this! You that have brought all this upon us, you that allowed us to
be preyed upon by a villain--screened him, helped him in his deceit,
plotted with him! Being what he was, it was in his nature to cheat us.
I forgive him, and pity him. But you I shall never forgive! Go, Mr.
Miles. Whatever and whoever you are, go as you are asked. And go you
too--true friend--brave gentleman! Go, both of you. Let us never see
you again. Yet no! Stay--stay, all of you" (her face was changing, her
words were growing faint)--"and hear what it was--he said--to me--and
my answer, which is my answer still! Stay--one moment--and hear----"
Her words ceased altogether. Without a cry or a moan she sank senseless
in her father's arms.
Philip Robson rushed forward. They stretched her on the cold stone. They
tore open the collar round her neck, breaking the pretty brooch. They
put brandy to her lips, and salts to her nostrils, and water upon her
brow. Minutes passed, and there was no sign, no glimmer of returning
life.
When Alice fell, Miles took one step forward, but no more. He stood
there, leaning forward, unable to remove his eyes from the white
lifeless face, scarcely daring to breathe.
There was no noise, no single word! The doctor (to his credit be it
remembered) was trying all that he knew, quickly and quietly. The
Colonel said not a word, but silently obeyed his nephew, and chafed the
chill hands. Edmonstone fanned her face gently. Pinckney had disappeared
from the group.
Robson suddenly looked up and broke the silence.
"Where is the nearest doctor?"
"Melmerbridge," murmured someone.
"He should be fetched at once. We want experience here. This is no
ordinary faint."
Before the doctor had finished speaking, Miles wheeled round and darted
to the gate. And there he found himself confronted by a short, slight,
resolute opponent.
"You sha'n't escape," said Pinckney through his teeth, "just because the
others can't watch you! You villain!"
Pinckney had heard only the end of what had passed on the steps, but
that was enough to assure him that Miles had been unmasked as a
criminal. Of course he would take the opportunity of all being
preoccupied to escape, and did; and David faced Goliath in the gateway.
In lesser circumstances Miles would have laughed, and perhaps tossed
his little enemy into the ditch. But now he whipped out his
revolver--quicker than thought--and presented it with such swift,
practised precision that you would have thought there had been no hiatus
in his career as bushranger. And he looked the part at that instant!
Pinckney quailed, and gave way.
The next moment, Miles was rushing headlong up the hill.
On the crest of the second hill, above the beck and the bridge, he
stopped to look round. The people on the steps were moving. Their number
had increased. He could distinguish a servant-maid holding her apron to
her eyes. They were moving slowly; they were carrying something into the
house--something in a white covering that hung heavily as a cerement in
the heavy air.
XXVII
THE FATAL TRESS
Was she dead?
The question was thundered out in the sound of the runner's own steps on
the flinty places, and echoed by the stones that rolled away from under
his feet. The thought throbbed in his brain, the unspoken words sang in
his ears: Was she dead?
The face of Alice was before Ryan as he ran: the pale, delicate face of
this last week, not the face of old days. The early days of summer were
old days, though it was summer still. June by the Thames was buried
deeper in the past than last year in Australia, though it was but August
now. What had come over the girl in these few weeks? What had changed
and saddened her? What made her droop like a trampled flower? What was
the matter--was it the heart?
The heart! Suppose it was the heart. Suppose the worst. Suppose this
shock had killed her. Suppose he--the criminal, the outlaw, the wretch
unfit to look upon good women--had murdered this sweet, cruel, wayward,
winsome girl! Even so, he must still push on and bring her aid. If that
aid came too late, then let his own black life come to a swift and
miserable end. His life for hers; the scales of justice demanded it.
The afternoon was dull but not dusky. The clouds were so high and
motionless that it seemed as if there were no clouds, but one wide vault
of tarnished silver. To point to that part of this canopy that hid the
sun would have been guesswork.
Between the tall hedges the air was heavier than in the morning; the
flies and midges swarmed in myriads. Even on the moor there was now no
breath of wind. The heather looked lifeless, colourless; the green
fronds peeping between had lost their sparkle; the red-brown of the
undulating belt of road was the brightest tint in the landscape up
there.
