The Pioneers

by Katharine Susannah Prichard

  CHAPTER IV

  Mary stood back from the threshold. The fear that had haunted her fordays had suddenly left her.

  At first glance she had seen that the men had rough pieces of wood intheir hands. Her gaze was arrested by the taller, shaggier man who hadsprung forward. He was about to speak roughly, breathlessly; but sheanticipated him. Her eyes flew past him to the man who hung in hisshadow. The gash of a wound was just visible under a grimy piece of ragwrapped across his forehead.

  "He's hurt!" she cried, a sure instinct of protection urging her. "Comein, and I'll bind up your head. It wants water and a clean bandage. Oh,but you look starving, both of you! Have you lost your way in the hills?It's terrible to do that! But you're welcome indeed. Come in and havesomething to eat and rest yourselves."

  The tall man hung in the doorway as though speech and reason haddeserted him. But the other, whose thatch of reddish hair stood upstrangely from the filthy rag that bound his forehead, raised his armand took a step forward, the glare of madness in his eyes. But thatmovement was the last spurt of energy in him. He pitched forward and layacross the threshold.

  "Oh, bring him in and put him on the bed there, and I'll try and dosomething for him," Mary cried, her eyes flying from the fallen body tothe man who stood in the doorway.

  He did as she asked and turned to her with watchful eyes.

  "You hold the child for me while I bathe his head," she said, "it maybring him to."

  She thrust Davey into his arms.

  "Sit down, won't you?" she asked, smiling towards him, as she set somewater on the fire and poured some more into a basin.

  She tore up a piece of old linen and began very gently to bathe theunconscious man's head. He groaned as the pain stirred again. She spoketo him, saying that the wound would mend the sooner for being cleansed,and that it was a wonder he was alive at all with the state it was in.Sitting in Donald's chair, holding Davey in his arms, tightly, clumsily,the tall man watched her; his face turned to, and from her, as his eyeswandered apprehensively about the hut, and to the door.

  "Here, ma'am," he said at last, snarling over the words, "Where's yourman? I've no notion for him to come in and corner us if that's yourgame."

  "He's away," she replied, "and will not be back--perhaps for a day ortwo."

  He stared at her.

  "I should never have thought Davey would be so good with a stranger,"she added, her eyes travelling from Davey's round head on his arm to theman's dark face, and the eyes that leapt and glittered in it. She smiledinto them.

  Davey was crooning and gurgling. He had crooked his little hands intothe stranger's beard, and his mother saw with joy that the stranger heldhis head as though he feared to dislodge those little hands.

  "No games, ma'am," he growled, "or it'll be the worse for you. We'redesperate men. It's our lives we're fighting for."

  "I knew that when I saw you," she said quietly.

  She put some bread on the table, a mug of milk and a piece of cold meat.

  "It is not much to offer you, but it is all I've got," she said. "I wishit were better, because you're wanting good wholesome food just now.I'll make some gruel for your friend and maybe there'll be an eggto-morrow, or I can set snares for a 'possum."

  She took Davey from him and he turned to the table to eat. The man onthe bed moaned wearily. She put Davey into his basket, lined with furryskins, and went to the sick man. The cloths that she had put over it tosoak off the filthy rag which bound his head had served their purpose.She lifted them and the festering gash on his forehead was laid bare.

  Her exclamation, or a twinge of pain as the air touched the wound,sharpened his brain. His eyes opened. He stared with semi-conscious gazea moment. Then with a hoarse oath he sprang at her. His quivering leanfingers gripped her throat and clung tenaciously. The man at the tableflung himself upon him and wrenched his hands away; they struggled for amoment, then the sick man dropped on to the bed again; but he shoutedincoherently, his fever-bright eyes baleful by the flickering firelight.

  "After the gaols, 'n the sea, 'n the bush, to be taken now and likethis, by God--" he panted. "Let me be! Let me be, don't you see it's atrap!"

  "It's all right," the other gasped. "Don't let your tongue run away withyou, Steve."

  "I'll not be taken alive," the man on the bed cried. "Not now, not aftergetting through so far, I'll not be taken alive, 'n the one that triesto take me'll not live either."

  The tall man cursed beneath his breath.

  "The woman means no harm to you," he said.

  "It is the fever troubling him," Mary explained.

