Chapter 20

THE LAST LOOP.

At noon Ailleen, sitting on the verandah of Barellan, caught the scent of bush-fire smoke floating on the faint breeze. She rose and walked to the end of the verandah, where she could obtain a view in the direction whence the wind was blowing. Over the tops of the trees she saw smoke rising rapidly. Even as she stood she saw fresh columns spring up as though fires were being set alight at intervals all along the sky-line to windward. At first it rose in well-defined columns, straight up in the air, with such regularity that it seemed to be floating upwards to the faultless blue of the heavens from numberless sacrificial altars--as though it were the token of sacrifice offered by the drought-stricken earth to the pitiless sky above; a token of supplication from dumb, inarticulate Nature to the gods of the thunder-cloud and the rulers of the rain-mist, in pleading that the bonds which held back the tribute of the season might be freed and the thirst of the parched earth quenched.

But soon the columns were broken, soon the order was disorganized, as the smoke, fanned by the winds set up by heat below, swirled and twisted and changed into rolling clouds without form or regularity--clouds which massed together and formed into heavy banks that marred the clearness of the skies. The fringe, formed of the lighter vapour, floated over the trees, and drifted on the breeze towards the station, like the shreds of a white sea-fog blown too far inland. Very quickly it approached, and the air became filled with a pungent scent, and grew hot and stifling.

Without realizing the danger there was of the fire sweeping down on the station, Ailleen walked back to the other end of the verandah and looked away over the bush, and wherever she looked she saw smoke rising. The country was on fire on every side.

A second glance in the direction she had first looked showed also that the fire was rapidly travelling down the wind towards the station. Then she understood, and hastily sought the blind woman.

"The bush is on fire," she said when she found her. "It is burning all round and nobody seems to be about. We must get ready to go away in case it comes too near."

"It will not come near here," Mrs. Dickson answered. "No fire ever has yet. The men always turn out and stop it. That must be where Willy is. I knew there was something when he did not come back. He is out fighting it and saving the run. We need not be afraid."

"I don't know," Ailleen answered uneasily.

The air was becoming heavier and hotter every moment, and as she looked, she saw how much nearer the massed clouds of smoke were rolling.

"You need not be afraid," Mrs. Dickson went on. "You may be sure Willy is out with all the men he can muster, and they are keeping it back from the paddocks. Willy is such a brave boy; and besides, he would do anything rather than that harm should come to you."

"All the same I think I'll saddle----"

"Why do you never listen to what I say about Willy?" the blind woman interrupted. "You know how anxious he is, and how he is always seeking to please you. He is such a good boy, too. He would make----"

"I'd rather not talk about it, Mrs. Dickson," Ailleen interrupted.

She was growing impatient of the constant reference which the blind woman made to Willy and his excellent qualities, and his sadness at her distant bearing towards him.

"I cannot bear to have him unhappy," the elder woman said, sticking loyally to the task the crafty youth had set her of softening the obdurate girl to an appreciation of him and a recognition of his possibilities as a suitor for her affections.

Ailleen, glancing round the smoke-bedimmed horizon, caught sight of the figure of a man riding hastily across the paddock towards the house.

"There is some one coming," she said. "He seems to be riding to the back of the house. I'll go round and see who he is."

"Why, of course it's Willy," Mrs. Dickson answered. "Who else could it be?"

Ailleen walked round the verandah to the other side, and as the man approached, she was surprised to recognize Slaughter.

"Miss," he exclaimed, as he rode up, "the bush is afire all round. I've come through to see if you were safe. You must come at once, for the fire's coming down fast, and if you're not burned you'll be choked."

"But we're safe here," she replied.

"Safe here? You're right in the line of it. The wind's blowing it down quicker than a horse can gallop, and when the grass catches it'll have the house and everything in its track in no time. Come at once. If you've----"

"Mrs. Dickson is here. She's blind. Come and tell her. She would not believe me," Ailleen exclaimed, as she turned to hurry back to where the blind woman was sitting.

Slaughter jumped off his horse and came close under the verandah.

"Miss," he exclaimed; and Ailleen turned back. "Begging your pardon, miss," he went on, watching her face with anxious eyes, "but I've come for you, not for them. It's you I want to see safe. I started before the fire came up. I heard something, and I came out to see if you knew it, for I promised I'd see you safe when--I said I'd do my best. There's a bad lot about. It wasn't for me to do anything till now, but with the fire coming down you've a reason to get away, and you can have my horse."

She looked at him, with a smile on her face--a smile which came at his anxiety, in spite of the memories his presence stirred.

"I have my own horse," she said quietly.

