By Blow and Kiss
Aleck Gault noted the glitter in the bright eyes and the shaking of the thin hands, and he spoke soothingly as he knew how, and made Steve strip, and dressed his wounds and rebound them afresh. He was alarmed and sore afraid when he saw the state they were in, the angry inflamed flesh and the raw unhealed cuts.
“You’ll have to be mighty careful of this, Steve,” he said gravely. “You’ll have to lie up and move as little as you can. I’ll take you along to some place to-night and leave you. I’ve brought a good stock of tucker with me to-day, and I’ll bring more, or get it to you again day by day. But I’ll have to be careful, for now they know you’re in the hills here they’re like to set a keen watch on me. I’m half afraid I was followed to-day, but if I was, it was by as cunning a man as I am, and I couldn’t spot him. We’ll wait now till dark and move you, and I’ll cover the tracks behind us.”
“All right,” said Steve, dully. “I’ll be right enough if I don’t go light-headed, Aleck. That’s what’s scaring me. I sit by the hour sometimes just doing nothing but trying to keep a grip o’ my senses. It’s wearing work, Aleck. Is there any fresh word from the township?”
“Nothing,” said Aleck. “The woman is still lying dazed and not speaking a word. They say she’s not likely to get over it, and may die when her kiddie comes. They think, too, she must have seen her man killed, for Dan says the breath was hardly out of his body when she came shrieking to him.”
“If she saw it done and could speak, it would clear me,” said Steve, slowly. “Have you any suspicion who it could have been?”
“Not a hint,” said Aleck. “And I’ve talked with Dan Mulcahy, and he can’t find a grain to go on against anyone. He’s your friend, Steve, and would give a hand to find anyone else to fasten it on, but he admits that there wasn’t a man in the township known to have an atom of a grudge or quarrel with Durgan. He was a harmless, inoffensive sort of chap. You know, Steve, although Dan hates to admit it even to me, he thinks you did it – did it in drink, maybe, and forgotten it yourself. I laughed at him.”
“Ah well,” said Steve, wearily, “I don’t want to bother thinking about it. What did Ess say when she knew I’d been down to the Ridge and was in hiding here?”
Aleck Gault told him, and re-told him, and spoke of every scrap of Ess and her doings he could think of. It seemed to be the only thing Steve took any interest in, and even discussions or suggestions for his getting out of the hills did not stir his apathy.
Aleck took a very troubled mind with him when he left that night, and it was a rather short-tempered answer he gave to Ned Gunliffe when he rode into the Ridge, and Ned looked at his sweating horse and drawled “Been ridin’ hard, Aleck? Haven’t run across the runaway by any chance, have you?”
A thought struck Aleck as he was turning his horse loose in the horse paddock. He caught his own horse by the mane again before it moved away, swung himself on to its bare back, and cantered over to the feeding mob of horses. The saddle marks were still plain on Ned Gunliffe’s horse, and by the black sweat marks it had evidently been ridden just as hard as his own that afternoon.
Aleck went straight to Scottie.
“Was Ned Gunliffe out this afternoon?” he asked. “I’m asking for a reason, Scottie.”
“He was out,” said Scottie, “went just after you did. Said he was ridin’ over to The Trickle for his pipe that he’d left there. He’s no long back, an’ I heard that he said he’d sat down for a rest when he got there and had fallen asleep.”
“The Trickle is half-an-hour’s easy ride,” said Aleck, thoughtfully, “and it’s a long and a hard half hour his horse did this afternoon.”
He thought it over for a minute, Scottie watching him and waiting in silence.
“Perhaps I’d better say nothing more to you about it, Scottie,” he said at last. “Whether he gets away or not, it would make trouble if it was known that you were helping to harbour him or to get away. For the same reason I’ll tell Miss Ess as little as I can, although of course she knows I was going to see him, and will want to know about him. But I’ll just tell you and her this – Steve’s all right, and will be looked after and given the first and the best chance to get clear away. I’m going to run his horse out on the hills somewhere, so he can get it when it’s sure the horse hasn’t been found or followed. Now I’ll go and see Miss Ess. And if you can keep Ned Gunliffe busy, so much the better. You know he and Steve had a row once, and Ned is the sort to carry a grudge long and well.”
He was not allowed to get off so easily when he saw Ess. She wanted to know where Steve was, and why he had not made an attempt to get away before, and whether he had sent any message to her, and half-a-dozen other things.
