Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

“He has!” shouted Engelhardt at the top of his excited voice; “and it’s where you’ll never get, not a man of you! You take that from me!”

  For a short space there was a hush outside. Then arose such a storm of curses and foul threats that the women within put their fingers in their ears. When they withdrew them, all was silence once more, and this time it lasted.

  “They must have gone for something!” exclaimed Naomi.

  “They have,” said the piano-tuner, coolly. “A battering-ram!”

  “Then now’s our time,” cried the girl. “It’s absurd to think of our being cooped up here with any quantity of fire-arms, and no chance of using one of them! First we must light up. Chop that candle in two, Mrs. Potter. It’ll see us through to daybreak, and there’s nothing to keep dark any longer, so the more light now the better. Ah, here’s the tool-box, and yes! here’s the brace and bits. Now this is my little plan.”

  She took the brace, fitted it with the largest bit, and was making for the door.

  “What are you going to do?” said Engelhardt.

  “Make a loop-hole to fire through.”

  “And for them to fire through, too!”

  “Well, that can’t be helped.”

  “Excuse me, I think it can. I’ve been puzzling the thing out for the last hour. I’ve a better plan than that!”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “A tomahawk!”

  She gave him one from the tool-box.

  “May I hack the roofing a bit?”

  “As much as ever you like.”

  “Now a pile of boxes — here — just at the left of the door — and four feet high.”

  The women had it ready in a twinkling. They then helped him to clamber to the top — no easy matter with an arm that was not only useless, but an impediment at every turn. When he stood at his full height his head touched the corrugated iron some twenty inches from the obtuse angle between roof and wall.

  He reached out his hand for the tomahawk, and at the height of his eyes he hacked a slit in the iron, prising the lower lip downward until he could see well out into the yard. Then, a handbreadth above the angle, he made a round hole with the sipke of the tomahawk, and called for a revolver. Naomi produced a pair. He took one, and worked the barrel in the round hole until it fitted loosely enough to permit of training. Then he looked down. There was no sign of the thieves.

  “Have you plenty of cartridges, Miss Pryse?”

  “Any amount.”

  “Well, I don’t expect to spill much blood with them; but, on the other hand, I’m not likely to lose any myself.” The work and the danger had combined to draw his somewhat melancholy spirit out of itself. Or perhaps it was not the danger itself, but the fact that he shared it with Naomi Pryse. Whatever the cause, the young man was more light-hearted than was his wont. “They’ll fire at the spot I fire from,” he explained, with a touch of pride; “they’ll never think of my eyes being two feet higher up, and their bullets must strike the roof at such an angle that no charge on earth would send them through. Mind, it’ll be the greatest fluke if I hit them; but they aren’t to know that; and at any rate I may keep them out of worse mischief for a time.”

  “You may and you will,” said Naomi, enthusiastically. “But still we shall want my loop-hole!”

  “Why so?”

  “The veranda!”

  For some moments Engelhardt said nothing. When at last he found his voice it was to abuse himself and his works with such unnecessary violence that again that soft warm palm lay for an instant across his lips. His pride in his own ingenuity had been cruelly humbled, for he had to confess that he had entirely forgotten to reckon with the store-veranda, a perfect shelter against even the deadliest fusillade from his position.

  “Very well,” he cried at last. “We’ll drill a hole through the door, but we must drill it near the top, and at an angle, so that they can’t put a bullet through it at a distance.”

  “Then let me do it,” said Naomi. She sprang upon the flour-bag, and the hole was quickly made. Still the men did not return. “Lucky thing I remembered the axe in time!” she continued, remaining where she was. “They would have hacked in the door in no time with that. I say, Mr. Engelhardt, this is my post. I mean to stick here.”

  “Never!” he cried.

  “But you can’t work both revolvers.”

  “Well, then, let us change places. You’ll probably shoot straighter than I should. I’ll stand on the flour-bag with the barrel of the other revolver through the hole you’ve made. If any one of them gets in a line with it —— well, there’ll be a villain less!”

