Chapter 19

STRANDS IN THE COIL.

Stripped to the waist, in the reek and grime of smoke and sweat, the men who rushed to the burning store fought with the flames till the dawn.

The country was parched with the drought, and the grass was as dry as hay; the fences would blaze in long lines of flame if once they were alight; the standing trees with their drooping leaves were full of oily sap, and if once the fire reached the open bush, it would sweep for a hundred miles. And each man knew what that would mean; each man knew how the flames would roar as they leapt from tree to tree; each man knew how the fire would glare as it caught the sun-dried grass; how overhead, and a mile in front, the whirling columns of smoke would roll, choking, smothering, blinding, till the blood-red glare showed fierce behind, and everything with life had fled, or stayed and swelled the ashes, on the desolate, blackened track.

The store was burned to a heap of cinders with all its contents, for the men let it burn, having no water to throw on it, and no time to use the water even if the tanks had all been full. It was not to save the store that they fought; it was not to put the fire out that they toiled and battled through the night. It was to keep the fire from spreading; to stamp it out as it ran, in long snake-like lines, licking up the withered grass; to beat it out as it flamed along the fences; or to hold it as it blazed out in a raging fury where a spark fell upon the inflammable foliage of the gums. Boughs stripped from saplings; sacks tied to long, thin sticks; even the coats off their backs,--were the weapons used in the fight; for unless the enemy were defeated at the outset, a smoking waste of charred desolation would be all that there was of Birralong and the district when again the sun came up.

But the fight was won, and when dawn came it only showed the heap of wood ash and twisted sheets of galvanized iron--which was all that remained of Marmot's store--and streaks of black running out into the paddock beyond and along the fences, with now and again a tree either leafless and charred, or with the leaves brown and scorched, showing where the fire had for a moment obtained a footing and striven to gain a hold, from whence it could spread in every direction, to reap, with its sickles of flame, the rich harvest in a wild, unrestrained orgy and blast, not only Nature's, but man's, handiwork into a dreary sadness of blackened desolation. The men, having won, went back to the Rest, with their throats parched and aching, their eyes smarting from the smoke and the dust, and their skins grimed and clammy.

"It's a bad job for me," Marmot exclaimed, when, with the trouble in their throats removed, the men reassembled at the Rest, where Peters and Tony and Morton had already returned; "it's a bad job for me, but it's nothing to what would have been if the blaze had got away. A bush fire in the district now would be ruin, black, staring ruin, to every one, and death to many."

"Ay, that it would," a selector, from ten miles out, answered. "It's what we are all afraid of now. A bush fire with the country like it is would go over five hundred square miles, and there wouldn't be a selector nor a squatter for miles round with a yard of fence nor a blade of grass to call his own."

"That's true," Marmot said. "And it's why I feel glad we held it. Though it's bad enough for me, for it leaves me a poor man."

"Not much," Peters exclaimed. "You're all right. You set us up with stores when we were broke, and now we've the chance we'll see you through."

"Seeing that the gold we brought in was probably the cause of all the trouble," Tony said.

"I don't know, lad; I don't know," Marmot replied. "How could any one but us know it was there?"

"Yes; how could they?" Peters echoed. "Only they did. We'll find out how later on. Meanwhile, one is settled--and Leary swears he's the man that tied him up before--while of the other two, one we know had a bad tumble, because we found where he took the ground, and found his horse lamed and with the gold still on its back. I'll bet that the chap carries marks enough about him to give his game away, even if he can travel all right."

"What about the other?" some one asked.

"He flung the gold away so as to get a lead on Murray and his mate--at least, so Murray said when he came in with the stuff," Peters answered.

Privately he had whispered to Tony an ugly suspicion he had--a suspicion which did not tend for peace of mind, for it was that Murray had in some way been in league with the men who had robbed and fired the store. That was a further irritant, for Tony remembered only too clearly the state of Murray's horse when he and Peters rode up to Marmot's, as well as the uneasiness in Murray's manner when they asked him who he had told of their return. Coming on the top of the other circumstances, it reduced Tony to a condition of suspecting every one and everything; so he took the first opportunity to ride away to the Flat--to test the greatest of the mysteries first.

Riding slowly, he reached the Flat about noon, his mind brooding over the perplexities which had crowded upon him since his return to Birralong, and his spirits depressed by the mingled doubts that had come to him since he had had time to realize something of the meaning of the story he had heard.

