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Pioneers, The

<h2>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2> When the broad glare of the morning sun broke through the dingy windows of the hut, Deirdre started from the cramped position in which she had fallen, her head leaning wearily against a box. She was aghast to find that she had been asleep. As she woke with a startled exclamation, a hand went out to her. Her eyes met Davey's. It was as if that encounter in the valley of shadows had brushed all misunderstandings from the love that was like the sun between them. Deirdre had wrestled with death for possession of him. Her eyes still bore the shadow of the conflict. Davey was wan and vanquished. He knew that she had wrested his spirit from the darkness on which it had been drifting, and the knowledge made a serene joyousness in him. Speech deserted them; they had no voices to talk with. Just this gazing of eyes on eyes told all that there was to tell. Later on she went from his side and began to move about the hut, gathering the brushwood into the hearth, raking over the ashes and making the fire again. His eyes followed her. The hut was shabby and disorderly by daylight. Conal had used it when he was mustering, and there was a heap of rusty irons in the corner, a few hoarded tins and half-empty jars of grease on the shelves, some old clothes, worn-out boots and green-hide thongs behind the door. The bunk, with its sheepskins, and a table made of a rough hewn plank on three poles set in the floor, were the only furniture. Deirdre found a bundle of rags on the shelf near the hearth, and searched for the bottle of liniment which she knew was kept for use if any of the men got a broken hand or a kick from a beast in the stock-yards. Davey knew where Conal had stowed these things while they were working there together. He tried to help Deirdre to find them. She was at his side in an instant. "You mustn't move," she said, a compelling tenderness in her voice. He fell back. The touch of her hands was a shock of joy. His face turned up to her, wan with weakness, radiant at her near presence. His eyes went through hers. "Deirdre!" The cry was a prayer also. She bent over him; her arms encircled him. From that first kiss of conscious lovers she withdrew a little tremulously. "Oh, you must be still," she cried. "If the bleeding begins again you'll never be strong. You must lie quiet now, and I'll see if I can find some food. There's sure to be flour and some oatmeal about." "On the shelf in the corner by the hearth," Davey said. "And there was tea in a tin there a day or two ago." She found them and they breakfasted on a weak gruel and tea without milk. She had helped Davey on to the bunk against the wall and spread the sheepskins under him when the Schoolmaster and Teddy came into the yard. Farrel carried a bag of food and a couple of blankets strapped to his saddle. Deirdre met him out of doors. The sight of her reassured him. She told him what had happened during the night—of Davey's long stillness and insensibility, and of Conal's coming a few hours before the dawn. The Schoolmaster went into the hut. "Father says "—Deirdre went straight to Davey—"he doesn't believe it was Conal fired that shot at you." Her eyes went out to him troubled and beseeching. "I can't help thinking it was, myself, though I'd be glad not to. He's been such a big brotherly sort of man to me always, Conal, and it hurts to think he could do a thing like that." She continued after a moment. "Father says, Conal came in after you'd gone last night. He'd been drinking, but his voice told him that he didn't do it. As soon as he knew you'd come after me, the way you were, he rode out after you for fear you mightn't have been able to reach here. Do—do you think it was Conal, Davey?" Davey turned his face to the wall. He could not bear to hear her defence of Conal—her solicitude and desire to think well of him in spite of everything. He had no doubt in his own mind. The memory of that whistling shot from the dark trees, the agony of his long ride through the hills, came back to him. "All I know," he said bitterly, "is that I was looking for him before I left the town to tell him what mother had told me about the raid McNab and the old man and M'Laughlin were getting up. At the Black Bull they said they'd been baiting Conal—about me—and he'd gone out looking for me—promising to do for me. Some one said he'd gone to the store. I went there and Joe Wilson told me he'd seen Conal riding out an hour earlier. I thought I'd catch him up on the road. It was from the trees by the creek the shot came, and Red took fright." "There's nobody else got a grudge against you, Davey?" "Not that I know who'd want to settle me that way. McNab, of course, hasn't got any love for me." "You went up to the store and straight out along the road past the Bull?" the Schoolmaster asked. "Yes, but I'd seen McNab in the bar a couple of minutes before. It couldn't have been him." Farrel threw out his hand with a gesture of doubt and disappointment. "Deirdre says she's heard Conal say that he'd do for you, Davey," he said, "but she didn't think he meant it. Just his hot-headed way of talking! McNab must have maddened him, filled him up with drink. I can't tell you how it goes against the grain to believe he could have done a thing like this, and yet—it looks like it." "Was he back when you came away this morning?" Deirdre asked. "No," the Schoolmaster replied. "Ask him when he comes in, whether he did, or did not fire at Davey," she said. "I'll take his word. Will you, Davey?" "Yes." Davey's tone was a little uncertain. The Schoolmaster went to the door again. Davey called him back with a restless movement. "What are you going to do about those beasts?" he asked querulously. "They're better here than at Steve's, but of course if M'Laughlin gets a tracker it wouldn't take him long to find them. Teddy's got them in the four-mile paddock