An Outback Marriage Part 23

"Yes," said Ellen, "I will go. And you hurry on now, and get the Doctor.

Tell the Doctor I've gone out there." Like an arrow from the bow the young fellow sent his big thoroughbred horse across the paddocks, making a bee line over fences and everything for Tarrong, while Ellen Harriott hurried in to pack up a few things.

"Can I help you at all?" said Carew, following her into the house. I'd like to be some use, don't you know; but in this country I seem to be so dashed useless.

"You will be a lot of use if you will come out with me. I shall want someone to drive the trap out, and I may want help with the patient. You are big and strong.

"Yes, and it's about the first time my strength has even been of any use to anybody. I will go and get the trap ready while you dress."

Hurriedly they packed food and blankets into the light buggy, and set off. Miss Harriott knew the tracks well, and the buggy fairly flew along till they came up the flat to Red Mick's. As they drew near the hut a noise of talking and crying came through the open door.

"What's up now?" said Carew. "Crowd of people there."

"No"--Ellen Harriott listened for a second. "No," she said, "he is delirious. That is the old woman crying. Hurry up, Mr. Carew--take the horse out of the buggy and put him in the stable, and then come in as quickly as you can. I may want help."

Leaving Carew to unharness the horse, she went inside. In the inner roomy on a bunk, lay Red Mick. Eye, nose, forehead, and mouth were all one unrecognisable lump, while fragments of bark and splinters still stuck to the skin. In the corner sat the old mother, crying feebly.

Disregarding the old woman, Ellen made a swift examination of Mick's injuries, but as soon as he felt her touch on his face he sprang to his feet and struck at her.

Just as he did so, Carew rushed in and threw his arms round the madman.

In that grip even Red Mick had no power to move.

"Just hold him quiet," said Ellen, "till I have a look"--and she rapidly ran her fingers over the wound. "Very bad. I think there must be a bit of the skull pressing on the brain. We can't do much till the Doctor comes. I think he will be quiet now. Will you make a fire and boil some water, so that I can clean and dress the wound That will ease him a little. And get the blankets in; we can make up some sort of place on the floor to sleep. One of us will have to watch all night. Cranny, you must go to bed, do you hear? Come and sit by Mick till I put Granny to bed."

By degrees they got things s.h.i.+pshape--put the old woman to bed, and cleaned and dressed Mick's wounds. Then they settled down for the long night in the sick-room. A strange sick-room it was; but many a hospital is less healthy. Through wide cracks between the slabs there came in the cool, fresh air that in itself is worth more than all the medicines in the pharmacopoeia. The patient had sunk into an uneasy slumber when Ellen made her dispositions for the night.

"You go and lie down now," she said, "in the other room, on the sofa. I will call you if I want you. Get all the sleep you can, and in a couple of hours you can take my place. He may talk, but don't let that disturb you. I will call out loud enough if I want you."

"Mind you do," said the Englishman. "I sleep like a blessed top, you know. Sleep anywhere. Well, good-night for the present. He looks a little better since you washed him, doesn't he?"

He threw himself on the couch in the inner room, and before long a t.i.tanic snore showed that he had not over-rated his sleeping powers.

Ellen Harriott sat by Red Mick's bedside and thought over the events of the last few weeks. As she thought she half-dozed, but woke with a start to find her patient broad awake again and trying to get at something that was under his bunk. Quietly she drew him back, for his struggles with Carew had left him weak as a child.

He looked at her with crazed eyes.

"The paper," he said, "for the love of G.o.d, the paper. I have to take it to Gavan. 'Twill win the case. The paper."

She tried to pacify him, but nothing would do but that she should get the mysterious paper. At last, to humour him, she dived under the bunk and found an iron camp-oven, and in it a single envelope. Just to see what was exciting him she opened the envelope, and found a crumpled piece of paper which she read over to herself. It was the original certificate of the marriage between Patrick Henry Keogh and Margaret Donohoe; if Ellen had only known it, she held in her hand the evidence to sweep away all her friend's troubles. It so happened, however, that it conveyed nothing to her mind. She had heard much about Considine, but not a word about Keogh, and the name "Margaret Donohoe" did not strike her half-asleep mind as referring to Peggy. She put the paper away again in the camp-oven; then, feeling weary, she awoke Carew and lay down on the couch while he watched the patient.

Next morning the Doctor arrived with a trail of Red Mick's relations after him; among them they arranged to take him into Tarrong to be operated on, and Ellen Harriott and Carew drove back to Kuryong feeling as if they had known each other all their lives.

As they drove along she wondered idly which of Red Mick's innumerable relatives the paper referred to, and why Mick was so anxious about it; but by the time they arrived at home the matter pa.s.sed from her mind, except that she remembered well enough what was written on the odd-looking little sc.r.a.p.

"I will give you a certificate as a competent wardsman if ever you want one," she said to Carew as he helped her out of the buggy. "I don't know what I'd have done without you."

"You'd have managed somehow, I'll bet," he said, looking at the confident face before him. "Quite a bit of fun, wasn't it? I hope we have a few more excursions together."

And she felt that she rather hoped so, too.

CHAPTER XXIII. HUGH GOES IN SEARCH.

Who does not remember the first exciting news of the great Grant v.

Grant will case? The leading Q.C.'s. watched eagerly for briefs; juniors who held even the smallest briefs in connection with it patronised their fellows, and explained to them intricate legal dodges which they themselves had thought out and "pumped into" their learned leaders.

