“Anybody else? Well, no, not as a rule. It’s the stock route? you see, between Hay and Deniliquin, so there’s bound to be stock on the way; but sheep, bless you! they travel six miles a day, and cattle they ain’t so much faster, so we brings ‘em all the news. The Company has stables here, and feed, and we change horses. The old man and old woman keep it, with a boy or two. Mighty dull for the old woman, I should think, with on’y the ghost to keep her company. She was her cousin or her aunt or somethin’, the ghost was, and, Lord, women is fools an’ no mistake.” It was July, and the winter rains had just fallen, so that the plains, contrary to custom, were a regular sea of mud.
The wheels sank axle deep in it. The horses floundered through it in the darkness, and every now and then the lamps were reflected in a big pool of shallow water. The wind blew keen and cold, but the coach was full inside and out, and so, though it was pitch dark, I kept my seat by the driver.
A light gleamed up out of the darkness.
“Trotting Cob!” said he, and discoursed upon it till he pulled up his horses on their haunches exactly opposite a wide-open door, where the lamplight displayed a rudely-laid table and a bright fire, which seemed hospitably to beckon us in. The whole place was as wide awake as if it were noon instead of midnight.
Ten minutes’ stay, and we were off again into the darkness, and then I prevailed upon the driver to tell me the tale of Trotting Cob. He told it in his own way. He interlarded his speech with strange oaths. He stopped often to swear at the road, to correct the horses, and he was emphatic in his opinions on the foolishness of women, so I must e’en do as he did, and tell the tale of Trotting Cob in my own way.
A flat world—possibly to English eyes an uninteresting, desolate, dreary world; but to those who knew and loved them, they had a weird charm, all their own, those dull, gray plains that stretched away mile after mile till it seemed the horizon, unbroken by hill or tree, must be the end of the world. Trotting Cob was Murwidgee then, Murwidgee Waterhole, where all the stock stopped and watered; but from the slab hut, which was the only dwelling for miles, no waterhole was visible; the creek was simply a huge crack in the earth, and at the bottom, twenty feet below the level of the plain, was the water-hole. One waterhole in summer, and in winter a whole chain of them, but the creek seldom if ever flowed, except in a very wet season. It was a permanent waterhole—Murwidgee, fed by springs, and the white cockatoos and screaming corellas came there and bathed in its waters, and the black swans, and the wild duck, and teal rested there on their way south, when summer had laid his iron hand on the northern plains.
The reeds and rushes made a pleasant green patch in the creek bed, and once there had been several tall white gums; but old Durham had cut them down years ago, when first he settled there, and so from the hut door, though almost close upon the creek, it was not visible, and there was presented to the eye an unbroken expanse of salt bush. It was unbroken but for the mirage that quivered in the dry, hot air. The lake of shining water, with the ferns and trees reflected in it, was but a phantasy, and the girl who leaned idly against the door-post of the hut knew it. Still she looked at it wistfully—it had been so hot, so cruelly hot, this burning January day, and in all the wide plain that stretched away for miles on every side there was not a particle of shade; even the creek ran north and south, so that the hot sun sought out every nook and corner, and the bark-roofed hut, with its few tumble-down outbuildings, was uncompromisingly hot, desolate, and ugly.
Old Durham called himself a squatter, and gave out that his wife, with the help of her granddaughter Nellie, kept an accommodation-house. Forty years ago the times were wild, and what did it matter. Convict and thief the squatters round called him, and his grandsons, in their opinion, were the most accomplished cattle-duffers in all the country round, and as for the accommodation-house—well, if the old woman did go in for sly grog-selling, the police were a long way off, and it was no business of anybody’s. And Nellie Durham was a pretty girl, a little simple perhaps, but still sweetly pretty, with those wistful blue eyes, fringed with dark lashes, that looked out at you so earnestly, and the wealth of fair hair. So dainty and so pretty—the coarse cotton gown was quite forgotten, and in those times, when women of any sort were scarce, many a man turned out of his way just to speak a word or two to Mother Durham’s granddaughter.
She sat down on the door-step now, and resting her elbows on her knees, and her chin in her hands, looked out across the plain. The sun was just setting—a fiery, glowing sun, that sent long, level beams right across the plains, till they reached her hair, and turned it to living gold, and went on and penetrated the gloom of the hut beyond.