this morning, but they ought to be moving." "Perhaps Conal"—the Schoolmaster began. "Oh, yes, I forgot, Conal—he'll take them." Davey fell back. "Why can't you take them yourself?" he inquired. The Schoolmaster met his eyes for a moment. "Lost my nerve," he said, with a little grating laugh, and turned out of doors. Deirdre's eyes sparkled with anger. "Oh," she gasped, breathlessly, "how dare you, Davey? How dare you?" Davey, morose anger in his eyes, stared at her. "You're angry because he let me go out last night," she said. "Don't you know he's almost helpless, that he can just see dimly in the broad daylight. All the world's going dark to him, and it's breaking his heart—eating the strength and the soul and the courage out of him, to stand by and let others do things for him." Consciousness of what he had done came slowly to Davey. "Oh, it was mean and cruel and cowardly to hurt him like that!" Deirdre cried passionately, and ran out into the sunshine after her father. When she came back into the hut Davey, with a tense white face, was standing near the door. "I ought to be flayed alive—but I didn't know, I didn't understand," he said. There was no quieting or comforting him. "Will he ever forgive me? Do you think he will, Deirdre?" His face was clammy with the sweat of weakness. "It was more than Conal did—that. Conal wouldn't have done it." Deirdre went for the Schoolmaster. He came into the hut again. He and Davey gripped hands. Then the Schoolmaster led him to the bunk again and stretched him out on it. "It's all right, my boy! All right!" he said, brokenly. "You lie still now and let Deirdre look after you." Davey's vigorous youth rebelled at the days of idleness which followed. The wound knitted quickly; his weakness vanished as it mended. Conal had disappeared. No one had seen or heard of him since the night of the Wirree races. The Schoolmaster and Deirdre had accepted his disappearance as silent proof of his having fired the shot that had almost cost Davey his life. When they went back to the shanty Steve talked incessantly about Conal. Although no more had been heard of M'Laughlin and the threatened raid had never been made, he was not easy about that half hundred head of newly-branded beasts in the Narrow Valley paddock. At the end of the week Davey took the bit between his teeth. "I'm going to take that mob to the Melbourne yards," he said. "We can't run them any longer in the Valley." "It's too risky, Davey," the Schoolmaster said. "McNab's too quiet to be harmless, and there's only one man could run the mob with safety." "And that's Conal?" Davey asked. "There's not a man in the country like Conal with cattle. He knows every by-path and siding on the ranges. Then he's hail-fellow-well-met with the men on the roads. There's not one of them would give him away," the Schoolmaster said. "I could run them." The line on Davey's mouth tightened. "And safer than Conal, I've been thinking. Some of the cows have father's brand on them. Most of the calves ought to have the D.C. by rights, I suppose. They've got the cut of our Ayrshires, though Conal's done the double M's pretty neatly on them. "What's the old man's will be mine some day, and so they're in a sort of way my cattle too. I can say, I don't think Ayrmuir had any right—not much anyway—to them, if we couldn't get them. The old man wouldn't risk a couple of horses on the off-chance. Rosses and Morrisons lost three horses when they had a go for 'em, besides there isn't a man on our place could have yarded them. Conal got them. We were with him. You can hold his share for this batch when I bring it to you. But I'm going to drive, saying they are Donald Cameron's cattle. So they are, most of them. I'll be driving my own cattle as a matter of fact, though it may be realising on the estate, a forced loan from the old man, you may say. My name will carry me through and when the deal's over I can make it right with father. I'm going home." "Can't think what Conal means, leavin' 'em so long," Steve muttered irritably. "We can't have them on our hands any longer!" Davey's voice was short and irritable too. "You're right, Davey." The Schoolmaster spoke slowly, thoughtfully. "What you say makes the getting rid of them sound easy, but I hardly like the idea of—" "Taking your share, after the way I've put it?" Davey interrupted. "But as far as I'm concerned they're Conal's beasts, and your's—and mine—because we got them. Nobody else could, and they weren't any good to anybody eating their heads off in the hills. But for all the world it's as if I had contracted with you to do it on behalf of the estate. Ayrmuir gets a third of the profits. I'll hand it over to the old man—and as likely as not he'll be glad enough to see it, for a couple of dozen breakaways and scrubbers he never expected to make a penny out of again." The Schoolmaster's gesture of impatience was one of resignation also. "It's a specious argument, Davey," he said, "but I wish to heaven you'd kept clear of the whole business." That evening Davey called Deirdre and they wandered down the hillside, watching the sun set on the distant edge of the plains that stretched, northwards and inland, from the rise beyond Steve's. "I'm going to-morrow," he said, and told her of the promise he had made his mother. "I feel it's up to me to carry this job through, but when it's over I'm coming back—going home. When I come back will you marry me, Deirdre?" "Yes," she said simply. "But if you'd only give up going, Davey!" Davey's face had a look of his father for the moment, a sombre obstinacy. "There's something in the game," he said. "You're on your mettle to carry it through when you've begun. But you needn't worry. I'll be all right. My story'll be good enough if there is any trouble." Deirdre sighed. "But I can't bear the thought of your going," she said. "If only you wouldn't!" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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