IX

Well, away we went to this township. Bundah was the name of it; not that there was anything to do or see when we got there. It was the regular upcountry village, with a public-house, a store, a pound, and a blacksmith’s shop. However, a public-house is not such a bad place⁠—at any rate it’s better than nothing when a fellow’s young and red-hot for anything like a bit of fun, or even a change. Some people can work away day after day, and year after year, like a bullock in a team or a horse in a chaff-cutting machine. It’s all the better for them if they can, though I suppose they never enjoy themselves except in a cold-blooded sort of way. But there’s other men that can’t do that sort of thing, and it’s no use talking. They must have life and liberty and a free range. There’s some birds, and animals too, that either pine in a cage or kill themselves, and I suppose it’s the same way with some men. They can’t stand the cage of what’s called honest labour, which means working for someone else for twenty or thirty years, never having a day to yourself, or doing anything you like, and saving up a trifle for your old age when you can’t enjoy it. I don’t wonder youngsters break traces and gallop off like a colt out of a team.

Besides, sometimes there’s a good-looking girl even at a bush public, the daughter or the barmaid, and it’s odd, now, what a difference that makes. There’s a few glasses of grog going, a little noisy, rattling talk, a few smiles and a saucy answer or two from the girl, a look at the last newspaper, or a bit of the town news from the landlord; he’s always time to read. Hang him⁠—I mean confound him⁠—for he’s generally a sly old spider who sucks us fellows pretty dry, and then don’t care what becomes of us. Well, it don’t amount to much, but it’s life⁠—the only taste of it that chaps like us are likely to get. And people may talk as much as they like; boys, and men too, will like it, and take to it, and hanker after it, as long as the world lasts. There’s danger in it, and misery, and death often enough comes of it, but what of that? If a man wants a swim on the seashore he won’t stand all day on the beach because he may be drowned or snapped up by a shark, or knocked against a rock, or tired out and drawn under by the surf. No, if he’s a man he’ll jump in and enjoy himself all the more because the waves are high and the waters deep. So it was very good fun to us, simple as it might sound to some people. It was pleasant to be bowling along over the firm green turf, along the plain, through the forest, gully, and over the creek. Our horses were fresh, and we had a scurry or two, of course; but there wasn’t one that could hold a candle to Jim’s brown horse. He was a long-striding, smooth goer, but he got over the ground in wonderful style. He could jump, too, for Jim put him over a big log fence or two, and he sailed over them like a forester buck over the head of a fallen wattle.

Well, we’d had our lark at the Bundah Royal Hotel, and were coming home to tea at the station, all in good spirits, but sober enough, when, just as we were crossing one of the roads that came through the run⁠—over the “Pretty Plain,” as they called it⁠—we heard a horse coming along best pace. When we looked who should it be but Miss Falkland, the owner’s only daughter.

She was an only child, and the very apple of her father’s eye, you may be sure. The shearers mostly knew her by sight, because she had taken a fancy to come down with her father a couple of times to see the shed when we were all in full work.

A shed’s not exactly the best place for a young lady to come into. Shearers are rough in their language now and then. But every man liked and respected Mr. Falkland, so we all put ourselves on our best behaviour, and the two or three flash fellows who had no sense or decent feeling were warned that if they broke out at all they would get something to remember it by.

But when we saw that beautiful, delicate-looking creature stepping down the boards between the two rows of shearers, most of them stripped to their jerseys and working like steam-engines, looking curiously and pitifully at the tired men and the patient sheep, with her great, soft, dark eyes and fair white face like a lily, we began to think we’d heard of angels from heaven, but never seen one before.

Just as she came opposite Jim, who was trying to shear sheep and sheep with the “ringer” of the shed, who was next on our right, the wether he was holding kicked, and knocking the shears out of his hand, sent them point down against his wrist. One of the points went right in, and though it didn’t cut the sinews, as luck would have it, the point stuck out at the other side; out spurted the blood, and Jim was just going to let out when he looked up and saw Miss Falkland looking at him, with her beautiful eyes so full of pity and surprise that he could have had his hand chopped off, so he told me afterwards, rather than vex her for a moment. So he shut up his mouth and ground his teeth together, for it was no joke in the way of pain, and the blood began to run like a blind creek after a thunderstorm.

