But time came when all the romance of barbarism seemed to have fizzled out and only cruel realities remained--when work and worry turned McKeith from the worshipping lover into the rough-tongued, irritable bushman--when his 'hands' deserted him, his cattle died and things generally went wrong, and when he showed himself something of the hard-headed, parsimonious, ill-conditioned Scotch mongrel that Steadbolt had called him. When, indeed, he seemed to have forgotten that Lady Bridget O'Hara had graciously permitted him to worship her, but had not bargained for being treated--well, as many another out-back squatter--treats his help-mate. Then Bridget would tell herself bitterly that it might have been better had she married a civilised gentleman. There would sometimes be scenes and sometimes sulks, and those times no doubt accounted for the hungry look in Lady Bridget's eyes and the slight hardening of her mouth.

She was loyal though, in spite of her many faults, and 'game' in her own way--and when Colin came out of his dour moods, she was generally ready to meet him half way.

For, through all, the memory of the dream-drive honeymoon lingered. And the bit of bark, sapless, brown, curled up by the heat into almost a tube, and partially eaten by white ants--before the desecrating a.s.sault had been discovered and the termites' nest destroyed with boiling water--was still cherished as a sacred symbol.

While she swung in the hammock the memory pictures came and went like a cinematograph show--the dream-drive presently merging into an electioneering trip through McKeith's const.i.tuency a few weeks after her bridal homecoming.

The 'Lady of Quality' might, had she been so minded, have also made spicy capital out of the humours of that political contest--in which, unhappily, the Labour Party had triumphed. Steadbolt had had his say on the occasion, and there had been a free fight--Lady Bridget was not present, and only heard darkly of the occurrence--when Steadbolt had got the worst of it in an encounter with his late employer.

But all that was but a small side-show, and not likely to affect in any great measure Lady Bridget's life. Except that the loss of McKeith's seat in the Legislative a.s.sembly made it no longer necessary for him to spend at least part of the winter session in Leichardt's Town. Nor would Lady Bridget have the opportunity to resume her old intimacy at Government House. In any case, however, she was not destined to see more of her old friend in Australia. A few months previously, Lady Tallant had developed symptoms of grave disease--it was said that the Leichardt's Land climate did not agree with her, and she had gone back to England, leaving Sir Luke to perform his duties without her help.

CHAPTER 9

At last, Lady Bridget heard the unmistakable sound of cattle in the distance--the low, mult.i.tudinous roar of lowing beasts and tramping hoofs and the reverberating crack of stock-whips. It came from the gidia scrub. She knew that they had been mustering SCRUBBERS--otherwise, wild cattle from the broken country at the foot of Moongarr Range.

She left the hammock and went again to the veranda railing. Looking along a side path from the Chinaman's garden she saw that Mrs Hensor and her boy--the yellow-headed urchin of about six--were hastening towards the Bachelors' Quarters. The woman carried a basket of vegetables, the boy hugged a big pawpaw fruit which he held up proudly as his mother responded in her free-and-easy, rather sulky fashion to Lady Bridget's stiff nod. 'It's for the House,' cried the child. 'Fo Wung said I was to bring it up.'

Lady Bridget made a wry face--she did not like pawpaws.

'Very well, Tommy, and if you're good you can have what's left tomorrow.'

'That's all right,' responded Tommy in bush formula.

'Have you seen anything of your master--or the postman?' asked Lady Bridget of Mrs Hensor.

'I believe Mr McKeith is coming on ahead with Harry the Blower,' said Mrs Hensor. 'Look sharp, Tommy, the cattle will be at the yard directly, and I've got my dinner to cook for the whole lot of them, seeing that some visitors aren't good enough for the house.'

The woman pointed her last sentence by a malicious glance at the mistress of Moongarr.

'I suppose that is what your master keeps you here for--to cook for the visitors at the Quarters, Mrs Hensor,' said Lady Bridget, with incisive sweetness.

Mrs Hensor flushed scarlet, but she checked an impudent reply. Pulling Tommy angrily along, she hurried up to the four-roomed, zinc-roofed humpey and its lean-to kitchen, protected by a bough shade, which lay between the head-station and the gully, with the stockyard close to it, and which const.i.tuted her domain. It annoyed Mrs Hensor to hear McKeith called her master. She always spoke of her late husband as having been the Boss-mate on that--to him fatal--exploring expedition. Also, she resented having all the bachelors 'dumped down'--as she phrased it--on her, while the 'Ladyship's swell staff' was spared the trouble. At present the Bachelors' Quarters was fairly full. Mr Ninnis, store-keeper and overseer in the owner's absence, abode there permanently, and just now, there were Zack Duppo, the horse-breaker, and a young man from Breeza Downs--a combined cattle and sheep station about fifty miles distant--who had come to help in the mustering and to collect any beasts strayed from the Breeza Downs' herd.

The gully crossing lay below the boulders of rock at the head of the lagoon. Presently, two hors.e.m.e.n appeared on the rise. One was McKeith; the other Harry the Mailman--otherwise the Blower--a foxy, browny-red little man on a raw-boned chestnut, carrying his mail-bags strapped in front and at the side of his saddle.

Lady Bridget supposed they had met at the turn-off track just above the crossing. McKeith was carrying a leather mail-bag, from which he appeared to have extracted a bundle of letters, with one hand. He held his bridle and coiled stock-whip in the other. He was listening to the mailman, who seemed to be talking animatedly. As they neared the house, he gave the usual COO-EE, that set all the dogs barking, and put the Chinaman-cook and black-boys on the alert.

The riders pa.s.sed by the end of the veranda where Lady Bridget stood.

