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<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> Strange tales were being told of Cameron's son in Wirreeford. Donald Cameron had been laid up, crippled with rheumatism since the early spring, and Davey had been managing for him. For the first time in his life the boy found himself with responsibility, authority and money in his hands. The old man required a strict account of his movements and operations, allowing him only a few shillings to pay for his meals and nothing over for the couple of drinks that cemented a deal in the township. McNab had got hold of Young Davey. How it was not exactly known. "Let the old man sew up his money-bags, Young Davey'll open them for him," sale-yard loafers began to say. Davey swaggered. He was cock of the walk at McNab's. Conal had gone to New South Wales again, and now there was not a man spent more, nor was as free with the dice as Davey. The Schoolmaster heard McNab talking to Davey in the parlour behind the bar one evening, filling the boy with a flattery that went to his head faster than the crude spirits he plied him with. "The only son of the richest man in these parts—be a bit of a millionaire y'self, Davey—when y're too old to enjoy the money—have a good time with it," McNab said. "Your father's a great man—a great man, Davey—a bit near, that's all—don't understand that a high-spirited youngster like you'se got to have a bit of gilt about him! Makes you look ridiculous, that's what it does, havin' no more money about you than a teamster, or a bloomin' rouseabout." "Here you ... you hold your tongue about the old man, McNab," Davey struggled to say. "You ... you give me the money. It'll be all right when I come into the property. I want to go'n have a game with the boys now." McNab sniggered. "Oh well—you're a lad, Davey," he said. "As good a man with cattle as your father, and you know better than he does how to make yourself popular. We used to say you was as mean as him once—a chip of the old block." Davey started to his feet. He stood by the table, swaying a little as he hung to it. "You ... you be careful, McNab, or I'll smash your damned head," he said. It was only when they were very fuddled that men spoke to him like this. McNab giggled. Farrel heard the boy's voice. It came to him, thick and uncertain, through the thin walls. The door of McNab's parlour was ajar. He caught a glimpse of Davey's sullen, flushed face, his eyes, stupid and dull, with the glow of drink in them. He pushed open the door and went into the room. "Hullo, Davey," he said, "I was looking for you." Davey stared at him uncertainly. "You mayn't know, Mr. Farrel," McNab said, an evil light in his yellow eyes, "but Davey, here, is doing an important bit of business with me and you're intrudin'." The Schoolmaster glanced at him. "Intruding, am I?" he replied coolly. "Well, it seems to me, it's just about time." "What do you mean? What the hell do you mean?" "School's out, Mr. Farrel," Davey crowed, lurching back on his heels. "You hurry up and give me the money, McNab." McNab put a couple of sovereigns into his hand. "Come and have a drink, Mr. Farrel," Davey cried boisterously. "There's a couple of chaps in the bar ... waiting for me ... and I'll play you poker, bob rises. Not a dime more." He staggered across the room and threw open the door into the tap-room. McNab followed him, turning back at the doorway to shoot a glance of triumph at the Schoolmaster. Davey's appearance in the bar was hailed with a shout. Dan heard the rattling of bottles and glasses, the shouts of laughter, blaring of oaths and stamping of heavy feet that followed the boy's call for drinks all round. Fragments of a song, bawled jocosely, came to the Schoolmaster's ears as he tramped down the road to the cottage, on the edge of the township. He brooded over the change in Davey, asking himself how he came to be kicking over the traces; why he was going to the dogs with the ne'er-do-wells of McNab's, what Donald Cameron would say to it if he knew; how he could fail to know; what his mother was feeling and thinking about it. She would know, of that he was certain. Not much escaped those clear, still eyes of hers. In the morning when he saw the boy again, he tried to speak to him; but Davey swung past, dragging his hat over his face, shamefacedly. The Schoolmaster got into the habit of watching him, trying to see his face. Sometimes it surprised him. He had seen Davey thrashing a steer until the blood poured from its tawny hide. He had seen him swinging along the roads on sale days after the midday meal, reckless and laughing, his head thrown back, a couple of McNab's men at his heels. He had heard him singing drunkenly on his way home to the hills in the evenings. He went after him one evening, when