“Oh! poor fellow. What a dreadful cut! Look, papa!” she cried out. “Hadn’t something better be bound round it? How it bleeds! Does it pain much?”

“Not a bit, miss!” said Jim, standing up like a schoolboy going to say his lesson. “That is, it doesn’t matter if it don’t stop my shearing.”

“Tar!” sings out my next-door neighbour. “Here, boy; tar wanted for No. 36. That’ll put it all right, Jim; it’s only a scratch.”

“You mind your shearing, my man,” said Mr. Falkland quietly. “I don’t know whether Mr. M’Intyre will quite approve of that last sheep of yours. This is rather a serious wound. The best thing is to bind it up at once.”

Before anyone could say another word Miss Falkland had whipped out her soft fine cambric handkerchief and torn it in two.

“Hold up your hand,” she said. “Now, papa, lend me yours.” With the last she cleared the wound of the flowing blood, and then neatly and skilfully bound up the wrist firmly with the strips of cambric. This she further protected by her father’s handkerchief, which she helped herself to and finally stopped the blood with.

Jim kept looking at her small white hands all the time she was doing it. Neither of us had ever seen such before⁠—the dainty skin, the pink nails, the glittering rings.

“There,” she said, “I don’t think you ought to shear any more today; it might bring on inflammation. I’ll send to know how it gets on tomorrow.”

“No, miss; my grateful thanks, miss,” said Jim, opening his eyes and looking as if he’d like to drop down on his knees and pray to her. “I shall never forget your goodness, Miss Falkland, if I live till I’m a hundred.” Then Jim bent his head a bit⁠—I don’t suppose he ever made a bow in his life before⁠—and then drew himself up as straight as a soldier, and Miss Falkland made a kind of bow and smile to us all and passed out.

Jim did shear all the same that afternoon, though the tally wasn’t any great things. “I can’t go and lie down in a bunk in the men’s hut,” he said; “I must chance it,” and he did. Next day it was worse and very painful, but Jim stuck to the shears, though he used to turn white with the pain at times, and I thought he’d faint. However, it gradually got better, and, except a scar, Jim’s hand was as good as ever.

Jim sent back Mr. Falkland’s handkerchief after getting the cook to wash it and iron it out with a bit of a broken axletree; but the strips of white handkerchief⁠—one had C. F. in the corner⁠—he put away in his swag, and made some foolish excuse when I laughed at him about it.

She sent down a boy from the house next day to ask how Jim’s hand was, and the day after that, but she never came to the shed any more. So we didn’t see her again.

So it was this young lady that we saw coming tearing down the back road, as they called it, that led over the Pretty Plain. A good way behind we saw Mr. Falkland, but he had as much chance of coming up with her as a cattle dog of catching a “brush flyer.”

The stable boy, Billy Donnellan, had told us (of course, like all those sort of youngsters, he was fond of getting among the men and listening to them talk) all about Miss Falkland’s new mare.

She was a great beauty and thoroughbred. The stud groom had bought her out of a travelling mob from New England when she was dog-poor and hardly able to drag herself along. Everybody thought she was going to be the best lady’s horse in the district; but though she was as quiet as a lamb at first she had begun to show a nasty temper lately, and to get very touchy. “I don’t care about chestnuts myself,” says Master Billy, smoking a short pipe as if he was thirty; “they’ve a deal of temper, and she’s got too much white in her eye for my money. I’m afeard she’ll do some mischief afore we’ve done with her; and Miss Falkland’s that game as she won’t have nothing done to her. I’d ride the tail off her but what I’d bring her to, if I had my way.”

