Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “You have spirit. If you would still be my mate — —”

  “Your mate! I mean this to be the making of me as an honest man. Here’s the fence. I give you two minutes to strap it down and get us over.”

  Stingaree slid tamely to the ground.

  “Don’t you dare to get through those wires! Strap it from this side with your belt, and strap it quick!”

  And the bushranger obeyed with the same sensible docility, but with his back turned, so that Fergus could not see has face; and it was light enough to see faces now; yet Barmaid refused the visible wires, as she had not refused them all that night of indigo starlight.

  “Coax her, man!” cried Fergus, in the saddle now, and urging the mare with his heels. So Stingaree whispered in the mare’s ear; and with that the strapped wires flew under his captor’s nose, as the rider took the fence, but not the horse.

  At a single syllable the milk-white mare had gone on her knees, like devout lady in holy fane; and as she rose her last rider lay senseless at her master’s feet; but whether from his fall, or from a blow dealt him in the act of falling, the unhappy Fergus never knew. Indeed, knowledge for him was at an end until matches burnt under his nose awakened him to a position of the last humiliation. His throat and chin topped a fence-post, the weight of his body was on chin and throat, while wrists and muscles were lashed at full stretch to the wires on either side.

  “Now I’m going to shoot you like a dog,” said Stingaree. He drew the revolver whose muzzle had pressed into his own neck so short a time before. Yet now it was broad daylight, and the sun coming up in the bound youth’s eyes for the last time.

  “Shoot away!” he croaked, raising the top of his head to speak at all. “I gave you leave before we started. Shoot away!”

  “At ten paces,” said Stingaree, stepping them. “That, I think, is fair.”

  “Perfectly,” replied Fergus. “But be kind enough to make this so-called man of yours hold his foul tongue till I’m out of earshot of you all.”

  Huge Howie had muttered little enough for him, but to that little Stingaree put an instantaneous stop.

  “He’s a dog, to be shot like a dog, but too good a dog for you to blackguard!” cried he. “Any message, young fellow?”

  “Any message, young fellow?”

  “Not through you.”

  “So long, then!”

  “Shoot away!”

  The long barrel was poised as steadily as field-gun on its carriage. Fergus kept his blue eyes on the gleaming ring of the muzzle.

  The hammer fell, the cartridge cracked, and from the lifted muzzle a tiny cloud flowed like a bubble from a pipe. The post quivered under Carrick’s chin, and a splinter flew up and down before his eyes. But that was all.

  “Aim longer,” said he. “Get it over this shot.”

  “I’ll try.”

  But the same thing happened again.

  “Come nearer,” sneered Fergus.

  And Stingaree strode forward with an oath.

  “I was going to give you six of them. But you’re a braver man than I thought. And that’s the lot.”

  The bound youth’s livid face turned redder than the red dawn.

  “Shoot me — shoot!” he shouted, like a lunatic.

  “No, I shall not. I never meant to — I did mean you to sit out six — but you’re the most gallant little idiot I’ve ever struck. Besides, you come from the old country, like myself!”

  And a sigh floated into the keen morning air as he looked his last upon the lad through the celebrated monocle.

  “Then I’ll shoot myself when I’m free,” sobbed Fergus through his teeth.

  “Oh, no, you won’t,” were Stingaree’s last words. “You’ll find it’s not a bit worth while.”

  And when the mounted police and others from Glenranald discovered the trussed youngster, not an hour later, they took the same tone. And one and all stopped and stooped to peer at the two bullet-holes in the post, and at something underneath them, before cutting poor Fergus down.

  Then they propped him up to read with his own eyes the nailed legend which first helped Fergus Carrick to live down the indiscretion of his letter to Largs, and then did more for him in that Colony than letter from Queen Victoria to His Excellency of New South Wales. For it ran: —

  “This is the gamest little cock I have ever struck. He had me captive once, could have shot me over and over again, and all but took me alive. More power to him!

  “Stingaree.”

  To the Vile Dust

  Vanheimert had been in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so far from the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full of sand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm which already shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks there were none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned browner and more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket and ran for the fence as for his life. He had only left it in order to camp where his tree had towered against the stars; it could not be a hundred yards away; and along the fence ran that beaten track to which the bushman turned instinctively in his panic. In a few seconds he was groping with outstretched hands to break the violence of a collision with invisible wires; in a few minutes, standing at a loss, wondering where the wires or he had got to, and whether it would not be wise to retrace his steps and try again. And while he wondered a fit of coughing drove the dust from his mouth like smoke; and even as he coughed the thickening swirl obliterated his tracks as swiftly as heavy snow.

  Speckled eyeballs stood out of a sanded face as Vanheimert saw himself adrift and drowning in the dust. He was a huge young fellow, and it was a great smooth face, from which the gaping mouth cut a slice from jaw to jaw. Terror and rage, and an overpowering passion of self-pity, convulsed the coarse features in turn; then, with the grunt of a wounded beast, he rallied and plunged to his destruction, deeper and deeper into the bush, further and further from the fence.