It was very bare, the hut, just as bare as it could possibly be; but three men bent eagerly over the rough-hewn table, while an old woman, worn and wrinkled and haggard, and yet in whose face might still be traced a ghastly resemblance to the pretty girl outside, laid out on the table a much-thumbed, dirty pack of cards.
“Cut them, Bill. Drat you! what ‘d you do that for, George? You know you ain’t never lucky—you oughter let Bill do it. No—no—no luck. Two, three, nine o’ spades, ‘tis ill luck all through.”
“Well, let Bill do it, Gran,” said George with an oath, as he flung down the cards, and they were picked up and shuffled, and cut again and again; the old woman shook her head solemnly.
“‘Tis bad luck the night,” she said, “bad, bad luck. Don’t you touch Macartney’s mob, or you ‘ll rue it. There’s death some-wheres, but it doesn’t point to none o’ you.”
“Macartney probably,” said another man, who was leaning against the slab wall, and intently watching the girl in the doorway. “Come, Gran, don’t be croaking; if the cards ain’t lucky, put ‘em away till they are.”
He looked cleaner and smarter than the other three—Nellie’s brothers, who were young fellows, little over twenty. They were good-looking, strapping fellows, but the sweet simplicity in her face was in theirs loutish stupidity, and their companion stood out beside them, though probably he was nearly twice their age, as cast in a very different mould. He was dressed as they were, in riding-breeches and shirt, but the shirt was clean, his black hair and beard were neatly trimmed, the sash round his waist was new and neatly folded, and the pistols therein were bright and well kept. Gentleman Jim, the Durhams called him; as Gentleman Jim he was known to the police throughout all the length and breadth of New South Wales. What he had been once no man knew, though evidently he was a man of some little culture and education; what he was now was patent to every man—escaped convict, bushranger, cattle-duffer—even a murder now and again, it was whispered, came not amiss to Gentleman Jim. It was an evil face, with the handsome dark eyes set too closely together, and when there is evil in a man’s face at forty, there is surely little hope for him; but bad as it was, to Nellie Durham it was the one face in the world. Cattle-duffing—it hardly seemed a sin to her. Ever since she could remember, her grandfather, and her father, and when he died, her brothers, had driven off a few head of cattle from the mobs that passed, and she in her simplicity hardly realized the heinousness of the offence; and for the rest, she simply believed nothing against her hero. He had been cruelly ill-treated, cruelly ill-used, but she understood him—she loved him, she believed in him, in the blind unreasoning way a woman, be she old or young, rich or poor, wise or foolish, gentle or simple, does believe in the man she loves. And the old grandmother saw, and shook her head. She did not mind cattle-duffing—it was but levying a fair toll on the rich squatter as he passed. Sly grog-selling was hardly a crime; so few people passed it would have been waste of money to take out a licence, more especially since there was no one to ask whether they had one or not. But Gentleman Jim, whom the boys had taken to bringing home with them of late, was another matter altogether, and she looked on anxiously when she saw the impression he had made on her son’s pretty daughter.
“I dunno,” she said, anxiously to her husband, “whether the gal’s all there; sometimes I think she ain’t, but anyhow, she’s sweet and pretty an’ loving, an’ he’s an out-an’-out scamp, drat him!”
But the old man would not interfere. He was a little afraid of Gentleman Jim; besides he was useful to him—he was getting old, and the grandsons were not much help; they took after their mother, and privately old Durham thought his son’s wife had been more than half a fool, so he encouraged Gentleman Jim; and now came information that Macartney would be camping here to-morrow with a mob ready for the southern market, and here was the man again. The cards too prophesied disaster, shuffle them as she would.
Gentleman Jim swore at the cards and at the old woman in no measured terms, and then he laughed, and gathered them up in his hands.
“Here, Nell, Nell!—the cards are clean against us, your Gran says—come and cut, like a good girl.”
Nellie rose willingly enough, but the old woman said scornfully, “Nell, Nell, she ain’t got no luck at all. Three times I tried her fortune, and three times it came, ‘tears, tears, tears’—never naught else for Nell but tears.”
“Never mind, mother, better luck this time, eh, Nell?” and the girl took the cards, and smiled trustingly up into his face.