  The sick man was already weak again. He lay on the bed limply andmuttering uneasily.

  "You'd best hold him so as I can put on the clean rags," she said.

  She had a length of old linen, smeared with ointment from a smallearthenware jar, in her hands. She laid it over the wound and gently andfirmly bound it into place.

  "That'll be better," she murmured.

  The gaunt man overlooked her, a curious cynical humour in his eyes.

  "You're a brave woman," he said.

  "I'm not, indeed," she replied; but her eyes met his squarely.

  She laughed softly, and told him how afraid she had been earlier in theday.

  At the sound of his mother's voice, Davey piped, wistfully. She wentover to him and rocked his cradle for a moment or two.

  "Hush, Davey," she said talking to him softly in her native Welsh. "Wehave company. There's one hungry man wants his supper, and another man,sick, that thy mother must make gruel for. Do thou sing to thyself, son,till mother is ready to take thee again."

  But Davey had no great notion of the laws of hospitality that separatedhim from the source of all consolation. He wailed incontinently and fromwailing took to uttering his protest with all the strength that was inhim.

  The unkempt stranger munching his dry bread by the table, glancedfurtively at Mary's back as she stooped over the fire stirring thegruel; then he got up and went to the cradle. He lifted the child withawkward carefulness. Davey continued to wail, nevertheless, finding thatit was not the soft covering of his mother's breast that he was laidagainst, but a harsh fabric, smelling of the sea, the earth, dank leavesand a strange personality.

  When she took the gruel from the fire and poured it into a little bowl,her eyes rested on the stranger as he tried to appease Davey.

  He was cradling the child in his arms, and muttering awkwardly,distressfully: "There now! There!" An expression of awe andreflectiveness veiled the sharpness of his features. "There now! Therethen!" he kept saying.

  He looked up to find Davey's mother's eyes resting on him and laughed alittle shamefacedly.

  "I think he's forgetting his company manners, surely," he said.

  "You're the first company he's had to practise on," she replied.

  Her simplicity, and again the clear, shining eyes with their direct andsmiling glance astounded him.

  "You'd best give this to your friend, yourself," she went on, puttingthe bowl on the table. "It seems to trouble him to see a strange face."

  She lifted Davey from the stranger's arms and he took the bowl of gruelto the other man.

  "Be gentle with him and humour him," she warned, "but make him eat allof it. I'll put a blanket here on the hearth for you, and Davey and Iwill sleep at the other end of the room."

  When she had thrown all the spare clothing in the hut on the floorbefore the fire and had spread a patchwork quilt and the rug of 'possumskins at the far end of the room for herself, she sat down on a lowstool near the door and lifted Davey's lips to her breast. She sang ahalf-whispering lullaby, rocking him in her arms. His cries ceased; herthoughts went off into a dreamy psalm of thanksgiving as his soft mouthpulled at her breast.

  She looked up to find the eyes of the tall stranger on her.

  A gaunt, long-limbed man, his clothes hung on his arms and legs as ifthey were the wooden limbs of a scarecrow. The shreds were knotted andtied together, and show
ed bare, shrunken shanks and shins, burnt and cutabout, the dark hair of virility thick on them. His face, lean andleathern, had a curious expression of hunger. The eyes in it held darkmemories, yet a glitter of the sun.

  Mary Cameron vaguely realised that she had known what manner of man thiswas the moment she looked into his eyes. That was why she had not beenafraid when he confronted her on the doorstep; why, too, she had beenable to ask him into her house and treat him as an unexpected, but notunwelcome guest.

  The man on the bed moaned. Suddenly he started up with a shrill scream.

  "A wave! A wave! We'll be swamped."

  His voice fell away, muttering. Then again he was crying:

  "Is that the land, Dan, that line against the sky over there? No, don'ty' see there--there, man. God! Don't say it isn't! How long have we beenin this boat? Seems years ... been seein' the sea, them blasted littleblue waves jumpin' up 'n lickin' my face! Better throw me overboard,Dan. Dan? Better throw me overboard ... can't stand it any longer. Thethirst and the pain in me head, Dan."

  Mary turned pitiful eyes on him, rocking Davey and hushing him gently,as he wakened and began to cry querulously.

  "A sail!" the sick man shouted. "Some blasted clipper for the Port, d'y'think she'll see us, Dan? Are we too far away? Will the waves hide us?"