At first he had tried to dismiss it from his mind altogether, telling himself that it was only the ravings of a man delirious at the point of death. But the knowledge that the man had displayed as to incidents and interests in his life, and, above all, the significant hints Nuggan had uttered, all helped to keep his attention on it.

As he approached the boundary fence of the selection where it first touched the road, he caught sight of Taylor, and coo-eed to him. The elder man came towards him as soon as he saw who it was, and Tony dismounted and stood by the fence till he came up.

"Why, Tony, lad, back again? And what luck this time? Did you strike----"

"I want to ask you something," Tony said seriously; and Taylor stopped and looked at him.

"Why, what's wrong with you, Tony?" he asked. "You look as though--well, I don't quite know how. You haven't had fever, or a touch of the sun, or a----"

"No," Tony said, "I haven't. But I've heard something, and I----"

"Ah!" Taylor exclaimed. His wife had been expressing her views strongly and plainly to him as the weeks went by without any signs of Tony's return, while rumour was busy with the names of Ailleen and Dickson. "I understand, lad. You come along and see your mother. She's got it all off by heart, and will talk to you about it. She'll tell you all you want to know, and more besides."

"I want to hear it from you," Tony answered.

"There's mighty little I can tell you. It's all mixed up to me. It wasn't that way with your mother and me. It was straight out dealing; no side-tracks and cross-tracks. We started right off the reel. I said to her----"

"Who is my mother?"

The question, the tone, the expression of his face and the look in his eyes, made Taylor stare at Tony, speechless for the moment. The question was so unexpected; it brought such a flood of memory into the man's mind that his slow, heavy wits stood still, and he could only stand staring and gaping at the alert young face.

"Who is my mother?" Tony repeated abruptly.

"Your mother? Why--what's come over you, lad? Your mother? Why--go on to the house and ask her," Taylor replied, the only idea which came to him being the idea to escape from the difficulty by passing it on to some one else. But he was not to escape so easily.

"Am I your son?" Tony asked.

"My son? Why--my son? Ain't your name Taylor? Ain't you always--what's up with you? Who's been--you haven't--what's put that in your head?"

Tony leaned his arms on the top rail of the fence and looked away across the paddock. It was a simple question to answer, he told himself--a simple question for this man above all others to answer; but instead of doing so, he hesitated and was confused.

"I've heard--something," he said quietly. Now that he was face to face with the mystery, he lost his irritation and impatience. It was all true, he told himself. There was something which had been kept from him; something which Ailleen had learned and resented; something which----"I've heard something," he repeated, checking his thoughts. "I came straight to you to ask if it were true. If it were not, you need not--you would have said so."

"I don't know what you've heard," Taylor said slowly. "I don't know, and I don't care; for I ain't a man to catch an idea quick like. But I'll tell you this: you'd never have heard it from me--never. You'd have lived and died as you've been, just as if I'd been your father."

"Then you are not?" Tony exclaimed, turning on the man with a fierce earnestness.

"No, Tony, I ain't; but you'd never have heard it from me save this way. And now you know--well, it don't make no difference. You're just as you always have been--no more, no less. I'd never have told you, nor would your----" he stopped as he realized that the word which was on his tongue no longer applied.

"My--my mother," Tony said, with a different ring in his voice and a different look in his eyes.

"No, lad--no! 'Tain't that way," Taylor exclaimed warmly. "She's been your mother--and more maybe."

The dull wits for once acted quickly, and into Taylor's mind there came on the moment the memory of that night a score of years ago, when he saw his wife clutch the nameless babe and clasp it to her bosom, and the same fling of memory brought back also the building of the slim rail fence round the little mound in the corner of the paddock--the fence that was never without a trailing, flowering vine growing over it--and the dull, prosaic mind tried to understand something of the beauty and the glamour of it, but only grew more confused under the spell of unfamiliar emotion.

"You should have left it as it was, lad; you should have left it as it was," he mumbled. "Where's the good of stirring it up now? It's twenty years and more ago."

"It's _now_ to me--now and always," Tony answered. "And I want to know it all--everything."

Taylor wondered. Should he tell the story in his own heavy fashion, or go and ask his wife to tell it? There was no sense in keeping it a secret any more now, but he remembered his wife's words of twenty years before, "No one shall take him from me; no one--never."

"We'll go and ask the missus," he said; and together they walked to the house, silent.

At the door Mrs. Taylor met them. Before she could speak Taylor interposed.

"He's heard something of the yarn, and wants to know the facts," he said; "so we came along to you."