“Cut, Nell.”
She cut the nine of spades, and the old woman groaned. “Disaster, sure as fate; let Macartney’s mob alone, I tell you.”
“Cut again, Nell.”
She shuffled them carefully, the other four watching her with eager, anxious eyes, while the man at her side looked on with tolerant scorn. And then she cut—the ace of spades. Her grandmother threw up her hands. “Death, I tell you—death—death—death—an’ no less.”
Gentleman Jim struck the cards out of her hand roughly, and they went flying to all corners of the hut.
“Come outside, Nell—come down to the waterhole, it’s cool there, and better fun than listening to an old woman’s twaddle. The sun’s down now. Come on.”
She looked at her grandmother first, partly from habit, but the old woman was still wringing her hands over the danger foretold by the cards, and was blind for the moment to that right under her eyes. So Nellie followed him gladly, only too gladly, down the steep bank to the waterhole. He pushed her down somewhat roughly under the shadow of the western bank, and then flung himself down on the ground beside her, and put his head in her lap. With her little work-hardened hand, she smoothed back his black hair, and he looked up into her face.
“So you love me, Nellie?” he said, somewhat abruptly. “You be sure you love me?”
It was hardly a question, he was too certain of it, and no man should be certain of a woman’s love.
She made no answer in words, but the pretty blue eyes smiled down at him so confidingly, that for a moment the man was smitten with remorse. What good would this love ever do her?
“You poor child!” he said. “You poor little girl. I believe you do. Don’t do it, Nellie—don’t be such a fool.”
“Why?” she asked simply.
“Why? Because I shall do you no good.”
“But I love you,” she whimpered, “an’ you won’t harm me.”
“No, by —— I won’t.” And for the moment perhaps he meant to keep his oath, for he half rose, as if there and then he would have left her. Perhaps it was too much to expect—all his companions feared him, the outside world hunted him, only this woman believed in him and loved him; and if it is a great thing to be loved, it is a still greater thing to be believed in and trusted. And so when she put her arms around him and drew him back he yielded.
“It is your own fault, Nell, your own fault—don’t blame me.”
“No,” she said, satisfied because he had stayed. “I won’t—never.” Then she ran her fingers through his hair again.
“I saw a gray hair in the sunshine,” she said.
“A gray hair—a dozen—a hundred. My life is calculated to raise a few gray hairs.”
“But why—?”
“Why? Why—once on the downward path you can’t stop, my dear. However the path has led me to your arms, so common politeness should make me commend the road by which I came.”
“You are always good.”
“Good! great Heavens! No—only a silly girl would think that. Was I ever good? I’m sure I don’t know. If I was a woman soon knocked it out of me.”
“A woman! Did you love her?”
“Love her—of course I loved her.”
“More ‘n you do me?”
“More than I do you!—You’re only a little girl—and she—she was a woman of thirty, and she just wound me round her fingers,—her!”
The tears gathered in the girl’s eyes—only one thing her simple soul hungered after—she wanted this man’s love—she wanted to be allowed to love him in return.
“She didn’t love you like me,” she said.
“She didn’t love me at all, it was I loved her, the young fool. That’s the way of the world. Come, Nell, don’t cry—that s the bitterness of it. Where’s the good of crying? Where’s the good of loving me? I wasted all the love I had to give on a woman, who made a plaything of me—oh, about the time you were born I suppose. That’s the way of the world, my dear; oh, you ‘ll learn as you grow older.”
“Ben Fisher,” said Nellie slowly—“Ben Fisher, Gran says, loves me, an’ ‘ud marry me. An’ he’s Macartney’s boss man.”
The man sprang to his feet and caught her roughly in his arms. He hurt her, but she did not mind; such fierce wooing was better than the indifference which had seemed to mark his manner before. His hot breath was on her face, and in his eyes was an angry gleam, but she read love there too, and was content.
“You, Nellie—you—do you want Ben Fisher? If you go to him—if you have any truck with him—I ‘ll kill you, Nell.”
She closed her eyes and drooped her head on to his shoulder.
“Jes’ so,” she said, “you can.”
“Nell, Nell,” called her grandmother’s voice from above. “Nell, you come up this minute. Drat the girl, where’s she got to? You come along, miss, and help to get supper. There’s the bread to set, for Macartney’s mob ‘ll be here early to-morrow.”
