The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A Cold Camp-Fire

BY MID JUNE the lamb-marking was in full swing. Every man on the station was working at full pressure, and extra men had been put on for the occasion. Watts, the overseer, was in charge of the camp, with Ralph as second in command, and during the marking the camp was moved to four points on the run to which the flocks were taken by the riders under the direction of Frank Dugdale. Mr Thornton himself undertook a roving commission, accompanied often by his niece.

The Western Division of New South Wales had become a comparative paradise. The frost of mid-winter not having yet come to cut down the growing grass, the whole world was covered in brilliant emerald, whilst the full water-holes and clay-pans sparkled like huge diamonds beneath the mildly warm sun. It was the kind of weather that makes man and beast very glad to be alive.

Perhaps the worst or hardest of the work was the marking, done by George Watts himself. He had a surgeon’s hands, plus the knack of mental concentration, which enabled him to keep at his labours at extraordinarily high speed. For an hour at a time Watts kept moving up and down the line of lamb-catchers, followed by Ralph with ear-markers and tarbrush. At the end of each hour the young man was permitted to use the knife under the calm directions of the master, who whilst supervising Ralph rolled and smoked a thin cigarette.

Yet, in spite of the interest of the work, and the gaining of essential experience, young Thornton’s mind was not in it. Watts was too busy to notice his preoccupation at the time, but subsequently events recalled those evenings by the camp-fire, when Ralph sat and stared silently into the glowing embers.

Warring for the soul of Ralph Thornton were two separate influences, influences that had well nigh assumed personalities like those of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Each influence, backed by distinctive desires, was pulling in opposition to the other, and it seemed to him sometimes that the struggle going on within him would drive him mad. It was as though he stood on the very summit of a high ridge, with the ineffable lure of the bush, typified in Nellie Wanting, trying to pull him down on the one side, and on the other the civilizing restraint of Barrakee and the conventions embodied by Mrs Thornton.

Of this strife the two women concerned were utterly unconscious. Neither was aware of the other’s opposing influence-the one sure of her affectionate domination, the other resigned to the surrender of hers. Mr Thornton realized in a dim, careless way that the lad was thinking out some personal problem, whilst Kate Flinders believed it also, and believed, moreover, that the problem was a basic reason of the gradual change in his habits.

It was Bony, the half-caste detective, not a student but a professor of human nature, who saw so plainly the perpetual struggle occupying Ralph’s every waking moment. But, though Bony was witness of the battle, was conversant with the personalities, he could not fathom the underlying reason. To him Ralph had become an absorbing study, so much so that it almost excluded from his mind his real business at Barrakee.

A battle of lesser intensity was being fought in the heart of Kate Flinders, but of this battle Bony knew nothing. To the girl it was unutterably distressing to be betrothed to one man and wholeheartedly in love with another. Her sense of loyalty was outraged, for, no matter how she tried to banish thoughts of Dugdale, the sub-overseer’s personality would obtrude, making her feel atraitress every time Ralph kissed her, which fortunately had now become a rare occurrence. As to the kissing, Bony wondered if Ralph occasionally, when kissing his betrothed, consoled himself by imagining it was Nellie’s lips he was kissing. Actually Kate had wondered twice whilst being kissed if Dugdale’s kisses would be fiercer.

She could not help it. The thought came involuntarily and horrified her. It made her both grieved and ashamed. Yet how could she ask Ralph to release her? How could she disappoint theThorntons who had been ever as a father and a mother, surrounding her with their protection and love?

And it was these thoughts that filled her mind when in company with the squatter, who himself drove, but more slowly than Dugdale, the big station car about the run. The thoughts and the growing forebodings made her silent till her uncle rallied her with teasing questions or some joking remark.

Many times did they come upon a great flock of sheep being taken to or brought from the lambingcamp. The squatter, of course, knew precisely where those flocks were, but coming upon them invariably took Kate by surprise. At the first sight of the moving mass, with its attendant horseman and lolling-tongued dogs, Kate’s eyes searched hungrily for the graceful figure of Dugdale, sometimes on a grey gelding, at others on a spirited bay mare with white feet.

And when they did come upon him her heart fluttered and her eyes sparkled till she remembered Ralph, and then the sun appeared to lose its light, and the sudden glory of the world die down to a dull drab.

It was thus they came upon him when engaged, with the help of three riders, in moving a flock of ten thousand sheep towards the marking camp. When the car slowed, Dugdale cantered over to it and, dismounting, removed his wide-brimmed felt to Kate.

“Good afternoon, Kate. Good day, Mr Thornton,” he said levelly. A quick glance at the girl, another at her uncle who was watching the milling flock, and a second look, longer and searching, at the girl.

“Gad! how lovely she is today and for always,” was his thought.

And hers, when her eyesthat were in danger of telling too much, fell aside: “Always cool and good-looking, and so efficient. How can I-Oh, how can I help loving him?”

“How are they travelling, Dug?” asked the squatter, referring to the sheep.

