In the Roaring Fifties Part 41

'My word! Come longa me.'

Jim took up his revolver and followed the half caste, leaving the body between the sheets of bark with which he had fas.h.i.+oned a rude coffin.

'Boss close up here,' said Yarra as they scrambled up the side of the gorge, after following the creek for about a quarter of a mile. The boy proceeded with out caution, and presently they came upon a saddled horse lying under a big white gum. The animal' neck was broken; evidently it had collided with the tree when at a gallop.

'Boss make big smash up here,' said Yarra. He pointed to a huddled, shapeless heap lying amongst the scrub-ferns at a distance of about twenty feet.

Done stood over the body of Macdougal, and felt for a moment a resentment against the Fates that had robbed him of his revenge. The squatter had dreaded the probability of confederates coming to the a.s.sistance of the outlaw, and his ride for safety had been absolutely desperate. He lay within a quarter of a mile of the waterfall, and had been killed on the spot. His head was crushed and hideous. Done turned from the sight with a shudder.

Jim buried Ryder by the light of the moon. He spent the night in the gorge, but slept little, and Yarra, who had all the superst.i.tions of his mother's race, crouched close to the white man, and his teeth chattered with fear the whole night through. He had conceived the idea that the spirit of Macdougal had taken possession of the gorge, and for the future the place must be a haunt of terror to him. After daybreak, with the boy's a.s.sistance, Done hid all traces of the new-made grave, and by this time he was grateful for the food Yarra brought from the cave. Breakfast strengthened him greatly. He had eaten nothing for close upon twenty hours, and the exhaustive experiences of that time told heavily upon his enfeebled frame. As a result of his night's reflection and the judgment that had come with cooler blood, he was determined to visit Lucy at the station. Yesterday's bitterness towards her had been real enough, but he a.s.sured himself that it was the effect of the extraordinary excitement worked in his brain by the events of the day. This morning there was upon him a physical and moral apathy: the reaction left him without interest.

The invalid la.s.situde possessed him again, and he stood over his brother's grave for a few minutes, without feeling any recurrence of the resentments that had so recently blazed within him.

Lucy met him in the garden; she was still pale, but showed no sign of physical weakness.

'I treated you brutally,' he said abruptly. I am sorry; I was mad with rage.'

'I know; I understood then. You know I am sorry for you.'

'You saved Macdougal for my own sake, not for his,'

'Yes. Innocent or guilty, your brother was an outlaw, Legally, Macdougal was justified in killing him, but if you kill Macdougal it will be murder. Ah! that terrible thought has gone from your mind?'

'Yes; Macdougal is dead.'

'Dead!' She caught his hand, and looked into his face with terror. 'You have killed him!'

'No. His horse must have collided with a tree as he galloped down the gorge. Yarra found him.'

'Thank G.o.d vengeance was not left to you!'

'It is best. I have buried my brother. The whereabouts of his grave must be kept secret.'

'Tell me where he lies.' She spoke with eagerness. 'I swear none shall know from me!'

Done was impressed by her emotion, and the picture of her sobbing figure prostrate over the body of the outlaw was recalled to his mind. 'Under the great round boulder above the waterfall to the left, just where the shadow falls at noon,' he said. 'Better never speak of his death even. I have warned Yarra, and I think he will be faithful.'

'You can trust me.' She paused for a moment falteringly, and then continued with an effort and in a low voice: 'I must respect the grave, for in it my heart is buried. More than my heart,' she continued with pa.s.sion--' a part of my very soul. I loved him!' She had made this confession, feeling that it was her duty to let Jim know that the tenderness she had felt for him had been swept away in the tide of an overwhelming love for the other.

Whatever Done's feelings may have been, neither face nor voice betrayed him. 'Good-bye,' he said, and turned away.

She followed him a few paces, and seized his arm.

'You are not going with unkindness in your heart?' she pleaded.

'No,' he answered. 'I am very sorry for you.'

'I want your friends.h.i.+p always.'

It is yours.'

He held her hands in his, and noticed that there were tears upon her cheeks. He was certainly sorry for her; it was pitiful to think that her new happiness had been wrecked in this way, but he could not overcome the coldness that was about him; and so they parted on the spot where a few months earlier Jim had said good-bye with a heart full of love and longing.

