The Rider of Waroona Part 19

He scrambled out of his rackety old buggy and stamped into the place, pa.s.sing direct into the little room Eustace had used as a private office, where, by the chance of circ.u.mstances, he came face to face with Mrs. Burke.

His keen, grey, hawk-like eyes flashed an envenomed look at her, and were met by a glance not one whit less steadfast. For a moment he stood, his s.h.a.ggy white brows meeting in a scowl as he found himself confronted by one who even to his distorted vision possessed a charm of face and figure such as he had not seen since the days of Kitty Lambton.

Something in the eyes which met his touched a chord of memory long suppressed. So Kitty had looked when he met her for the first time after her flight with O'Guire; so she had looked the last time he had seen her when she had pleaded for mercy to her dying parents and he had taunted her and mocked her till she turned and left him with curses as deep-voiced as any he himself could have uttered.

"This is Mrs. Burke, the purchaser of Waroona Downs, Mr. Dudgeon," he heard, and faced round on the speaker, turning his back upon her.

"Who are you?" he blurted out.

"I am the officer in charge of the bank for the time being," Wallace replied suavely.

"Where's Eustace? He's the only man I know in the matter."

"He is not here at present, Mr. Dudgeon. But that need not concern you.

I a.s.sume you have come to complete the sale of----"

"I only know Eustace. I'm prepared to deal with him--I don't know you and don't want to."

"Unfortunately Mr. Eustace cannot be present. But I am in his place. I arrived from the head office this morning with the gold you demand as payment for the sale of Waroona Downs. You may have noticed it as you came in--the bags are on the counter in charge of the police escort."

"But where's Eustace? That's what I want to know."

He looked from Wallace to Harding savagely.

"If you are prepared to sign the transfer, Mr. Dudgeon, we can proceed with the business," Wallace replied. "Mrs. Burke is waiting."

Dudgeon glanced at her covertly.

She was standing, as she stood throughout the subsequent proceedings, a silent spectator, irritating him by the mere fact that she was so absolutely impa.s.sive. When the time came for her to sign the formal doc.u.ments which made Waroona Downs hers, Wallace placed a chair at the table; but she ignored it, bending down gracefully as she signed her name in beautifully flowing characters.

Old Dudgeon's hands, knotted and stiff with many a day's toil, were not familiar with the pen. As he laboured with the coa.r.s.e, splodgy strokes which ranked as his signature, the sight of the delicate curves of the letters she had made fanned the flame of his wrath still higher. He also stood to sign, not because she had done so, but because he scorned to use a chair which belonged to his enemies. When he drew back from the table he saw how she had been standing almost behind him, looking over his shoulder as he wrote. A smile which he read as a sign of derision was on her lips and in her eyes.

He kicked the chair viciously towards her.

"Why don't you sit down, woman?" he exclaimed.

"Because I prefer to stand--man," she replied.

It was the first time he had heard her voice, and he started at the sound, wincing as, with one quick, furtive glance, he met her eyes again.

"Is that all you want?" he asked Wallace abruptly.

"Thank you, Mr. Dudgeon, that is all. Will you take the gold with you, or leave it for safety in the bank?"

"Leave it at the bank, eh?" he sneered. "No, thank you, Mr. Wallace, I trust you as far as I trust your bank, and you know how far that is without my telling you."

"Very good, Mr. Dudgeon. Will you watch it while it is being carried to your buggy? There are two troopers here who have acted as my escort from the head office. If you care to take them with you as a protection----"

"I want neither you nor your troopers," Dudgeon snarled. "I can take care of myself and my money, too, without anyone's help."

He watched, with undisguised suspicion, while the counted piles of sovereigns were replaced in the bags, while the bags were carried away and stacked in the rackety old vehicle. Then, when the tally was complete, he walked out of the bank, climbed into the buggy, gathered up the reins and drove away without a word or a glance for anyone.

The bitterness of defeat was rankling in him, the defeat of his lifelong determination that never, while he was on the earth to prevent it, should a woman live where his faith in the s.e.x had been wrecked. It was bitter to think how he had been foiled after all by a woman, but still more so when the woman was of such a type as the one who had outwitted him. It was a new experience for him to be beaten at his own game, still a newer experience to find himself remembering the one by whom he was beaten as he was remembering the woman whose voice, despite his surly antagonism, rang in his ears with a melody which was as the song of a syren. Each time he had measured swords with her she had triumphed--just as, in the far-off days, Kitty Lambton had triumphed.

