CHAPTER XI
Three nights after the day of “The Murder at Connor’s Leap,” as the papers called it, Aleck Gault was sitting drowsing over a fire high up on the hills, his dog sleeping near him. He was roused by the growl of the dog, but although he sat up and strained his ears for a sound, he could hear nothing, till the dog sat up with ears pricked and suddenly rushed off into the darkness barking loudly. Aleck rose and followed him and called out “Anybody there?” He heard the barking of the dog suddenly hushed, and then no further sound.
“Is that you, Steve?” he called. “This is Aleck, and there’s nobody else here.”
“Right,” a voice answered immediately, “I’m coming,” and presently Steve Knight moved slowly into the light of the fire.
Aleck Gault looked at him in an amazement that gave way to pity. “Lord, Stevie boy,” he said, “you look bad. What’s wrong? I thought you’d be miles away.”
Steve dropped by the fire. “I suppose it’s safe here?” he said. “I’ve been creeping up to the light to try and see who it was for an hour past. The dog spotted me before I could make you out.”
“There’s not likely to be anyone within miles,” said Aleck. “The dog would scent them in time. I guessed it was you when he went off barking glad-like that way. He wouldn’t to any but a Ridge man, and no Ridge man but yourself would be trying to come up quiet. But what’s the matter?”
Steve unbuttoned his jacket and held it open, and Aleck leaned forward with an exclamation of horror. Steve’s breast was bare, save for a bloody bandage made from his torn shirt and wound tightly round his body, and even as he looked Aleck could see the red of fresh blood oozing from beneath the rags.
“My horse came down before I’d gone a mile,” said Steve. “He pitched me clear, and I fell on my chest and side on some sharp-edged rocks. They’re flesh wounds only, I think, though maybe one of the ribs is cracked – it hurts enough for it. But old Vulcan broke a leg, and I had to finish him. Poor brute, I had to make him hobble on three legs over to a gully, where I could drop him to be out of sight, and that hurt worse than my side.”
“Let’s have a look at it,” said Aleck Gault, throwing off his own jacket and starting to pull his shirt off. “We’ll make you some more bandages and fix you up better. And to-morrow I’ll bring up anything I can to dress it, and proper bandages.”
“Is there anything fresh, Aleck,” said Steve, “from the township?”
“Not much,” said Aleck. “His wife has been ill ever since. She is lying at the police station, and Mrs. Dan is looking after her. She only spoke a word or two over and over in the first day – something about ’he’s dead’; and she’s been lying doing nothing but breathe and swallow the food they’ve given her since. The doctor examined him and the police, and they say he had been struck over the head from behind, and had fallen or been thrown, and broken his neck. They had black trackers on to see if there were signs of a scuffle, but too many people have been moving back and fore for any readable sign to lie.”
“Struck from behind,” repeated Steve, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Aleck Gault. “I was glad to hear that.”
“Glad?” said Steve, and looked at him sharply.
“Yes,” said Aleck, simply. “I knew then it wasn’t you. But the police don’t look at it that way, Steve. The doctor says the blow was struck by something blunt and light – like a stick, or the handle of a stockwhip.”
“I didn’t have a whip,” said Steve.
“Take that jacket off so I can get at you,” said Aleck. “So – steady now, till I get these rags off. No, we all swore you had no whip when the police asked us, but of course they knew we wouldn’t say anything to give you away. Man alive, that’s a shocking mess,” as he took the bandage off.
“I’d nothing to dress it with, and I’d no water to wash it properly at first,” said Steve. “It’s inflamed a little by the throb. Have you spoken to Ess – Miss Ess, of this affair? And how is she?”
“All right,” said Aleck. “Though she’s been upset, naturally enough, over the whole business. I say, you’ll need to be careful of these wounds. You don’t want to be stuck in these hills longer than you can help.”
“I’ve stuck too long as it is,” said Steve. “I’d hoped to get clear away before the police could get a right watch set, but by now they’ll be looking for me at every railway siding, and my description in all the papers and police-stations I suppose. Well, they won’t fetch me in alive, I’ll promise you that.”
“Rot,” said Aleck, sharply. “We’ll get you out, or we’ll keep you here in the hills for six months, till the thing blows over. You’re bushman and hillman enough to dodge them for years in this patch of hills, and we can help you to some of the other ranges if necessary, though you’re better sticking here where you know the country.”
“If this wound thing doesn’t mess me up, I’ll make out maybe,” said Steve; “I’m all right for food now the sheep are in the hills here.”
