By Blow and Kiss
“But a blow to one’s heart, to one’s pride, to love,” she said, leaning forward and speaking breathlessly. “Can that be forgotten, or should one be ashamed to forget it?”
“We’re speaking in parables, my dear,” the boss said, “and that’s not always wise. Straight speech and a straight road are always good things, though they don’t often run between the hearts of an old man and a young maid – the worse for the maid, maybe. But here’s my last word on it. If ever your heart, and your pride, and your love and life are beaten down into the dust, they can be raised up and healed by a kiss, given and taken, on the lips.”
“Thank you,” she said, and that was all. But to herself she said bitterly, “He doesn’t know – he can’t know.”
There was one thing that, in her secret heart, Ess was thankful for – to the work that kept the men out on the hills. She saw little of Ned Gunliffe, and although she had told of her engagement to him, and some of the men had shyly congratulated her, she was glad to have them out of the reach of their well-meant words on the subject, or of the sly and homely jests they would offer, little guessing how they hurt her.
Scottie had heard something of the night ride she and Ned Gunliffe had taken, and although he said nothing to her, he did speak, and speak sharply, to Ned.
“Understand,” he said sternly. “I’ll have nae strayvagin’ the hills by night or by day wi’ station horses an’ station men; on no business and no excuse. A man here is paid tae wark, an’ every minute he can spare from sleepin’ or eatin’, an’ every ounce o’ energy an’ strength he’s got, belongs tae the station, an’ the sheep, an’ cattle that’s sair needin’ it. An’ if I hear o’ ony man ridin’ but where he’s bid, he gets his cheque an’ his walkin’ ticket that same day.”
And now, just when he could ill spare a rider, Scottie lost one of his boldest and best, and Aleck Gault was carried in to the Ridge from the hills with a broken leg.
He had been out with two other men – Dolly Grey, who had been brought up to the Ridge from the back paddocks, where now there were no sheep to ride boundary on, and Whip Thompson.
They were pushing back into the hills in search of some of the sheep that were constantly straying in the rough country, for all their efforts to shepherd them, and when they came to the Cupped Hands, a wide bowl-shaped depression with a series of ridges running up one side, exactly like the fingers of the hands, the three men separated. Aleck and Whip rode round one side of the cup each, so as to see down into the hollows that lay outside the “Hands,” while Dolly Grey rode straight through to pick up any sheep that might be hidden there, or between the finger ridges. He was half-way through when the two men on the edges heard him yell and saw him spur his horse to a gallop. They saw, too, the tawny streak that flashed over the ground and amongst the boulders, and it did not need Dolly Grey’s warning yell of “Dingo” to tell them what it was. They circled round the edges, riding hard to intercept the chase, and volleying cracks from their stockwhips to keep the dog from turning up over the sides and down into the broken country below.
“Yoicks, tally-ho,” screamed Dolly, his hat flying and his shirt sleeves fluttering in the wind. He was on a good horse, but a dingo is a fast traveller when it is pressed, and for a little it held its own. Then Dolly began to gain, and he thundered up between two of the ridges with the spurs stabbing his horse’s sides at every leap, and his stockwhip slashing at the flying dog.
“Loose your stirrup – take your stirrup to him,” Aleck Gault shouted, and sat down and rode hard for the point where the ridge ran up and over the edge of the Cupped Hands. The grade was telling on the horse, and he was blowing hard, and the dog was gaining as they swept up and over the edge of the depression, and went racing down the other side. Dolly was still slashing with the whip, but the dog ran without swerving under the cruel cuts. “Wot was the good o’ that?” as Whip Thompson said afterwards to the contrite Dolly. “You might ha’ cut ’im in two ’alves wi’ that, an’ the ’alves would ha’ kep’ on runnin’.”
But Aleck Gault was up with the chase now, and, although the going was rough enough to make most men thankful of a full knee-grip and both stirrups, he was bending over and unslipping a stirrup leather as he rode. He shot past Dolly, running the stirrup iron to the end of the leather as he went. The ground was dipping sharply; it was littered with boulders and loose stones, and rotten with rabbit holes, but the men went down it as hard as the horses could put foot to ground, leaving them to go with a loose rein and pick a path, and carry their own and their riders’ necks unbroken.