"You _had_, miss; you haven't now. It was a part of what I heard. They've driven your horse away and all the others."

"Oh, nonsense!" she exclaimed.

"It's true," he answered earnestly. "I wouldn't tell you what isn't true. It was young Dickson said it. Do you know where he is now? He's at my place, he, and a mate of his, badly knocked about. There's another one somewhere--and he's the one I've got out ahead of, it seems. But there, look at the smoke rolling in! Come on, or we'll never get through," he added excitedly, pointing up to the smoke which was drifting rapidly over the house.

Ailleen glanced up and saw it. The fire was evidently coming down rapidly.

"I must tell Mrs. Dickson," she exclaimed, and turned away, running quickly along the verandah from the corner.

Slaughter climbed on to the verandah and followed her. As he turned the corner where Mrs. Dickson was sitting he started back with a cry.

"Kate Blair, by the living God!" he shouted, his face turning livid under the fury of rage that swept over him as he saw and recognized the woman who had ruined his life.

The sound of his voice and the name that was uttered made Mrs. Dickson start to her feet, her sightless eyes staring straight at the face of the man before her, her face pale to the lips, and her hands, quivering with excitement, held out in front of her.

"Who are you?" she gasped. "Who are you to speak like that?"

"Who am I?" Slaughter answered, speaking in a low, strained tone that was even more penetrating than his former shout. "Who am I?"

"Yes, yes," she exclaimed nervously. "Who are you? What right have you here? I don't know you, man."

A laugh, mirthless, cold, and full of devilish satire, came from his lips.

"You look me in the face and ask that question?" he said. "You----"

Ailleen, looking from one to the other in wondering surprise, caught at Slaughter's words.

"She's blind," she said hurriedly. "You must be mistaken. Mrs. Dickson is quite blind."

"Begging your pardon, miss," he said, as he turned towards her, "I forgot you were there for the moment; but maybe it's as well that you are. There's no mistake on my part."

He spoke with a calm self-possession that was in great contrast to the fury of his first exclamation, and in great contrast to the agitation of the blind woman.

"I don't know you--I don't know you," she went on repeating. "Go away. You have no right here."

"Then if you don't know me, maybe it'll be as well if I just say who you are to this young lady here," he said, with unmoved demeanour. "It may interest her to know, and you'll maybe place me when you hear all I know."

"It is nothing but a pack of lies--a lot of wretched lies. It is all untrue; everything is untrue," Mrs. Dickson exclaimed.

"Even before it is said," Slaughter remarked dryly. "Miss," he added, with a return of the angry vigour to his voice, "I told you my story once, the story of what made me a lonely man, the story of a lie a woman told to the woman I loved and who loved me. That woman--the woman I loved--was your mother. The other is there."

His tone had grown harder with every word, his eyes brighter, and his face more pale and set. As he spoke the last words there was an energy in voice and manner which seemed to make them almost a blow, and a blow before which the blind woman shrank.

"It's a lie!" she muttered. "It's a lie!"

"It _was_ a lie," he thundered. "It _was_ a lie that ruined one life and nearly blasted another, and now--now I've found you, after years of longing and waiting, found you as the mother of a scoundrel who sought to ruin the daughter of the woman you wronged."

"It's a lie!" she repeated. "My boy is brave; he would wrong no one."

"Where is he now?" Slaughter went on, in a voice that was loud and angry. "Where was he last night?"

"He is out at the fire," she said. "He is a brave boy and a good boy. Blame me as you like, but you shall not blame him."

Ailleen, watching the two, fascinated by the development which was as inexplicable to her as it was unexpected, felt a touch of pity as she saw the expression of pride come over the blind woman's face--pride for the absent Willy!

"The close companion of Barber," Slaughter said; and Mrs. Dickson, clasping her hands together, sank into her chair again.

"No," she said, "no. He promised me he would not touch the boy. He promised he would not lead him astray."

"Then Barber has been here?" Slaughter cried.

The blind woman nodded.

"When?" Slaughter demanded.

"More than a month ago," she said in a subdued voice, as she shuddered. "Ask Ailleen. She will tell you when. It was the day the rail broke."

"Why, that was Tony--Tony Taylor," Ailleen exclaimed, glad of any chance of interposing between the two.

Slaughter looked at her wonderingly, and as he looked there came a curious expression into his eyes.

"I must have been blind, I take it," he said, more as though he were speaking to himself. "I must have been blind--up to now."

"And Willy was with Tony last night?" Ailleen asked.

Slaughter started as he heard her voice.