“You’ll have to be careful about that,” warned Gault. “There are some extra police drafted over, and a tracker or two – we don’t know just how many men altogether. They’ll watch the hills where the sheep are, so be careful in daylight. Perhaps you’d better leave the sheep alone. There’s always the skin and so on, and these black fellows have the noses of hounds for blood. I’ll manage to bring rations up to you to keep you going. We’re all out shepherding now, and trying to keep the sheep from scattering too much, and from the dingoes getting too many.”
“They’re looking pretty poor,” commented Steve.
“Poor?” said Aleck. “They’re all that, and the feed even up here is nearly petered out. The cattle have been hard enough put to it and have scoffed all they can reach, and now the sheep are cleaning up the remains.”
“Poor old boss,” said Steve.
“It’s rough luck on him all right,” agreed Aleck. “We are losing them in bunches too, for all we can do. The dingoes are playing havoc, and I suppose the ones that stray will all fall to them. Poor Dolly Grey lost his way in some of the gullies when he was rounding them up for the night last night, and one brute killed forty-seven at a sweep.”
“I don’t think, Aleck, you’d better say anything to Miss Ess about seeing me here. You’d have to explain that I was hurt, and that would only worry her.”
“All right,” said Aleck. “I think it’s wiser so, maybe. Now is there anywhere near here you can hide up during the day? And be careful coming to the fire, in case anyone is with me, or I’m shifted and someone else put here. Of course you’re safe enough with any of the Ridge men, or I suppose the Coolongolong men – don’t you think so? Or is there anyone particular you think doubtful?”
“Just one man,” said Steve, “though I may be unjust to him even to think anything of the sort. But we had a falling out once, and he was pretty bitter over it.”
“That’s Ned Gunliffe,” said Aleck. “He’s the man I had in mind. But I’ll say no word to anyone, and then we’re safe. Tell you what – if I’m alone here and it’s a safe thing for you to come along, I’ll keep two little fires going – one of just a few sticks. If there’s only one fire – keep off.”
“Good enough,” said Steve.
They sat talking together till the first chill of dawn – the chill that comes even before there is a hint of light – warned them it was time for Steve to go, and Aleck walked down the hillside with him, and left him, and saw his figure vanish silently as a ghost into the darkness.
On two more nights Steve saw the double fire burning, and came up, and sat and talked with Aleck Gault, and spent some hours and had his wounds dressed, and took away replenished stores of food with him.
But on the third night there was only one fire, and he crept hurriedly but cautiously back to his hiding place, and when on the third and fourth nights the single fire still warned him off, he knew he was running heavy risks to remain near, and painfully shifted his little camp some miles away. He was growing thin and gaunt, his wounds were swollen and inflamed and stabbed him with burning shooting pains, and his store of food was running low.
Twice he saw a policeman and a tracker in the hills, and he knew they were casting back and forth in the hopes of cutting his tracks and guessing how he had headed. He was too good a tracker himself not to have taken care to walk lightly, to keep to bare stone and rock wherever possible, and to cover his tracks as well as he could, and he had no fear but that he could keep out of reach provided his wounds got no worse, and he could get food without leaving traces.
He sighted a small mob of strayed sheep and herded them into a gully, and killed a score of them, ripping the skins and tearing the flesh down to the livers and kidneys, which he wrenched out. He had seen the dingo marks on dead sheep often enough to be able to imitate the rending signs of their savage destruction, and when he had finished, he drove the rest of the sheep back and forth till all possible signs of his own tracks were trampled out. He was satisfied that if the carcases lay there without being found for a day or two, even a black fellow would hardly tell that they were not the work of a wild dog.
He saw several fires on these nights, but he was afraid to venture near, not knowing whose they were, and remembering how Aleck Gault’s dog had scented him and given the alarm.
He began to lose taste even for the little food he had left. He commenced to think how nice it would be if he could go back to the Ridge, and how his mates would look after him, and bring him plenty of drinks and dress his wounds. And perhaps Ess’s cool fingers … and her kisses… He wouldn’t stand this any longer. Why should he? He would go back to the Ridge, and to her at once.
He was actually walking openly over the hills when he realised what he was doing, and with a shock decided that he was growing light-headed. He went back to his hiding and washed and dressed his wounds as well as he could, and made himself tea, and forced himself to bake a flour-and-water damper in the ashes, and to eat it.
He set himself to watch his own movements, and even his thoughts, and to set every nerve of his brain to keeping himself sane and under his own control.