Taking the remark to apply to what she herself had in her mind, Mrs. Taylor put her hand on Tony's arm and smiled.

"Why, there's nothing to fret about," she said. "It isn't your loss; it's hers, if she's that sort of girl. Let her please herself, I say; and if she's fool enough----"

"'Tain't that," Taylor exclaimed. "It's--that chap who came here years ago has been around, or the yarn has, and Tony's heard it, and wants----now then, here, hold up!" he broke off, as Mrs. Taylor, taken terribly aback, looked from one to the other with startled eyes.

"What right has he to talk--now?" she asked, with a return of the savage jealousy she had shown when, twenty years before, she thought the baby was to have been taken from her--the baby which was now the stalwart, handsome young bushman who was watching her with such winsome eyes. "Is that what's made her change, Tony?" she went on, resentment against the girl, whom she held to be responsible for Tony leaving the Flat, still uppermost in her mind.

"I don't know," he answered. "Last night Marmot's store was burned, after we had left our gold there, and the gold was stolen. We rode the thieves down. One of them was badly thrown and died. I stayed with him while the others went on, and he told me he knew me because I was like my--my father; and then he said he stole me as a baby and left me here. I wouldn't have believed it only Nuggan said there was something wrong, and then I made up my mind to come out and ask. What is the truth?"

"That's it," Taylor said. "A chap came here one night and said--said he was left with you, and we took you and kept you and brought you up like our own."

Mrs. Taylor, touching Tony on the arm, pointed to the vine-covered rail in the corner of the paddock.

"He'd just gone," she said sadly.

"And the chap never came back and never sent a word, and it was nobody's business--so we kept you as our own," Taylor added.

"And if _that's_ why the girl----"

"There's more than that," Tony said. "If one part of the man's yarn is true, all of it may be. He said he'd killed my father, and then stole me in revenge on my mother; and he jeered me, dying as he was, and swore I'd never find her, though she was seeking for me now. I only thought he was raving then; I don't know now."

For a few moments there was silence between them.

"If he did that----" Mrs. Taylor began, and stopped.

Her memory turned back to the sorrow she had known when her firstborn went from her, when the aching void came into her life and robbed it of every joy and every zest, till the waif was brought to her, the care of whom filled her life with happiness and content. Her big motherly heart was trying to understand something of the anguish she would have known had that waif not come to her then; and she thought of the anguish that other mother must have known if the story she heard were true.

"I want to find her," Tony said simply.

Demonstrations of affection were unknown at Taylor's Flat--emotion has but slight influence in the prosaic life of the bush; but Mrs. Taylor flung her arms round Tony's neck, and held him closely to her as she kissed him. Then, as she released him and, looking up, caught her husband's glance, she exclaimed, "And you would too, Bill," as she pushed him, to hide the tears in her eyes.

The sound of a horse, furiously ridden, caused them to turn towards the road just as a rider dashed up to the slip-rails.

"There's a fire on Barellan run," he shouted. "We want all the help we can get."

Without waiting for an answer he dashed off out of sight, riding as hard as his horse would go to carry the warning and call for help to fight the common enemy.

"On Barellan!" Taylor exclaimed. "Why, the grass is a foot high there with no stock to keep it down. It'll be over the country if they don't check it. Ride for it, lad. Every man's wanted."

Tony needed no second bidding, and was in the saddle and off, riding hard for the scene of the conflict. As he rode past selections, the old hands were already preparing to protect their holdings by firing the grass and burning it for about ten yards on either side of the boundary fences, beating the flames out with boughs when they threatened to spread too far. It was a slow process and a dangerous one, for only small patches could be burned at a time, lest the small fire escaped past control and developed in an instant into a great blaze. The heavy white smoke rolled in clouds as each patch was set alight, enveloping the figures of the beaters, half hidden by the smoke and half revealed by the line of flame which ran so rapidly through the dry grass.

When Tony reached the township he found it practically deserted. The men who had struggled to stop the spread of the flames at Marmot's the night before were already away at the big blaze, the site of which was marked by a great column of smoke, rolling, whirling, and folding against the clear blue of the cloudless sky. On the air a faint haze was already drifting over the town, and with it came the pungent, aromatic scent of the burning eucalypts.