Aleck was almost alongside the dog, and was swinging the stirrup high for a blow, when he heard a warning yell from Dolly Grey. “Ware – ” and the next second he found himself sliding full speed over a smooth slab of stone, as wide and as steeply pitched as the roof of a house. He was just conscious of the long harsh scrape of the horse’s hoofs beneath him, of the violent wrenching side lunge of its leg to save itself toppling and keep it straight, and he was down and in full gallop again. It was over before he could draw a breath, and he had no time or need to interrupt the swing of the stirrup that began at the top of the rock and ended half-a-dozen strides below it.
Straight and hard and true he hit with the full strength of his arm, and in the same breath his horse was down and rolling head over heels, and he was down with it.
“You finished ’im,” said Whip Thompson, when he recovered enough to sit up. “But ’e dash near finished you. You turned ’im over, and ’e mixed up in your ’orse’s feet an’ – wallop. Must ’ave been heavy gorged to be run down so quick. ’Ow d’you feel? The ’orse is all right.”
Aleck tried to move his leg, and grunted at the pain.
“Broken,” he said, feeling it tenderly. “Nice job to get back to the Ridge with a broken leg. Get this boot off and slit my trouser leg up, Whip, and don’t stand there glaring like a stuck pig, Dolly. See if you can find a couple of straight sticks for splints; and kill your own dingo next time, please.”
And when he was brought in to the Ridge – fainting twice on the way – and Scottie came to see him, all he had to say was “I’m dead sorry, Scottie; I know you can’t well spare a man these days.”
He was more cheerful when Ess came over to see him, and he grinned at her and exulted openly. “You’ll have to nurse me, Miss Ess,” he said. “And Ned or any other man can say what he likes. Every man is wanted on the work just now, so you’ll have to tend the job.”
“But you’re forgetting Blazes,” she said mischievously.
“Blazes!” he ejaculated. “To blazes with Blazes. Fancy Blazes doing sick nurse! And, besides, his time will be fully occupied making chicken broth and jellies, and nourishing soups and things.”
“But you won’t need stimulating foods,” said Ess with a solemn face. “They’d make you feverish. Low diet and not too much of it for you, Aleck. A little gruel and perhaps a milk pudding now and then. Fortunately we’ve plenty of tinned milk.”
“Tinned milk nothing,” said Aleck, firmly. “This is my leg that’s broke, isn’t it? Well, I know what’s good for my own leg, don’t I? And don’t you imagine I don’t know all about what a sick chap gets. I’ve never had a turn myself, but I’ve read heaps of books about it, and I know just how the beautiful nurse has to hold the patient’s hand and soothe his fevered brow with cool fingers, and so on. D’you think my brow is getting fevered now, Miss Ess?”
Ess laughed a little, but then frowned anxiously. It was just after he had been brought in, and Scottie was finishing re-tying the splints, after satisfying himself that the setting was all right. Aleck’s face was grey and drawn, and the sweat stood in heavy beads on his forehead, but he still talked cheerfully.
“Only thing wrong about this,” he said, in aggrieved tones, “is your being engaged to Ned. You ought to fall in love with me, and marry me and live happy ever after. That’s what the nurse always does in the very best books.”
Then he quietly fainted again.
Aleck never knew how she had flinched under his gay badinage of engagements and marrying. But she undertook to nurse him, and resisted as stoutly as he did the suggestions that he should be taken down to the township, where a doctor could more easily be brought to him.
“I don’t want any doctors,” he said. “You’re a good enough surgeon for me, Scottie, and know as much about broken limbs as any doctor” (as indeed Scottie did). “And, besides, a doctor would take all the credit of mending it. This is going to be Miss Ess’s job, and if she brings it out that I have to dot-and-carry-one with a short foot or a shin as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, I – I’ll marry her to pay her out.”
“I can nurse him,” said Ess. “I’ll be glad to be so useful.”
She might have been even more glad if she could have foreseen the result of Aleck’s staying at the Ridge.
CHAPTER XV
And even as Ess installed herself as sick nurse at the Ridge there was being enacted over at the township another sick-bed scene, which was still closer bound up with the threads of her own life.
Mrs. Durgan was sinking fast. The doctor had been called in hot haste, and the woman’s child was born, and died, and the mother walked with faltering steps on the very brink of death.
She still lay in the bedroom of the house next the police station, and the trooper’s wife was still attending her. The doctor had told her that the end was very near, that there was not the slightest hope, and that he must go now. So he left her there, and went out and strapped his instrument case to the saddle, and mounted and rode down the quiet dusty street, to carry himself and his skill and his instruments for long miles across parched plain and hardly discernible tracks, to where some other sufferer was patiently waiting the relief he rode so hard with.
