The Shadow Of A Man Part 23

"Why?"

"I'm coming with you--to the police-barracks!"

It was like a dream. Moya could have rubbed her eyes, and soon had to do so, for they were full of tears. She sobbed her thanks; she flung out both hands to press them home. The convict waited grimly at her horse's head.

"Better wait and see what comes of it," said he. "And think yourself lucky worse hasn't come of it yet! I'm not thinking of myself; do you know where you are? Do you know that this is Blind Man's Block? Haven't you heard about it? Then you should thank your stars you've a good old bushman to lead you out; for it's like getting out of a maze, I can tell you; and if you'd been warned, as I was, I don't think you'd have ventured in."

Moya had never realised that it was into Blind Man's Block she had plunged so rashly. Nor did the discovery disturb her now. She was too full of her supreme triumph to dwell for many moments upon any one of the risks that she had run for its accomplishment. Neither did she look too far ahead. She would keep faith with this poor creature; no need to count the cost just yet. Moya set her mind's eye upon the reunion at the police-barracks: her advent as the heroine of a bloodless victory, her intercession for the father, her meeting with the son.

The prospect dazzled her. It had its gravely precarious aspect. But one thing at a time. She had done her best; no ultimate ill could come of it; of that she felt as certain as of the fact that she was sitting in her saddle and blindly following an escaped criminal through untrodden wilds.

Suddenly she discovered that she was not doing this exactly. She had not consciously diverged, and yet her leader was bearing down upon her with a scowl.

"Why don't you follow me?" he cried. "Do you want to get bushed in Blind Man's Block?"

"I wasn't thinking," replied Moya. "It must have been the horse."

Bovill seized the bridle.

"It's a fool of a horse!" said he. "Why, we're quite close to the fence, and it wants to head back into the middle of the block!"

Moya remarked that she did not recognise the country.

"Of course you don't," was the reply. "You came the devil of a round, but I'm taking you straight back to the fence. Trust an old hand like me; I can smell a fence as a sheep smells water. You trust yourself to me!"

Moya had already done so. It was too late to reconsider that. Yet she did begin to wonder somewhat at herself. That hairy hand upon the bridle, it lay also rather heavily on her nerves. And the mallee shrub showed no signs of thinning; the open s.p.a.ces were as few as ever, and as short; on every hand the leaves seemed whispering for miles and miles.

"We're a long time getting to that fence," said Moya at length.

The convict stopped, looked about him in all directions, and finally turned round. In doing so his right hand left the bridle, but in an instant the other was in its place. Moya, however, was too intent upon his face to notice this.

"I'm afraid I've missed it," said he calmly.

"Missed the fence?"

"It looks like it."

"After what you said just now? Oh, what a fool I was to trust you!"

Their eyes were joined for the next few seconds; then the man's face relaxed in a brutal grin. And Moya began to see the measure of her folly.

"Hypocrite!" she gasped.

"Don't call names, my dear. It's not kind, especially to your father-in-law that is to be!"

Moya shuddered in every member except the hand that gripped her whalebone switch. The gold-mounted handle was deep in her flesh.

"Leave go of my bridle," she said quietly.

"Not just yet, my dear."

The whalebone whistled through the air, and came slashing down upon the dapple-grey's neck, within an inch of the hairy fingers, which were nevertheless s.n.a.t.c.hed away. Moya had counted on this and its result. The animal was off at its best pace; but the desperate hands grabbed Moya's habit as it pa.s.sed, and in another instant she was on the ground. In yet another she had picked herself up, but she never even looked for the horse; she fixed her eye upon her loathly adversary as on a wild beast; and now he looked nothing else, with canine jaw and one vile lip protruding, and h.e.l.l's own fire in his wicked eyes.

Luckily her grip of the riding-whip had tightened, not relaxed; but now she held it as a sword; and it helped her to cow a brute who had the real brute's dread of the lash. But also she was young and supple, and the man was old. The contrast had never been so sharp; for now they were both in their true colours; and every vileness of the one was met by its own ant.i.thesis in the other. It was will against will, personality against personality, in an open s.p.a.ce among the mallee and the full glare of a climbing sun, mile upon mile from human help or habitation.

And the battle was fought to a finish without a word.