  He sank back wearily, muttering again.

  "I'll not be caught ... not be taken alive, Dan." He started up cryingangrily. "I'd rather go to hell than back. A-u-gh!"

  A shriek that curdled the blood in her veins, a cry that sped upwards inan uncurling scream of uncontrollable anguish, flew from the sick man.Another and another.

  Mary looked at the man before her questioningly.

  The lines about his nose were bent to a faint and bitter smile; butthere was no smile in his eyes.

  "Thinks he's being flogged," he said. "He would be if we werecaught--taken back again. You know where we came from?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "From the Island," his head was jerked in the direction of the sea."You're the first soul I've spoken to since we escaped except him, andhe's been raving mad most of the time. You and I've got to do sometalking, ma'am."

  He looked about the room, lifted Donald's chair and set it before her.He had recovered his self-possession, was readjusting his plans.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "You know, we meant to get all the food and clothes we wanted from thishut," he said harshly. "We watched you all day from the trees andthought a man would be coming home after sundown. We didn't mean to letyou off if you screamed and brought him before we'd got what wewanted.... The dog's dead. Did you know? I killed him, caught him by thethroat behind the shed?"

  "But that was a pity!" she cried, a note of distress in her voice.

  "Pity?" He leaned forward. "But we can't afford to have pity. I saw yousitting spinning in the sun, singing to the child. My heart turned in meto see you like the women at home. But that would not have saved you.Starving men, fighting for our lives we were. Wild beasts. Pity? Whatpity's been shown to us? Do y' know what it means to have felt the lash,and made your escape from Port Arthur, swimming the bay at Eaglehawks'Neck, wrapped in kelp, cheating the bloodhounds chained a few yards fromeach other across the Neck, and the sentry who'd shoot you like a dog ifhe saw you? Do y' know what it was like, crawling from one end of theIsland to the other in the bush at night with only a native to guide you... not knowing whether he was going to spear you, or run you into thetribe ... making your way in a cockle-shell of a boat in the open seawithout any mariner's tools at all, and only a keg of water and a bit of'possum skin to chew to keep the life in you?

  "No, you don't know! How could you?" He paused a moment, and continueddesperately: "And it's no good my trying to tell you; Steve got a crackon his head the night we escaped. He was mad with thirst in the boat. Iwas near it myself ... and I had all the work to do, pulling andstraining my eyes for the land. We had to keep out of sight of otherboats too, and the Government sloop going between Port Southern andHobart Town, for fear we'd be seen, picked up and sent back. Months ofscheming it took to get so far! I'd picked up the lay of the land nearthe Port and the way to get about in the country beyond, from sailors.It was a man who'd got as far as the coast and had been sent back toldme to look for the muddy river-water in the sea and get up the river atnight. We wanted to make the Wirree because there is a man--lives nearthe river--we'd heard would give us food and shelter, or help us to getaway to the hills.

  "We got to the river and had to be low in the bush all day till nightcame again. Then I went up through the trees to a wooden house we couldsee among other houses that were all mud, or mud and stones. It wasMcNab's shanty. We'd got a sailor to take a letter through to him,saying we were coming and to be on the look out for us. And I'd got amessage from McNab telling us how to get to him, what sort of man he wasto look at, and saying he was willing to help us get away on conditionthat when we got on our feet we'd make it up to him--of course we had topay on the spot too. And we'd got a bit to do it with. I've heard themsay on the Island he's making his fortune, McNab....

  "They say there are men in this country now--well off, holding bigpositions--who pay McNab what he likes because he helped them to getaway. They pay because if they don't--no matter who they are, whatthey're doing--a word from him against them, and back they'd go to thedarbies and the cells. But there's a new game now. A reward is out forthe capture of escaped convicts."

  The weary bitterness of his voice took a sharper edge.

  "It was a hot night; I lay low near McNab's, waiting for the chance totell him we'd come and get the food and clothes he'd promised to haveready for us. It was late.... I waited until there didn't seem anybodyabout the bar and the lights went out--all but the one in a room at theside. Then I got tired of waiting and crept up to the shanty and layflat against the wall, hoping to see if the way was clear and I couldget a word with McNab.... The wall was not thick, and there was a crackin it. I could see into that room with the light. McNab was there, andthe trooper from Port Southern with him. Under his coat, I could makeout his uniform. A bottle of rum made the talk go easy between them, andI heard the plan they were making. It was that M'Laughlin should notkeep too close a watch for 'travellers' from the Island--be too keen ontheir scent--and McNab should play friendly to them and tell M'Laughlinof their whereabouts when they thought they were getting off finely. Hewas to arrest them, and the pair of them would share the reward. Steveand I were expected. We were to be first victims."

