Sheilah McLeod Part 8

'I am much happier. I thank you, Jim, from the bottom of my heart. For I know you well enough to be sure that if you have once given your word you will stick to it. G.o.d bless you.'

'G.o.d bless you, Sheilah. And now I must be off. Good-bye.'

'Good-bye.'

I jumped on to my horse, and, waving my hand to her, went back up the track to the township with a strange foreboding in my heart that her prophecy would some day be realised.

CHAPTER IV

THE RACE

Slowly the month rolled by, and every day brought the fatal races nearer, till at last only a week separated us from them. With each departing day a greater nervousness took possession of me. I tried to reason it out, but without success. As far as I could see, I had nothing very vital to fear! I might lose the esteem of the grey heads of the township, it was true, and possibly get into trouble with my father--but beyond those two unpleasantnesses I was unable to see that anything serious could happen to me.

Since giving him my promise I had only once set eyes on Whispering Pete.

To tell the truth, I felt a desire to keep out of his way. At the same time, however, I had not the very slightest intention of going back on my promise to ride for him. At last, one morning, I met him riding through the township on a skittish young thoroughbred. As usual he was scrupulously neat in his dress, and, when he stopped to speak to me, his beady black eyes shone down on me like two live coals.

'You're not going to throw me over about that race are you, Jim?' he said, after we had pulled up our horses and saluted each other.

'What should make you think so?' I answered. 'When I give my word I don't go back on it as a general rule.'

'Of course, you don't,' he replied; 'I know that. But I heard yesterday that the folk in the township had been trying to persuade you to withdraw your offer. The time is drawing close now, and I shall have the horse up here to-night. Come over in the evening and have a look at him, and then in the morning, if you're agreeable and have nothing better to do, we might try him against your horse Benbow, who, I take it, is the best animal in the district. What do you say?'

'I'm quite willing,' I answered. 'And where do you intend to do it?'

'Not where all the township can see, you may be sure,' he answered, with one of his peculiar laughs. 'We'll keep this little affair dark. Do you know that bit of flat on the other side of Sugarloaf Hill?'

'Quite well,' I said. 'Who should know it better than I?'

'Very well, then; we'll have our trial spin there.' Then bending towards me he said very softly, 'Jim, my boy, it won't be my fault if we don't make a big haul over this race. There will be a lot of money about, and you've no objection, I suppose?'

'None whatever,' I answered. 'But do you think it's as certain as all that? Remember it's a pretty stiff course, and from what I heard this morning, the company your horse is likely to meet will be more than usually select.'

'I'm not the least afraid,' he answered 'My horse is a good one, and if he is well, will walk through them as if they were standing still.

Especially with you on his back.'

I took this compliment for what it was worth, knowing that it was only uttered for the sake of giving me a bit of a fillip.

'I shall see you, then, this evening?' I said.

'This evening. Can you come to dinner?'

'I'm afraid not,' I answered; and with a parting salutation we separated and rode on our different ways.

When I reached the corner I turned and looked back at him, asking myself what there was about Whispering Pete that made him so different to other men. That he _was_ different n.o.body could deny. Even the most commonplace things he did and said had something about them that made them different from the same things as done and said by other people. I must confess that, while I feared him a little, I could not help entertaining a sort of admiration for the man. Who and what was he? He had been in the township now, off and on, for two years, and during the whole of that time, with the exception of myself and a few other young men, he had made no friends at all. Indeed, he used to boast that he had no sympathy with men above a certain age, and it was equally certain that not one of the elderly inhabitants of the town, from my father and old McLeod downwards, had any sympathy or liking for him.

When I had watched him out of sight, I rode on to the McLeods'

selection, and, having tied up my horse, entered the house. Sheilah, I discovered, was not at home, having ridden out to their back boundary to see a woman who was lying ill at one of the huts. Old McLeod was in the stockyard, branding some heifers, and I strolled out to give him a hand.

