Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “And are you glad to come away with Gwynneth, darling?”

  “I should think I are; jolly glad; but I thought there was anunner lady too?”

  “We shall find her where we are going. Do you know where we are going, Georgie?”

  “Course I do. We’re goin’ to London to see the Queen. I wish we would soon be there!”

  “So we shall, Georgie.”

  “In a minute?”

  “No, not in a minute; we have to go in the train first. Have you ever seen a real train, Georgie?”

  “No, never. I know I haven’t,” Georgie averred. “You are kind to take me in one! I do love you, I say!”

  “Do you, darling?”

  “Yes, really. I love you bestest in the world. I know I do!”

  They were entering Lakenhall, and it was quite dark in the fly; but now Georgie knew that Gwynneth was crying, for she was kissing him at the same time, and as he never had been kissed before.

  “And you always will, Georgie — you always will?”

  “Course I will,” said Georgie, gaily.

  “And go to school when Gwynneth sends you, and turn into a great strong man, and be good to poor Gwynneth then?”

  “Gooder’n all the world,” said Georgie.

  THE END

  AT LARGE

  CONTENTS

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  I

  A NUCLEUS OF FORTUNE

  A hooded wagon was creeping across a depressing desert in the middle of Australia; layers of boxes under the hood, and of brass-handled, mahogany drawers below the boxes, revealed the licensed hawker of the bush. Now, the hawker out there is a very extensive development of his prototype here at home; he is Westbourne Grove on wheels, with the prices of Piccadilly, W. But these particular providers were neither so universal nor so exorbitant as the generality of their class. There were but two of them; they drove but two horses; and sat shoulder to shoulder on the box.

  The afternoon was late; all day the horses had been crawling, for the track was unusually heavy. There had been recent rains; red mud clogged the wheels at every yard, and clung to them in sticky tires. Little pools had formed all over the plain; and westward, on the off-side of the wagon, these pools caught the glow of the setting sun, and filled with flame. Far over the horses’ ears a long low line of trees was visible; otherwise the plain was unbroken; you might ride all day on these plains and descry no other horse nor man.

  The pair upon the box were partners. Their names were Flint and Edmonstone. Flint was enjoying a senior partner’s prerogative, and lolling back wreathed in smoke. His thick bare arms were idly folded. He was a stout, brown, bearded man, who at thirty looked many years older; indolence, contentment, and goodwill were written upon his face.

  The junior partner was driving, and taking some pains about it — keeping clear of the deep ruts, and pushing the pace only where the track was good. He looked twenty years Flint’s junior, and was, in fact, just of age. He was strongly built and five-feet-ten, with honest gray eyes, fair hair, and an inelastic mouth.

  Both of these men wore flannel shirts, buff cord trousers, gray felt wideawakes; both were public-school men, drawn together in the first instance by that mutually surprising fact, and for the rest as different as friends could be. Flint had been ten years in the Colonies, Edmonstone not quite ten weeks. Flint had tried everything, and failed; Edmonstone had everything before him, and did not mean to fail. Flint was experienced, Edmonstone sanguine; things surprised Edmonstone, nothing surprised Flint. Edmonstone had dreams of the future, and golden dreams; Flint troubled only about the present, and that very little. In fine, while Edmonstone saw licensed hawking leading them both by a short cut to fortune, and earnestly intended that it should, Flint said they would be lucky if their second trip was as successful as their first, now all but come to an end.

  The shadow of horses and wagon wavered upon the undulating plain as they drove. The shadows grew longer and longer; there was a noticeable change in them whenever young Edmonstone bent forward to gaze at the sun away to the right, and then across at the eastern sky already tinged with purple; and that was every five minutes.

  “It will be dark in less than an hour,” the lad exclaimed at last, in his quick, anxious way; “dark just as we reach the scrub; we shall have no moon until eleven or so, and very likely not strike the river to-night.”

  The sentences were punctuated with sharp cracks of the whip. An answer came from Edmonstone’s left, in the mild falsetto that contrasted so queerly with the bodily bulk of Mr. John Flint, and startled all who heard him speak for the first time.

  “My good fellow, I implore you again to spare the horseflesh and the whipcord — both important items — and take it easy like me.”

  “Jack,” replied Edmonstone warmly, “you know well enough why I want to get to the Murrumbidgee to-night. No? Well, at all events, you own that we should lose no time about getting to some bank or other?”

  “Yes, on the whole. But I don’t see the good of hurrying on now to reach the township at an unearthly hour, when all the time we might camp in comfort anywhere here. To my mind, a few hours, or even a night or two, more or less — —”

  “Are neither here nor there? Exactly!” broke in Edmonstone, with increasing warmth. “Jack, Jack! the days those very words cost us! Add them up — subtract them from the time we’ve been on the roads — and we’d have been back a week ago at least. I shall have no peace of mind until I step out of the bank, and that’s the truth of it.” As he spoke, the fingers of Edmonstone’s right hand rested for a moment, with a curious, involuntary movement, upon his right breast.

  “I can see that,” returned Flint, serenely. “The burden of riches, you see — and young blood! When you’ve been out here as long as I have, you’ll take things easier, my son.”