  The trees were few and mostly stunted, but Vanheimert crashed into more than one upon his headlong course. The sense was choked out of him already; he was fleeing on the wings of the storm; of direction he thought no more. He forgot that the run he had been traversing was at the best abandoned by man and beast; he forgot the “spell” that he had promised himself at the deserted homestead where he had once worked as a lad. He might have remembered that the paddock in which he was burying himself had always been the largest in the district. It was a ten-mile block without subdividing fence or drop of water from end to end. The whole station was a howling desert, little likely to be stocked a second time by enlightened man. But this was the desert’s heart, and into it sped Vanheimert, coated yellow to the eyes and lips, the dust-fiend himself in visible shape. Now he staggered in his stride, now fell headlong to cough and sob in the hollow of his arm. The unfortunate young man had the courage of his desperate strait. Many times he arose and hurled himself onward with curse or prayer; many times he fell or flung himself back to earth. But at length the storm passed over and over his spent members; sand gathered by the handful in the folds of his clothes; the end was as near as end could be.

  It was just then that two riders, who fancied they had heard a voice, struck an undoubted trail before it vanished, and followed it to the great sprawling body in which the dregs of life pulsed feebly. The thing groaned as it was lifted and strapped upon a horse; it gurgled gibberish at the taste of raw spirits later in the same hour. It was high noon before Vanheimert opened a seeing eye and blinked it in the unveiled sun.

  He was lying on a blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees. The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but ev
ery leaf within Vanheimert’s vision bore its little load of sand, and the sand was clotted as though the dust-storm had ended with the usual shower. Vanheimert turned and viewed the sylvan amphitheatre; on its far side were two small tents, and a man in a folding chair reading the Australasian. He closed the paper on meeting Vanheimert’s eyes, went to one of the tents, stood a moment looking in, and then came across the sunlit circle with his newspaper and the folded chair.

  “And how do you feel now?” said he, setting up the chair beside the blanket, but still standing as he surveyed the prostrate man, with dark eyes drawn together in the shade of a great straw sombrero.

  “Fine!” replied Vanheimert, huskily. “But where am I, and who are you chaps? Rabbiters?”

  As he spoke, however, he searched for the inevitable strings of rabbit skins festooned about the tents, and found them not.

  “If you like,” replied the other, frowning a little at the immediate curiosity of the rescued man.

  “I don’t like,” said Vanheimert, staring unabashed. “I’m a rabbiter myself, and know too much. It ain’t no game for abandoned stations, and you don’t go playin’ it in top-boots and spurs. Where’s your skins and where’s your squatter to pay for ‘em? Plucky rabbiters, you two!”

  And he gazed across the open toward the further tent, which had just disgorged a long body and a black beard not wholly unfamiliar to Vanheimert. The dark man was a shade darker as he followed the look and read its partial recognition; but a grim light came with quick resolve, and it was with sardonic deliberation that an eye-glass was screwed into one dark eye.

  “Then what should you say that we are?”

  “How do I know?” cried Vanheimert, turning pale; for he had been one of the audience at Mrs. Clarkson’s concert in Gulland’s store, and in consecutive moments he had recognized first Howie and now Stingaree.

  “You know well enough!”

  And the terrible eye-glass covered him like a pistol.

  “Perhaps I can guess,” faltered Vanheimert, no small brain working in his prodigious skull.

  “Guess, then!”

  “There are tales about a new chum camping by himself — that is, just with one man — —”

  “And what object?”

  “To get away from the world, sir.”

  “And where did you hear these tales?”

  “All along the road, sir.”

  The chastened tone, the anxious countenance, the sudden recourse to the servile monosyllable, were none of them lost on Stingaree; but he himself had once set such a tale abroad, and it might be that the present bearer still believed it. The eye-glass looked him through and through. Vanheimert bore the inspection like a man, and was soon satisfied that his recognition of the outlaw was as yet quite unsuspected. He congratulated himself on his presence of mind, and had sufficient courage to relish the excitement of a situation of which he also perceived the peril.

  “I suppose you have no recollection of how you got here?” at length said Stingaree.

  “Not me. I only remember the dust-storm.” And Vanheimert shuddered where he lay in the sun. “But I’m very grateful to you, sir, for saving my life.”

  “You are, are you?”

  “Haven’t I cause to be, sir?”

  “Well, I dare say we did bring you round between us, but it was pure luck that we ever came across you. And now I should lie quiet if I were you. In a few minutes there’ll be a pannikin of tea for you, and after that you’ll feel a different man.”

  Vanheimert lay quiet enough; there was much to occupy his mind. Instinctively he had assumed a part, and he was only less quick to embrace the necessity of a strictly consistent performance. He watched Stingaree in close conversation with Howie, who was boiling the billy on a spirit-lamp between the two tents, but he watched them with an admirable simulation of idle unconcern. They were talking about him, of course; more than once they glanced in his direction; and each time Vanheimert congratulated himself the more heartily on the ready pretence to which he was committed. Let them but dream that he knew them, and Vanheimert gave himself as short a shrift as he would have granted in their place. But they did not dream it, they were off their guard, and rather at his mercy than he at theirs. He might prove the immediate instrument of their capture — why not? The thought put Vanheimert in a glow; on the blanket where they had laid him, he dwelt on it without a qualm; and the same wide mouth watered for the tea which these villains were making, and for their blood.