  “And Mrs. Potter shall load for us,” cried Naomi. “Do you know how?”

  “Can’t say I do, miss.”

  “Then I’ll show you.”

  This was the work of a moment. The old bush-woman was handy enough, and cool enough too, now that she was getting used to the situation. It was her own idea to bring round the storekeeper’s tall stool, to plant it among the props, within reach of Naomi on the boxes and of Engelhardt on the flour-bag, and to perch herself on its leather top with the box of cartridges in her lap. Thus prepared and equipped, this strange garrison waited for the next assault.

  “Here they come,” cried Naomi at last, with a sudden catch in her voice. “They’re carrying a great log they must have fished out from the very bottom of the wood-heap. All the top part of the heap was small wood, and I guess they’ve wasted some more time in hunting for the axe. But here they are!” She pushed her revolver through the slit in the roof, and the sharp report rang through the store.

  “Hit anybody?” said Engelhardt next moment.

  “No. They’re stopping to fire back. Ah, you were right.”

  As she spoke there was a single report, followed by three smart raps on the sloping roof. The bullet had ricochetted like a flat stone flung upon a pond. Another and another did the same, and Naomi answered every shot.

  “For God’s sake take care!” cried the piano-tuner.

  “I am doing so.”

  “Hit any one yet?”

  “Not yet; it’s impossible to aim; and they’ve never come nearer than the well-palings. Ah!”

  “What now?”

  “They’re charging with the log.”

  Engelhardt slipped his revolver into his pocket, and grasped the shelf that jutted out over the lintel. He felt that the shock would be severe, and so it was. It came with a rush of feet and a volley of loud oaths — a crash that smashed the lock and brought three of the clothes-props clattering to the ground. But those secured by gimlet and bradawl still held; and though the lower part of the door had given an inch the upper fitted as close as before, and the hinges were as yet uninjured.

  “One more does it!” cried Bill. “One more little rush like the last, and then, by God, if we don’t make the three of you wish you was well dead, send me to quod again for ten year! Aha, you devil with the pistol! Very nice you’d got it arranged, but it don’t cover us here. No, no, we’ve got the bulge on you now, you swine you! And you can’t hit us, neither! We’re going to give you one chance more when we’ve got our breath — just one, and then — —”

  By holding on to the shelf when the crash came Engelhardt had managed to stand firm on the flour-bag. Seeing that the door still held, though badly battered, he had put his eye to the loop-hole bored by Naomi, and it had fallen full on Bill. A more bestial sight he had never seen, not even in the earlier hours of that night. The bloated face was swimming with sweat, and yet afire with rage and the lust for blood. The cross-eyes were turned toward the holes in the roof, hidden from them by the veranda, and the hairy fist with the four fingers was being savagely shaken in the same direction. The man was standing but a foot from the door, and when Engelhardt removed his eye and slipped his pistol-barrel in the place, he knew that it covered his midriff, though all that he could see through the half-filled hole was a fragment of the obscene, perspiring face. It was enough to show him the ludicrous change of ex
pression which followed upon a sudden lowering of the eyes and a first glimpse of the protruding barrel. Without a moment’s hesitation Engelhardt pressed the trigger while Bill was stupidly repeating:

  “And then — and then — —”