But that night he decided to go back to the Ridge and leave a message for Gault. He couldn’t be quite sure whether or not this was rankly foolish, and a plan born of his pain and illness, and he tried to reason the thing out and to see it in every possible aspect. He tested his own brain and sanity by every means he could think of. He worked out little sums, scrawling the figures on the sand with a twig; he went over in detail incidents that had happened weeks before; he put dates to various periods in his life, and recalled the names of people and places he had met. One thing he would not allow himself – and that was to think of Ess. He felt that if he did his reason would not stand against the temptation to go straight back and risk everything for the sake of seeing her.
And he decided again to go down quietly, and at night, and try to get a message to Aleck Gault. He realised the risk. There might be a policeman there, the dogs might rouse everyone, the black fellows might pick up his tracks in the morning. It was all risk, but stopping there was more than risk; it was certain death, or, worse, a losing of his senses and a wandering on the hills or down to the Ridge, and being captured and taken in alive.
So that night, when Ess waked at the faint rustle of the blind drawn down on her open window, she thought it no more than the puff of a wandering breeze. And she lay awake for a time thinking of Steve, and wondering if he was lying out somewhere in the open under the starlight with the breeze fanning his cheek; or was he safe down in one of the cities; or perhaps somewhere out at sea making for another place round the coast, or over to New Zealand. And as she lay there, there was nothing to tell her that Steve at that instant was within whisper-reach, that he was standing listening for the faint sound of her breathing, that the rustle of her bedclothes as she moved set the blood racing in his veins and pounding in his ears.
And when she woke again in the morning and went to pull her blind up, she stared in amazement at the dirty smoke-blackened billy that stood on her window ledge just inside the blind. She picked it up wonderingly. She looked inside it, but it was empty. She took it out to her uncle at last, and told him where and how she had found it.
Scottie took it quickly and, without an instant’s hesitation, turned it over and handed it back to her, pointing out the scratches under the bottom.
“It’s an old bush trick for sending a message when a man hasna pencil or paper,” he said. “It’s like tae be a message for you.”
Plainly enough now Ess could read the printed letters scratched on the burnt and blackened surface with the point of a knife. She read, and then handed it to Scottie without speaking.
“Tell Aleck meet Fri. where we killed dingo pups,” she read. There was no signature, but neither Ess nor Scottie had need of a guess to tell who it was from.
“What does it mean, uncle?” whispered Ess. “I thought he – he was far away by this time, and safe. And he must have been here last night – outside my window – and I might have spoken with him. Oh, uncle…”
“Whist, lass, wheest,” said Scottie. “If ye had known he was there, wad a minute hae satisfied you – or him? And every minute he stood there, when he should ha’ been hastenin’ tae his hidey-hole again, wad have been paid for maybe wi’ his life or lang years in a jail. Be glad he didna wake ye.”
“Yes, you are right,” she said soberly, “and I’m glad.”
“It’s Aleck Gault he means,” said Scottie. “I mind Steve an’ him got a litter o’ dingo pups up in the hills somewhere a year ago, an’ Aleck will ken just where. I’ll gie the message tae him. He’ll be down this mornin’, an’ I’ll send him off on some job tae gie him a chance tae meet the lad. An’ now…” He took a knife and carefully scraped the last trace of the message from the bottom of the billy.
So that afternoon Aleck Gault met Steve again, and felt a chill of apprehension and pity run through him as he stared at Steve’s sunken cheeks, tight lips, and hollow eyes.
“I’ve been breaking my heart to get a word to you or with you, Steve,” he said, “but I couldn’t risk letting you come to the fire. I had my suspicions that I was being watched, and some of those cursed trackers found the dead horse, so they know you are somewhere about and afoot, and will be likely to need food. We should have arranged some place to leave messages if we couldn’t meet. But now let’s have a look at those wounds. How are they getting along?”
Aleck Gault noted the glitter in the bright eyes and the shaking of the thin hands, and he spoke soothingly as he knew how, and made Steve strip, and dressed his wounds and rebound them afresh. He was alarmed and sore afraid when he saw the state they were in, the angry inflamed flesh and the raw unhealed cuts.
“You’ll have to be mighty careful of this, Steve,” he said gravely. “You’ll have to lie up and move as little as you can. I’ll take you along to some place to-night and leave you. I’ve brought a good stock of tucker with me to-day, and I’ll bring more, or get it to you again day by day. But I’ll have to be careful, for now they know you’re in the hills here they’re like to set a keen watch on me. I’m half afraid I was followed to-day, but if I was, it was by as cunning a man as I am, and I couldn’t spot him. We’ll wait now till dark and move you, and I’ll cover the tracks behind us.”