When Ryan was half-way across the moor, rain began to fall. He threw
back his head as he ran, and the raindrops cooled his heated face. His
hat had long ago been jerked off, and his hair lay plastered by
perspiration to the scalp. The man's whole frame was on fire from his
exertions. The breath came hard through his clenched teeth. His blue
eyes were filled with a wild despair. Since the last backward look, that
showed him the solemn group on the steps, he had thundered on without an
instant's pause; and the time lost in toiling up the banks was made up
by dashing headlong down the other side.
Now he was climbing the steep ascent that culminated at the spot where
the road was curved round the face of the cliff, and protected on the
right by the low stone parapet. Once at the top, he would soon be in
Melmerbridge, for the remainder of the road was down-hill.
The wall of cliff on the left was jagged and perpendicular, and of the
same russet tint as the road. Detached fragments of the rock rested in
the angle formed by its base and the rough-hewn road. Among these
boulders was an object that attracted Ryan's curiosity as he climbed up
from below: it was so like a boulder in rigidity and colour, and in
outline so like a man. Ryan saw the outline alter: of course it was a
man, and he was crouching with his back to the rock for shelter from the
rain. Suddenly the man rose, and staggered into the middle of the pass,
between rocky wall and stone parapet, while Ryan was still some yards
below. It was Pound.
Ryan had seen him in the street at Melmerbridge, in coming from church.
Pound had reeled out of a public-house and caught him by the arm. Ryan
had shaken him off with a whispered promise to meet him in the evening
as arranged; and had explained the occurrence to his companion by some
ready lie.
So Pound was on his way back to Gateby, drunk. This was evident from his
attitude as he stood barring the pass, and from the hoarse peal of
laughter that echoed round the cliff, and from the tones of blusterous
banter with which he greeted his quondam leader.
"Welcome! Glad to see ye! But who'd ha' thought you'd be better than
your word? Better, I say--you're better than your blessed word!"
"Stand clear!" shouted Ryan, twenty paces below.
Pound leered down upon him like a satyr. His massive arms were tightly
folded across his bulky chest. His smooth face became horrible as he
stood looking down and leering. His answer to Ryan was hissed savagely
through his teeth:
"Stand clear be----! I want my money. I'll have my whack o' the swag,
and have it now! D'ye hear? Now!"
"I have nothing about me," Ryan answered. "You drunken fool, stand
clear!"
The twenty paces between them were reduced to ten.
"Nothing about you!" jeered Pound, spitting upon the ground. "Ay, I
know--you carry your nothing round your neck, old man! And I'll have my
share of it now or never!"
They were almost at arm's length now.
"Never, then!" cried Ryan, half drawing his revolver.
In a flash Pound's arm unfolded, and his right arm shot out straight
from the shoulder. There followed a streak of fire and a loud report.
Thin clouds of white smoke hung in the motionless air. From their midst
came a deep groan and the thud of a dead weight falling. And Pound was
left standing alone, a smoking pistol in his hand. For a minute he stood
as still as Ryan lay.
"A shake longer," he muttered at length, "and I'd have been there and
you here. As it is--as it is, I think you're cooked at last, skipper!"
He put the revolver back in his pocket, and stood contemplating his
work. The sight completely sobered him. To a certain degree it
frightened him as well. Of the other sensations, such as might ensue
upon a first murder, Jem Pound experienced simply none. Even his fear
was not acute, for it was promptly swallowed by cupidity.
"Now for them notes!"
He knelt down beside his victim, eyeing him cautiously. The fallen man
lay stretched across the road, on his back. He had torn open his coat
and waistcoat while running, and the white shirt was darkened with a
stain that increased in area every instant. Pound wondered whether he
had hit the heart. The upturned face, with closed eyelids and mouth
slightly open, was slimy and wet with perspiration and the soft August
rain. By holding the back of his hand half-an-inch above the mouth,
Pound satisfied himself that Ryan was still breathing--"his last,"
thought Jem Pound, without any extravagant regret. Blood was flowing
from a scalp-wound at the back of the head, received in falling; but
this escaped the murderer's notice. What he next observed was that the
arms lay straight down the sides, and that the right hand grasped a
revolver. At sight of this, Jem Pound leapt to his feet with an excited
exclamation.
He drew forth again his own revolver, to assure himself that he was not
mistaken. No, he was not. The pistols were an original brace, and alike
in every particular. The smooth, heavy face of the murderer lit up with
infernal exultation. He pointed with a finger that trembled now--from
sheer excitement--to the pistol in the lifeless hand, then tapped the
barrel of his own significantly.
