“Exactly!” quoth Kentish. “And there’s going to be another this afternoon!”
Stingaree hurled the stump of his cigar into the scrub, and without a word the villain was born again, with his hard eyes, his harder mouth, his sinister scowl, his crag of a chin.
“So you come back to that,” he cried, harshly. “I thought you had more sense; you will make me tie you up before your time.”
“You may do exactly what you like,” retorted Kentish, a galling scorn in his unaltered voice. “Only, before you do it, you may as well know who I am.”
“My good sir, do you suppose I care who you are?” asked Stingaree, with an angry laugh: and his anger is the rarest thing in all his annals.
“I am quite sure you don’t,” responded Kentish. “But you may as well know my name, even though you never heard it before.” And he gave it with a touch of triumph, not for one moment to be confounded with a natural pride.
The bushranger stared him steadily in the eyes; his hand had dropped once more upon the butt of his revolver. “No; I never did hear it before,” he said.
“I’m not surprised,” replied the other. “I was a new member when you were turned out of the club.” Stingaree’s hand closed: his eyes were terrible. “And yet,” continued Kentish, “the moment I saw you at close quarters in the road I recognized you as — —”
“Stingaree!” cried the bushranger, on a rich and vibrant note. “Let the other name pass your lips — even here — and it’s the last word that ever will!”
“Very well,” said Mr. Kentish, with his unaffected shrug. “But, you see, I know all about you.”
“You’re the only man who does, in all Australia!” exclaimed the outlaw, hoarsely.
“At present! I sha’n’t be the only man long.”
“You will,” said Stingaree through teeth and mustache; and he leaned over, revolver in hand. “You’ll be the only man ever, because, instead of tying you up, I’m going to shoot you.”
Kentish threw up his head in sharp contempt.
“What!” said he. “Sitting?”
Stingaree sprang to his feet in a fury. “No; I have a brace!” he cried, catching the pack-horse. “You shall have the other, if it makes you happy; but you’ll be a dead man all the same. I can handle these things, and I shall shoot to kill!”
“Then it’s all up with you,” said Kentish, rising slowly in his turn.
“All up with me? What the devil do you mean?”
“Unless I am at a certain place by a certain time, with or without these letters that are not yours, another letter will be opened.”
Stingaree’s stare gradually changed into a smile.
“A little vague,” said he, “don’t you think?”
“It shall be as plain as you please. The letter I mean was scribbled on the coach before I got down. It will only be opened if I don’t return. It contains the name you can’t bear to hear!”
There was a pause. The afternoon sun was sinking with southern precipitancy, and Kentish had got his back to it by cool intent. He studied the play of suppressed mortification and strenuous philosophy in the swarthy face warmed by the reddening light; and admired the arduous triumph of judgment over instinct, even as a certain admiration dawned through the monocle which insensibly focussed his attention.
“And suppose,” said Stingaree— “suppose you return empty as you came?” A contemptuous kick sent a pack of letters spinning.
“I should feel under no obligation to keep your secret.”
“And you think I would trust you to keep it otherwise?”
“If I gave you my word,” said Kentish, “I know you would.”
Stingaree made no immediate answer; but he gazed in the sun-flayed face without suspicion.
“You wouldn’t give me your word,” he said at last.
“Oh, yes, I would.”
“That you would die without letting that name pass your lips?”
“Unless I die delirious — with all my heart. I have as much respect for it as you.”
“As much!” echoed the bushranger, in a strange blend of bitterness and obligation. “But how could you explain the bags? How could you have taken them from me?”
Kentish shrugged once more.
“You left them — I found them. Or you were sleeping, but I was unarmed.”
“You would lie like that — to save my name?”
“And a man whom I remember perfectly . . .”
Stingaree heard no more; he was down on his knees, collecting the letters into heaps and shovelling them into the bags. Even the copy of Punch and the loose wrapper went in with the rest.
“You can’t carry them,” said he, when none remained outside. “I’ll take them for you and dump them on the track.”
“I have to pass the time till midnight. I can manage them in two journeys.”
But Stingaree insisted, and presently stood ready to mount his mare.
“You give me your word, Kentish?”
“My word of honor.”
“It is something to have one to give! I shall not come back this way; we shall have the Clear Corner police on our tracks by moonlight, and the more they have to choose from the better. So I must go. You have given me your word; you wouldn’t care to give me — —”
But his hand went out a little as he spoke, and Kentish’s met it seven-eights of the way.
“Give this up, man! It’s a poor game, when all’s said; do give it up!” urged the man of the world with the warmth of a lad. “Come back to England and — —”
But the hand he had detained was wrenched from his, and, in the pink sunset sifted through the pines, Stingaree vaulted into his saddle with an oath.
“With a price on my skin!” he cried, and galloped from the gully with a bitter laugh.
And in the moonlight sure enough came bobbing horsemen, with fluttering pugarees and short tunics with silver buttons; but they saw nothing of the missing passenger, who had carried the bags some distance down the road, and had found them quite a comfortable couch in a certain box-clump commanding a sufficient view of the road. Nevertheless, when the little coach came swaying on its leathern springs, its scarlet enamel stained black as ink in the moonshine, he was on the spot to stop it with uplifted arms.
