
to reach and kill? Do you? Then you know what I've felt for years and
years, day and night; what I've lived for, longed for, worked for."
The eyes that had gleamed before were blazing as though some of the
glowing embers had been taken from the fire and placed in the man's
head, and the face glistened with sweat as the muscles worked and
quivered under the paroxysm of fury that held him.
"That's enough," Tony exclaimed, jumping up.
The man held up his hand.
"You've got to hear it, all of it, and then find her out and tell
her--from me who's dying. If you don't take a dying man's message to
your own mother----"
He stopped and looked at Tony, his face growing calmer the while.
"If you get excited like that----" Tony began.
"Don't you be afraid," the man answered quickly. "I'll finish the yarn
or there won't be time. One of the two men married the woman, and one of
the two men swore for vengeance, either on the man, or the woman, or
both. And he had it. How? That's what I'll tell you. The yarn don't
amuse you, sonny? You want waking up again? Well, one thing he did was
to steal the kid."
He stopped again, watching Tony's face closely.
"Yes; go on," Tony said quietly.
"It near broke the mother's heart when she found it out," he continued,
speaking maliciously--"near broke her heart. But she never found it, for
it was put right out of sight; it was left at a humpy at a place called
Taylor's Flat."
He watched Tony narrowly as he spoke, and laughed harshly as he saw him
swing round and leap to his feet.
"Now you're interested," he said.
Tony stood looking at him, unable for the moment to find words to
express what he felt. Was the coincidence of a delirium-stricken mind
still the explanation of the man's striking at the tenderest spot in his
heart? If so, it was as nothing; but if not----
"Who are you that you should know this?" Tony cried, moving towards the
man where he lay with his eyes, bright as stars and cruel as a snake's,
fixed upon him.
"You listen to my yarn. That's your contract," he said derisively.
"You'll live till to-morrow; I shan't. Are you going to cheat a dying
man? Let me talk. You can fill in the rest about the kid to suit your
own taste, and I'll----"
"You were the man who stole the child; you were the mean----"
"Was I?" interrupted the man. "You wait and hear. The man who stole the
kid--you, if you want to be exact, damn you, now you've come to see me
die--that man went back to the--the place where he stole the kid and
where he met--your father."
Again he sought to raise his head as he uttered the words in short,
sharp tones, his face growing wet and ghastly under the influence of his
pain and his hatred. Tony, watching him, said nothing; the man was
either mad or lying, and whichever it was, the best thing to do was to
keep quiet and say nothing.
"He came back for fresh mischief, and I--there, you know now--I met
him," he shouted; and Tony, keeping still, stood looking at him calmly.
"I waited for him out on the run," he went on, beginning to speak in
jerky spasms of words, as though he needed to rest every few seconds if
he would keep his energy enough in hand to last him till he finished his
story. "He had been rounding up some cattle, and had a stock-whip with
him. I had one, too, a beauty, with a sixteen-foot green-hide thong. I
knew him as soon as I saw him half a mile away. I skulked in the scrub
as he came up--just behind a clump of wattle. To fool him I rode out
and past him; he turned after me, and I wheeled."
[Illustration: "THROUGH THE BUSH IT WENT, RACING LIKE MAD." [_Page 268._]
The bright eyes glittered as they watched Tony's face.
"You're a fly young chap," he went on, "but you're not fly enough to
guess what's coming. A couple of miles from where we were a track ran
through a thickly timbered part of the run. It was a winding track, and
not too wide. At one of the narrowest bits, just in the middle of a
curve, an old dead gum had stood for years. I had gone over that track
just an hour or so before, and I saw where that big gum had
fallen--lying right up the track. It was a red gum, tough, long-limbed,
and sun-dried. When it fell it had splintered lumps off the limbs,
making them sharp at the ends, which were pointing up the track like the
prongs of a great jagged toasting-fork. Ha, sonny, what a throw-in for
me! Here was a game worth playing. I rode at the man I hated, loosening
my stock-whip, and as I came near him, I turned aside and sent out the
lash--so as not to touch him. The crack of it sounded in his ears and in
his horse's as well, and the beast began to plunge. Here was my chance,
and I took it. As the horse reared and plunged, I waited till it was
facing away from me, and then sent the lash fair on to its flanks. It
brought a lump out of the brute, for the green-hide was as hard as
nails, and that horse set off straight for the track where the dead gum
lay, and with me after it. Through the bush it went, racing like mad,
with its flanks dripping red as I landed blow after blow with the good
old green-hide. Soon it was on the track, racing, galloping, blindly,
madly, like hell out for an airing, straight for my toasting-fork,
straight--God!"
In the fury and excitement of his story the man had forgotten his
injuries, and to give emphasis to his words, and perhaps make the pale,
set face that was turned towards him grow paler and more set, he had
reached out his arms, and held his clutching fingers towards Tony as he
sought to rise and peer with his vengeful eyes nearer and closer to his
victim, till the pangs of agony cut short both his fury and his
invective. He fell back, his lips pressed together till they were thin
and white, and his fists clenched as he strove to battle with the
jarring torture in his nerves. The sweat stood out in glistening beads
on his forehead, and his brows contracted down until they almost hid the
eyes in the frown of determined will.
The mute agony of the man's face sent back the disgust which was growing
in Tony's heart. The tale might be a lie--it might be only delirium; but
the man was in agony, in the death-agony perhaps, and Tony went to his
side.
"What can I do to help you?" he asked, as gently as he could.
"Pull the damned leg down--it's shifted," the man muttered between his
clenched teeth; and Tony did as he asked.
The man lay still with closed eyes for a few moments without heeding
Tony's query whether he was easier. Then he raised his eyelids, and,
with a short, forced laugh, turned his head on one side.