  “You don’t understand my position,” said Edmonstone. “You laugh when I tell you I came out here to make money: all the same, I mean to do it. I own I had rotten ideas about Australia — all new chums have. But if I can’t peg out my claim and pick up nuggets, I’m going to do the next best thing. It may be hawking and it may not. I mean to see. But we must give the thing a chance, and not run unnecessary risks with the gross proceeds of our very first trip. A hundred and thirty pounds isn’t a fortune; but it may be the nucleus of one; and it’s all we’ve got between us in this world meanwhile.”

  “My dear old boy, I’m fully alive to it. I only don’t see the point of finishing the trip at a gallop.”

  “The point is that our little all is concealed about my person,” said Edmonstone, grimly.

  “And my point is that it and we are absolutely safe. How many more times am I to tell you so?” And there was a squeak of impatience in the absurd falsetto voice, followed by clouds of smoke from the bearded lips.

  Edmonstone drove some distance without a word.

  “Yet only last week,” he remarked at length, “a store was stuck up on the Darling!”

  “What of that?”

  “The storekeeper was robbed of every cent he had.”

  “I know.”

  “Yet they shot him dead in the end.”

  “And they’ll swing for it.”

  “Meanwhile they’ve shown clean heels, and nobody knows where they are — or are not.”

  “Consequently you expect
to find them waiting for us in the next clump, eh?”

  “No, I don’t. I only deny that we are absolutely safe.”

  Flint knocked out his pipe with sudden energy.

  “My dear boy,” cried he, “have I or have I not been as many years out here as you’ve been weeks? I tell you I was in the mounted police, down in Vic, all through the Kelly business; joined in the hunt myself; and back myself to know a real bushranger when I see him or read about him. This fellow who has the cheek to call himself Sundown is not a bushranger at all; he and his mates are mere robbers and murderers. Ned Kelly didn’t go shooting miserable storekeepers; and he was the last of the bushrangers, and is likely to remain the last. Besides, these chaps will streak up-country, not down; but, if it’s any comfort to you, see here,” and Flint pocketed his pipe, made a long arm overhead and reached a Colt’s revolver from a hook just inside the hood of the wagon, “let this little plaything reassure you. What, didn’t you know I was a dead shot with this? My dear chap, I wasn’t in the mounted police for nothing. Why, I could pick out your front teeth at thirty yards and paint my name on your waistcoat at twenty!”

  Flint stroked the glittering barrel caressingly, and restored the pistol to its hook: there was a cartridge in every chamber.

  The other said nothing for a time, but was more in earnest than ever when he did speak.

  “Jack,” said he, “I can only tell you this: if we were to lose our money straight away at the outset I should be a lost man. How could we go on without it — hawking with an empty wagon? How could I push, push, push — as I’ve got to — after losing all to start with? A hundred pounds! It isn’t much, but it is everything to me — everything. Let me only keep it a bit and it shall grow under my eyes. Take it away from me and I am done for — completely done for.”

  He forgot that he was using the first person singular instead of plural; it had become natural to him to think out the business and its possibilities in this way, and it was no less in Flint’s nature to see no selfishness in his friend’s speech. Flint only said solemnly:

  “You shouldn’t think so much about money, old chap.”

  “Money and home!” exclaimed Dick Edmonstone in a low, excited tone. “Home and money! It’s almost all I do think about.”

  Jack Flint leaned forward, and narrowly scanned the face of his friend; then lay back again, with a light laugh of forced cheerfulness.

  “Why, Dick, you speak as though you had been exiled for years, and it’s not three months since you landed.”

  Dick started. It already seemed years to him.

  “Besides,” continued the elder man, “I protest against any man growing morbid who can show a balance-sheet like ours. As to home-sickness, wait until you have been out here ten years; wait until you have tried digging, selecting, farming, droving; wait until you have worn a trooper’s uniform and a counter jumper’s apron, and ridden the boundaries at a pound a week, and tutored Young Australia for your rations. When you have tried all these things — and done no good at any of ‘em, mark you — then, if you like, turn home-sick.”

  The other did not answer. Leaning forward, he whipped up the horses, and gazed once more towards the setting sun. His companion could not see his face; but trouble and anxiety were in that long, steady, westward gaze. He was very young, this lad Edmonstone — young even for his years. Unlike his mate, his thoughts were all of the past and of the future; both presented happy pictures; so happy that his mind would fly from the one to the other without touching the present. And so he thought now, gazing westward, of home, and of something sweeter than home itself; and he blended that which had gone before with that which was yet to come; and so wonderful was the harmony between these two that to-day was entirely forgotten. Then the sun swung half-way below the dark line of the horizon; a golden pathway shone across the sandy track right to the wheels of the wagon; the dark line of scrub, now close at hand, looked shadowy and mysterious; the sunset colours declared themselves finally in orange and pink and gray, before the spreading purple caught and swallowed them. The dreamer’s face grew indistinct, but his golden dreams were more vivid than before.

  A deadly stillness enveloped the plain, making all sounds staccato: the rhythmical footfall of the horses, the hoarse notes of crows wheeling through the twilight like uncanny heralds of night, the croaking of crickets in the scrub ahead.

