The Rider of Waroona Part 41

In long swinging strides his horse carried him easily, and his spirits rose above the gloom which had weighed upon him since the evening before when, for the third time, he had been foiled by the mysterious Rider.

There had been little sleep for him during the night. Had the discovery of Eustace and the raid of the town been the only events of the day he might have succeeded in banishing them from his mind sufficiently to allow himself to sleep. But there was more than these, disquieting as they were, to fill him with restlessness. The way in which Mrs. Burke had rebuffed him on the previous evening, the hostility of manner she had displayed towards him up to the time he and Brennan left Waroona Downs, weighed upon him.

He could not account for the change which had come over her. From the time he arrived from Taloona she had always shown kindliness and gentleness towards him, even when, during the early days of his convalescence, he had been impatient and exacting. Nor could he find a reason for the change in the brief profession he had made of his love for her. Had that been the cause she would, he argued, have shown it the morning after; but she had met him then with the same light-hearted raillery with which she had greeted him every morning he had been in her house. Only when Brennan arrived on the scene had she suddenly developed antagonism.

There must be some other reason for her anger than his declaration of love. For hours he had sought for it, cudgelling his brain to discover an explanation; but only now, as he cantered along through the bush with his spirits rising in harmony with the glories of an Australian dawn, did illumination come to him.

"Oh, my love, why have you come so late to me!"

Through the sombre shade of his brooding there flashed the memory of the scene when he had heard those words spoken. Like the touch of a magic wand the memory changed gloom to sunshine, shadow into light.

It was not because he had professed his love for her that she had been displeased; it was because he was going from her, leaving her house, parting with her perhaps for all time.

What a fool he had been not to know that earlier. Of course, she had repelled him when he had spoken on the previous evening, repelled him, not because she resented, but because she, like all of her s.e.x, could not yield the truth at the first asking.

Yet why should he have doubted with the memory of that earlier scene in his mind? He asked himself the question and answered it frankly.

He doubted for the reason that still he did not know whether that memory was of a real scene, or was merely a figment of a delirium-haunted brain. If he could be sure, then no more need he doubt; but how was he to be sure? There was only one way--only one person in all the world who could tell him whether he was right or not--Nora Burke alone could say whether he had been dreaming.

Some day he would ask her to tell him, some day, after he had asked and compelled her to answer that other question which had now become insistent. For the time the mystery of the Rider occupied a second place in his thoughts; yet the trend of his mind unconsciously brought it again to the front.

The mission on which he had set out was one which might clear away the initial obstacle in the pathway of his love; he might locate the hiding-place of the Rider; might secure a clue to his ident.i.ty; might, by great good fortune, discover the stolen money.

If he could only do that, if he could only go back to the bank with the news that he had recovered the stolen gold, five thousand pounds would be his. Then he would be able to go to Mrs. Burke without the feeling, unbearable to a man of his temperament, that he, a poor man, was aspiring to one who had money, and who might attribute to that money the secret of his fascination.

By the time the sun showed above the trees, he was up to the outlying spurs of the range and nearing the ridge along which he had previously followed the tracks of the two hors.e.m.e.n. With the knowledge he had gained how the track turned and twisted, he set his horse to the rising ground, and rode steadily and cautiously until he arrived at the summit of the steep immediately above where the creek entered the pool.

Below him was the narrow sandy strip running round the edge of the water, and even from where he was he could see the marks of the horses'

hoofs upon it. His glance wandered from the sh.o.r.e over the surface of the pool. It was a long sheet of water, more an exaggerated reach in a stream than a lake, for except along the sandy margin below him, the water everywhere rippled right up to the dense verdure-clad slopes of the hills.

A curious discolouration appeared in a streak across the pool at the far end. The otherwise clear water was marred by a ledge of rock which stretched from one side of the pool to the other and came so near the surface as to give a suggestion of muddiness to the water.

Dismounting, he led his horse to a sheltered gully, and securely tethered him to a tree. Then, with his carbine on his arm and his revolver pouch unfastened, he walked down to the dry bed of the creek and followed it to the mouth.

Fresh marks were on the soft ground near the water, coming from the end of the pool where the streak of muddy water showed, and pa.s.sing onwards round the pool. He decided to go in the same direction, and for a few yards walked along the level before he discovered other hoof-prints, equally clear, going the opposite way. The horseman, whoever he might be, had both come and gone within the past few hours, but Durham was uncertain which way had been the last.

Leaving the level ground he forced a way through the thick herbage growing on the bank above and crept forward. As he went he obtained through the foliage an occasional glimpse of the track below, until the bank rose so steeply and the vegetation became so dense that he had to climb higher to move along at all. Presently he came to an easier grade, and was able to see once more the margin of the pool, but he was surprised to discover that all marks of the horses had ceased.

He crept down to the water. Looking back, he saw that the bank, on the top of which he had been, ran out to the water's edge, forming a barrier across the track and terminating in a steep bluff jutting out into the pool.

Crouching almost to the ground, Durham crawled through the undergrowth until he reached the summit of the bluff, and was able to see once more the narrow sandy strip which skirted the bank and formed the margin of the sh.o.r.e.

Peering through the low-growing shrubs he saw how the bluff fell away in a precipitous descent on the other side down to where the narrow strip widened out into a level s.p.a.ce screened by a clump of bushes reaching from the high bank to the water. The whole of this s.p.a.ce was trampled upon, and it was evident that hors.e.m.e.n had been there frequently and recently.