When we had finished we put away the irons, and went up the path to the house together. On reaching the dining-room, a neat and pretty room, with Sheilah's influence showing in every corner of it, the old man turned and put his hand on my shoulder. He was a strange-looking old chap, with his long, thin face, bushy grey eyebrows, shaven upper lip, and enormous white beard. After looking at me steadily for a minute or so, he said, with the peculiar Scotch accent that time had never been able to take away from him,--

'James, my lad, it is my business to warn ye to be verra careful what ye're about, for I ken, unless ye mend your ways, ye're on the straight road to h.e.l.l. And, my boy, I like ye too well to see ye ganging that way without a word to so stay ye.'

'And what have you heard about me, Mr McLeod?' I asked, resolved to have it out with him while the iron was hot. 'What gossip has been carried to your ears?'

'Nay! nay!' he answered. 'Not gossip, my laddie. What I have heard is the sober truth, and that ye'll ken when I tell ye. First an' foremost, ye've been card-playing up at the house on the hill yonder these many months past.'

'That's quite true,' I replied. 'But I can also tell you that I have not seen or touched a card for close upon five weeks now; and, if I can help it, I never will do so again. What else have you been told about me?'

'Well, lad,' he said, 'I've heard that ye're going to ride in the races out on the plain yonder next week. Maybe that'll not be true, too?'

'Yes. It's quite true; I am.'

'But ye'll think better of it, laddie. I'm sure of that!'

'No! I have no option. I have promised to ride, and I cannot draw back.'

'And ye'll have reckoned what the consequences may be?'

'I think I have!'

'Well, well; I'm sorry for ye. Downright sorry, laddie. I thought ye had more strength of mind than that. However, it's no care of mine; ye'll have your own day of reckoning I make no doubt.'

'I cannot see that what I do concerns anyone but myself,' I answered hotly.

He looked at me under his bushy eyebrows for a second or two, and then said, shaking his old head,--

'Foolish talk--vain and verra foolish talk!'

By this time my temper, never one of the best, as you already know, had got completely out of my control, and I began to rage and storm against those who had spoken against me to him, at the same time crying out against the narrowness and hypocrisy of the world in general. Old McLeod gravely heard me to the end, visibly and impartially weighing the pros and cons of all I said. Then, when I had finished, he remarked,--

'Ye're but a poor, half-baked laddie, after all, to run your head against a wall in this silly fashion. But ye'll see wisdom some day. By that time, however, 'twill be too late.'

Never has a prophecy been more faithfully fulfilled than that one. I have learned wisdom since then--learned it as few men have done, by the hardest and bitterest experience. And when I got it, it was, as he had said, too late to be of any use to me. But as that has all to be told in its proper order, I must get on with my story.

Leaving the house, I mounted my horse again and rode off in the direction I knew Sheilah would come, my heart all the time raging within me against the injustice of which I considered myself the victim. What right had old McLeod to talk to me in such a fashion? I was not his son; and, poor fool that I was, I told myself that if I liked I would go to a thousand races and ride in every one of them, before I would consider him or anyone else in the matter. But one thing puzzled me considerably, and that was how he had come to know so much of my private affairs.

Since it had been kept such a profound secret, who could have told him about my gambling, and my promise to ride Pete's horse in the steeplechase? So far as I was aware, no one but Sheilah knew, to whom I had told my whole story. Could she have revealed my shortcomings to her father? In my inmost heart, I knew that she had not said a word. But I was so angry that I could not do justice to anybody, not even to Sheilah herself. G.o.d help me!

For an hour I rode on; then, crossing a bit of open plain, I saw Sheilah ahead, mounted on a big brown horse, coming cantering towards me. When she made out who I was, she quickened her pace, and we were presently alongside each other, riding back together. Angry as I was, I could not help noticing how pretty her face looked under her big hat, and how well she sat her horse.

'You seem put out about something, Jim,' she said, when I had turned my horse and we had gone a few yards.

'I am,' I answered, 'very much put out. Sheilah, why did you tell your father what I told you the other day?'

'What have I told him?'