“Don’t shoot!” he cried. “I’m the passenger you put down this afternoon.” And the driver nearly tumbled from his perch.
“What about my mail-bags?” he recovered himself enough to ask: for it was perfectly plain that the pretentiously intrepid passenger had been skulking all day in the scrub, scared by the terrors of the road.
“They’re in that clump,” replied Mr. Kentish. “And you can get them yourself, or send someone else for them, for I have carried them far enough.”
“That be blowed for a yarn!” cried the driver, forgetting his benefits in the virtuous indignation of the moment.
“I don’t wonder at your thinking it one,” returned the other, mildly; “for I never had such absolute luck in all my life!”
And he went on to amplify his first lie like a man.
But when the bags were really back in the coach, piled roof-high on those of the downward mail, then it was worse fun for Guy Kentish outside than even he had anticipated. Question followed question, compliment capped compliment, and a certain unsteady undercurrent of incredulity by no means lessened his embarrassment. Had he but told the truth, he felt he could have borne the praise, and indeed enjoyed it, for he had done far better than anybody was likely to suppose, and already it was irritating to have to keep that circumstance a secret. Yet one thing he was able to say from his soul before the coach drew up at the next stage.
“You should have a spell here,” the driver had suggested, “and let me pick you up again on my way back. You’d soon lay hands on the bird himself, if you can put salt on his tail as you’ve done. And no one else can — we want a few more chums like you.”
“I dare say!”
And the new chum’s tone bore
its own significance.
“You don’t mean,” cried the driver, “to go and tell me you’ll hurry home after this?”
“Only by the first steamer!” said Guy Kentish.
And he kept that word as well.
The Taking of Stingaree
Stingaree had crossed the Murray, and all Victoria was agog with the news. It was not his first descent upon that Colony, nor likely to be his last, unless Sub-Inspector Kilbride and his mounted myrmidons did much better than they had done before. There is no stimulus, however, like a trembling reputation. Within four-and-twenty hours Kilbride himself was on the track of the invader, whose heels he had never seen, much less his face. And he rode alone.
It was not merely his reputation that was at stake, though nothing could restore that more effectually than the single-handed capture of so notorious a desperado as Stingaree. The dashing officer was not unnaturally actuated by the sum of three hundred pounds now set upon the outlaw’s person, alive or dead. That would be a little windfall for one man, but not much to divide among five or six; on the other hand, and with all his faults, Sub-Inspector Kilbride had courage enough to furnish forth a squadron. He was a black-bearded, high-cheeked Irish-Australian, keen and over-eager to a disease, restless, irascible, but full of the fire and dash that make as dangerous an enemy as another good fighter need desire. And as a fine fighter in an infamous cause, Stingaree had his admirers even in Victoria, where the old tale of popular sympathy with a picturesque rascal was responsible for not the least of the Sub-Inspector’s difficulties. But even this struck Kilbride as yet another of those obstacles which were more easily surmounted alone than at the head of a talkative squad; and with that conviction he pushed his thoroughbred on and on through a whole cool night and three parts of an Australian summer’s day. Imagine, then, his disgust at the apparition of a mounted trooper galloping to meet him in the middle of the afternoon, and within a few miles of a former hiding-place of the bushranger, where the senior officer had strong hopes of finding and surprising him now.
“Where the devil do you come from?” cried Kilbride, as the other rode up.
“Jumping Creek,” was the crisp reply. “Stationed there.”
“Then why don’t you stop there and do your duty?”
“Stingaree!” said the laconic trooper.
“What! Do you think you’re after him too?”
“I am after him.”
“So am I.”
“Then you’re going in the wrong direction.”
Kilbride flushed a warm brown from beard to helmet.
“Do you know who you’re speaking to?” cried he. “I’m Sub-Inspector Kilbride, and this business is my business, and no other man’s in this Colony. You go back to your barracks, sir! I’m not going to have every damned fool in the force charging about the country on his own account.”
The trooper was a dark, smart, dapper young fellow, of a type not easily browbeaten or subdued. And discipline is not the strong point of forces so irregular as the mounted police of a crescent colony. But nothing could have been more admirable than the manner in which this rebuke was received.
“Very well, sir, if you wish it; but I can assure you that you are off the track of Stingaree.”
“How do you know?” asked Kilbride, rudely; but he was beginning to look less black.
“I happen to know the place. You would have some difficulty in finding it if you never were there before. I only stumbled across it by accident myself.”
“Lately?”
“One day last winter when I was out looking for some horses.”
“And you kept it to yourself!”
The trooper hung his head. “I knew we should have him across the river again,” he said. “It was only a question of time; and — well, sir, you can understand!”
“You were keen on taking him yourself, were you?”
“As keen as you are, Mr. Kilbride!” owned the younger man, raising bold eyes, and looking his superior fairly and squarely in the face.