So this was the brute that had got away with Miss Falkland, the day we were coming back from Bundah. Some horses, and a good many men and women, are all pretty right as long as they’re well kept under and starved a bit at odd times. But give them an easy life and four feeds of corn a day, and they’re troublesome brutes, and mischievous too.

It seems this mare came of a strain that had turned out more devils and killed more grooms and breakers than any other in the country. She was a Troubadour, it seems; there never was a Troubadour yet that wouldn’t buck and bolt, and smash himself and his rider, if he got a fright, or his temper was roused. Men and women, horses and dogs, are very much alike. I know which can talk best. As to the rest, I don’t know whether there’s so much for us to be proud of.

It seems that this cranky wretch of a mare had been sideling and fidgeting when Mr. Falkland and his daughter started for their ride; but had gone pretty fairly⁠—Miss Falkland, like my sister Aileen, could ride anything in reason⁠—when suddenly a dead limb dropped off a tree close to the side of the road.

I believe she made one wild plunge, and set to; she propped and reared, but Miss Falkland sat her splendidly and got her head up. When she saw she could do nothing that way, she stretched out her head and went off as hard as she could lay legs to the ground.

She had one of those mouths that are not so bad when horses are going easy, but get quite callous when they are overeager and excited. Anyhow, it was like trying to stop a mail-coach going down Mount Victoria with the brake off.

So what we saw was the wretch of a mare coming along as if the devil was after her, and heading straight across the plain at its narrowest part; it wasn’t more than half-a-mile wide there, in fact, it was more like a flat than a plain. The people about Boree didn’t see much open country, so they made a lot out of what they had.

The mare, like some women when they get their monkey up, was clean out of her senses, and I don’t believe anything could have held her under a hide rope with a turn round a stockyard post. This was what she wanted, and if it had broken her infernal neck so much the better.

Miss Falkland was sitting straight and square, with her hands down, leaning a bit back, and doing her level best to stop the brute. Her hat was off and her hair had fallen down and hung down her back⁠—plenty of it there was, too. The mare’s neck was stretched straight out; her mouth was like a deal board, I expect, by that time.

We didn’t sit staring at her all the time, you bet. We could see the boy ever so far off. We gathered up our reins and went after her, not in a hurry, but just collecting ourselves a bit to see what would be the best way to wheel the brute and stop her.

Jim’s horse was far and away the fastest, and he let out to head the mare off from a creek that was just in front and at the end of the plain.

“By George!” said one of the men⁠—a young fellow who lived near the place⁠—“the mare’s turning off her course, and she’s heading straight for the Trooper’s Downfall, where the policeman was killed. If she goes over that, they’ll be smashed up like a matchbox, horse and rider.”

“What’s that?” I said, closing up alongside of him. We were all doing our best, and were just in the line to back up Jim, who looked as if he was overhauling the mare fast.

“Why, it’s a bluff a hundred feet deep⁠—a straight drop⁠—and rocks at the bottom. She’s making as straight as a beeline for it now, blast her!”

“And Jim don’t know it,” I said; “he’s closing up to her, but he doesn’t calculate to do it for a quarter of a mile more; he’s letting her take it out of herself.”

“He’ll never catch her in time,” said the young chap. “My God! it’s an awful thing, isn’t it? and a fine young lady like her⁠—so kind to us chaps as she was.”

“I’ll see if I can make Jim hear,” I said, for though I looked cool I was as nearly mad as I could be to think of such a girl being lost before our eyes. “No, I can’t do that, but I’ll telegraph.”

X

Now Jim and I had had many a long talk together about what we should do in case we wanted to signal to each other very pressing. We thought the time might come some day when we might be near enough to sign, but not to speak. So we hit upon one or two things a little out of the common.

The first idea was, in case of one wanting to give the other the office that he was to look out his very brightest for danger, and not to trust to what appeared to be the state of affairs, the sign was to hold up your hat or cap straight over your head. If the danger threatened on the left, to shift to that side. If it was very pressing and on the jump, as it were, quite unexpected, and as bad as bad could be, the signalman was to get up on the saddle with his knees and turn half round.

