Part 33

“All gone humpy.” Their haste had been of no avail. The tale was told. They had come too late.

What need to ride for all they were worth now? But so they did ride, revolver in hand. And when they arrived at what had been Dick Stanesby’s hut, an out-station of Nilpe Nilpe, there was nothing to mark it from the surrounding plain but a handful of ashes; even the hard earth showed no sign of trampling feet.

Stanesby flung himself off his horse like a madman.

“She may be all right. She must be all right. It may have been an accident. She is hidden down by the creek.”

Turner said nothing. What could he say? His thoughts flew back to the lonely hut, and the girl lying there on the hard ground in her dusky red dress, alone, cast off, a thing of use to no one. Well, she was dead, he expected nothing else, and she was avenged. Surely this home-coming would haunt the man who had left her all the days of his life.

He laid his hand heavily on the black boy’s shoulder.

“Track, you devil!”

And Jimmy led the way down towards the waterhole.

They followed him in silence.

The tall reeds looked green and fresh after the hot dry plain, but they also suggested another idea to Turner, and he tried to check his companion’s headlong career.

“Look out! You don’t know. They might be in those reed beds.”

“All gone blackfellow,” said Jimmy, and stolidly went ahead.

Then at last he brought them to what they sought. Dead, of course. Long before they started on that mad ride back her sufferings had been over. Dead! and Turner dared not look his companion in the face. No peace, no tenderness, about a death like this. It was too terrible! And this man had left her; in spite of her prayers he had left her!

They avenged her. The blacks had not gone far, but they could not follow them up that day. They spent it in the shade down by the waterhole, and Turner did not try to break his companion’s silent reverie. Then when their horses were recruited they set out for the head-station of Nilpe Nilpe. There they told their tale. It was not much of a tale after all. Only a half-caste girl murdered, and a hut burnt. Such things happen every day. But the blacks must be punished, nevertheless, and half-a-dozen men rode out to do it, Stanesby at their head.

He was very silent. They said at the station, coming into a fortune had made him stuck-up and too proud to speak to a fellow, only Turner put a different construction on his silence. And the vengeance he took was heavy. They rode down among that tribe at bright noonday, led by Stanesby’s black boy, who had been one of themselves, and when evening fell it was decimated, none left but a few scattered frightened wretches crouching down among the scanty cover in the creek bed, knowing full well that to show themselves but for a moment was to court death swift and certain. So they avenged Dick Stanesby’s hutkeeper.

They count Dick Stanesby a good fellow in his county. He is a just landlord, well beloved by his tenants. He is a magistrate and stanchly upholds law and order; and withal he is a jolly good fellow, whose hunting breakfasts are the envy and admiration of the surrounding squires. His wife is pretty too, somewhat insipid perhaps, but a model wife and mother, and always sweet and amiable.

There have been found men who were Goths enough to object to Mrs. Stanesby’s innocent, loving prattle about her eldest boy and her third girl, and the terrible time they had when her second little boy had the measles, and they were so terrified for the first twenty-four hours lest it should turn to scarlet fever; there have been men, I say, who have objected to this as “nursery twaddle,” but their womenkind have invariably crushed them. They believe in Mrs. Stanesby and in Dick Stanesby too.

“Their story is too sweet,” says Ethel De Lisle, his sister’s sister-in-law. “It reminds one that the chivalry of the olden times has not yet died out among true Englishmen. Only think, he loved silently because he was too poor to speak. He went away to Australia, and he worked and waited there all among the blacks and all sorts of low people, and at the end of four years, when his cousin died and left him Heyington, he came back faithful still and he married her. I call it too sweet for words.”.

But Mrs. De Lisle has never met Guy Turner. He is still “riding tracks” on Jinfalla, and consequently she knows nothing of Dick Stanesby’s hutkeeper, or of a solitary grave by the Woonawidgee creek.

THE YANYILLA STEEPLECHASE

My dear, my dear, so you want to know why I am an old maid?

Well, nobody asked me to marry them, I suppose that must have been it.

No? What? You think I must have been pretty. Pretty, was I pretty?

They said I was then, dear, but you see there wasn’t another lady within fifty miles, and that made the difference, just all the difference. You ‘ve a pretty little girl, Hope--it wasn’t fair to have called you Hope, it’s such an unlucky name--but if you’d been young when I was they’d just have raved about you.

Had I lovers, dear?

Of course I had lovers. Every woman who isn’t downright repulsive has, I think. Willie Maclean doesn’t come here to see me, does he? Ah! I thought--

There, never mind, there’s no harm done. It’s thirty years since the men used to ride across the ranges just to stay the night at Yanyilla, and I don’t think it was wholly for your grandfather’s society they came. Of course I had lovers. It’s so long ago I can tell you about them now; but mostly, dear, I don’t think a woman should tell. She gets the credit of it, I know, but she ought not to, and I do think there are many things a nice woman, I mean a good woman, keeps to herself.

Oh yes! I had lovers, like every other girl, but there was only one I cared about--and I cared--I cared--I believe I care still, for all I lost him three and thirty years ago. I used to look forward to dying and meeting him in heaven, dear, but I was young then, and after I passed thirty, and began to go down hill, I got to know that he’d never recognize in an old woman the girl he loved on earth. It troubled me sorely, sorely, for he was only thirty when he died, but afterwards I thought we must have been put into this weary world for some good purpose, and surely if there is a great God he won’t let me waste my life for nothing. I have tried to do my best, but somehow my life has been a failure all round; I ‘m not much use to anybody. They say love doesn’t last, but I think they are wrong; I know it has lasted me all these years, and the thought of seeing him again--well, well, you will think an old woman foolish, dear, but it makes my heart beat like a young girl’s. Suppose--suppose I should not be quite all he thought me; suppose he should have changed.