And although the lake-level plains, with the mirage gleaming on the horizon, and the pleasantly cool trees and bushes all looking innocent and peaceful enough, there was no doctor, whoever tended the wounded under fire or carried a stricken soldier back into the friendly shelter of the trenches, who faced a greater risk or took more chances with his life than this rough out-back doctor in the wide-brimmed hat and the red-dusty clothes.
If the horse he rode put its foot in one of the rabbit holes that riddled the plains; if he dismounted to walk and stretch his saddle-weary limbs, and the horse broke away and left him; even if he strayed off the track, which was so faint that a man who was not a bushman would examine the ground for it in vain, the patient out there might wait and wonder why the doctor hadn’t come when he promised, and suppose that some more urgent case had detained him. And if the doctor were missed in time, and the black trackers laid on, and no rain came to wash out his tracks, and no dust storm blew over them and hid them, he might be found alive – or dead. But in a country where the sheep tanks are the only water within hundreds of miles; where the same tanks are merely holes scooped in the plain, with nothing to mark them until you are right on them; where an ordinary paddock is ten miles across, and you may walk forty miles round the fence and see no soul, and have to cross into the next paddock and repeat the walk; where the sun is beating down like iron flails; where the ground underfoot is hot enough to burn the soles of the boots off the heat-rotted stitches; where every drawn breath dries the moisture out of a man’s body, the man who is lost and without water does not walk far or live long.
So a doctor in the back country has to be a bush man who can find an unerring way by dark or light, a rider who, when his own horse is knocked up, must be able and willing to sit any half-broken brute he can pick up, or at a pinch swim a flooded river “running a banker,” with whirling tree trunks and drowned bullocks to add to the hazard, as well as a man brave enough to count life and death risks as nothing worth the counting; who on every round he makes must ride, with his own life in the hollow of his hands and the strength of his knee-grip, to keep the flame of life alive in other people; and, lastly, a man who has body strength and endurance to sit in the saddle, to ride, to walk, to drive, or to swim through a long day; on again through the night, and, if need be and the case is urgent enough, to take the road and start over again. A doctor is a doctor, but in the outside country he is a great deal more – or he is a great deal less.
So the doctor left Mrs. Durgan, first, because he could do no more for her, and second, because at the end of some of those long miles there was someone else he could do perhaps everything for.
And Mrs. Dan Mulcahy saw him go and went back to the death-bedside to do her little best to carry out his orders and ease the sufferer over the end – as women so often have to do in the outside country.
Mrs. Durgan was lying still, breathing noisily, and white to the lips, that were tinted pale blue. Only her fingers were never still, and plucked at the coverlet and twisted themselves ceaselessly. Mrs. Dan wiped the perspiration from the damp forehead, and moistened the tight-drawn lips, and took her seat beside the bed.
Now and again she slipped noiselessly from the room and pushed a pot on the fire, or pulled it back and threw a billet of wood on. And when the trooper, her husband, came in, bringing the sergeant with him to dinner, she served the meal, and took her own with her, and went back to the sick room and closed the door, so that the murmur of voices should not disturb the woman.
And presently the sick woman opened her eyes and lay looking steadily at the roof over her, and Mrs. Dan saw the light of reason again in the eyes that had looked blank as the shuttered windows of an empty house for days and nights on end.
“She will recover consciousness just before the end,” the doctor had said. “Give her a spoonful of this, and she may speak and tell all she can before she goes.”
The trooper’s wife moved quietly, but very quickly, to the door, and opened it and beckoned to the two men, and laid her fingers on her lips as a sign for silence. And the two rose and slipped the boots from their feet, and in stocking soles crept into the room and took their stand behind the screen that was placed close beside the bed, and between it and the door, while Mrs. Dan brought the medicine and held it to the woman’s lips.
“Drink this,” she said gently. “It will help you and make it easier.”
The woman swallowed. “I’m goin’, ain’t I?” she said calmly; and Mrs. Dan whispered “Yes,” for in “the outside” men and women are more used to the thought of facing death than the people of the cities are, and there is not held to be the same need to lie to them and cheat them about their end.
“The baby?” asked the woman.
“It died,” said Mrs. Dan.