“Good,” answered the sub-overseer. “Mr Watts still has ten hundred at the yards, so I am not hurrying these.”

“That’s right, Dug. How are the lambs going, do you think?”

“I should say about eighty per cent, if not a little higher.”

“Humph! That rain came just in time.” For a while Mr Thornton again regarded the flock, and absently looked at the slow-moving riders, none of whom carried a stock-whip, for he would not allow a man working sheep even to crack a whip. Cracking of whips, or any methods designed to hurry sheep unduly, the squatter frowned at, and it was these little points, among others, which had made him so successful a sheepman.

“Who owns that brindle dog working close in?” was his next question.

“Sam Smith.”

“Is it a pup?”

“No, second year. One of Elsie’s pups.”

“Oh!” Elsie was a famous kelpie bitch belonging to the overseer. “Well, it looks as though it’ll never make a good dog. Keep your eye on it, Dug. I noticed it biting just then. Tell Sam to make it work wider or-shoot it.”

“All right. Sam, I think, reckons it to be no good, but his other dog is sore-footed and he is giving it a spell.”

“Well, we’ll get on. So long, Dug.”

“Goodbye! Goodbye, Kate!”

“Aurevoir, Dug.”

And when the car movedahead Kate dared not raise her eyes and look at him, yet she could not refrain from looking back to see him vault into the saddle and canter off easily on his return to the sheep.

Half an hour later they came to a winding creek in which was a chain of water-pools.

“What about a drink of tea, Kate?”

“I would like it, Uncle, if we have time to boil the billy,” she said with an affectionate smile at his consideration, well knowing that, had not she been with him, he would never have thought of it.

So, while he gathered a few sticks and made a fire, afterwards putting the billy against it, she undid the strap securing the small “tucker-box” to one of the running-boards, and produced tin pannikins, a bottle of milk, tea, sugar, and sandwiches. He came across, got the tea-tin and with it returned to the billy; and there, whilst waiting for the water to boil, stood idly looking about the scene, sylvan and lovely. She saw him frown, saw him hesitate, and then watched her uncle walk away for some fifty yards and examine the ground about a large box-tree, growing at an angle of forty-five degrees from the ground.

Circling the tree, he looked as though searching for tracks, and, his actions puzzling her, she called out:

“What are you trying to find, Uncle?”

“I am reading a story,” he called back. “Come and read it, too.”

She rose and joined him. At the foot of the box-tree she saw the ashes of a recent fire. A little away from it were three chop-bones, picked clean by the birds.

“The story reads that someone has camped here,” she said lightly.

Nodding, he said reprovingly:

“You’ve only half read it. When did that someone camp here?”

“Really, I couldn’t say.”

“Three nights ago a slight shower fell,” he reminded her. “See! Here are the marks of the raindrops on the bare places. Here is a footprint on bare sandy ground on whichare no marks of raindrops. The fire is too old to have died out this morning, so that it was made the night before last. The person who made it was a big man-anyway, he wears a larger boot than I do. Look!”

Placing his foot over one of the few tracks plainly visible, he showed her how his boot fitted inside it. Then, looking up at the interested girl, he went on:

“Excepting the possibility that one of the temporary hands has large feet, there is no one on the run who wears bigger boots than I do but Martha. None of the temporary hands have been to this part of the run to my certain knowledge, and Martha hasn’t left the homestead. Of course the fire may possibly have been lit by a wandering swagman, but I much doubt it, as we are so far off any track. It is my conviction, Kate, that the person who made that fire and evidently camped here for one night is none other than the missing William Clair,”

“Uncle!”Kate was surprised more by the mention of the name than by the reasoning.

“It is a fact,” Thornton said when, reaching the boiling billy, he dropped a small handful of tea in it, and allowed it to boil for six seconds before taking it away from the fire. “Poor devil, it must be a terrible thing to be hunted like a wild beast.”

“Awful,” agreed the girl.

“I suppose-” Her uncle regarded her with suddenly twinkling eyes. “I suppose, if Clair made his appearance now, you would wish to give him up.”

“No! No, I would not wish it, nor do it if I could,” she said slowly. “The black may have provoked Clair, even attacked him. In any case, Clair is white, and King Henry was black. He should certainly be punished, but not hanged.”

“I think I agree with you,” he said. “But then, as your aunt said recently, I am old fashioned. We old people and our people before us regard and regarded the lives of black very cheaply. They regarded our lives and our stock equally as cheap.”

Kate shivered. “I hate black people,” she said. “Every time I look at them I go cold, especially when I see the whites of their eyes. If one came for me, or ran after me, I’d die.”

“Well, perhaps I am wrong, and, as a JP, I should not say it, but I shall be sorry when they get Clair.”

“They may not get him,” she said softly.

“Oh, they will eventually,” he opined. “They’ve drafted over a dozen troopers into this district to track him down. Likely only the rain has saved him up to this, by filling more water holes than the troopers could watch. Yes, they’ll get him in the end, but when they do I do not think we shall ever know why Clair killed King Henry.”