"With Tony? No; he was with Barber, the most evil scoundrel, the--the--well, that woman's husband;" and he broke off as he swung round again towards Mrs. Dickson. "The man she married and left for another fool, who----"

"Don't!" the blind woman exclaimed. "Don't speak of him. Blame me--blame even Willy, but not him. _I loved him._"

Slaughter laughed in his mirthless, satirical manner again.

"Till yet another came," he said. "Till you met Dickson, and----"

"He _was_ Dickson," she interrupted. "It was the name he took. It was----"

"And you profane his memory by saying that he was the father of that cowardly slab?" Slaughter broke in angrily.

"He was the father of my boy. It was why I named him Willy. It is why he is all my world, ever since his father was taken from me."

"Miss," Slaughter exclaimed, turning to Ailleen again, "it makes me mad to hear her. She lied of me as she now lies of him, who was my dearest friend in the old days, the man she led to ruin with the witchery of her face. It makes me mad, I say," he went on, his voice rising under the growing fury of his anger. "She wronged me bad enough, but----"

With a sudden access of the frenzy which had seized him when he met Barber at the Three-mile, he swung round upon the blind woman as she sat trembling in her chair, with his fists clenched and the evil light of mania in his eyes. Ailleen, seeing the look and the gesture, sprang at him and seized his arm.

"Stop!" she cried. "Would you strike a helpless woman like that?"

He looked at her with his blazing eyes.

"A woman?" he said hoarsely. "She's a fiend--a lying fiend. I have waited to kill her. Now the time has come. Now I can----"

The girl was in front of him, holding both his arms, and looking into his eyes with a fearless glance.

"You shall not," she said, as she struggled to push him back. "You shall not harm her. You are mistaken."

"Let me go. She nigh broke your mother's heart," he answered. "I've waited years. She's not fit to live. She even betrayed McMillan."

"No, no," the blind woman cried; "I did not--I did not! I gave up everything for him. I loved him."

Unnoticed in the excitement they were labouring under, the air had grown thicker with the smoke coming from the line of fires which almost surrounded them to windward. Unnoticed, also, was the figure of a horseman riding furiously up from the opposite direction. He sprang off his horse as he caught sight of them through the rapidly deepening haze of smoke, and, leaping from the ground, he clutched the verandah rail and pulled himself up.

"Quick for the horses! The fire is on you!" he shouted.

The blind woman started to her feet with a piercing shriek.

"His voice!" she cried. "It is him come back from the dead to save me. Willy, Willy, my love, oh, come to me!"

She turned to where he was, with outstretched arms, feeling in the air, helpless in her blindness to do more. Slaughter, with his arms dropped to his sides, stared vacantly at them. Only Ailleen understood.

"Thank God you've come, Tony!" she exclaimed.

"Where are your horses?" he shouted. "The fire has reached the grass. Slaughter, quick; it's life or death."

He sprang over the rail as he spoke, and pushed against Slaughter as he dashed over to Ailleen and seized her by the arm. The impact brought Slaughter out of his stupor.

"The horses are gone," he cried. Then, as his awakened sense showed him the peril they were in, he rushed along the verandah, shouting, "Fire the grass. It's our only chance."

"Go to the back of the house," Tony exclaimed to Ailleen, as he sped after him.

From the windward side of the verandah he and Slaughter leaped to the ground. The smoke was rolling towards them in great opaque billows and the air scorched their faces, for through the dense mass they saw the lurid gleam of the flames leaping and springing like living things thrown out in a skirmishing line across the grass-covered stretch of country. They dashed forward towards it, their eyes half blinded, their lungs choking, and their skin blistering.

"Light it there," Slaughter gasped; and Tony paused to get his match-box.

He flung a lighted match on the grass, and in a moment, with a roar and a glare that sent him reeling to the ground, the flames sprang up, dancing, skipping, rushing hither and thither as they licked up the fuel of the grass. In a moment they had passed from him, travelling in a widening circle, the curve to windward moving slowly, the curve to leeward looping as it ran over the ground. Through the line of flame and smoke he saw the station loom. A moment later it stood clear on the blackened earth, and on either side of it the broken line of flame sped on. Scrambling to his feet, he ran over the still smoking ashes towards the house, with one thought in his mind, one hope in his heart--that the woodwork had not caught.

He reached the verandah, which was reeking with the smell of scorched wood, and rushed round to the other side. The line of flame was already far beyond it, passing over the open grass country at the back with towering masses of dead white smoke rolling along overhead. On the verandah the blind woman sat, huddled up against the wall, and beside her Ailleen was standing.

She turned as she heard him, and took a step towards him with outstretched hands.

"Thank God you came," she said, as he caught her in his arms and held her.

"Darling, darling!" he whispered. "Ailleen, you are mine now."