"I'm going to finish the yarn," he said in a voice that was strained,
but in marked contrast to the one he had previously used.
"Never mind the yarn; lie quiet for a bit," Tony exclaimed.
"I'll finish the yarn," the man replied, with a touch of his old
fierceness in his voice. "Where was I when the damned bone moved? I
remember. We were riding for the jump, riding as I never rode before or
since, riding like--like----I wonder if they ride in hell? If they do
they can't ride wilder, for I cut that horse's flanks to ribbons--yes,
cut it till the bone showed through--and it fled down that winding track
so fast that I was left behind. It went out of sight, it and its rider,
round the bend where the red gum lay. Ha, sonny, I wasn't first in, but
I won that race. There was a shout and a shriek from man and horse, and
then a crash of shattered timber, and when I rode up at a hand-gallop, I
saw on my toasting-fork, stuck with a jagged prong through him, his head
hanging down and his legs flying up, just as he had pitched from his
horse, the man your mother loved."
The venom had come into the voice again, the hatred into the eyes; and
as he uttered the last words, Tony instinctively drew back farther away
from him, his whole nature recoiling in loathing from the cruel, brutal
passion of the man's face.
"That's what you're to tell her; that's my message to her when you find
her--my dying message to the woman who made me mad with love and mad
with hate. And you'll give it to her--you, her stolen boy, and when she
hears it from you, she----"
His voice stopped in a gasp, and for a minute he battled for his breath.
"I don't care now; I'm square at last," he muttered, as soon as he could
speak again; and Tony saw by the red firelight how his face was growing
pallid and drawn. "I was square with the mother years ago and square
with the man she loved, and now I'm square with you; for I've put a
sting in your life that'll last as long as you've breath to draw. I came
back here to find you; and then--I am the man who collared the gold last
time you were here, and I settled your hash with the fair-haired girl
that's out at the station now. You've your father's voice and your
father's face, and if your mother could see you she'd know in a
moment--only she can't, she can't; and you----"
A gasping spasm seized the man, and he battled again for his breath.
Tony sprang across to him, and, stooping down, put his hand under the
man's head and raised it. He breathed more easily, and Tony watched the
face anxiously, for the eyes were closed and the lips drawn away from
the teeth. With his unoccupied hand Tony put back the shaggy mass of
hair from the forehead, and, as he felt the touch, the man opened his
eyes and stared vindictively at the face above him.
"You thought I'd gone--did you?" he said, in little more than a whisper.
"Don't touch me--you spawn of----"
A spasm of pain contracted his features and stopped his words.
"Don't talk like that. Keep quiet. I only want to do what I can to ease
you," Tony said gently.
The man, even as he struggled for breath, raised one arm and tried to
push Tony away, until, fearing that his efforts to soothe him might only
do more harm than good, Tony let the head lie on the pillow again and
stood back. The man's chest moved as the gasping struggles for breath
sounded hard and grating in his throat, and his frame trembled as it
lay. Presently he opened his eyes again and looked at Tony.
"Tell your--mother when you--find her how----"
Another spasm interrupted him, and Tony stepped nearer, for the voice
was terribly low. When the worst of the spasm was over, he went on, the
words scarcely audible--
"How your--father--died."
The eyes, still full of hatred though they were growing lustreless and
dull, were fixed on Tony's face with a blinkless stare. The distorted
lips moved twice without any sound coming from them. Then the chin fell;
the glazing eyes turned up from their stare on Tony's face, up to the
dark starlit vault overhead; a wavering sigh came as it were on the
silent air of the night--and the unknown was dead.
For a time Tony stood looking down at him as he lay, the face, never
beautiful, growing more hideous every second with the muscles setting
rigid in the last expression of savage hate. The fire softly hissed and
crackled as the burning logs flaked into ashes, and beyond the range of
the ruddy light the bush formed a deep, impenetrable gloom, darker and
more sombre than the deep blue of the moonless sky. The faint wind of
night, scarcely perceptible to the senses save by the soft whispering
rustle of the foliage, brought no other sound with it. All was still and
silent, and Tony, as he stood, felt as a man will sometimes feel when he
stands on a silent night in the great immensity of the Australian
bush--as though he were something which had no material existence save
the consciousness of the moment, and even that were an intrusion on the
sublime calm of untrammelled, sleeping nature.
Then, as with the fury of a thunder-peal, there crashed in upon his
half-numbed mind the significance of all that he had just seen and
heard. The hate the man had shown him; the story of that ghastly
revenge; the message he had scoffingly told him to take to his
mother,--all returned to him in a moment, blended, as it were, with the
hints Nuggan had thrown out, and the suspicion that had often been in
his own mind.
The man had spoken of Ailleen; he had claimed the robbery from Leary's
hut; he had boasted how he had stolen the child from its mother and left
it at Taylor's Flat--and Nuggan had told him to ask next time he was at
the Flat who Mrs. Garry was and what she could tell. Nuggan, too, had
taunted him with the change in Ailleen's manner and the reason for
it--the reason this man had named--the mystery surrounding his birth.
His eyes turned again upon the silent form on the stretcher, with the
horribly distorted features and the face moulded in an expression of
merciless hate and cruelty.
Mechanically he approached and pulled the end of the blanket over the
staring face. With a shudder he turned away, and walked back to his seat
by the fire. He was sitting there when, an hour later, Peters and Morton
rode up with a led horse, walking lame, between them.
"Our man was thrown and dodged us in the bush," Peters said as he came
up. "But we collared the horse and the gold. Murray and his mate are
after the other. Hullo!" he broke off, as he glanced over at the figure
under the blanket. "Has he gone?"
Tony nodded.
"Well, I hope the others have too--the mean sneak thieves!" Peters
exclaimed.
"We'd have lynched them if we'd caught them," Morton added.