XXIV

A BITTER time followed with Jim Done. He had rejoined Harry Peetree at Blanket Flat, and continued working there; but his strength returned slowly, and the joy of life had fled from his heart again, leaving him more miserable than he had been as a youth in his native village. In those days his resentments helped to sustain him; he took pride in the spirit with which he faced the enmity of the people, and not a little comfort came to him from the egotism he had cultivated as a refuge from the common contempt. Now the fighting spirit was gone all hatred had gone with it, and his self-confidence had degenerated. For a few weeks after Ryder's death he made a deliberate effort to stir himself into a state of pa.s.sionate revolt, dwelling long upon the barbarous sufferings his brother had endured, drawing upon his affection for Mike Burton to stimulate his fading emotions; but he failed to lift himself out of the slough of despond into which he had fallen.

Jim fled from his nurses too early, and the trials he subsequently endured served to r.e.t.a.r.d his restoration. He had pretty good health, without either strength of body or spirit. Half an hour's work at the windla.s.s wearied him, and this weariness irritated him with a dull, abiding anger. He spent much of his time when not at work lying on his bunk. The life on the field was not different from that which had delighted him at Diamond Gully; there was the same cheerfulness amongst the men, the shanties flared at night, and the diggers roared, and gambled, and drank with no less enthusiasm. He alone was changed.

These moods and the manner of life he was leading fostered a most unhealthy habit of introspection. He was for ever examining his emotions.

He thought much about Lucy Woodrow, and of the love he had borne her, but without sorrow for the loss of her. He tried to account for the fact that there was no grief in his heart on Lucy's accounts whilst keeping Aurora jealously in the background. He was unconsciously dishonest to himself in these self-examinings, and one day this dawned upon him. He laughed over the discovery, laughed aloud at himself, but the amus.e.m.e.nt was grim.

'So, then, it is Aurora I need after all,' he said in satirical soliloquy, 'and my soul has been playing the hypocrite these few weeks.

What a marvel of constancy is man! Lucy is lost to me, and secretly the baffled heart sneaks back to the other love.'

Behind all this was a fretful longing for the past happiness to which the new country, the new conditions, Aurora Mike, and his own abounding vitality, had contributed. He shunned the conditions, and was angry because the object eluded him. Done, in his sick desire to know himself ceased to be truly himself. Had he been content with the fact that he loved Aurora and needed her--needed her love, her beauty, her fine joyousness and splendid vitality--the rest would have been easy.

He had written from Ballarat to Mike Burton's family in New South Wales, and at about this time there came a letter from a relative, asking his a.s.sistance in Melbourne to secure the money lying to Burton's credit in the bank. Jim went to Melbourne, and a quiet trip and the change improved him considerably. When he returned again there was a letter from Mary Kyley, It was brief:

'DEAR JIMMY,

'We are at Tarrangower. Joy is back with us, well and strong again, and as pretty as a picture; but the mischief is she doesn't forget the boy who isn't fit to kiss the boots she wears--meaning your self, you scamp!

'Tisn't a far ride! Maybe you'll come one of these fine Sundays.

'Your middle-aged friend,

'MARY KYLEY.'

Jim spent nearly three days over that letter, and then determination came suddenly on top of much contrary argument. He would go. No sooner had he made up his mind than a consuming eagerness to see Aurora seized him. All other considerations were lost. He must go at once, take her in his arms, plead with her with all the fervour of his heart, compel her with every argument love could advance, beseech her with all the humility of the conquered to be his wife.

Now his love of Lucy appeared as a mere aberration. His overwhelming eagerness for life, for new faces, scenes, sensations, had whirled him from the true path of his happiness. Thank G.o.d, it was not too late! Joy alone was his true mate, his true love, the real need of his being, and he had never loved her as now. The pa.s.sion came back upon him like a dammed torrent. His impatience made his mate open his eyes in grave wonder.

'I want to reach Tarrangower before noon to' morrow, Harry,' he said.

'Can it be done?'

'You could cover the distance in 'bout five hours on a decent horse. But what's struck you, ole man?'

'The idea that I've been playing the melancholy fool. I've been questioning life, bargaining with it like a suspicious huckster --suspecting, doubting, rejecting, instead of opening wide my arms and taking the good to me wherever it offered.'

'I dunno what you're drivin' at, Jim; but if it means you're goin' to cheer up I'm all-fired glad to hear it. You've been as miserable as a dingo in a springer since Eureka.'

'It means that, Harry. Can we get horses?'

'We--meanin' me too?'

'Yes; you'll come with me? I don't know the lay of the country, and I must go.'

'Oh, I'll go fast enough. You can get horses from Croker, but they'll cost you a bite.'