"Suicide!" he whispered. "Suicide--suicide--suicide!" He reiterated the
word until he thought that he appreciated its full import. Then he knelt
down and leant over the prostrate Ryan, with the confident air of a
lucky man on the point of crowning a very pyramid of good fortune.
Slowly and daintily he unfastened the studs in Ryan's shirt; he was
playing with blood now, and must avoid unnecessary stains. He would just
take what he wanted--take it cleverly, without leaving a trace
behind--and satisfy himself that it was what he wanted, more or less.
Then he would fire one chamber of Ryan's revolver, and make off. But
first--those notes! The chest was already bathed in blood; but Pound saw
at once the object of his search, the cause of his deed, and his black
heart leapt within him.
Well, the little oiled-silk bag was small--unexpectedly
small--incredibly small; but then there were bank notes for enormous
sums; and one bank-note, or two, or three, would fold quite as small as
this, and press as thin. To Pound's ignorant mind it seemed quite
natural for Sundown, the incomparably clever Sundown, to have exchanged
his ill-gotten gold for good, portable paper-money at some or other time
and place. Dexterously, with the keen broad blade of his knife, he cut
the suspending tapes and picked up the bag on its point. The oiled-silk
bag was blood-stained; he wiped it gingerly on the flap of Ryan's coat,
and then wiped the blood from his own fingers. He knew better than to
allow bank-notes to become stained with blood.
Yet how light it was in his palm! It would not be lighter if the
oiled-silk contained nothing at all. By its shape, however, it did
contain something. Pound rose to his feet to see what. His confidence
was ebbing. His knees shook under him with misgiving. He moved
unsteadily to the low stone parapet, sat down, and ripped open the
little bag with such clumsy haste that he cut his finger.
Jem Pound sat like a man turned to stone. The little bag was still in
his left hand, and the knife; his right hand was empty the contents of
the bag, a lock of light hair, had fallen from his right palm to the
ground, where it lay all together, for there was no wind to scatter it.
Jem Pound's expression was one of blank, unspeakable, illimitable
disappointment; suddenly he looked up, and it turned to a grimace of
speechless terror.
The barrel of the other revolver covered him.
Bleeding terribly from the bullet in his lungs, but stunned by the fall
on his head, Ned Ryan had recovered consciousness in time to see Pound
rip open the oiled-silk bag, in time to smile faintly at what
followed--and to square accounts.
Ryan did not speak. The faint smile had faded from his face. In the
relentless glare that took its place the doomed wretch, sitting in a
heap on the low parapet, read his death-warrant.
There was a pause, a hush, of very few moments. Pound tried to use his
tongue, but, like his lips, it was paralysed. Then the echoes of the
cliff resounded with a second, short, sharp pistol shot, and when the
white smoke cleared away the parapet was bare; Jem Pound had vanished;
the account was squared.
Ryan fell back. The pistol dropped from his hand. Again he became
well-nigh senseless, but this time consciousness refused to forsake him
utterly; he rallied. Presently he fell to piecing together, in jerky,
delirious fashion, the events of the last few minutes--or hours, he did
not know which--but it was all the same to him now. The circumstances
came back to him vividly enough, if out of their proper sequence. That
which had happened at the moment his senses fled from him was clearest
and uppermost in his mind at first.
"The cur!" he feebly moaned. "He gave me no show. He has killed me--I am
bleeding to death and not a soul to stop it or stand by me!"
Yet, very lately, he had decided that his life was valueless, and even
thought of ending it by his own hand. Some dim reflection of this recent
attitude of mind perhaps influenced him still, for, if an incoherent
mind can be said to reason, his first reasoning was somewhat in this
strain:
"Why should I mind? Who am I any good to, I should like to know? What
right have I to live any more? None! I'm ready. I've faced it night and
day these four years, and not for nothing--not to flinch now it's
here!... And hasn't my life been gay enough, and wild enough, and long
enough?... I said I'd die in the bush, and so I will--here, on these
blessed old ranges. But stop! I didn't mean to be shot by a mate--I
didn't mean that. A mate? A traitor! What shall we do with him?"
His mind had annihilated space: it had flown back to the bush.
A curious smile flickered over Ryan's face in answer to his own
question.
"What have I done with him?" he muttered.
He raised himself on his elbows and looked towards the spot where he had
seen Pound last. The formation of the parapet seemed to puzzle him. It
was unlike the ranges.