We could do this easy enough and a lot of circus tricks besides. How had we learned them? Why, in the long days we had spent in the saddle tailing the milkers and searching after lost horses for many a night.

As luck would have it Jim looked round to see how we were getting on, and up went my cap. I could see him turn his head and keep watching me when I put on the whole box and dice of the telegraph business. He “dropped,” I could see. He took up the brown horse, and made such a rush to collar the mare that showed he intended to see for himself what the danger was. The cross-grained jade! She was a well-bred wretch, and be hanged to her! Went as if she wanted to win the Derby and gave Jim all he knew to challenge her. We could see a line of timber just ahead of her, and that Jim was riding for his life.

“By⁠—! they’ll both be over it,” said the young shearer. “They can’t stop themselves at that pace, and they must be close up now.”

“He’s neck and neck,” I said. “Stick to her, Jim, old man!”

We were all close together now. Several of the men knew the place, and the word had been passed round.

No one spoke for a few seconds. We saw the two horses rush up at top speed to the very edge of the timber.

“By Jove! they’re over. No! he’s reaching for her rein. It’s no use. Now⁠—now! She’s saved! Oh, my God! they’re both right. By the Lord, well done! Hurrah! One cheer more for Jim Marston!”

It was all right. We saw Jim suddenly reach over as the horses were going stride and stride; saw him lift Miss Falkland from her saddle as if she had been a child and place her before him; saw the brown horse prop, and swing round on his haunches in a way that showed he had not been called the crack “cutting-out” horse on a big cattle run for nothing. We saw Jim jump to the ground and lift the young lady down. We saw only one horse.

Three minutes after Mr. Falkland overtook us, and we rode up together. His face was white, and his dry lips couldn’t find words at first. But he managed to say to Jim, when we got up⁠—

“You have saved my child’s life, James Marston, and if I forget the service may God in that hour forget me. You are a noble fellow. You must allow me to show my gratitude in some way.”

“You needn’t thank me so out and out as all that, Mr. Falkland,” said Jim, standing up very straight and looking at the father first, and then at Miss Falkland, who was pale and trembling, not altogether from fear, but excitement, and trying to choke back the sobs that would come out now and then. “I’d risk life and limb any day before Miss Falkland’s finger should be scratched, let alone see her killed before my eyes. I wonder if there’s anything left of the mare, poor thing; not that she don’t deserve it all, and more.”

Here we all walked forward to the deep creek bank. A yard or two farther and the brown horse and his burden must have gone over the terrible drop, as straight as a plumb-line, on to the awful rocks below. We could see where the brown had torn up the turf as he struck all four hoofs deep into it at once. Indeed, he had been newly shod, a freak of Jim’s about a bet with a travelling blacksmith. Then the other tracks, the long score on the brink⁠—over the brink⁠—where the frightened, maddened animal had made an attempt to alter her speed, all in vain, and had plunged over the bank and the hundred feet of fall.

We peered over, and saw a bright-coloured mass among the rocks below⁠—very still. Just at the time one of the ration-carriers came by with a spring cart. Mr. Falkland lifted his daughter in and took the reins, leaving his horse to be ridden home by the ration-carrier. As for us we rode back to the shearers’ hut, not quite so fast as we came, with Jim in the middle. He did not seem inclined to talk much.

“It’s lucky I turned round when I did, Dick,” he said at last, “and saw you making the ‘danger-look-out-sharp’ signal. I couldn’t think what the dickens it was. I was so cocksure of catching the mare in half-a-mile farther that I couldn’t help wondering what it was all about. Anyhow, I knew we agreed it was never to be worked for nothing, so thought the best thing I could do was to call in the mare, and see if I could find out anything then. When I got alongside, I could see that Miss Falkland’s face was that white that something must be up. It weren’t the mare she was afraid of. She was coming back to her. It took something to frighten her, I knew. So it must be something I did not know, or didn’t see.

