The Rider of Waroona Part 18

"And the presence of your escort would announce to him or his spies, a.s.suming that he is concerned in the robbery, that you have it with you?"

"Naturally; but the risk was more than the general manager would allow for me to travel with it unless I had police protection."

"You expect to pay it out this afternoon?"

"I antic.i.p.ate Dudgeon will be at the bank clamouring for it, under threat of crying off the sale, by the time I get there. The first thing I shall most probably do is to pay it over."

"So that it will soon be out of the bank, and the bank's interest in it will have ceased."

"Exactly," Wallace replied. "Mr. Dudgeon, who refuses to act through the bank, will have the pleasure of providing his own strong-room for its safe keeping."

"Eustace would know that too?"

"Certainly."

"Then you will have to send one or both of those troopers with Mr.

Dudgeon; otherwise he will be robbed to-night. It would certainly be the last thing necessary to identify Eustace with the robbery at the bank, but there is already enough to prove that, to my mind. Your duty ceases when you have handed this sum over, but there mine begins."

"I intend to suggest to Mr. Dudgeon the advisability of his having police protection while the gold is in his possession, in view of what has already occurred. But I am quite sure that the suggestion will be treated with contempt."

"Tell me where Mr. Dudgeon lives."

"He has another station on the opposite side of the towns.h.i.+p to Waroona Downs, about ten miles out. He wants to sell that, too, and I don't mind saying we all hope he will soon find a purchaser."

"How many men has he there?"

"Oh, he sold off all his stock from both places and discharged his hands some months ago. He might have a couple of men about the place, but not any more, I should say."

"Well, try and persuade him to take the escort. If he will not, send the men out to the station to-night. I shall probably be there by the time they arrive, but you need not mention this to them. Give the impression, if you can, that I am on my way to Wyalla, and don't be surprised if I take you unawares any time between this and noon to-morrow."

"I'm never surprised at anything you do, Durham," Wallace retorted grimly. "We're quite satisfied the money will be recovered if head-quarters leave you alone."

"I hope so--I can't say more," Durham said.

"But I can," Wallace continued. "It's in confidence, of course, but the directors have decided that in the event of your recovering this money they will present you with five thousand. I don't suppose that will make you work any harder, but it may interest you to know it."

Durham rode at a slower pace when he had parted with Wallace than when he came out of the towns.h.i.+p. The news that a fifth of the missing money would be his when he recovered it gave him a far greater incentive than Wallace antic.i.p.ated. With five thousand pounds behind him he knew his prospects of winning the woman who had fascinated him would be much greater than if he had only his official salary as a financial backing to his suit. Further, if he succeeded in recovering the gold he would also recover the stolen doc.u.ments. He had little doubt but what he would be able to woo her successfully, were he able to return to her the papers which had been stolen and go to her with his freshly won laurels of victory.

A mile down the road he turned his horse into the bush and rode straight for the range which rose between the towns.h.i.+p and Waroona Downs.

Skirting the flanking spurs, he followed on until he caught sight of the tracks left by the hors.e.m.e.n who had ridden after the fugitives the night before. In their haste and lack of system, he saw how they had crossed and recrossed the marks left by the riders they were chasing. He walked his horse to and fro until he came upon the tracks of the two horses showing clear beyond the jumbled confusion of hoof-prints the amateur trackers had made.

The two had ridden direct to the range. As he followed the track, bending down in his saddle to note the marks, he laughed aloud. The men were the veriest fools at bush-craft. There were instances by the dozen which revealed to him the fact that neither had had any experience in tracking, and so had failed to avail themselves of the chances the ground they had ridden over offered to render their track difficult to follow. Where the ground was soft, they had not swerved to avoid it, but had left the prints of their horses' hoofs showing so clearly that to the skilled bushman it was as an open book he could read as he rode.

Where low-growing shrubs stood in their way they had crashed through, sometimes setting their horses to jump what should have been ridden round. Everywhere the same thing was manifest. The riders were not bushmen; they were in a great hurry; they were in country with which they were not acquainted, and were hastening towards some landmark that would bring them to a locality where they would be more at their ease.

As he followed the track, he sat back in his saddle. There was no need to study the ground when he could see the hoof-prints showing right ahead. So it was that he saw what those other riders had failed to distinguish in the half light of the moon. There was a sudden dip in the surface, a shallow depression sloping down to a little stream. Riding, as they must have been riding, at a full gallop, it was a trap for an unsteady horse and one of the horses was unsteady, for it had propped at the brow of the slope, slipped, and come down on its knees, pitching its rider clear over its head.

The spot where he fell was still distinguishable by the bent and broken herbage and his heels had scored the ground as he scrambled to his feet, caught his horse, and hastily remounted. He had been in a great hurry and so had his companion, for there was no break in the tracks of the second horse--the other man had ridden on without a moment's halt, had ridden past his fallen companion and left him to do the best he could for himself. All this was plain at one glance. Again Durham laughed aloud at the folly of the pair, as he reined in his horse and sprang from the saddle.