"He was always the worst of us, that Jem Pound," he went rambling on;
"the worst of a bad lot, I know. But those murders were his doing. So at
last we chucked him overboard. And now he's come back and murdered me.
As to that, I reckon we're about quits, with the bulge on my side. Never
mind, Jem Pound"--with a sudden spice of grim humour--"we'll meet again
directly. Your revenge'll keep till then, old son!"
All this time Ryan's brain was in a state of twilight. He now lay still
and quiet, and began to forget again. But he could not keep his eyes
long from the spot whence Pound had disappeared, and presently, after a
fruitless effort to stand upright, he crawled to the parapet, slowly
lifted himself, and hung over it, gazing down below.
Nothing to be seen; nothing but the tops of the fir-trees. Nothing to be
heard; for the fir-trees were asleep in the still, heavy atmosphere, and
the summer rain made no noise. He raised his head until his eyes fell
upon the broad flat table-land. The air was not clear, as it had been in
the morning. That pall of black smoke covering the distant town was
invisible, for the horizon was far nearer, misty and indeterminate; and
his eyes were dim as they never had been before. The line of white smoke
left by an engine that crept lazily across the quiet country was what he
saw clearest; the tinkling of a bell--for Sunday-school, most
likely--down in one of the hamlets that he could not see, was the only
sound that reached his ears.
Yet he was struggling to recognise as much as he could see, vaguely
feeling that it was not altogether new to him. It was the struggle of
complete consciousness returning.
He was exhausted again; he fell back into the road. Then it was that he
noticed the parapet streaming with blood at the spot where he had hung
over it. To think that the coward Pound should have bled so freely in so
short a time! And how strange that he, Ned Ryan, should not have
observed that blood before he had drenched himself in it! No! Stop! It
was his own blood! He was shot; he was dying; he was bleeding to his
death--alone--away from the world!
A low moan--a kind of sob--escaped him. He lay still for some minutes.
Then, with another effort, he raised himself on his elbow and looked
about him. The first thing that he saw--close to him, within his
reach--was that fatal tress of light-coloured hair!
In a flash his mind was illumined to the innermost recesses, and clear
from that moment.
Now he remembered everything: how he had come to his senses at the very
moment that Pound was handling this cherished tress, which alone was
sufficient reason and justification for shooting Jem Pound on the spot;
how he had been on his way to fetch help--help for Alice Bristo!
He pressed the slender tress passionately to his lips, then twined it
tightly in and out his fingers.
Faint and bleeding as he was, he started to his feet. New power was
given him; new life entered the failing spirit: new blood filled the
emptying vessels. For a whole minute Ned Ryan was a Titan. During that
minute the road reeled out like a red-brown ribbon under his stride. The
end of that minute saw him at the top of Melmerbridge Bank. There, with
the village lying at his feet, and the goal all but won, he staggered,
stumbled, and fell headlong to the ground.
XXVIII
THE EFFORT
Galloping over the moor, fresh from his corn, the pony suddenly swerved,
and with such violence that the trap was all but overturned.
"What was that?" asked Edmonstone, who was driving.
"A hat," Pinckney answered.
These two men were alone together, on an errand of life or death.
Edmonstone glanced back over his shoulder.
"I'll swear," said he, "that hat is Miles's!"
"Good heavens! has he stuck to the road?"
"Looks like it."
"Then we're on his track?"
"Very likely."
"And will get him, eh?"
At this question Edmonstone brought down the lash heavily on the pony's
flank.
"Who wants to get him? Who cares what becomes of him? The Melmerbridge
doctor's the man we want to get!"
Pinckney relapsed into silence. It became plain to him that his
companion was painfully excited. Otherwise there was no excuse for his
irritability.
At the foot of the last steep ascent on the farther side of the moor,
Pinckney had jumped out to walk. He was walking a few yards ahead of the
pony. Suddenly he stopped, uttered a shrill exclamation, and picked up
something he found lying in the road. He was then but a few feet from
the top, and the low stone parapet was already on his right hand.
"What is it?" cried Dick, from the pony-trap below.
Pinckney threw his hand high over his head. The revolver was stamped
black and sharp against the cold grey sky.
A cold shudder passed through Edmonstone's strong frame. The wings of
death beat in his ears and fanned his cheek with icy breath. The dread
angel was hovering hard by. Dick felt his presence, and turned cold and
sick to the heart.