Moya only heard a muttering as the wretch swung round upon his heel, and walked after the dapple-grey, which had come to a standstill within sight. But she was not done with the blackguard yet. She watched him remove the lady's saddle, then carefully detach the water-bag, and sling it about himself by means of the stirrup-leather. Then he mounted, bare-back; but Moya knew that he would not abandon her without his say; and she was waiting for him with the self-same eye that had beaten him off.

He reined up and cursed her long and filthily. Her ear was deaf to that; but little of it conveyed the slightest meaning; her unchanged face declared as much. So then he trimmed his tongue accordingly.

"Sorry to take the water-bag; but through you I've forgot mine and my swag too. Better try and find 'em; they're away back where I camped last night; you're welcome to the drop that's left, if there is one. You look a bit black about the gills as it is. Have a drop to show there's no ill-feeling before I go."

And he dangled the bag before her, meaning to whisk it back again. But Moya disappointed him. She was parched with thirst, though she only realised it now. She neither spoke nor moved a muscle.

"Then die of thirst, and be d.a.m.ned to you! Do you know where you are?

Blind Man's Block--Blind Man's Block! Don't you forget it again, because I shan't be here to remind you; a horse was what I wanted, and was promised, so you're only keeping that poor devil's word for him. Give him my blessing if you ever see him again; but you never will. They say it's an easy place to die in, this here Blind Man's Block, but you'll see for yourself. A nice little corpse we'll make, won't we? But we'll die and rot the same, and the crows'll have our eyes for breakfast and our innards for dinner! And do you good, you little white devil, you!"

Moya remained standing in the same att.i.tude, with the same steady eye and the same marble pallor, long after the monster disappeared, and the last beat of the dapple-grey's hoofs was lost among the normal wilds of the bush. Then all at once a great light leapt to her face. But it was not at anything that she had heard or seen; it was at something which had come to her very suddenly in the end. And for a long time after that, though lost and alone in Blind Man's Block, and only too likely to die the cruel death designed for her, Moya Bethune was a happier woman than she had been for many an hour.

XIV

HIS OWN COIN

"Cooo-eee!"

It was a far cry and faint, so faint that Moya was slow to believe her ears. She had not stirred from the scene of her late encounter, but this inactivity was not without design. Moya was tired out already; she had too much sense to waste her remaining strength upon the heat of the day.

She found the chewing of leaves avert the worst pangs of thirst, so long as she remained in the shade, and there she determined to rest for the present. Sooner or later she would be followed and found, and the fewer her wanderings, the quicker and easier that blessed consummation. Her plight was still perilous enough, and Moya did not blink this fact any more than others. Yet another fact there was, of which she was finally convinced, though she had yet to prove it; meanwhile the mere conviction was her stay and comfort. She was gloating over it, a leaf between her dry lips, and her aching body stretched within reach of more leaves, when she thought she heard the coo-ee.

She sat up and listened. It came again. And this time Moya was sure.

She sprang to her feet, and, deliverance within hail, realised her danger for the first time fully. Sunburnt hands put a trembling trumpet to her lips, and out came a clearer call than had come to Moya.

The answer sounded hoa.r.s.e, and was as far away as ever; but prompt enough; and now Moya was as sure of the direction as of the sound itself. Nor had she occasion to coo-ee any more. For the first thing she saw, perhaps a furlong through the scrub, was a riderless horse, bridled but unsaddled, with a forefoot through the reins.

True to its unpleasant habit, the dapple-grey had done n.o.ble service to the human race, by swerving under a branch at full gallop, and sc.r.a.ping its rider into s.p.a.ce.

The wretch lay helpless in the sun, with a b.l.o.o.d.y forehead and an injured spine. Moya's water-bag had fallen clear, and lay out of his reach by a few inches which were yet too many for him to move. He demanded it as soon as she came up, but with an oath, and Moya helped herself first, drinking till her hands came close together upon the wet canvas.

"Now you can finish it," she said, "if you're such a fool. I've left you more than you deserve."

He cursed her hideously, and a touch of unmerited compa.s.sion came upon her as she discovered how really helpless he was. So she held his head while he drained the last drop, and as it fell back he cursed her again, but began whining when she made off without a word.

"My back must be broken--I've no feeling in my legs. And you'd let me die alone!"