Kilbride returned the stare, and what he saw unsettled him. The other was wiry, trim, eminently alert; he had the masterful mouth and the dare-devil eye, and his horse seemed a part of himself. A more promising comrade at hot work was not to be desired: and the work would be hot if Stingaree had half a chance. After all, it was better for two to succeed than for one to fail. “Half the money and a whole skin!” said Kilbride to himself, and rapped out his decision with an oath.
The trooper’s eyes lit with reckless mirth, and a soft cheer came from under his breath.
“By the bye, what’s your name,” said Kilbride, “before we start?”
“Bowen — Jack Bowen.”
“Then I know all about you! Why on earth didn’t you tell me before? It was you who took that black fellow who murdered the shepherd on Woolshed Creek, wasn’t it?”
The admission was made with due modesty.
“Why, you’re the very man for me!” Kilbride cried. “You show the way, Jack, and I’ll make the going.”
And off they went together at a canter, the slanting sun striking fire from their buttons and accoutrements, and lighting their sunburnt faces as it lit the red stems and the white that raced past them on either side. For a little they followed the path which Kilbride had taken on his way thither; then the trooper plunged into the thick bush on the left, and the game became follow-my-leader, in and out, out and in, through a maze of red stems and of white, where the pungent eucalyptus scent hung heavy as the sage-green, perpendicular leaves themselves: and so onward until the Sub-Inspector called a halt.
“How far is it now, Bowen?”
“Two or three miles, sir.”
“Good! It’ll be light for another hour and a half. We’d better give the mokes a breather while we can. And there’d be no harm in two draws.”
“I was just thinking the same thing, sir.”
So their reins dangled while they cut up a pipeful of apparent shoe-leather apiece: and presently the dull blue smoke was curling and circling against the dull green foliage, producing subtle half-tint harmonies and momentary arabesques as the horses ambled neck and neck.
“Native of this Colony?” puffed Kilbride.
“Well, no — old country originally — but I’ve been out some years.”
“That’s all right so long as you’re not a New South Welshman,” said Kilbride, with a chuckle. “I’ll be shot if I wouldn’t almost have turned you back if you had been!”
“Victoria is to have all the credit, is she, sir?”
“Anyhow they sha’n’t have any on the other side, or I’ll know the reason!” the Victorian swore. “I — I — by Jove, I’d as lief lose my man again as let them have a hand in taking him!”
“But why?”
“Why? Do you live so near the border, and can you ask? Did you never hear a Sydney-side drover blowing about his blooming Colony? Haven’t you heard of Sydney Harbor till you’re sick? And then their papers!” cried Kilbride, with columns in his tone. “But I’ll have the last laugh yet! I swore I would, and I will! I swore I’d take Stingaree — —”
“So I heard.”
“Yes, they put it in their infernal papers! But it was true — take him I will!”
“Or die in the attempt, eh?”
“Or die and be damned to me!”
All the bitterness of previous failure, indeed of notorious and much-criticized defeat, was in the Sub-Inspector’s tone; that of his subordinate, though light as air, had a touch of insolence which an outsider could not have failed — but Kilbride was too excited — to detect. The outsider might possibly have foreseen a rivalry which no longer entered Kilbride’s hot head.
Meanwhile the country was changing even with their now leisurely advance. The timbered flats in the region of the river had merged into a gully which was rapidly developing into a gorge, with new luxuriant growths which added greatly to the density of the forest, suggesting its very heart. The almost neutral eucalyptian tint was splas
hed with the gay hues of many parrots, as though the gum-trees had burst into flower. The noise of running water stole gradually through the murmur of leaves. And suddenly an object in the grass struck the sight like a lantern flashed at dead of night: it proved to be an empty sardine tin pricked by a stray lance from the slanting sun.
“We must be near,” whispered Kilbride.
“We are there! You hear the creek? He has a gunyah there — that’s all. Shall we rush it on horseback or creep up on foot?”
“You know the lie of the land, Bowen; which do you recommend?”
“Rushing it.”
“Then here goes.”
In a few seconds they had leaped their horses into a tiny clearing on the banks of a creek as relatively minute. And the gunyah — a mere funnel of boughs and leaves, in which a man could lie at full length, but only sit upright at the funnel’s mouth — seemed as empty as the space on every hand. The only other sign of Stingaree was a hank of rope flung carelessly across the gunyah roof.
“He may be watching us from among the trees,” muttered Kilbride, looking sharply about him. Bowen screwed up his eyes and followed suit.
“I hardly think it, Mr. Kilbride.”
“But it’s possible, and here we sit for him to pot us! Let’s dismount, whether or no.”
They slid to the ground. The trooper found himself at the mouth of the gunyah.
“What if he were in there after all!” said he.
“He isn’t,” said Kilbride, stepping in front and stooping quickly. “But you might creep in, Jack, and see if he’s left any sign of life behind him.”
The men were standing between the horses, their revolvers cocked. Bowen’s answer was to hand his weapon over to Kilbride and to creep into the gunyah on his hands and knees.
“Here’s something or other,” his voice cried thickly from within. “It’s half buried. Wait a bit.”
“As sharp as you can!”
“All right; but it’s a box, and jolly heavy!”
Kilbride peered nervously to right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though they had violated a grave.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 471