  It was Howie who came over with the steaming pannikin, and watched Vanheimert as he sipped and smacked his lips, while Stingaree at his distance watched them both. The pannikin was accompanied by a tin-plate full of cold mutton and a wedge of baking-powder bread, which between them prevented the ravening man from observing how closely he was himself observed as he assuaged his pangs. There was, however, something in the nature of a muttered altercation between the bushrangers when Howie was sent back for more of everything. Vanheimert put it down to his own demands, and felt that Stingaree was his friend when it was he who brought the fresh supplies.

  “Eat away,” said Stingaree, seating himself and producing pipe and tobacco. “It’s rough fare, but there’s plenty of it.”

  “I won’t ask you for no more,” replied Vanheimert, paving the way for his escape.

  “Oh, yes, you will!” said Stingaree. “You’re going to camp with us for the next few days, my friend!”

  “Why am I?” cried Vanheimert, aghast at the quiet statement, which it never occurred to him to gainsay. Stingaree pared a pipeful of tobacco and rubbed it fine before troubling to reply.

  “Because the way out of this takes some finding, and what’s the use of escaping an unpleasant death one day if you go and die it the next? That’s one reason,” said Stingaree, “but there’s another. The other reason is that, now you’re here, you don’t go till I choose.”

  Blue wreaths of smoke went up with the words, which might have phrased either a humorous hospitality or a covert threat. The dispassionate tone told nothing. But Vanheimert felt the eye-glass on him, and his hearty appetite was at an end.

  “That’s real kind of you,” said he. “I don’t feel like running no more risks till I’m obliged. My nerves are shook. And if a born back-blocker may make so bold, it’s a fair old treat to see a new chum camping out for the fun of it!”

  “Who told you I was a new chum?” asked Stingaree, sharply. “Ah! I remember,” he added, nodding; “you heard of me lower down the road.”

  Vanheimert grinned from ear to ear.

  “I’d have known it without that,” said he. “What real bushmen would boil their billy on a spirit-lamp when there’s wood and to spare for a camp-fire on all sides of ‘em?”

  Now, Vanheimert clearly perceived the superiority of smokeless spirit-lamp to tell-tale fire for those in hiding; so he chuckled consumedly over this thrust, which was taken in such excellent part by Stingaree as to prove him a victim to the desired illusion. It was the cleverest touch that Vanheimert had yet achieved. And he had the wit neither to blunt his point by rubbing it in nor to recall attention to it by subtle protestation of his pretended persuasion. But once or twice before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the Englishman in the bush learns to expect from the indigenous buffoon.

  In the night Vanheimert was less easy. He had to sleep in Howie’s tent, but it was some hours before he slept at all, for Howie would remain outside, and Vanheimert longed to hear him snore. At last the rabbiter fell into a doze, and when he awoke the auspicious music filled the tent. He listened on one elbow, peering till the darkness turned less dense; and there lay Howie across the opening of the tent. Vanheimert reached for his thin elastic-sided bushman’s boots, and his hands trembled as he drew them on. He could now see the form of Howie plainly enough as it lay half in the starlight and half in the darkness of the tent. He stepped over it without a mistake, and the ignoble strains dr
oned on behind him.

  The stars seemed unnaturally bright and busy as Vanheimert stole into their tremulous light. At first he could distinguish nothing earthly; then the tents came sharply into focus, and after them the ring of impenetrable trees. The trees whispered a chorus, myriads strong, in a chromatic scale that sang but faintly of the open country. There were palpable miles of wilderness, and none other lodge but this, yet the psychological necessity for escape was stronger in Vanheimert than the bodily reluctance to leave the insecure security of the bushrangers’ encampment. He was their prisoner, whatever they might say, and the sense of captivity was intolerable; besides, let them but surprise his knowledge of their secret, and they would shoot him like a dog. On the other hand, beyond the forest and along the beaten track lay fame and a fortune in direct reward.

  Before departure Vanheimert wished to peep into the other tent, but its open end was completely covered in for the night, and prudence forbade him to meddle with his hands. He had an even keener desire to steal one or other of the horses which he had seen before nightfall tethered in the scrub; but here again he lacked enterprise, fancied the saddles must be in Stingaree’s tent, and shrank from committing himself to an action which nothing, in the event of disaster, could explain away. On foot he need not put himself in the wrong, even with villains ready to suspect that he suspected them.

  And on foot he went, indeed on tiptoe till the edge of the trees was reached without adventure, and he turned to look his last upon the two tents shimmering in the starlight. As he turned again, satisfied that the one was still shut and that Howie still lay across the opening of the other, a firm hand took Vanheimert by either shoulder; otherwise he had leapt into the air; for it was Stingaree, who had stepped from behind a bush as from another planet, so suddenly that Vanheimert nearly gasped his dreadful name.

  “I couldn’t sleep! I couldn’t sleep!” he cried out instead, shrinking as from a lifted hand, though he was merely being shaken playfully to and fro.