“He just said to assure you he was all right,” said Aleck. “And look here, Miss Ess, we decided it was best that you and your uncle should not know anything about where he was or that sort of thing. I fancy neither of you would make really good liars you know, and if the police try to pump you, you might let something slip, or at least let them see you knew. And that would be a pity.”
“But when will you see him again, Aleck?” she asked. “Could – do you think I might write a letter for you to take to him?”
Aleck looked at her keenly, and she blushed a little. She would have liked to have told Aleck something of what was between her and Steve, but evidently Steve himself had said nothing, so it would be wiser for her not to.
“I won’t be seeing him again for a bit,” said Aleck; “but he’s all right. He couldn’t get away without a horse, but that’ll all be fixed up for him.”
“But how is he doing about food?” persisted Ess.
“Don’t you worry about that or anything else,” said Aleck, evasively. “He’s all right every way.”
And so Ess had to content herself with that. Her thoughts were busy enough about Steve afterwards, but she was soon to have something else to think over, and make her puzzle whether she ought to speak of the love between her and Steve Knight.
CHAPTER XII
Scottie found enough to keep Ned Gunliffe busy about the place for the next day or two, although all the other men were kept hard at work on the hills amongst the sheep.
He saw a good deal of Ess one way and another, and Ess had an uneasy feeling that he was making chances of speaking to her more than she thought right. She was half inclined to speak to her uncle about it, but a girl shrinks from talking of these things to a man. Men are so dense at times, and inclined to want something more tangible to go on than an inflection of a voice or a sidelong look, although these perhaps speak plainer than words to a woman.
But Ned Gunliffe soon removed any chance of doubt of his feelings. He met Ess after the men had gone to the hills, and there was no one about the place but Blazes, and he asked her point-blank if she would walk over the Ridge with him, as he had something to say.
“Won’t it keep, Ned?” she asked brightly, but with an inward qualm of premonition. She called all the men by their Christian names, on Scottie’s advice. It was obviously ridiculous to speak to “Mr. Blazes” and “Mr. Whip” or even “Mr. Thompson,” and she could not use the Mr. to one without using it to all. “I’m rather busy this morning. I have to – a lot of things to do.”
“I won’t keep you ten minutes,” he said eagerly. “Just stroll across to the edge of the Ridge with me. It’s something rather important.”
After that she could not very well refuse without being downright rude, she decided, so she turned to walk with him with a quiet “Very well, Ned.”
They walked in silence to the edge of the Ridge, where it ran down into the valley below, and stood there a moment looking along it and out across the dusty plains shining in the sun.
She tried to stop him speaking after his first few words, but he begged her to let him finish, and went on to pour an impassioned love speech on her troubled ears.
“Stop, stop, please, Ned,” said Ess, when at last he allowed her to speak. “I don’t want to listen to you. It isn’t right for me to, for I can never feel for you in any degree that way. I cannot be any other than a friend.”
“A friend,” he said scornfully. “The same as Whip Thompson, and Darby the Bull, and Blazes, and the rest are your friends. I want more than that, Ess. I want you. I want – ”
She stopped him again with a gesture.
“I can hear nothing more,” she said, with quiet dignity. “You must take my word as final. There can never be anything more between us than there is now.”
“Is there no hope for me?” he said. “I don’t want to press you now, Ess, but perhaps later – ”
“There is no hope,” she said, with an air of finality. “Now, or ever.”
He was silent a moment, fiddling nervously with a button on his coat. She moved as if to turn back, but he stopped her, and burst out suddenly “You’ve given me no reason… Is it – will you tell me if there is anyone else?”
“I think that is more than you have any right to ask,” she said steadily; “but perhaps…” She stopped and thought again with a troubled mind. She felt she would have told him openly that she was pledged to Steve Knight, and that would have settled the thing for good; but Steve had said to say nothing, and her uncle had agreed that it was wiser not to.
“I can only tell you that there is a man I care for more than for any other,” she said at last; “and you must be content with that.”
“Is it Steve Knight?” he shot at her.
She turned without making any answer.
“You can never be held to any word – if there is any word between you – to a man who is an outlaw, and running from the police,” he said hotly.