  Mary's exclamation of pity and horror comforted him. The compassion ofher eyes banished the evil, mirthless smile from his.

  "I got back to Steve," he said more quietly. "He was almost too ill towalk. He understood though that we would not be troubling McNab, when Itold him what had happened, and was quiet--though he had been moaningand crying all day. It was because of his fever I was afraid to leavehim again, or to try to get food in the township. So we started for theranges. But we hadn't gone far when he gave out and I had to carry him.I wanted to get him away from the tracks where the sound of his ravingcould be heard, and so we've been in the hills ever since--nearly tendays it must be. This was the first clearing we sighted since we saw theWirree and we had to get what we could out of it, or die in our tracks.I'm talking sane enough now, but I was almost as mad as Steve--withhunger and rage at the thought of being taken again and serving to getreward money for McNab, when we came to the door, here...."

  He hesitated.

  "It was the sight of you ... looking like the Mother of God with thechild in your arms ... saved me."

  "I'll give you all the food and clothes I can," she said.

  "Ma'am "--his voice trembled. Then he said roughly: "You're not playingthe Thad McNab game?"

  Her eyes met his.

  "Do you think so?" she asked. "Davey and I, a fine pair we are to play agame with you."

  "You think it's the easiest way to get rid of us--to give us what we askfor?"

  She nodded, smiling.


  "You are afraid, then?"

  "Not for myself--but for you."

  There was no wavering in her eyes. "I was not wanting my husband to findyou here. He might think it was his duty to send word back to the Port.He might...."

  "He'd try."

  "Yes, he'd try. But you've got a sick man to think of and you're at theend of your strength yourself. Donald's a strong man, and he has no lovefor desperate characters." A flickering smile played about her mouth."You must be gone before he returns. You can rest here to-morrow andthen you would be better going. You can read the stick by the door. Thecross marks the day he went, it will be five days since then to-morrow,and he may be back on the sixth, or the seventh day."

  The man looked from her to the sapling pole by the door, counted thenotches on it and his eyes returned to her.

  "You've heard naught good of convicts that you should be treating meso," he said.

  "No, it's terrible tales, I've heard of the things they do, and thethings that are done to them."

  A shadow had fallen on her face.

  "None too terrible for the truth," he said.

  "They tell me--it was a man in Melbourne told me--it is the life makesthem desperate," she cried. "Men who have been sent out for quite littlethings, become--"

  "Dead to shame," he said, "men who would kill a woman who has servedthem as you have served us, for fear when they'd gone she would betraythem--send her men and the black bloodhounds after them, condemn them tohell and torture again. Oh, women have done it, and men like me havemade other women pay."

  A gleam of anger lighted Mary Cameron's eyes.

  "If you believe I would give them the chance of taking you back againthere is Donald's gun on the shelf," she said. "Settle the matter foryourself. But if you will believe the truth it is this: My heart is withyou and all like you."

  The sick man muttered and cried; Davey waking, wailed fretfully.

  "We'll go to-morrow," the stranger said. "You'll give us food andclothing?"

  "Yes," she replied a little wearily. "But will you not rest now? I mustbe sleeping myself because the child will be ill if I'm not careful ofhim."

  The man stood before her abashed, his face working as though he wererestraining the desire to cry as Davey was crying.

  "I can't understand why you should be as you are," he said at length,his voice breaking.

  "Ah, there's reason enough," she sighed, and turned away from him.

  He threw himself down before the fire. But Mary did not sleep when shelay on the floor at the other end of the room, although the regularbreathing of her guest told her when he slept. Once she sat up andlooked at him where he lay stretched before the fire as he had thrownhimself in an attitude of utter exhaustion. The rambling cries, and themoaning of the man on the bed, kept her awake. She found herselflistening to the tangled threads of his raving. The firelight leapt inlong beams across the room. There was no fear but a strange awe in herheart.