"Let me see it," cried Dick, urging on the pony.
Pinckney ran down to meet him with a pale, scared face.
"It was his," faltered Pinckney. "I ought to know it. He threatened me
with it when I tried to stop him bolting."
The slightest examination was enough to bespeak the worst.
"One cartridge has been fired," said Dick, in a hushed voice. "God knows
what we shall find next!"
What they found next was a patch of clotting blood upon the stones of
the parapet.
They exchanged no more words, but Dick got down and ran on ahead, and
Pinckney took the reins.
Dick's searching eyes descried nothing to check the speed of his running
till he had threaded the narrow, winding lane that led to Melmerbridge
Bank, and had come out at the top of that broad highway; and there, at
the roadside, stretched face downward on the damp ground, lay the
motionless form of Sundown, the Australian outlaw.
The fine rain was falling all the time. The tweed clothes of the
prostrate man were soaked and dark with it. Here and there they bore a
still darker, soaking stain; and a thin, thin stripe of dusky red,
already two feet in length, was flowing slowly down the bank, as though
in time to summon the people of Melmerbridge to the spot. Under the
saturated clothes there was no movement that Dick could see; but neither
was there, as yet, the rigidity of death in the long, muscular,
outstretched limbs.
Dick stole forward and knelt down, and murmured the only name that rose
to his lips:
"Miles! Miles! Miles!"
No answer--no stir. Dick lowered his lips to the ear that was uppermost,
and spoke louder:
"Miles!"
This time a low, faint groan came in answer. He still lived!
Dick gently lifted the damp head between his two hands, and laid Ryan's
cheek upon his knee.
Ryan opened his blue eyes wide.
"Where am I? Who are you? Ah!"
Consciousness returned to the wounded man, complete in a flash this
time. At once he remembered all--tearing madly down from the top, in and
out this winding track--and all that had gone before. He was perfectly
lucid. He looked up in Edmonstone's face, pain giving way before fierce
anxiety in his own, and put a burning question in one short, faint,
pregnant word:
"Well?"
Had health and strength uttered this vague interrogative, Dick would
have replied on the instant from the depths of his own anxiety by
telling the little that he knew of Alice Bristo's condition. But here
was a man struck down--dying, as it seemed. How could one think that on
the brink of the grave a man should ask for news from another's sick
bed? Edmonstone was puzzled by the little word, and showed it.
"You know what I mean?" exclaimed Ryan, with weary impatience. "Is
she--is she--dead?"
"God forbid!" said Dick. "She is ill--she is insensible still. But man,
man, what about you? What have you done?"
"What have I done?" cried Ryan, hoarsely. "I have come to bring help to
her--and--I have failed her! I can get no further!"
His voice rose to a wail of impotent anguish. His face was livid and
quivering. He fell back exhausted. Dick attempted to staunch the blood
that still trickled from the wound in the chest. But what could he do?
He was powerless. In his helplessness he gazed down the bank; not a soul
was to be seen. He could not leave Ryan. He could hear the sure-footed
steps of the pony slowly approaching from above. What was he to do? Was
this man to die in his arms without an effort to save him? He gazed
sorrowfully upon the handsome face, disfigured by blood, and pain, and
mire. All his relations with this man recrossed his mind in a swift
sweeping wave, and, strange to say, left only pity behind them. Could
nothing be done to save him?
The pony-trap was coming nearer every instant. It was Dick's one hope
and comfort, for Pinckney could leave the trap and rush down into the
village for help. He hallooed with all his might, and there was an
answering call from above.
"Make haste, make haste!" cried Dick at the top of his voice.
The shouting aroused Ryan. He opened his eyes, and suddenly started into
a sitting posture.
"Haste?" he cried, with articulation weaker yet more distinct. "Yes,
make haste to the township! To the township, do you hear? There it is!"
He pointed through the rain to the red roofs of Melmerbridge, on the
edge of the tableland below. It was then that Dick noticed the lock of
hair twisted about the fingers of Ryan's right hand.
"There it is, quite close--don't you see it? Go! go--I can't! Fly for
your life to the township, and fetch him--not to me--to her! For God's
sake, fetch him quick!"
For all the use of the word "township," his mind was not wandering in
Australia now.
"Why don't you go? You may be too late! Why do you watch me like that?
Ah, you won't go! You don't care for her as I did; you want her to die!"