A step forward showed him something more. Right under the bank a dark patch showed. It was the mouth of a cave.

He listened intently, but no sound came to him, and he again crept forward until he was able to see into the cave. It was low-roofed, and formed by rocks which had fallen loosely together, and over which vegetable soil had acc.u.mulated.

Satisfied it was empty, he advanced boldly towards it. As he pushed between the shrubs which grew close up to it, he caught sight of what, in the shadow, looked like a crouching man. In a moment his carbine was thrown forward and he was about to challenge, when he realised he was aiming at a heap of clothes.

He stepped into the cave. The clothes lay in a carelessly thrown heap, and with them, half hidden, was a false beard of long yellow hair.

Picking it up, he held it at arm's length. So the Rider was disguised after all!

The flimsy thing brought clearly back to him the features of the man as he had twice seen him. The close-clipped fair hair, the light sandy eyebrows, the peculiarly light lashes which gave so sinister an expression to the eyes, were distinct; but when he tried to reconstruct the face as it would be without the beard, he was baffled. The form of the nose, the moulding of the chin, the shape of the mouth, had been hidden by the disguise, and without a knowledge of them Durham could not grasp fully what the man was like. As Harding had expressed himself, when describing the face he had seen at the window of the bank, it was the impression of a familiar face disguised, and yet a familiar face which could not be located.

Beyond that he could not go.

He picked up the clothes and examined them. They were of nondescript grey, such as can be bought by the hundred at any bush store in Australia, and were similar to what the man was wearing the night he visited Waroona Downs. The hat was missing, as Durham expected it would be. The pockets were empty.

Replacing the articles as nearly as possible in the position in which he found them, Durham turned his attention to the cave itself.

The floor was rough and uneven. What sand cl.u.s.tered in the hollows was too much trampled upon to reveal any detail of the feet that had walked upon it.

There were innumerable nooks and crannies where articles could be stored, but in every instance they contained nothing. Nowhere could he find anything more than the clothes.

He went to the mouth and stood peering round to see if there was another similar cave near, but everywhere else the ground rose solid and unbroken.

In the open s.p.a.ce under the shelter of the bluff where the ground had been so much trampled by horses, the wheel-marks of a vehicle also showed. He walked over and examined them carefully.

They were the marks of what was evidently an old and rackety conveyance.

One of the wheels was loose and askew on the axle, with the result that it made a wobbly mark on the ground, while the tyres on all the wheels were uneven in width and badly worn.

"Almost as ancient as old Dudgeon's rattle-trap," Durham said to himself as he looked at the marks.

The story, fanciful as he had regarded it at the time, of the buggy driven by two men with a pair of white horses, the story told by the travelling bushmen the day the bank robbery was discovered, recurred to him. If this was the vehicle in which the gold had been carried off, and the wheel-marks he was looking at had been made by it, then that gold was probably secreted somewhere in his immediate vicinity.

The thick-growing shrubs and stunted gums made it difficult for him to see far from where he stood. The level stretch along the margin of the pool showed clear enough, but around him the vegetation was so dense that, unless he had some clue to guide him, to prosecute a search within it was like trying the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

During the time that had elapsed since those wheel-marks had been made they had been greatly obliterated, but it was still possible to distinguish where the vehicle had been stopped, for the horses had turned suddenly, and the wheels cut deep as they came round. He stepped to the spot. Later tramplings had removed all clear traces of footmarks.

Nothing was now to be learned from that source.

His eyes swept along the line of shrubs which fringed the open s.p.a.ce. A twig, snapped near the stem, dangled, its leaves brown and withered. It was a finger pointing where someone had forced a way through.

Durham went down on his knees beside the shrub. Near the root the bark had been stripped for a couple of inches, the scar showing brown, while in the soil the impression of a heavy boot was just distinguishable.

On hands and knees he pushed his way between the stems. Other footmarks, old and faint, showed, and he crept along with his eyes on them. Some weeks before there had evidently been much coming and going through the scrub at this point. Looking straight ahead he saw the grey sheen of a sun-dried log. He stood up. The thick undergrowth reached to his armpits, but through it, a couple of yards from where he stood, and ten from the spot where the wheel-marks turned, was the fallen trunk of an old dead tree.

Such a log, hollow for the greater part of its length and absolutely hidden by the shrubs growing round it, was exactly the place where anything could be secreted, and remain secreted, for an indefinite period.

Pushing his way carefully through the tangle of shrubs he came upon it at the root end. It had evidently fallen in some bygone bush-fire, the jagged charred fragments showing where it had snapped off close to the ground. The fire had eaten its way into the heart of the timber and there was s.p.a.ce enough in the cavity for a man to crouch.

Stooping down, Durham peered into it. At the far end he saw, indistinctly, a confused ma.s.s, pushed up closely. He reached in, but could not touch it, without creeping into the opening.

He looked round for something that would serve as a rake to pull the articles out, but there was no loose stick sufficiently long near to hand, and he did not want to cut one. Higher up the bank he saw one that would suit his purpose and went to get it.

As he returned with it in his hand he saw, at the other end of the log, a patch of white on the ground. Going over to it he found it was caused by a chalky powder which cl.u.s.tered thickly near the tree.

This end of the log was also hollow, and in the cavity were a couple of bags which, when he pulled them out, he found to be full of the chalky powder.