“ ‘What is it, Miss Falkland?’ I said.

“ ‘Oh!’ she cried out, ‘don’t you know? Another fifty yards and we’ll be over the downfall where the trooper was killed. Oh, my poor father!’

“ ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said. ‘We’ll not go over if I can help it.’

“So I reached over and got hold of the reins. I pulled and jerked. She said her hands were cramped, and no wonder. Pulling double for a four-mile heat is no joke, even if a man’s in training. Fancy a woman, a young girl, having to sit still and drag at a runaway horse all the time. I couldn’t stop the brute; she was boring like a wild bull. So just as we came pretty close I lifted Miss Falkland off the saddle and yelled at old Brownie as if I had been on a cattle camp, swinging round to the near side at the same time. Round he came like one o’clock. I could see the mare make one prop to stop herself, and then go flying right through the air, till I heard a beastly ‘thud’ at the bottom.

“Miss Falkland didn’t faint, though she turned white and then red, and trembled like a leaf when I lifted her down, and looked up at me with a sweet smile, and said⁠—

“ ‘Jim, you have paid me for binding up your wrist, haven’t you? You have saved me from a horrible death, and I shall think of you as a brave and noble fellow all the days of my life.’

“What could I say?” said Jim. “I stared at her like a fool. ‘I’d have gone over the bank with you, Miss Falkland,’ I said, ‘if I could not have saved you.’

“ ‘Well, I’m afraid some of my admirers would have stopped short of that, James,’ she said. She did indeed. And then Mr. Falkland and all of you came up.”

“I say, Jim,” said one of the young fellows, “your fortune’s made. Mr. Falkland’ll stand a farm, you may be sure, for this little fakement.”

“And I say, Jack,” says old Jim, very quiet like, “I’ve told you all the yarn, and if there’s any chaff about it after this the cove will have to see whether he’s best man or me; so don’t make any mistake now.”

There was no more chaff. They weren’t afraid. There were two or three of them pretty smart with their hands, and not likely to take much from anybody. But Jim was a heavyweight and could hit like a horse kicking; so they thought it wasn’t good enough, and left him alone.

Next day Mr. Falkland came down and wanted to give Jim a cheque for a hundred; but he wouldn’t hear of so much as a note. Then he said he’d give him a billet on the run⁠—make him under overseer; after a bit buy a farm for him and stock it. No! Jim wouldn’t touch nothing or take a billet on the place. He wouldn’t leave his family, he said. And as for taking money or anything else for saving Miss Falkland’s life, it was ridiculous to think of it. There wasn’t a man of the lot in the shed, down to the tarboy, that wouldn’t have done the same, or tried to. All that was in it was that his horse was the fastest.

“It’s not a bad thing for a poor man to have a fast horse now and then, is it, Mr. Falkland?” he said, looking up and smiling, just like a boy. He was very shy, was poor Jim.

“I don’t grudge a poor man a good horse or anything else he likes to have or enjoy. You know that, all of you. It’s the fear I have of the effect of the dishonest way that horses of value are come by, and the net of roguery that often entangles fine young fellows like you and your brother; that’s what I fear,” said Mr. Falkland, looking at the pair of us so kind and pitiful like.

I looked him in the face, though I felt I could not say he was wrong. I felt, too, just then, as if I could have given all the world to be afraid of no man’s opinion.

What a thing it is to be perfectly honest and straight⁠—to be able to look the whole world in the face!

But if more gentlemen were like Mr. Falkland I do really believe no one would rob them for very shame’s sake. When shearing was over we were all paid up⁠—shearers, washers, knockabout men, cooks, and extra shepherds. Every soul about the place except Mr. M’Intyre and Mr. Falkland seemed to have got a cheque and a walking-ticket at the same time. Away they went, like a lot of boys out of school; and half of ’em didn’t show as much sense either. As for me and Jim we had no particular wish to go home before Christmas. So as there’s always contracts to be let about a big run like Banda we took a contract for some bush work, and went at it. Mr. M’Intyre looked quite surprised. But Mr. Falkland praised us up, and was proud we were going to turn over a new leaf.