As he galloped through the bush the haze grew denser, the scent more pungent, the heat more intense, until he reached the fringe of the smoke, rolling along in heavy wreaths and clouds, and bearing with it a sound, inexplicable to those who have never heard it, unforgettable to those who have--a sound of a whispering roar, impressive and yet faint, sharp and yet dull, like the far-off roll of breaking surf and the rattle of rifle-shots. It told of a fire that was sweeping along through miles of grass with the rush of an incoming tide, leaping, flinging, dancing as it came, throwing up its columns of smoke, spark-laden and dense; sweeping in long lines of flame, reaching out like endless feelers from the great red demon behind; stretching out in thin streaks of glowing red, flameless till a dozen had spread in a network, laced and interlaced, in the dull buff hue of the grass, and a breath came out from the smoke and fanned them all to a blaze, and the flames sprang up with a roar, and leaping, rushed like a charging host when battle-cries rend the air, devouring everything, destroying everything, in the maddened swirl of heat. It told of standing timber bending before the wind which sprang to life in the fury of the blaze, while sheets of flame flung from tree to tree, hissing and roaring as they wrapped round the topmost boughs, and, while yet the stems were enshrouded in smoke, stripped off the leaves in a blazing shower, and tossed them far and wide, as though the game were a frolic and death were a laughing glee. It told of scorching blasts that rushed from the line of flame, shrivelling the leaves that were green to make them ripe for the havoc that was to come.

Shouts came to him from the smoke, telling him where the men were fighting, and he hastened forward. A dozen men dashed out of the gloom ahead, smoke-stained and grimed.

"Back to the road," the first one cried. "Ride back and fire the grass. It's sweeping down for miles in front. There's twenty fires alight."

"The blacks have set it going," another yelled. "It's springing everywhere."

"It's coming round both sides. It's all over the run," another shouted.

"The station-house?" Tony cried.

"The fires are all round it," was the answer. "Nothing can save it."

For a moment Tony sat still--for a moment. Then over him there swept a wave of emotion which blotted out everything from his mind but a sense of Ailleen's peril. A second thought would have suggested that she would have been warned, that she would have fled from the station long before; but he had no second thought. Only could he realize the peril she was in; only could he realize the need there was of helping her. Forgetful of what had occurred when last he was at the station; forgetful of the anger he had felt at her apparent preference of another to himself,--he remembered only that Ailleen might be in danger. Without heeding whether he was not himself riding into danger from whence there was no escape, he spurred his horse forward, and galloped off in the direction of the station.

As he rode the mirk of the smoke became denser, until his eyes were smarting and his lungs choking. His horse shied and tried to turn back, but Tony kept him going. The signs which served to show how great and widespread the fire was, only served to stimulate his anxiety to reach the station.

Suddenly the bush gave way before him as he emerged on to the Barellan road. The smoke was rolling along it in heavy volumes, but was less trying than it had been amongst the timber, and Tony again urged his horse into a gallop. The crackle and roar of the conflagration sounded on both sides, and he was marvelling that it had not yet burst out on to the road, when the sound of a horse coming towards him at break-neck speed arrested his attention. Scarcely had he heard the sound than through the haze of the smoke the horse, ridden by a girl, came into sight. Instinctively he reined up, and the thought flashed through his brain that it might be Ailleen.

The horse and its rider dashed out of the smoke, the horse with its neck stretched out, its eyes starting from its head, its tongue hanging out and blood-flecked foam on its nostrils. The rider was hatless, her clothes torn in shreds, and her hair streaming out on the wind. With one arm she was flogging her horse unmercifully; the other she was waving wildly around her head. The pace of the gallop carried her past Tony in a moment, but in that moment he recognized her--Nellie Murray.

With her eyes staring in a frenzy of madness, with her face wet and ghastly, and her voice raised in an endless mocking shriek of laughter, she dashed past him. There was no time to catch the words that seemed to blend with the laughter, there was no time to learn whether she saw him as she rode past, but there was time enough for his intuitions to work and teach him the originator of the fire and the reason of its existence. Nellie was avenging her defeat by Ailleen.

Straight down the road she raced, travelling with the smoke which, as it rolled along in great clouds of density, appealed to her as something that was humorous, as something that called for the long shouts of laughter with which she greeted it. Soon her horse, staggering in its stride, but still flogged to a gallop, emerged ahead of the heavy smoke though yet within the haze. The track which led to the Three-mile showed before her, and she turned her horse on to it from off the main road. Along its winding course she fled until the hut opened out. The horse lurched and stumbled in its stride, but mercilessly she used the switch, until, ten yards from the door, it came down on its knees, and, almost before she could spring from the saddle, rolled over, ridden to death.