"I always was," she answered, as she clung to him. "Oh, why have you been so long in coming? I thought you had forgotten."

"You sent me away the day I came, and they said----"

"Tony!"

She raised her head as she spoke, and looked at him with eyes full of deep reproach.

"I hardly cared for anything then," he said.

"Tony, I never meant that," she answered. "You rode off, and I thought----I'm so sorry, Tony."

The voice of the blind woman interrupted them.

"Where is he? Where is he? Why doesn't he come?" she said plaintively.

"Oh, Tony, I forgot," Ailleen exclaimed, as she loosened her arms. "Let me go to her."

"And where's Slaughter?" Tony cried, coming back from the clouds of happiness to the reality of their situation to discover that he only had returned to the station.

He hurried round to the other side of the house. The ground was black, with small wisps of smoke rising here and there for a considerable distance away, while a hundred yards off he saw an undefined heap lying. The sight of it made him shudder, and he rushed over to it, fearing what he dared not think.

It was Slaughter, senseless, with blackened face and singed hair, lying where he fell when the flames swept up around him and the smoke rolled over him, shutting him off from escape and filling his lungs till he was overcome.

Tony seized him by the shoulders, and, half carrying, half dragging him, succeeded in getting him to the house. Ailleen, seeing him coming, met him with some water, and between them they bathed his head and hands until there was some sign of returning vitality. But consciousness was longer in reviving, and Slaughter still lay insensible when a rescue party from the men who were fighting the fires pressed through the lines and reached Barellan.

For many days after Slaughter lay ill, almost at death's door, to the sorrow and anxiety of Birralong; for the nightly gatherings at Marmot's temporary store had much food for reflection in the knowledge which came to them after the days of the great bush fire.

The charred ruins of the Three-mile, and the shallow waterhole beside the hut, revealed enough to put to shame the scandal that had been laid on Slaughter's shoulders, and for that alone Birralong, collectively, acknowledged the blame of a grievous fault. But there was more than mere acknowledgment of error needed to balance accounts. The fire that Tony lit in the grass at Barellan would have been of no value in saving the station had not another been lit farther away and nearer the onward rushing line of raging fury. The heat and smoke where Tony stopped nearly overpowered him, but Slaughter had dashed almost up to the oncoming line before _he_ fired the grass; and the men of Birralong, who knew what bush fires mean, had no words to express what they thought of Slaughter's act.

"Cold-blood Slaughter, eh?" Cullen said, when he heard it; and then he stood up and took off his hat, and remained standing, with bowed head, till the others caught his meaning and followed his example; and so, while Slaughter lay nearly dying at Barellan, the men of Birralong nightly greeted the mention of his name.

But that was not all the news which came to the gossips of the town. The story that Tony had heard from the dying Barber, and which he had re-told at the Flat, was known to every one; Nuggan, anxious to cover his retreat from an awkward position, being assiduous in spreading it. Later, when rumour had it that the Lady of Barellan had claimed that Tony and not Dickson must be her son, Birralong was prepared to support her, more especially when it was known that Ailleen had never wavered in her allegiance to the champion of the district. But there was no proof of her right to make the claim till Slaughter had recovered, and even then, in a legal sense, there was not much of a case to go on. Only was there the statement that the dead McMillan lived again in the features and figure of Tony; but it satisfied Birralong, and no one came forward to dispute it. Even if the question had been raised no interest would have been served, for Mrs. Dickson willed that if Barellan could not be his, it should be Ailleen's, and with Peters's Reef a "boomer," as Palmer Billy averred, their future was assured when Tony and Ailleen were wed.

Birralong took it soberly till the last event occurred. Then festivity reigned supreme, and the resources of the Rest were strained to meet the calls, made by a thirsty district, to do honour to the occasion. And always was there another cheer and another excuse for a toast when the raucous voice of Palmer Billy proclaimed the fact--which it did till the coming of dawn--that they were "both to be ranked with the real McKay, and both were colonial born."

THE END

* * * * *

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

THE TRACK OF MIDNIGHT.

By G. FIRTH SCOTT.

_Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d._

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The Romance of Australian Exploring.

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"This is a thoroughly sound and trustworthy account of the Australian explorers, from Wentworth to Burke and Wills. It should have been styled the 'reality' rather than the 'romance' of Australian exploring, for Mr. Firth Scott is, wisely, more anxious about his facts than his style."--_Spectator._

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+-----------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | Page 178 proprieter changed to proprietor | | Page 227 corroborrees changed to corroborees | | Page 275 orgie changed to orgy | | Page 304 gound changed to ground | +-----------------------------------------------+