Nobody could say at that time we didn’t work. Fencing, dam-making, horse-breaking, stock-riding, from making hay to building a shed, all bushwork came easy enough to us, Jim in particular; he took a pleasure in it, and was never happier than when he’d had a real tearing day’s work and was settling himself after his tea to a good steady smoke. A great smoker he’d come to be. He never was much for drinking except now and again, and then he could knock it off as easy as any man I ever seen. Poor old Jim! He was born good and intended to be so, like mother. Like her, his luck was dead out in being mixed up with a lot like ours.

One day we were out at the back making some lambing yards. We were about twenty miles from the head station and had about finished the job. We were going in the next day. We had been camping in an old shepherd’s hut and had been pretty jolly all by ourselves. There was first-rate feed for our horses, as the grass was being saved for the lambing season. Jim was in fine spirits, and as we had plenty of good rations and first-rate tobacco we made ourselves pretty comfortable.

“What a jolly thing it is to have nothing on your mind!” Jim used to say. “I hadn’t once, and what a fine time it was! Now I’m always waking up with a start and expecting to see a policeman or that infernal half-caste. He’s never far off when there’s villainy on. Some fine day he’ll sell us all, I really do believe.”

“If he don’t somebody else will; but why do you pitch upon him? You don’t like him somehow; I don’t see that he’s worse than any other. Besides, we haven’t done anything much to have a reward put on us.”

“No! that’s to come,” answered Jim, very dismally for him. “I don’t see what else is to come of it. Hist! isn’t that a horse’s step coming this way? Yes, and a man on him, too.”

It was a bright night, though only the stars were out; but the weather was that clear that you could see ever so well and hear ever so far also. Jim had a blackfellow’s hearing; his eyes were like a hawk’s; he could see in about any light, and read tracks like a printed book.

I could hear nothing at first; then I heard a slight noise a good way off, and a stick breaking every now and then.

“Talk of the devil!” growled Jim, “and here he comes. I believe that’s Master Warrigal, infernal scoundrel that he is. Of course he’s got a message from our respectable old dad or Starlight, asking us to put our heads in a noose for them again.”

“How do you know?”

“I know it’s that ambling horse he used to ride,” says Jim. “I can make out his sideling kind of way of using his legs. All amblers do that.”

“You’re right,” I said, after listening for a minute. “I can hear the regular pace, different from a horse’s walk.”

“How does he know we’re here, I wonder?” says Jim.

“Some of the telegraphs piped us, I suppose,” I answered. “I begin to wish they forgot us altogether.”

“No such luck,” says Jim. “Let’s keep dark and see what this black snake of a Warrigal will be up to. I don’t expect he’ll ride straight up to the door.”

He was right. The horse hoofs stopped just inside a thick bit of scrub, just outside the open ground on which the hut stood. After a few seconds we heard the cry of the mopoke. It’s not a cheerful sound at the dead of night, and now, for some reason or other, it affected Jim and me in much the same manner. I remembered the last time I had heard the bird at home, just before we started over for Terrible Hollow, and it seemed unlucky. Perhaps we were both a little nervous; we hadn’t drunk anything but tea for weeks. We drank it awfully black and strong, and a great lot of it.

Anyhow, as we heard the quick light tread of the horse pacing in his two-feet-on-one-side way over the sandy, thin-grassed soil, every moment coming nearer and nearer, and this queer dismal-voiced bird hooting its hoarse deep notes out of the dark tree that swished and sighed-like in front of the sandhill, a queer feeling came over both of us that something unlucky was on the boards for us. We felt quite relieved when the horse’s footsteps stopped. After a minute or so we could see a dark form creeping towards the hut.