James Newton held the girl for a moment with a merciless hand.
“Nell, I ‘ll kill you.”
She smiled at him through her tears, then stooped and kissed the hand that held her, and as he loosened his grasp, flew up the embankment and joined her grandmother.
Next day the Durham lads and Gentleman Jim had disappeared. It seemed a wonder in that flat open plain where they could disappear to, but the creek had many windings, and its bed was so wide and so far beneath the surface of the plain, there was ample room for men and horses to hide there.
About three in the afternoon, a lowing of cattle and cracking of stockwhips announced the arrival of Macartney’s mob, and the beasts, wild with thirst, for the way had been long and hot, and the waters were dried up for miles back, rushed tumultously down into the waterhole, trampling one another in their eagerness to get to the water. The men could no nothing but look on helplessly, and finally Fisher, a tall young fellow with that sad look on his bearded face, which sometimes comes of much living alone, left the mob to his men, and flinging his reins on his horse’s neck went towards the hut.
Nellie stood in the doorway, but when she saw who it was, mindful of her lover’s fierce warning of the night before, she drew back into the hut, and the sadness on the man’s face deepened, for Nellie Durham, the cattle-duffer’s granddaughter, was the desire of his heart, and the light of his eyes, and Murwidgee Waterhole, when he had charge of the cattle, was on the main road to everywhere.
He dismounted and entered, and Mrs. Durham bustled up to him—eager to make amends for Nellie’s want of cordiality.
“It’s pleased I am to see ye, pleased, pleased,” she said, “for ‘tis lonesome hereabouts, now the boys is away down Port Philip way.”
“Are the boys away?” he asked, watching Nellie, as in obedience to an imperious command from her grandmother, she began to set out a rough meal.
“Oh, ay—there ‘s on’y Nell an’ grandfather, an’ me, an’ we’re gettin’ old. Oh, ‘t is lonesome for the girl whiles.”
If it were, she did not seem to feel it, and she steadfastly refused all Fisher’s timid advances. Farther away than ever he felt her to-day, and yet she had never looked so fair in his eyes.
He ate his meal slowly, answering the old woman in monosyllables, when she questioned him as to his camp for the night and his movements on the following day. Possibly he may have thought it unwise to take old Durham’s wife into his confidence, but if so the men under him were not so reticent, and when they came in a few moments later, chatted freely on their preparations for the night, and half in jest roughly warned the old woman that the cattle must be let alone.
“None o’ your larks now, old girl,” said Fisher’s principal aid. “We mounts guard turn an’ turn about, an’ the first livin’ critter as comes anigh them beasts—the watch he shoots on sight.”
“What’s comin’ anigh ‘em?” asked the old woman scornfully. “There’s me an’ th’ old man an’ the girl here, an’ nary a livin’ thing else for miles. They do say,” she added, dropping her voice, “the place is haunted. Jackson of Noogabbin was along here a month back, and he told me how the cattle broke camp all along o’ the ghost. He seed ‘un wi’ his own eyes, a great white thing on a trottin’ cob it was. Clean through the camp it rode moanin’, moanin’, an’ the cattle just broke like mad.”
“Oh, yes—I dessay,” said the man, “and when them cattle were mustered, there was a matter o’ fifty head missin’, I ‘ll bet. Now if that ghost comes along my way I shall just put a bullet in him sure as my name’s Ned Kirton. So there, old lady, put that in your pipe and smoke it. Come along, Nell, my girl—don’t be so stingy with that liquor, the old woman ‘ll make us pay for it, you bet. Why, Nell, I ain’t seen such a pretty pair o’ eyes this many a long day. Give us just one—”
He had caught her roughly by the shoulder, and bent down to kiss her, but the girl drew back with a low cry that brought Fisher to her aid.
“Let her alone, Ned,” he said with a muttered oath.
“Right you are, boss,” laughed the other. “There ‘s a darned sight too much milk and water there for my taste; I like ‘em with a spice o’ the devil in ‘em, I do. But if that ‘s your taste—well, fair’s fair an’ hands off, says I.”
“It ain’t much good, boss,” said another man. “She’s Gentleman Jim’s gal, she is, and I shouldn’t sleep easy if I so much as looked at her.”
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