“All right,” said Steve, dully. “I’ll be right enough if I don’t go light-headed, Aleck. That’s what’s scaring me. I sit by the hour sometimes just doing nothing but trying to keep a grip o’ my senses. It’s wearing work, Aleck. Is there any fresh word from the township?”
“Nothing,” said Aleck. “The woman is still lying dazed and not speaking a word. They say she’s not likely to get over it, and may die when her kiddie comes. They think, too, she must have seen her man killed, for Dan says the breath was hardly out of his body when she came shrieking to him.”
“If she saw it done and could speak, it would clear me,” said Steve, slowly. “Have you any suspicion who it could have been?”
“Not a hint,” said Aleck. “And I’ve talked with Dan Mulcahy, and he can’t find a grain to go on against anyone. He’s your friend, Steve, and would give a hand to find anyone else to fasten it on, but he admits that there wasn’t a man in the township known to have an atom of a grudge or quarrel with Durgan. He was a harmless, inoffensive sort of chap. You know, Steve, although Dan hates to admit it even to me, he thinks you did it – did it in drink, maybe, and forgotten it yourself. I laughed at him.”
“Ah well,” said Steve, wearily, “I don’t want to bother thinking about it. What did Ess say when she knew I’d been down to the Ridge and was in hiding here?”
Aleck Gault told him, and re-told him, and spoke of every scrap of Ess and her doings he could think of. It seemed to be the only thing Steve took any interest in, and even discussions or suggestions for his getting out of the hills did not stir his apathy.
Aleck took a very troubled mind with him when he left that night, and it was a rather short-tempered answer he gave to Ned Gunliffe when he rode into the Ridge, and Ned looked at his sweating horse and drawled “Been ridin’ hard, Aleck? Haven’t run across the runaway by any chance, have you?”
A thought struck Aleck as he was turning his horse loose in the horse paddock. He caught his own horse by the mane again before it moved away, swung himself on to its bare back, and cantered over to the feeding mob of horses. The saddle marks were still plain on Ned Gunliffe’s horse, and by the black sweat marks it had evidently been ridden just as hard as his own that afternoon.
Aleck went straight to Scottie.
“Was Ned Gunliffe out this afternoon?” he asked. “I’m asking for a reason, Scottie.”
“He was out,” said Scottie, “went just after you did. Said he was ridin’ over to The Trickle for his pipe that he’d left there. He’s no long back, an’ I heard that he said he’d sat down for a rest when he got there and had fallen asleep.”
“The Trickle is half-an-hour’s easy ride,” said Aleck, thoughtfully, “and it’s a long and a hard half hour his horse did this afternoon.”
He thought it over for a minute, Scottie watching him and waiting in silence.
“Perhaps I’d better say nothing more to you about it, Scottie,” he said at last. “Whether he gets away or not, it would make trouble if it was known that you were helping to harbour him or to get away. For the same reason I’ll tell Miss Ess as little as I can, although of course she knows I was going to see him, and will want to know about him. But I’ll just tell you and her this – Steve’s all right, and will be looked after and given the first and the best chance to get clear away. I’m going to run his horse out on the hills somewhere, so he can get it when it’s sure the horse hasn’t been found or followed. Now I’ll go and see Miss Ess. And if you can keep Ned Gunliffe busy, so much the better. You know he and Steve had a row once, and Ned is the sort to carry a grudge long and well.”
He was not allowed to get off so easily when he saw Ess. She wanted to know where Steve was, and why he had not made an attempt to get away before, and whether he had sent any message to her, and half-a-dozen other things.
“He just said to assure you he was all right,” said Aleck. “And look here, Miss Ess, we decided it was best that you and your uncle should not know anything about where he was or that sort of thing. I fancy neither of you would make really good liars you know, and if the police try to pump you, you might let something slip, or at least let them see you knew. And that would be a pity.”
“But when will you see him again, Aleck?” she asked. “Could – do you think I might write a letter for you to take to him?”
Aleck looked at her keenly, and she blushed a little. She would have liked to have told Aleck something of what was between her and Steve, but evidently Steve himself had said nothing, so it would be wiser for her not to.
“I won’t be seeing him again for a bit,” said Aleck; “but he’s all right. He couldn’t get away without a horse, but that’ll all be fixed up for him.”
“But how is he doing about food?” persisted Ess.
“Don’t you worry about that or anything else,” said Aleck, evasively. “He’s all right every way.”
And so Ess had to content herself with that. Her thoughts were busy enough about Steve afterwards, but she was soon to have something else to think over, and make her puzzle whether she ought to speak of the love between her and Steve Knight.