  A flash cut him short, and as the smoke and the noise died away, Engelhardt, removing the pistol once more and applying his eye, saw the wounded brute go reeling and squealing into the moonshine with his hand to his middle and the blood running over it. To the well-palings he reeled, dropping on his knees when he got there, but struggling to his feet and running up and down and round and round like a mad bull, still screaming and blaspheming at the top of his voice, and with the blood bubbling over both his hands, which never ceased to hug his wound. His mates rushed up to him, but he beat them off, cursing them, spitting at them, and covering them with blood as he struck at them with his soaking fists. It was their fault. They should have let him have his way. He would have done for that hell-begotten swine who had now done for him. It was they who had killed him — his own mates — and he told them so with shrieks and curses, varied with sobs and tears, and yet again with wild shots from a revolver which he plucked from his belt. But he dropped the pistol after madly discharging it twice, and clapping his hand to his middle, as though he could only live by pressing the wound with all his force, he rushed after them, foaming at the mouth and squirting blood at every stride. At last he seemed to trip, and he fell forward in a heap, but turned on one side, his knees coming up with a jerk, his feet treading the air as though running still. And for some seconds they so continued, like the screws of a foundering steamer; then he rolled over heavily; his two companions came up at a walk; one of them touched him with his foot; and Engelhardt stepped down from the flour-bag with a mouth that had never relaxed, and a frown that had never gone.

  Naomi was no longer standing on the boxes; but she was sitting on them, with her face in her hands; and in the light of the two candle-ends, Mrs. Potter was watching her with a white dazed face.

  “Cheer up!” said Engelhardt. “The worst is over now.”

  “Is he dead?” said Naomi, uncovering her face.

  “As dead as a man can be.”

  “And you shot him?”

  She knew that he had; but the thing seemed incredible as she sat and looked at him; and by the time it came fully home to her, the little musician was inches taller in her eyes.

  “Yes, I shot the brute; and I’ll shoot that shearer, too, if I get half a chance.”

  Naomi felt nervous about it, and sufficiently shocked. She was dubiously remarking that they had not committed murder, when she was roughly interrupted.

  “Haven’t they!”

  “Whom have they murdered?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I know!” cried Mrs. Potter, with sudden inspiration; but even as they looked at her, a voice was heard shouting from a respectful distance outside.

  “We’re going,” it cried. “We’ve had enough of this, me and Simons have. Only when they find that chap in the paddock, recollect it was Bill that hung him. But for us he’d have hung you, too!”

  They listened very closely, but they heard no more. Then Naomi stood up to look through the slit in the roof.

  “The yard is empty,” she cried. “Their horses are gone! Oh, Mr. Engelhardt — Mr. Engelhardt — we are saved!”

  CHAPTER XVI IN THE MIDST OF DEATH

  The candle-ends had burnt out in the store; the moon no longer shone in through the skylight; but the latter was taking new shape, and a harder outline filled with an iron-gray that whitened imperceptibly, like a man’s hair. The strange trio within sat still and silent, watching each other grow out of the gloom like figures on a sensitive film. The packet of meat and bread was reduced to a piece of paper and a few crumbs; the little flask was empty, and the water-bag half its former size; but now that all was over, the horror of the night lay heavier upon them than during the night itself. It was Naomi who broke the long silence at last.

  “They have evidently gone,” she said. “Don’t you think we might venture now?”

  “It is for you to decide,” said Engelhardt.

  “What do you think, Mrs. Potter?”

  “If you ask me, Miss Naomi, I think it’s beneath us to sit here another minute for a couple of rascals who will be ten miles away by this time.”

  “Then let us go. I will take the Winchester, and if they are still about we must just slip in again quicker than we came out. But I think it’s good enough to chance.”

  “So do I,” said the piano-tuner, “most decidedly.”

  “Then down with the props. They have served us very well, and no mistake! You must keep them in your kitchen, Mrs. Potter, as a trophy for all time.”

  The old woman made no reply. Of what she was thinking none ever knew. Her life had run in a narrow, uneventful groove. Its sole adventure was probably the one now so nearly at an end. Ten years ago she had been ear-witness of a somewhat similar incident. And now she had played a part, and no small part, in another and a worse. At her age she might have come out shaken and shattered to the verge of imbecility, after such a night. Or she might have felt inordinately proud of her share in the bushrangers’ repulse. But when at last the battered door stood wide open, and the keen morning air chilled their faces, and the red morning sky met their eyes, the old woman looked merely sad and thoughtful, and years older since the day before. Her expression touched Naomi. Once more she threw her young arms about the wrinkled neck, and left kisses upon the rough cheek, and words of grateful praise in the old ears. Meanwhile Engelhardt had pushed past them both and marched into the middle of the yard.

