In the Roaring Fifties Part 26

'Stony is an a.s.sumed name. Cannon is his real name--Peter Cannon.'

'That is the name. But I cannot understand. My head fails me. I am utterly bewildered!'

'You'll hear Stony's story? He is in his tent.'

'Not now. You have overwhelmed: me. For G.o.d's sake, give me time to straighten things out!'

Jim sat in silence for some minutes, but the excitement lingered. He drifted into questions, and plied the other like a cross-examining lawyer eager to trap a witness; but Ryder knew every detail of the family history. He told Jim of a birthmark on his own body. He described the furnis.h.i.+ng of the home in Chisley much as it remained within Jim's memory.

'You have not mentioned our sister,' he said.

'She killed herself.' Jim spoke with blunt brutality. He had no energy for equivocation.

Ryder accepted this piece of news in the spirit of a man steeled to the keenest strokes of Fate.

'She was a beautiful girl,' he said. 'I remember I loved her dearly.'

'You speak as if it were fifty years ago.'

'I have been in h.e.l.l since, I tell you.'

Jim looked closely into his brother's face again, but it baffled him; it betrayed no more feeling than a stone.

'Why have you divulged this now?' he asked.

'You forced it from me. I did not expect you to return. I saw you playing cards at the shanty. But it is as well. I should have told you later.'

'There is something behind?'

'Much; but till you have heard Stony tell his part I shall say no more.

And for the present let this be our secret.'

'Burton may come in at any moment.'

'Good-night, then.'

'No; I'll go with you. I cannot face Mike in this condition. He would think me mad.'

'To Stony's tent?'

'If you like. In Heaven's name, man, why are you so cold? Why am I like a stunned brute? We are brothers. We may shake hands.'

Ryder made no advance. 'Better hear the story out,' he said.

It was a two-mile walk from where Jim and Mike were now camped to Stony's tent, and the hour was midnight. The two men walked in silence, Jim with his head bowed, racked with nervous excitement, his mind running from point to point, grasping nothing wholly, seeing nothing clearly, the other erect and calm. When the tent was reached Ryder entered unceremoniously, and, striking a match, looked about him for a candle.

There was a slush-lamp on a box by the bunk, and this he lit. Jim saw Stony start up in bed, and stare at the intruder with a look of mortal terror.

'I have brought you a visitor,' said Ryder.

The apprehension faded from the hatter's face when he Jim.

'A nice hour!' he grumbled.

'I have not studied your convenience,' answered Ryder. 'Here is the man to whom you are to tell the story of Richard Done and Peter Cannon. Tell it briefly, as you told it to me.'

Ryder seated himself on a block near the tent entrance, his back half turned to the others, and neither spoke nor moved throughout the narration. Stony looked from one to the other, and then commenced his story. He told it in a monotonous voice, with a dull face and eyes heavy with drink.

'We were always enemies, d.i.c.k Done and I--enemies as boys at school at Chisley, fighting over everything, picking at each other from morn till night. As young chaps we remained enemies. It seemed as if G.o.d or the devil had sent us to plague each other. Our enmity grew with us. In manhood we were as bitter as death. Then the woman came. We both wanted her. It was just natural of us to get set on the same girl. She liked him--she didn't care a snap of her fingers for me; but I didn't give up.

I followed her, plagued her, persecuted her, and hated Done worse than poison. With all my soul I hated him! Of course, we quarrelled over her, and Done went so far as to talk of killing. He didn't mean it, perhaps, but it told against him later. One bright night I came on him and her sitting on Harry's Crag. 'Twasn't an accident. I'd been told they'd gone down to the sea, and I followed. I interfered, furious at heart, but making a show of civility, knowing that would madden him. He was soon up in arms. He tried to drive me off, struck me. I used my stick, and we fought there and then--fought like madmen on the cliff edge, two hundred feet above the sea. The girl, frightened almost to death, ran away. Done got my stick from me, and we fought with our hands. He could beat me at that game, and at length struck me a blow that stunned me; then he left me lying there, and went after the girl.'

Stony paused for a moment, and, drawing a bottle from the back of his bunk, took a long drink. Then his eyes wandered to Ryder again, and he went on:

'When I came to I was alone. I crept a little further from the edge of the cliff, and lay down again. I was pretty badly knocked about; my nose was bleeding freely. Presently, moving my hand, I struck a knife--his knife! It was closed. I opened it, looking at the long blade. The idea had already formed in my mind. I smeared the blade with blood, and dropped the knife, open as it was, over the cliff, being careful that it should fall on the ledge about twenty feet below. Then I smeared blood upon the brink, tore a sc.r.a.p from my coat, and left it there, throwing the coat with the hat into the sea. I was never seen in Chisley again. I walked all that night. In London I read of the arrest of Done on a charge of murder. They had found my hat and my coat and the knife. The girl had told her story. Done was condemned to death; and then I stowed away in an Australian boat, and was allowed to work my pa.s.sage out I thought Richard Done had been hanged till I saw him that night at the camp in the Bush.

The man sitting there is Richard Done.'

Stony fell back upon his grimy pillow again, and was silent; his eyes were fixed upon Ryder, but at that moment he had more to fear from Jim, who looked down upon him, fierce with disgust, his fingers itching to be at the thin neck of the brute.

'Let us get out of this!' he gasped.

'Have you no questions to ask?' said Ryder quietly.

'None, none! And when I think of what this dog has brought upon me and mine I feel murderous.'

Ryder left the tent without another word, and Jim followed him. As they walked away, Done was stirred with deep sympathy for his companion.

Ryder's reiteration of the words, 'I have been in h.e.l.l!' recurred to him.

He felt that there were years of suffering and a fathomless hatred behind the phrase, and his blood ran hotly.

'I wonder you have not killed that man!' he blurted after a few minutes'

silence. 'I regret ever having raised a hand to prevent it.'

'I needed him,' answered Ryder.

'You intend to establish your innocence?'

For the first time that night a smile moved Ryder's stark lips--a hard, mirthless smile.

'No,' he said; 'where's the use?'

'How is it you are free?' asked Jim with surprise. This view had not occurred to him before.

They were standing between the stunted and twisted gums. The Bush here was spare and dwarfed, and the moonlight shone clearly upon Ryder's face.

'I am an escaped convict!' he replied

A bitter curse leapt from Done's tongue. He felt himself bound to this man by a common wrong, a wrong that had clouded with misery the greater part of their two lives.

'You may be retaken,' he said.

'I may, but I do not think it likely.'