“That,” she said sharply, “is entirely my own affair. I have mentioned no names, and if you wish to keep any spark of friendship between us, you will let the matter drop now, once and for ever. I have said all that I mean to say.”
She walked back to the yard, Ned Gunliffe striding beside her with a sullen face, but saying nothing more.
She was upset and a good deal afraid that night when she told Scottie something of what had passed, and saw how it disturbed him.
“I wish Steve’s name could have been held out o’ ’t,” he said gruffly. “I dinna just trust that same Ned Gunliffe, and if he thocht it was Steve that was atween you an’ him, an’ he had a chance tae pit Steve oot o’ the road, I’m thinkin’ there wad be a word passed whar it wad dae the maist damage tae the lad.”
“But what could I have done – what can I do now?” she cried, in distress. “Oh, if any harm came to Steve through me it would kill me.”
“Hoot, toot, lassie,” said Scottie, soothingly. “Dinna pit yersel’ aboot. Like enough, Steve is far enough awa’ by this time. His horse has been gone this two days back.”
She worried more than ever about Steve that night, and a talk with Aleck Gault gave her no comfort.
“I can’t tell you anything about him,” said Aleck; “I haven’t seen him since the last time I told you. I can’t go to him, for I’m afraid of being watched there, and of him being found. But he’s all right, never fear. His horse was left where he knows to look for it, and likely enough he’s miles away by now. And you know the trackers are taken off the hills. There’s no fear but what Steve can outwit any white police trooper.”
But Ess, uneasy as she was, would have been doubly so if she had been able to see Ned Gunliffe’s movements that night.
He had caught his horse, and quietly left the Ridge between the fall of dark and the rise of the moon, and now in the bright moonlight he was pressing on over the hills as fast as the rough ground would let him. He went straight and without drawing rein to the spot where Steve and Aleck had met that night – where they had killed the dingo pups – and he halted and dismounted, and searched the ground where they had sat and talked.
He picked up a burnt match, with triumph written on his face. “I couldn’t see their corroboree together,” he muttered, “but I saw them far enough to guess just where they met evidently. Now what is the likeliest spot for him to have gone to hide from here?” He stood and gnawed his underlip in uncertainty for a moment. “He hasn’t gone yet, that’s clear,” he said again. “His horse is still there, so…”
With an impatient oath he turned to his horse and mounted again. “I’ll try the Scoop first. That’s near here, and he could light a fire there without it being seen.”
He rode as near the Scoop as he thought safe, and then left his horse tied to a bush and reconnoitred on foot.
There was nobody in the Scoop; half-a-dozen sheep were foraging there for the scanty herbage, and he knew they would not be there if a man were. The moon was down again by now, and it was a long way back to the Ridge, and he reluctantly turned his horse’s head and abandoned his search for the night.
He was making his way to the hill track between the township and the Ridge, when suddenly his eye caught a quick flash of light on a hillside on his right front.
He pulled up short and sat staring, but there was no further gleam. He thought intently for a moment, and then a look of exultation flashed over his face.
“The old dogger’s hut,” he said triumphantly. “He’s there for a thousand. It hasn’t been used for years back, and it’s so near the township he’d hardly be searched for there. But I must make sure and hurry up about it – it’ll be coming light soon.”
He rode on a few hundred yards with the greatest caution, tied his horse, and set himself to scramble up the hill. It was a stiff climb, and there was light enough to see the dim outlines of the hut when he came to a little spur just below it. He halted and rested there, watching the door which faced him, and when he saw it open he dropped flat and peered close. What he saw brought keen disappointment to him but this quickly gave way to a savage joy, and then, as all the possibilities of his discovery came home to him, he gave a long chuckle of satisfaction.
The door had opened, and a woman – he could see distinctly enough even in the half light that it was a woman, though he could not distinguish who – had stepped out. Then a man had appeared in the doorway, and Ned heard the woman say lightly, “Good night, Steve.”
“Good night – or rather good morning,” came the answer in Steve’s voice.
“See you again to-night – take care of yourself till then,” the woman said, and, with a wave of her hand and flutter of skirts, she was gone round the corner of the hut and into the track that led back towards the township.
“So-ho,” said Ned, softly, as the door closed again. “At the old game again, my bold Fly-by-Night. And that’s what you’re hanging on round here for, when you might be down to the coast and safety by this time. It’s like you to be risking your neck in a noose for the sake of some fool of a woman. Comes up and stays the nights with him evidently. ‘See you again to-night,’ eh? Well, I’ll see if I can’t fix it that you see someone else to-night, and that they see you.”