Kitty Lambton!

He pulled himself up short as the name pa.s.sed through his mind. Why should he recall her now as Kitty Lambton when she had ceased to be that the day she left Waroona Downs with O'Guire? Why should this resolute woman recall her as Kitty Lambton and not as Kitty O'Guire?

As he drove along the lonely bush track which led to Taloona, his mind drifted across the years to the time when first he had come to the district, to the time when Kitty Lambton stood for him for all that was n.o.ble and generous and pure in life; when he was content to work the livelong day with a light heart and happy mind, satisfied with the reward of her presence when his day's work was done. For a mile or so of the journey he strove to nurse his resentment against this clear-eyed woman whose raven black hair was in such absolute contrast to the flaxen locks of the vanished Kitty, but whose voice had caused the intrusion of these bygone memories into his waking thoughts. But gradually, unconsciously, the long-suppressed recollections of the girl who had charmed his youthful fancies took possession of him.

Hitherto, whenever he had remembered her, it was with bitterness and anger; but now his mind was as free from anger as though the cause for it had never existed. It was the time when Kitty was the charmer which had come to him, the time when the gnawing anguish of betrayal was unknown, and slowly there obtruded itself upon him a dim, shadowy, speculating wonder as to all which might have been had she never changed for him from the charmer to the betrayer.

But he was not used to introspective a.n.a.lysis, and the efforts to grapple with the subtleties of his own subconscious memories brought a tendency to his mind to lose the clear-cut edge of a fact in a blur of misty vision. No longer did the memory of Nora Burke irritate him. Had he a.s.sociated her with Kitty the betrayer, the irritation would never have pa.s.sed; but as it was Kitty the charmer her voice brought to him, he drifted, in the sere and yellow age, down the stream of fantasy upon which he had turned his back in scorn when the blood of youth ran in his veins.

For miles the road slipped by unnoticed and unheeded as the old horse stumbled on at his own pace, unguided by the hand that held the reins.

The breath of life had sought to fan the withered soul, but only one small spark, deep-smothered by the dead ma.s.s of loveless years, smouldered weakly where the record of a long life filled with human sympathy should have blazed in answer. The gold for which he had striven lay forgotten at his feet; the hate which he had nurtured pa.s.sed, a vapid filmy shade, as the withered soul shrank shivering, chilled at the void the one poor spark revealed.

The sight of his solitary hut, glowing in the warm mellow light of the evening sun, broke in upon a reverie so deep he could never recall all that it had contained.

A horse hitched to one of the verandah posts, against which a man in uniform was leaning, brought him back to the world of reality with a shock. The hawk-like eyes gleamed as suspicion flashed through his brain. Had Wallace, despite his refusal, sent the troopers after him?

The whip-lash fell viciously across the horse's back and the old rackety buggy rattled as Dudgeon finished his drive at a canter.

"Well, what do you want?" he cried, as he pulled up opposite his door.

Durham glanced from the stern, hard face of the man to the pile of money-bags cl.u.s.tered round his feet on the floor of the buggy, and over which he had not even taken the trouble to throw a rug.

"I am a sub-inspector of police--Durham is my name----"

"Durham?" the old man exclaimed. "Are you the man who rode down Parker, the cattle thief, when he was making off with a mob of imported prize stock?"

"I arrested Parker--a couple of years ago."

Dudgeon leant forward and held out his hand.

"I'm proud to meet you, my lad. That mob of cattle belonged to me. You saved me a few thousands over that job of yours. I'm much obliged to you. I hoped to meet you some day so as to thank you."

"I don't remember your name in the case," Durham said.

"No, my lad, there was no need for me to appear. It was a Government affair to prosecute Parker. Why should I pay money away for the Government? Look at the anxiety and loss of time I had to put up with.

n.o.body offered to make that good."

"But you got your cattle?"

"Well, they _were_ mine--I paid for them. But that's all right. I'm much obliged to you for the trouble you took to catch the scoundrel--ten years I think he got? He ought to have been hanged. I'd have hanged him if I had been the judge. What are you after now? After more cattle-stealers?"

"Not this time. I'm on my way to Waroona; but I've been travelling all day and my horse is a bit knocked up. Can I turn him into one of your paddocks for the night?"

"Gra.s.s is worth money these times," the old man said slowly. "I suppose the Government will pay me for the use of the paddock, won't they?"