"Took me a doose of a time to get him to see it, but I think he has got it at last," they used to say. The case looked like lasting for years, for there would be appeals and counter-appeals, references, inquiries and what not; and in getting ready for the first fight the lawyers on each side worked like beavers.

Blake let it be known among the clans that he was going to fight the case for Peggy, and that there was going to be a lawsuit such as the most veteran campaigner of them all had never even dimly imagined--a lawsuit with the happiness of a beautiful woman and the disposal of a vast fortune at stake. Word was carried from selection to selection, across trackless mountain-pa.s.ses, and over dangerous river crossings, until even Larry, the outermost Donohoe, heard the news in his rocky fastness, miscalled a grazing lease, away in the gullies under the shadows of Black Andrew mountain. By some mysterious means it even reached Briney Doyle, who was camped out near the foothills of Kosciusko, running wild horses into trap-yards. This occupation had taken such hold on him that he had become as wild as the horses he pursued, and it was popularly supposed that the other Doyles had to go out with horses to run him in whenever they wanted him.

Peggy brought in the copy of her marriage certificate, an old and faded piece of paper which ran--"This is to certify that I, Thomas Nettles.h.i.+p, duly ordained clergyman of the Church of England, have this day solemnized a marriage between William Grant, Bachelor, and Margaret Donohoe, Spinster."

The name of Pike's Hotel and the date were nearly illegible, but there the doc.u.ment was; and though it was not the original certificate, it was pretty clear that Peggy could never have invented it. Its production made a great impression. It certainly went far to convince Blake.

He had cross-examined all the witnesses, had checked their accounts by each other, had followed William Grant's career at that time, had got on to the history of the bush missionary; and everything fitted in. Martin Doyle--Black Martin's son Martin--was letter-perfect in his part. Peggy could give the details of the ceremony with unfaltering accuracy fifty times a day if need be, and never contradict herself. So at last he gave up trying to find holes in the case, and determined to go in and win.

On the other side there was trouble in the camp--no witnesses could be found, except Martin Doyle, and he was ready to swear to the wedding. At last it became evident that the only chance of overthrowing Peggy's case was to find Considine; but the earth seemed to have swallowed him up.

The influence of the Chief of Police was brought to bear, and many a weary mile did the troopers of the Outer Back ride in search of the missing man. One of them followed a Considine about two hundred miles across country, and embodied the story of his wanderings in a villainously written report; brief and uncouth as the narrative was, it was in itself an outline picture of bush life. From shearers' hut to artesian borers' camp, from artesian well to the opal-fields, from the opal-fields to a gold-rush, from the gold-rush to a mail-coach stable, he pursued this Considine, only to find that, in the words of the report, "the individual was not the same."

Things looked hopeless for Mary Grant, when help came from an unexpected quarter. A letter written in a rugged, forcible fist, arrived for Charlie Gordon from a young fellow named Redshaw, once a station-hand on Kuryong, who had gone out to the back-country and was rather a celebrity in his way. His father was a pensioner at the old station, and Redshaw junior, who was known as Flash Jack, evidently kept in touch with things at Kuryong. He wrote

Dear Sir,

I hear from Gannon the trooper that you want to find Keogh. When he left the coach that time, he went back to the station and got his horses, and cleared out, and he is now hiding in Reeves's buffalo camp at the back of Port Faraway. If I hear any more will let you know.

J. REDSHAW, alas 'Flash Jack.'

"What's all this?" said Pinnock, when Charlie and Carew brought him the letter. "Who is J. Redshaw, and why does he sign "alas Flash Jack?"

"He means Alias, don't you see? Alias Flash Jack. He is a man we used to have on the station, and his father used to work for us--I expect he wants to do us a good turn."

"It will be a good turn in earnest, if he puts you in the way of finding Considine," said the lawyer. "You will have to send Hugh up. The old man knows you and Carew, and if he saw you coming he would take to the woods, as the Yankees say. Even when you do get him the case isn't over, because the jury will side with Peggy. They'll sympathise with her efforts to prove herself an honest woman. It isn't marrying too much that will get her into trouble--it's the other thing. But we have the date and place of her alleged marriage with William Grant; and if this old Considine can prove, by doc.u.ments, mind you, not by his own simple word--because it's a hundred to one the jury wouldn't believe him--I say, if he can prove that she married him on that very day and at that very place, then she's beaten. No one on earth could swallow the story of her marrying two different people on the same day."

"Hugh can go," said Charlie. "He'll have to do his best this time. It all depends on getting hold of this Considine, eh? Well, Hugh 'll have to get him. If he fails he needn't show his face amongst us any more."

Mary Grant was called in and told the great news, and then Pinnock started out to find Hugh. But before the lawyer could see him, Mary met him in the garden.

Hugh did not see that he could be of any use in the case, and wanted to be quit of Kuryong for good. Seeing Mary day after day, he had become more and more miserable as the days went by. He determined at last to go away altogether, and, when once he had made up his mind, only waited for a chance to tell her that he was going. The chance came as she left the office after consulting with Pinnock.

"Miss Grant," he said, "if you don't mind, I think I will resign my management of this station. I will make a start for myself or get a job somewhere else. You will easily get someone to take my place."

She looked at him keenly for a while.

"I didn't expect this of you," she said, bitterly. "The rats leave the sinking s.h.i.+p. Is that it?"

His face flushed a dull red. "You know better than that," he said. "I would stop if I could be of any use, but what is there I can do?"