He slid gently back from his post of observation till he was safe out of sight, and then turned and ran for his horse, and rode his hardest for the Ridge. The heap of stones had been removed from the Axe-Cut, and he was able to get back early enough for breakfast, and to get in without attracting undue attention, although he noticed Aleck Gault look at him sharply as he sauntered in.
Ned Gunliffe turned over several plans in his mind, but the one he decided on called first for an interview with Ess, and it was not till after tea-time that he was able to make the first move in the game. Some of the men came in for the meal, but before sunset went back to the hills to round up the sheep and watch them for the night. Even Scottie had gone off on a round of inspection, and nobody was left about the place except Blazes, Ned Gunliffe, and Darby the Bull. Just before tea a saddle-weary trooper had ridden in and had a meal with the men. Ned Gunliffe left him in conversation with Darby – rather a one-sided conversation it was, as Darby had been warned and re-warned to be careful of what he said to any troopers, and being doubtful of his own abilities in returning answers which would give no information, took the simple plan of giving no answers except Yes and No.
“Roastin’ day to be out in,” said the trooper, affably.
“Yes,” said Darby, cautiously. He had need of his caution. The troopers had discovered that he was the one least skilled in following the trend of their questions, and of understanding the deductions they might draw from his replies. Certainly they had not got much from him up to now, but then at other times there had usually been some of the other men about to relieve Darby of the responsibility of answering questions – a responsibility he had cheerfully left to them. So the trooper eagerly seized on the chance given him by the withdrawal of Ned Gunliffe, the only other man in the hut at the moment beside Darby.
“S’pose,” he said, “you chaps is all as sick as we are o’ bucketing over these hills?”
“Y-e-s,” admitted Darby.
“You know all the country round here well?” asked the trooper.
Darby considered this carefully. “Yes,” he admitted again.
“I dessay now,” he said, looking at Darby with simulated admiration, “a chap like you would know every crack in these hills where a man could stow himself. There’s that place – sort o’ cave – up beyond Split-the-Wind now. Know any more like that?”
Darby shook his head.
The trooper tried another tack. “’Course I’m not on duty now,” he said. “Just dropped in in passin’. I wasn’t sorry to be took off that job. I suppose Steve Knight’s well down to the coast by now. He was makin’ for there, wasn’t he?”
“You go to ’Ell,” said Darby, briskly and cheerfully.
“Well, that’s a nice answer to give a civil question,” said the trooper, indignantly. “D’you s’pose Steve ’imself would talk to a man like that?”
Darby wasn’t quite sure if this came under the heading of a question about Steve. He pondered a moment. It might be so… “You might go to ’Ell,” he said, highly pleased to think of his satisfactory solution of the difficulty. This sort of thing was complicated though, and to stop it he rose and sauntered outside. The trooper walked to the door and sat down where he could keep an eye on him and on Ned Gunliffe, who was talking to Ess at her door.
Ned had seen no sign of Ess when he went out, so he went boldly to the door and knocked.
“I’d just like a word with you, Miss Ess,” he said.
“Yes,” she said doubtfully. “If it’s not about – ”
“It’s not about myself in the first place,” said Ned. “It is about Steve Knight.”
“I have no wish to discuss him,” she said, drawing herself up slightly.
“Neither have I,” he returned. “But I suppose you will admit you are a friend of his, and don’t wish him to come to harm. So,” he added significantly, “you will listen to what I want to say.”
Ess shivered a little at something sinister she fancied she detected in the man’s voice.
“I don’t suppose you know just where Steve is, or why he hasn’t cleared well away by now?” He paused, but as she made no sign of answering, he went on, “I do, and I can tell you both. But before I go further, Miss Ess, I’d like you to understand that I’m not working solely for my own ends in speaking to you about this business. I could have gone straight to the police with my information. I prefer to come to you.”
“Why do you come to me?” she asked, her heart turning cold within her.
“I’ll answer that by asking you a question,” he said. “Would you do anything you could to save him from the police? Anything?”
She groped for his meaning a moment, and began to fancy she could see it, and that he meant to demand herself as the price of his silence.
“I would do anything which I was sure he would wish me to do,” she answered.