McKeith looked up at her. He seemed preoccupied and angry, and merely nodded to his wife, but did not take off his hat as he had done in earlier days--and, somehow, to-day she noticed the omission.

'All right, eh, Biddy?' he called out casually. 'Here's your mail--I've taken out mine,' and he pitched the leather bag, with the string cut and the official red seal broken, on to the veranda at her feet. 'I say--you might bring the whisky out to the back veranda. I daresay you could do with a nip, eh, Harry?'

'That I can, Mr McKeith. Riding along these plains is dry work. Good day, Ladyship. I'm a bit behind time, but I lost an hour looking for a hole to fill my water bag at--And then I could not drink out of it--for a demed old pleuro bullock had got there first and died in it. My word, Boss, you'll be in a fix if it don't rain before long.'

McKeith made an angry gesture. He spoke sharply to the horses. The two men rode round the kitchen-wing and dismounted at the paling fence, which made the fourth side of the little square. The back veranda of the new house, with steps ascending to it, in the middle, the Old Humpey, with its veranda, along one side, the kitchen and store building along the other, and a rough slab and bark outhouse beyond it.

Native-cuc.u.mber vines and other creepers partially closed in the older verandas. In the centre of the square was a small flower bed with a flowering shrub in the middle.

Lady Bridget brought the whisky decanter from the dining room to the back veranda, and McKeith mounted the steps, the mailman remaining beside them. A canvas water-bag, oozing moisture, hung from the rafters, and there were tumblers on a table beneath it. McKeith took the decanter from his wife's hand, too preoccupied, it seemed, even to notice the little satirical smile on her lips. She was thinking how funny it seemed that she should be playing Hebe to Harry the Blower.

She soon realised, however, that serious things had happened. As McKeith mixed a liberal allowance of whisky with water from the water-bag and handed it to the mailman, he asked curtly:

'This isn't one of your blowing yarns, Harry? You're positive about the fact?'

'Saw the thing with my own eyes, Boss. As fine a team as ever I'd wish to own, lying with their throats cut, and the trees black with crows all round. There was the dray-load all turned over, and two cases prized open. I bet that the rum-kegs and spirits that couldn't be carried off, are buried in some handy dry water-hole close by. I saw two or three empty brandy bottles with the heads of 'em smashed to show that the rascals had wet the wool before starting off.'

McKeith cursed in his throat. 'No sign of my men?'

'Scooted clean out of the scenery--the whole lot. I reckon that's what they shook hands on with the Union chaps, and that the natural consequences of absorbing your grog will be another woolshed or two burned down before long. Here's your health, Boss, and the Ladyship's.'

And the mailman gulped down his 'n.o.bbler' and turned to remount the lean chestnut, which was standing hitched to the palings, observing cheerfully:

'Well, so long, Sir. Go'day, Ma'am. This sort of argufying ain't going to carry my mail-bags along the river.'

'Go up to the Quarters and ask Mrs Hensor for a feed,' called McKeith.

'And look here, Harry, you can tell them at the Myall Creek out-station as you go by, to have two good horses ready in the yard for me. I'm off to Tunumburra to put the police on to those devils straight away.'

'All right, Boss. You'll find it will take some tall calculatin'

though. Them Unionists are getting too strong for the police to tackle.

Windeatt up at Breeza Downs is in a mortal funk, and sending word everywhere for a squad of Specials to protect his woolshed.'

'It seems,' said Lady Biddy to her husband, when the mailman had gone, 'that there might be some use after all for Luke Tallant's Maxims.'

'It seems that Jim Steadbolt has been taking his revenge,' he answered, 'and that I must be in the saddle in an hour's time. Mix me a drink, Biddy, and order in some grub, while I go and have a bath.'

He looked as if he needed one. The dust of the drafting camp was caked upon his face and clothes. His was the appearance of a man who had been riding hard after stock and sleeping, between his blankets only, under the stars.

Lady Bridget mixed him his drink and went to see Chen Sing in the kitchen. When she came back, Colin was in the front veranda. He had tumbled the rest of the letters and papers out of the mail-bag, and was hastily and eagerly scanning the last LEICHARDT'S TOWN CHRONICLE.

'Any news, Colin?'

'I don't know, I was looking to see if the Government were going to act against the strikers--I see they are sending troops.'

'And is Luke Tallant coming at the head of them, in official uniform, to read the Riot Act?--if there is a Riot Act in Australia. I'd like to see Luke maintaining the supremacy of the British Crown on the Leura.'

He looked up at her in vague rebuke of her levity, and there was suppressed tenderness in his eyes, notwithstanding his preoccupation with his own troubles.

'No, no. But there's something in the paper about Lady Tallant being ill and having an operation. Poor chap! He wouldn't have been bothering much about strikes in the Never-Never and the supremacy of the British Crown, any more than I should in similar circ.u.mstances.... Well, there!

I must go and bogey*.'

[*Bogey--in Black's language, 'bathe out of doors']

Sudden compunction overswept Bridget.

'Oh, Colin! You would care... really... even though they had cut the throats of your four best dray-horses?' But he had disappeared into a little veranda room, against which a corrugated iron tank backed conveniently, and in a minute she heard the splash of water.

She picked up the paper and looked at the English Intelligence before examining her own letters. It was quite true. There was a paragraph stating that Lady Tallant's health had not improved since her arrival in England, and hinting at the likelihood of an operation being advisable. Bridget reflected, however, that Sir Luke would probably have received a cablegram by this time, one way or other--which would have put him out of suspense, and, presumably, there had been no later bad news.