“Died?” said the woman. “Dead – he’s …” she caught back the word. “Seems like I bin sayin’ that a lot o’ times,” she said. “I remember now – he’s dead, an’ how he was – killed.”
The two men behind the screen exchanged swift glances, and the sergeant busied himself with the pencil. And Mrs. Dan knew what they were doing, and she thought of Steve, and how her husband believed his guilt even against his own wishes, and she could hardly bring her tongue to frame the questions that would bring the guilt home to the man who had been a friend to her and hers, or declare him innocent and free.
“You saw it done?” she said at last. “Can you tell me who did it?”
The woman slowly turned her eyes – the strength to turn her head was gone from her, even as the strength to speak was going like running water.
“You sure I’m goin’?” she asked, and again Mrs. Dan said “Yes.” “No mistake – no hope,” persisted the woman, and Mrs. Dan shook her head. “Please tell me if you can,” she said, “before it is too late. You haven’t long now, and you may lift the guilt from an innocent man.”
“I’m glad o’ that,” said the woman, “for I’m goin’ where I s’pose I’ll pay for it. I killed him myself.”
The horror of the thing gripped the trooper’s wife like a hand on her throat, shutting off her speech. Then she thought of Steve, and joy lifted the hand. “You did it yourself?” she repeated clearly, so that behind the screen there could be no mistake.
“Yes,” said the woman. “Gi’ me another sip from that bottle, an’ I’ll tell you.” Mrs. Dan gave her the sip – and wiped her lips.
“I heard him comin’ that night,” said the woman, speaking clearly, but with gasping efforts. “I went to let him in – an’ I gave him the rough o’ my tongue. He spoke back – an’ said he could go’n find another woman – who’d speak decent to ’im. It made me mad – an’ the child comin’ an’ all. I picked up the broom beside the door an’ hit ’im an’ knocked ’is ’at off, an’ hit ’im again… He fell off the steps, an’ when I went to pick ’im up, his head lolled, limp an’ slack-like, same as I’ve seen a rabbit’s when its neck was broke… His neck was broke, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Dan, mechanically, “his neck was broke.”
“Ah… I knowed I was right,” said the woman, with curious complacency. “Well, I didn’t … break it … did I? I only hit ’im light like… He broke it hisself, didn’t … he?”
And those were the last words she spoke.
“Did you get it all down?” asked Mrs. Dan, eagerly, when she came again to the next room.
“We got it all,” said the sergeant. “You might read this through and sign it, if you think it’s same as you heard.”
Mrs. Dan read it, and signed her name beneath the sergeant’s and her husband’s, and bundled him out forthwith to send a telegram away to headquarters.
“And tell everybody you meet,” she commanded. “God forgive me, if it’s a sin to feel glad, with the poor creatur lying there in the next room, but if it is I can’t help it. When can we get word to – to Thunder Ridge, Dan? I want them to know first minute they can. They was all so sure it wasn’t Steve Knight. And who was right about that same – me or you?” she finished triumphantly.
“You were right,” said Dan, soberly, “an’ it’s meself was never so glad to own it.”
“I’ll have to ride out to the Ridge and call the men in,” said the sergeant. “It’s been an out-an-out wild-goose chase, hasn’t it? Wonder what that thick-headed fool wanted to bolt for, and make all this fuss.”
“An’ wasn’t it a wise man he was to bolt?” said Mrs. Dan, defiantly, “when my own husband, that knows him well, went firing off his pistol at him, an’ believed up to the minute the poor woman spoke that it was Steve that did it. I’m a policeman’s wife myself, an’ well I know the police would have held him guilty an’ helped to hang him if you’d caught him, an’ the woman hadn’t had the strength an’ the wits to speak the truth with the last breath out of her lips.”
“Well, well,” admitted the sergeant, “it looked black enough, I’ll admit, an’ I suppose some men have swung for less evidence.”
When the sergeant brought the word to Thunder Ridge, there was no one about the place except the cook, Aleck Gault, and Ess. Aleck had been moved over to the house and into Ess’s room, while she took possession of her uncle’s camp bed in the outer room, and sent him off to sleep in the bunkhouse with the men.
When the sergeant rode up, he saw Blazes, and told him the news, and Blazes came over to the house hot foot to retail it.
Ess met him at the outer door, and seeing his wild excitement, motioned him to caution. “Aleck is asleep,” she said. “He had rather a bad night, and I don’t want to disturb him.”