  “It’s all right, I think,” said he, standing purposely between the women and the hideous corpse by the well-palings. “Yes, the coast is clear. But there’s the horse you rode, Mrs. Potter, and Bill’s horse, too, apparently, tied side by side to the fence.”

  “May God forgive them all,” said Mrs. Potter, gravely, as she walked across the yard at Naomi’s side.

  They were the last words she ever uttered. As she spoke, the crack of a rifle, with the snap of a pistol before and after, cut the early stillness as lightning cuts the sky. Naomi wheeled round and levelled her Winchester at the two men who were running with bent backs from a puff of smoke to a couple of horses tethered among the pines beyond kitchen and wood-heap. She sighted the foremost runner, but never fired. A heavy fall at her side made her drop the Winchester and turn sharply round. It was Mrs. Potter. She was lying like a log, with her brave old eyes wide open to the sky, and a bullet in her heart.

  “Take me away,” said the girl, faintly, as she got up from her knees. “I can bear no more.”

  “There are the horses,” answered the piano-tuner, pointing to the two that were tied up to the fence. “I should dearly like to give chase!”

  “No, no, no!” cried Naomi, in an agony. “Hasn’t there been enough bloodshed for one night? We will ride straight to the shed. They have taken the very opposite direction. Let us start at once!”

  “In an instant,” he said, and ran indoors for something to throw over the dead woman. The girl was again kneeling beside her, when he came back with a table-cloth. And she was crying bitterly when, a minute later, he slipped his left hand under her foot and helped her into the saddle.

  They never drew rein until the long, low wool-shed was well in sight. The sun was up. It was six o’clock. They could see the shearers swarming to the shed like bees to a hive. The morning air was pungent as spiced wine. Some color had come back to Naomi’s cheeks, and it was she who first pulled up, forcing Engelhardt to do the same.

  “Friday morning!” she said, walking her horse. “Can you realize that you only came last Saturday night?”

  “I cannot.”

  “No more can I! We have been through so much — —”

  “Together.”

  “Together and otherwise. I think you must have gone through more than I can guess, when you were lost in Top S
crubby, and when you fell in with those fiends. Will you tell me all about it some time or other?”

  “I’m afraid there will be no opportunity,” said Engelhardt, speaking with unnatural distinctness. “I must be off to-day.”

  “To-day!”

  Her blank tone thrilled him to the soul.

  “Of course,” he said, less steadily. “Why not? I did my best to get away the night before last. Thank God I didn’t succeed in that!”

  “Why did you go like that?”

  “You know why.”

  “I know why! What do you mean? How can I know anything?”

  “Very easily,” he bitterly replied, staring rigidly ahead with his burning face. “Very easily indeed, when I left you that letter!”

  “What letter, Mr. Engelhardt?”

  “The awful nonsense I was idiot enough to slip into your book!”

  “The book I was reading?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I have never had your letter. I haven’t opened that book since the day before yesterday, though more than once I have taken it up with the intention of doing so.”

  “Well, thank Heaven for that!”

  “But why?”

  “Because I said — —”

  “Well, what did you say?”

  She caught his bridle, and, by stopping both horses, forced him to face her at last.

  “Surely you can guess? I had just got to know about Tom Chester, and I felt there was no hope for me, so I thought — —”

  “Stop! what had you got to know about Tom Chester, please?”

  “That he cared for you.”

  “Indeed! To me that’s a piece of news. Mind, I care for him very much as a friend — as a hand.”

  “Then you don’t — —”

  “No, indeed I don’t.”

  “Oh, Naomi, what am I to say? In that letter I said it all — when I had no hope in my heart. And now — —”

  “And now you have called that letter awful nonsense, and yourself an idiot for writing it!”

  She was smiling at him — her old, teasing smile — across the gap between their horses. But his eyes were full of tears.