  Dick was recalled to the antipodes by a mild query from his mate.

  “Are you asleep, driver?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t noticed any one ahead of us this afternoon on horseback?”

  “No; why?”

  “Because here are some one’s tracks,” said Flint, pointing to a fresh horse-trail on the side of the road.

  Edmonstone stretched across to look. It was difficult in the dusk to distinguish the trail, which was the simple one of a horse walking.

  “I saw no one,” he said; “but during the last hour it would have been impossible to see any one, as close to the scrub as we are now. Whoever it is, he must have struck the track hereabouts somewhere, or we should have seen his trail before sundown.”

  “Whoever it is,” said Flint, “we shall see him in a minute. Don’t you hear him? He is still at a walk.”

  Edmonstone listened, and the measured beat of hoofs grew upon his ear; another moment and a horseman’s back was looming through the dusk — very broad and round, with only the crown of a wideawake showing above the shoulders. As the wagon drew abreast his horse was wheeled to one side, and a hearty voice hailed the hawkers:

  “Got a match, mateys? I’ve used my last, and I’m just weakening for a smoke.”

  “Here’s my box,” said Dick, pulling up. “Take as many as you like.”

  And he dropped his match-box into a great fat hand with a wrist like a ship’s cable, and strong stumpy fingers: it was not returned until a loaded pipe was satisfactorily alight; and as the tobacco glowed in the bowl the man’s face glowed in company. It was huge like himself, and bearded to the eyes, which were singularly small and bright, and set very close together.

  “I don’t like that face,” said Dick when the fellow had thanked him with redoubled heartiness, and ridden on.

  “It looked good-natured.”

  “It was and it wasn’t. I don’t want to see it again; but I shall know it if ever I do. I had as good a look at him as he had at us.”

  Flint made no reply; they entered the forest of low-sized malee and pine in silence.

  “Jack,” gasped Edmonstone, very suddenly, after half-an-hour, “there’s some one galloping in the scrub somewhere — can’t you hear?”

  “Eh?” said Flint, waking from a doze.

  “Some one’s galloping in the scrub — can’t you hear the branches breaking? Listen.”

  “I hear nothing.”

  “Listen again.”

  Flint listened intently.

  “Yes — no. I thought for an instant — but no, there is no sound now.”

  He was right: there was no sound then, and he was somewhat ruffled.

  “What are you giving us, Dick? If you will push on, why, let’s do it; only we do one thing or the other.”

  Dick whipped up the horses without a word. For five minutes they trotted on gamely; then, without warning, they leaped to one side with a shy that half-overturned the wagon.

  Side by side, and motionless in the starlight, sat two shadowy forms on horseback, armed with rifles, and masked to the chin.

  “Hands up,” cried one of them, “or we plug.”

  II

  SUNDOWN

  There was no time for thought, much less for action, beyond that taken promptly by Flint, who shot his own hands above his head without a moment’s hesitation, and whispered to Dick to do the same. Any other movement would have been tantamount to suicide. Yet it was with his eyes open and his head cool that Flint gave the sign of submission.

  The horsemen sat dark and motionless as the trees of the sleeping forest around
them. They were contemplating the completeness of their triumph, grinning behind their masks.

  Flint saw his chance. Slowly, very slowly, his left arm, reared rigidly above his head, swayed backward; his body moved gently with his arm; his eyes never left the two mysterious mounted men.

  He felt his middle finger crowned by a cool ring. It was the muzzle of his precious Colt. One grasp, and at least he would be armed.

  He turned his wrist for the snatch, gazing steadily all the while at the two vague shadows of men. Another second — and a barrel winked in the starlight, to gleam steadily as it covered Flint’s broad chest. He who had called upon them to throw up their hands spoke again; his voice seemed to come from the muzzle of the levelled rifle.

  “Stretch an inch more, you on the near-side, and you’re the last dead man.”

  Flint shrugged his shoulders. The game was lost. There was no more need to lose his head than if the game had been won. There was no need at all to lose his life.

  “I give you best,” said he, without the least emotion in his extraordinary voice.

  “Fold your arms and come down,” said the man with the rifle, his finger on the trigger.

  Flint did as he was ordered.

  “The same — you with the reins.”

  Edmonstone’s only answer was a stupefied stare.

  “Jump down, my friend, unless you want helping with this.”

  Dick obeyed apathetically; he was literally dazed. At a sign from the man with the rifle he took his stand beside Flint; three paces in front of the luckless pair shone the short barrel of the Winchester repeater. The other robber had dismounted, and was standing at the horses’ heads.

  In this position, a moment’s silence fell upon the four men, to be broken by the coarse, grating laughter of a fifth. Edmonstone turned his head, saw another horseman issuing from the trees, and at once recognised the burly figure of the traveller who had borrowed his match-box less than an hour before. At that moment, and not until then, Dick Edmonstone realised the situation. It was desperate; all was lost! The lad’s brain spun like a top: reason fled from it; his hand clutched nervously at the pocket where the money was, and he swore in his heart that if that went, his life might go with it.