Johnson, Cameron's head stockman, had gone on early, and Davey was going home alone. "Look here, Davey," he said, riding beside him, "what's this game you're on? You'll have to drop it." Davey laughed. "You're like the rest of them," he said bitterly. "Think a fellow never grows up! I've been treated like a kid too long. The old man's been making me the laughing stock of the country ... and he's got to understand I'm a man ... and I've got to be treated like one." "You needn't go drinking and chucking money about at McNab's to be that—" Davey's eyes veered on him. "Conal does it," he said. "And you all think no end of him." "Oh, Conal! What has he got to do with it?" The Schoolmaster hesitated. "Conal does it ... but then he's a roadster. It comes natural to him. It doesn't to you. You're Cameron's son and—" "Cameron's son!" Davey scoffed. "Much good that does me!" "What's your father going to say when he hears about this business at the Black Bull," the Schoolmaster asked. "Say? Oh, he'll cut up at first. He's got to understand though, I've got to go my own way—have some money to call my own. He won't know more than's good for him though. That's arranged between McNab and me." "You don't mean to say you've got into any—arrangement with McNab?" the Schoolmaster asked. "Oh, you needn't look like that about it," Davey replied. "It's a harmless one. He's been decent. I'm not fool enough to give McNab any real handle against me." "You're a darned fool, Davey," the Schoolmaster said, his voice ripping the silence with startled energy. "McNab and his crew'll have you in a hole before you know where you are." Davey flicked the reins across his mare's neck. She leapt forward along the track. There was not a man in Wirreeford who did not think he knew what Thad was driving at, that he was working for a shot at Donald Cameron through Young Davey. Only he did not see it, the calf, they said. They laughed and followed the course of Thad's snaring, with winks, chuckles of amusement, and sly jokes at Young Davey's expense, although they drank with him, flattered and applauded him, playing up to the part McNab had set them. The Schoolmaster tried again to warn the boy. This time, Davey was inclined to listen to him. "What can McNab do to me?" he asked. "I'm not a lag, or a lag's son." "No," the Schoolmaster said, a little bitterly. "But I've been watching McNab—seeing the way he works. He's got a genius for the underhand job. There's not much he couldn't do if he set his mind to it. He's set his mind to something now I can see that ... and you're in the way of it. I don't know exactly what it is. You know he doesn't love your father. Perhaps it's that. He's never forgiven him for trying to get him cleared out. He's using you somehow, Davey." "I believe you're right, Mr. Farrel," Davey said slowly, after a while. "I've been a fool!" He swore uneasily. "Think I've been mad lately. I wanted people to reckon I wasn't ... just Cameron's son, and 'mean as they make 'em!' I'm two parts wrong and one part right. The right part is, I've got to be independent. I've got to have money of my own. It was what you said the other night set me thinking. I'm going to keep out of McNab's way." "McNab never shows his hand when he means to win, Davey," there was a whimsical inflection in the Schoolmaster's voice. "You can only beat him at his own game if you don't let him see your cards either." "Eh?" the boy looked at him. "You mean don't drop him at once ... let him down slowly." "Yes. He's got his knife into me, too, you know, though he hasn't shown it quite clearly yet. He's good at the waiting game. It'll be a bit interesting to see how he marks us both off—if we don't mark him off, that is. I'm going to get out of his way as soon as I can. I'm giving up the teaching here. Deirdre and I are going up to Steve's for a while, and then I hope we'll shake the dust of the Wirree off our feet." They were parting when the Schoolmaster said: "Hear Pat and Tom Kearney have cleared out to the new rush? Eaglehawk, isn't it? They brought in a mob for Conal—Maitland's cattle—from the North-west, poor as mice. They said Conal was on the roads and will be in presently to take them up to the hills. Maitland's got a couple of fattening paddocks beyond Steve's." Two days later, on sale day, this same scraggy mob of northern bullocks was still in the largest pen of the Wirreeford yards. Davey heard them bellowing mournfully. "Conal's been expected the last couple of days to take charge of them," somebody told him. "But he's not come yet, and the Schoolmaster's beating the town for a man to drive 'em to the hills for him. The boys 've all cleared out to the rush. Dan's goin' to take them himself in the morning." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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