“That is hardly the point,” he said, “although I doubt if there is any point he’d stick at your doing to save him.”
“I can’t agree with you,” she said; “but may I ask what all this is leading up to? I’d rather you said plainly what you have to say.”
“Tell me plainly one thing, and I’ll speak straight enough,” he said. “But I won’t unless you satisfy me that there is need for me to prove to you that Steve Knight is a cur and a blackguard.”
That roused her, as he meant it should.
“Steve Knight is more to me than any man will be till I become his wife,” she said hotly. “And so you can understand what I think of a man who uses such words about him – behind his back.”
“I thought so,” he said sadly; “and God knows I’ve no wish to hurt you. But I’m saying nothing about him behind his back I would not say to his face. I’ll do so before the night is over if you like. But, whatever he may be to you, I think I know you well enough to know that when you have heard all I can tell of him you will fling him out of your mind, and that you’ll use worse words to him than I’ve done.”
“This is all rather idle,” she said scornfully. “I am not likely to believe anything you may say against him. You have given me reasons for wishing to lower him in my estimation. You cannot do so.”
“We’ll see,” he said coolly. “I don’t want to hark back and rake up the past records, and the name that Steve Fly-by-Night has here and round about. But perhaps I ought to warn you that although he has many friends, there are none who will deny that his – well, say – inconstancy to his fair ladies is notorious.”
“That may all be,” she said, with white lips; “but that is all past, and if I choose to overlook it, it leaves little room for others to speak.”
“If it were all past – ” said Ned, significantly; then roughly, “See here, Ess, I won’t hint and beat about the bush. I’ve got to speak out, whether you like it or not. Steve Knight is living close to here at this moment, and – he is living with a woman.”
She flinched from him for an instant, but recovered herself. “That,” she said deliberately, “is a lie. And if you think, Ned Gunliffe, you are improving my opinion of you…”
“I’m thinking of nothing of the sort,” he broke in. “And I am doing no more in telling you this for your own sake than any man on Thunder Ridge – than your own uncle – would do. As to it’s being a lie, that is easily proved or disproved. Are you willing for me to prove it?”
“You can’t prove it,” she said shakily. She was sure of Steve, of course, she told herself, but the man seemed so quietly confident. But there might be a mistake somewhere.
“I can prove it,” he returned. “And if you will come with me now – to-night – I will prove it. It will have to be at night, because the woman, whoever she is, leaves him at daybreak to get back to the township, I suppose before she will be noticed.”
She felt weak and sick. She was angry with herself for her doubts, but – her mind went back over the warning her uncle had given her, the half-jesting remarks Steve himself had made – unstable as water – unstable as water. The words rang in her ears. But she would have the proof first, and if it were a lie, she would humble herself, oh so gladly, to Steve for all her doubts.
“Very well, then,” she said, “prove it.”
“You will have to get into your riding things and ride,” he said. “You can trust yourself with me, but if you like, I will give you a pistol to carry, and I’ll ride in front of you all the way.”
She looked at him doubtfully, and wild ideas began to work through her brain.
“If you look at it reasonably,” he said quietly, “you will see that there is nothing to fear from me. I am hardly likely to hurt you. These hills would never hide me if I did. And if I kidnapped you – ” he smiled slightly as her start told him how near the mark of her thoughts his words came, “it is hardly likely to benefit me. But if you are still afraid – there is a trooper over there. We will take him along, although in that case I need hardly warn you that there is likely to be some shooting done, or an arrest made.”
“I’ll come,” she said suddenly, “though I despise myself for my doubts. But I believe you have made some mistake, and it will be a satisfaction to prove it to you as well as myself. Will you promise to let him go free and not divulge his hiding place if you are wrong?”
“Yes,” he said boldly, “I will promise anything if I’m wrong. Dare you promise me as much if I’m right?”
She was silent.
“Ess,” he said earnestly, “believe me I am not only doing this to harm Steve. He could go where he will for me. I’ve no wish to see him again. But it is of you I am thinking. We have all more or less made a jest of Fly-by-Night and his love affairs, or flirtations, or whatever you care to call them. I couldn’t be expected to stand by – especially you knowing what I have told you of my feelings – and see you fooled and made a sport of and a byword in the countryside. None of the men of the Ridge would let him do that and live, and I least of all. And you ought to thank me if I prevent it.”