She scarcely glanced at it as she rushed forward to the hut and flung the door open. On the stretcher Tap lay, his face terribly bruised and cut, moaning feebly. On one of the stools by the fireplace, sitting bunched up in a heap with his head on his hands, was Dickson. As she caught sight of him, she broke out again into her wild laugh.

"I said I'd come for you, Willy--and I've come," she shouted--"come with lots of friends for you, friends who won't let you get away any more. They're all round you, dancing and singing as they come along, nearer and nearer. Don't you hear them? Listen! Can't you smell the smoke in the air? _She's_ part of it by this time. I've fired the grass and the bush all round the house. She can't get away. More can you," she added quickly, as Dickson rose to his feet, and, turning a haggard face towards her, shrank away to the corner of the hut.

"You devil!" he exclaimed. "You've fired the bush!"

"All over the place," she answered, with her head thrown back and her mocking laugh ringing through the place. "I told you--I told you, if you didn't come for me I'd come for you--and I've come. She can't touch you now; she's burned up like the grass, and the fences, and the trees, and the house. Oh, it burned so well!"

"It's coming this way," he cried, as his eye caught sight of the rolling clouds of smoke through the open door.

"Yes; it's coming this way," she answered, with a sudden calm--"it's coming this way for you--for you and me. Look! Look out there! See that big boomer there with the red tongues jumping up? Look on the top of it. Don't you see him? Just on the top he's floating--just as he's been on all the big smokes. He likes the big smokes. He laughs at me when he's up there like that. He's been asking for them--asking--asking--asking so long. Poor little man, they took him away, but I've found him, and he's found me."

Her voice died down to a mournful monotone as she spoke--colourless, unimpassioned, melancholy. But to Dickson it was twice as terrifying as when she shouted and laughed. He looked as she directed towards the big column of smoke, which suddenly sprang up, as it were, from a bed of writhing, twisting tongues of flame.

"It's on us!" he shrieked in a sudden access of panic, and made a dash for the door.

She turned and faced him, and, as he came up to her, flung her arms around him, and held him.

"Leave go," he shouted, as he struggled; but she only raised her face to his--a calm, set face, pale to the lips, and showing the more ghastly from the dishevelled mass of dark hair that surrounded it. "Leave go," he repeated; and, as she still held, he raised his fist and brought it down on the upturned face, and tried to wrest himself free.

She buried her face against his shirt, seizing part of it in her teeth to aid her to keep her hold of him. He struck at her head, at her arms, at her body, anywhere, so long as he hit her, in his efforts to throw her off. But she held him, and at last, mad with fear, he tried to stagger out of the hut, dragging her with him.

The man on the stretcher made an effort to raise himself as the noise of the scuffle roused him. He also saw through the open door the rolling masses of smoke and the dancing line of flame.

"The bush is afire," he gasped. "Here, Willy, get me out of this. Help me to move. Willy! Willy! My God! I'm your father, boy; don't leave me."

But Dickson, dragging Nellie with him, had already gained the door.

"I'm all broken up. I can't move alone. Willy! Willy!" Tap cried as loud as he could, for the fall he had had the night before had given him a mortal hurt.

Dickson had reached the door and stood for a moment helpless to move at the sight which met his glance. The fire seemed to have swept down in two wide converging curves, rushing through the bush and setting it ablaze all round before it advanced on to the cleared land of the selection. It had just attacked the vegetation in the paddocks as Dickson got outside the hut, and which ever way he looked he saw a line of leaping flames sweeping towards him. The heat was scorching; the air stifling. The voice of the man in the hut fell on unheeding ears, for only one chance of escape appeared, and that was Slaughter's waterhole. With Nellie clinging to him he staggered towards it. Every second the heat was more intense, the smoke-laden air more stifling, and at the edge of the pool he swayed, even the strength born of his fear deserting him. With a wild, hopeless cry he fell forward into the water, and floundered towards the middle of the fence which Slaughter had built across it. As he reached the middle, breathless and exhausted with fear and the strain of Nellie's weight, a line of flame darted through the grass at the side of the track, and sprang, like a snake, up the wall of the hut, writhing out over the dried sheets of bark of the roof as, with a roar, the whole burst into flame. Other flames leaped out along the line of the fence; the heat came upon him with such fierceness that he felt his skin blister and crack; the smoke entered his lungs and made him choke as though a cord were tied tight round his throat, and with a glimpse of Nellie's face, upturned as her arms relaxed and she slipped down under the water, Dickson fell senseless across the rail of the fence.