“The John ’Op sergeant ’as just brought word, Miss – ’e didn’t do it – the woman’s confessed. Ain’t that great? We’ll ’ave ’im back in no time mark my words. An’ won’t we give ’im the Long Yell, neither – ”
“But who didn’t do what, and who’ll be back?” interrupted Ess.
“Eh, wot? Why, Steve didn’t. We knowed it all along, o’ course, but there’s the cussed Johns chasin’ ’im over the ’ills, an’ a warren out to arrest ’im – an’ wot for? Wot for? For a thing ’e’d no more to do with than I ’ad. It’s a cussed shame. It’s a disgrace to the country.” Blazes was beginning to work himself into a violent passion. “Who the – I mean who are they to go chivvyin’ a man? I’ll go ’n give that sergeant – ”
“Wait a minute, Blazes,” cried Ess. “You haven’t told me anything about it, except that Steve didn’t do it.”
Blazes dropped his rage and apologised, and then gave her the whole story. It was a little confused, and Ess walked over and interviewed the sergeant herself.
When Aleck woke she gave him his broth, and quietly asked him if he could hear some good news without getting excited.
But the words had barely left her lips when Aleck struck in, “About Steve? They’ve caught the man who did it? Tell me quickly, please.”
“His wife did it herself,” said Ess. “It was more or less an accident. They quarrelled, and he fell off the steps and broke his neck. The woman confessed to striking him, and then she died.”
Aleck dropped back on the pillows he had raised himself from. “Lord, Miss Ess, if you only knew how good that sounds to me.” His face was glowing and his voice thrilled with pleasure. “I’ll see him soon. He’ll come the minute he can, especially if he hears I’m hurt. Steve – Lord – Stevie lad, won’t I shake the hand off him.”
“You must be quiet and not talk too much,” warned Ess. “You know it’s bad for you to get excited.”
“Tell me everything about it, please, then,” he pleaded, “every scrap. I’d rather have had this than – ” he broke off and tried to steady his voice, and Ess saw a suspicion of tears in his eyes. His emotion moved her to the heart, and she turned and pretended to busy herself about the room, telling him all the particulars the sergeant had given her.
“Thank you,” he said. “You mustn’t mind me getting worked up like this over it, please. I’m an awful kid about Stevie, you know. I feel as if I could howl like a kid, though why Heaven knows – ’tisn’t anything to howl about, is it? This leg must be weakening my intellect.”
Ess noticed the flush of fever in his cheeks, and tried to calm him. “It’s no good,” he declared; “I’ve got to talk, or I’ll bust. You imagine if it was Ned that had been blamed for this, and what you’d feel like if you heard he was cleared of every suspicion of it. Well, Stevie’s more to me than a man is to a girl – yes, I know you’ll grin at that, but you don’t rightly know what men are to each other out here. He’s my mate – we’re mates, and good mates. The marriage service says something about the pair forsaking all to cleave to each other. But it doesn’t say a man must forsake his mate. They’d have to alter the marriage service for us out here if it did – a man with a mate wouldn’t stand for it.” He went on talking and laughing excitedly, till at last Ess said, “Aleck, I’m sure it’s bad for you to talk so much. Now stop, or I’ll go away and leave you to talk to the flies.”
He laughed happily. “All right, Miss Boss, I’ll dry up. But I’d like to write a note to Steve – no, never mind though, he’ll understand without that, and he’ll be here just as hard as a horse can hammer across the Toss-Up track when he hears I’m crippled. And don’t you worry about me being excited. ’Tisn’t near as bad for me as lying here fretting my soul to fiddle-strings wondering if he was all right, and if he’d need me and I couldn’t go. I was going to clear out and join him, and help him get away, too, soon as he was fit to travel.”
“Fit to travel?” said Ess, slowly.
“Yes,” said Aleck. “Soon as his wounds healed up.” He stopped abruptly and looked at her. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that. He said not to, and we agreed it might worry you for nothing.”
Ess felt a curious sense of sickness stealing over her. She remembered again the haggard look in Steve’s face.
“When was he hurt?” she asked as steadily as she could. “And what – was it anything serious?”
“He fell just after he left here,” said Aleck, “and he cut himself, and I fancy cracked a rib or two. Nothing much if he could have laid up and had the things tended properly. But he’d no bandages and little water – he’d to be careful about going near water you see, knowing the trackers would be watching there – and the things got inflamed and so on. And scrambling about on his feet didn’t help.”