In his fall the fugitive rider had dropped something. It lay white on the ground just beyond the mark he had made in falling. Durham picked it up--a closed, unaddressed envelope bearing the bank's impress on the flap.

He tore it open. Inside was a sheet of paper with the bank's heading, but undated.

"No one saw me go, and I am safe now where they will never find me.

Stay there till you hear from me again. A friend will bring you word. Ask no questions, but send your answer as directed. You must do everything as arranged, or all is lost. Whatever you do, don't leave till I send you word. I am safe till the storm blows over.--C."

As Durham read the words, written in pencil and obviously in haste, he was satisfied that his suspicion not only of Eustace, but of Mrs.

Eustace, was correct. The man with the yellow beard whom he himself had seen, was possibly the "friend," through whom communication was to be maintained between husband and wife. He and Eustace had evidently ridden in during the evening with the intention of advising Mrs. Eustace of the successful flight of her husband. Hesitating to approach the bank, until he was certain the way was clear, Eustace had given the note to his companion to deliver. Harding's vision of the face at the window completed the picture. The man had crept up to the window of the room where it was probably arranged Mrs. Eustace was to wait. So long as any other person who might have been in the room occupied the chair Mrs.

Eustace placed, the shadow on the blind would warn the visitor that the coast was not clear. It was due to the fact that Harding had noticed the shadow and had moved to another chair that the man had so nearly been captured.

What had followed was equally clear to Durham's mind.

Directly he found he was discovered the man had run to his horse and, together with his companion, had galloped off, too quickly to allow him either to explain how he had failed to deliver the message or to hand it back to Eustace. It was most probably he who had come down with his horse at the edge of the depression, by which time the letter would have pa.s.sed completely from his mind and so he would not notice its loss.

Under the circ.u.mstances it was very unlikely he would tell the truth to his companion, but would rather leave Eustace under the impression that the letter had been put where Mrs. Eustace would find it. Sooner or later, therefore, Eustace would make another attempt to communicate with his wife. If he were not captured otherwise there would be every hope of securing him by keeping a close watch upon her.

With the letter in his pocket Durham remounted his horse and continued to follow the track. It led him into the broken country which formed the outlying spurs of the range, and continued along a narrow depression lying between two ridges. The trees grew closer together in the shelter of the little valley, and the track turned at right angles and continued up the side of one of the ridges.

The surface became more rocky and Durham had to watch closely for the hoof-prints as he gradually ascended to the top. For a time the track ran along the summit and then turned down the other slope, following the course of what, in the rainy season, would be a small rivulet. This again turned where it met the bed of a larger stream and Durham set his horse at a canter as he saw, distinct as a road, the marks left by the runaways right along the bed of the stream.

As he went he worked out the direction in which he was travelling; the stream he was following was evidently one which fed the watercourse crossing the road in the range. It turned and twisted in and out small flanking spurs, down the sides of which other streams had cut narrow scars, now as dry as the stream-bed along which he was riding, but which, in the time of the rains, would be roaring little torrents adding their quota to that great pool dammed back by the mountain road.

Suddenly the creek took a sharp turn round a jutting bluff, and as he pa.s.sed beyond it he reined in his horse. Scarce twenty yards in front was a sheet of water, its surface, without a ripple, reflecting the tree-clad slopes that encompa.s.sed it. In the sand of the stream-bed the track was so strong it might have been made only a few hours ago.

He rode warily to the water's edge. The pool stretched on both sides away into the hills, but it was not that which made him rein in his horse and sit motionless.

Along the margin of the pool there was a strip of sandy soil. It extended to the right and to the left of the creek-mouth. Upon it the marks both of wheels and hoof-prints showed.

The tracks he had been following swung sharp to the right; the wheel-marks came from the left, crossed the creek-bed and continued to the right.

His first impulse was to spur his horse along the track to the right, see where it led, and then return along it to the left, but the twenty-five thousand pounds to be paid to Dudgeon would be at the mercy of the marauders, if, as Wallace antic.i.p.ated, the old man refused police protection.

Great as the temptation was to learn where the track led and whence it came, Durham set his face against it.

He had stumbled on a clue, but the following it up was not for that day.

Later he would return and complete his discovery. For the present he must leave it.

There was a long ride before him if he were to reach Dudgeon's homestead at Taloona by sunset. That Eustace was one of the two men concerned in the robbery of the bank he had now no doubt. The question he had to consider was who the other man was. At the back of his mind there was a lurking suspicion that the owner of Taloona might possess information on the subject if he could be induced or inveigled to reveal it.

He glanced regretfully in the direction the tracks led. He would have preferred to follow them to the end, but after all he might get nearer the solution of the problem by a visit to Taloona.

CHAPTER IX

DUDGEON'S HOSPITALITY

Within half an hour of Wallace's arrival at the bank Dudgeon drove up.