Читать книгу Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch - Brian Penton - Страница 22

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When McGovern came in Pete was gone. Cabell said he had split on Gursey and Red as McGovern had expected him to, so he had let the boy go. He was pale and upset, but McGovern did not seem to notice. After a few moments McGovern laughed.

"That settles his hash," he said, half to himself.

That night he put two convicts in irons and chained them to the anvil in the smithy.

"We ought to settle down snug together for another two years now," McGovern mocked Joe.

He tormented them till Red let out a terrible yell and ran at him, forgetting all about the irons, which jerked him flat on his face. McGovern went inside chuckling contentedly. Gursey had not once spoken or raised his head.

McGovern was in a jovial humour and broached the rum. But after tea he began to be restless, kept going to the door and looking at the smithy. Through the reflection of distant lightnings the stars burned with a feverish, sickly colour. The air was heavy--like wadding to the nostrils. The dogs lying round the door panted for breath. From far away came an echoing rumble.

He lit his pipe, let it go out, then suddenly began to talk about indifferent matters, off-handedly as man to man. He told Cabell stories about the settlers in the district, how many of them had "started with a damn sight less than you and made their pile". He went over this again and again. He became very serious and began giving Cabell good advice. "You don't want to stick round here, lad, tailing another man's sheep. Look here, I could put you on to land out beyond the Swamp way where you'd run a sheep to the acre. Clean as billiard table. Grass like a feather bed. And water. You could float a ship in the holes. Look here, lad"--he jerked himself across the table and patted Cabell's shoulder--"all you want--a thousand good ewes and fifty rams and a year's tucker. You could go tomorrow." He seemed to take it for granted that Cabell would leave Murrumburra soon--as soon as his ewes had lambed. "And I wouldn't waste no time, neither, lad. You're not doing yourself no good round here with a wet season just in the offing. Did you hear them ducks going over this afternoon? Wouldn't mind betting we'll be cut off here inside a week if the river starts getting up, which means you'll be set back a couple of months and a good dollop of monkeys into the bargain most likely. Take my tip. You ought to move on before it breaks."

At this point he put down his pannikin of rum, from which he was sipping continually, and entered on a long, involved rigmarole lasting for nearly two hours, about the necessity of starting young and remembering that "it was every man for himself and the swag for him that hit first". He echoed Cabell's uneasiest thoughts when he spoke of the way a man's best years ran away in this country, and drove the point in with some awful yarns about men who had come out young and hopeful ("Just like you, me boy. Fine, upstanding Johnny Newcomes."), and had drunk themselves mad or hanged themselves in despair.

During this he got gloomier and gloomier, until finally, in a burst of boozy misery, he beat his chest and began to complain that he was a "done sod" himself. "Lazy as a store pig. That's me. Take after my old man. They hanged him, and they'll hang me."

He stared mournfully at Cabell, nearly pulling the table out of the earth to save himself from falling over, for by this time he was very drunk. His face had gone several shades redder and he talked as though he had a mouthful of molasses. "You're laughing at me. Think I'm dirt, don't you? Bloody aristocrat. That's what Joe says. Joe's right. Wouldn't tell you if I wasn't drunk as a bastard. 'Brighten your lamps. He's dangerous.' That's what Joe says to me long ago. Well, he don't need to put me flash. I know you're dangerous, curse you. Where's the bloody rum?" He poured out another pannikin, spilling half of it over the table. "Just you wait," he muttered threateningly. "You can't come Yorkshire over Bob McGovern. I ain't scared of no sod, dead or alive." He emptied the pannikin and banged it down on the table, frowning with the ludicrous, maudlin rage of drunkenness. But at this moment he lost his grip on the table and toppled over backwards. He made a ridiculous exhibition trying to get on his feet, half staggered, half crawled into his room, and after repeating that he wasn't scared of nobody, particularly of Cabell, shut his door and made a great fuss barring it and pulling the shutter over his window.

All this deeply impressed Cabell, and for some time after McGovern had closed his door he sat with his chin in his hand, thinking.

Of course, he saw at once that McGovern had been talking, not wildly, but with a definite purpose--was not, perhaps, really drunk at all. His stories, his advice, his humiliation, and, most interesting, his intentionally transparent pretence of being afraid by asserting that he was not afraid--all this was calculated to produce some effect, but for the moment an explanation eluded Cabell. At first he thought that McGovern was merely daring him again, expressing contempt for him. But he dismissed this quickly. The only conclusion left, then, was so unexpected, so bizarre, that, in a curious way, it frightened him.

He walked excitedly up and down the humpy, chewing his nails, pausing now and then to stare at McGovern's door. Going to his bunk then, he sat down with his head in his hands and again went over all that had been said. But the incredible conclusion remained: McGovern had been pretending, but because he was afraid.

Say he had wanted to close the door, what better way was there than by some such clumsy subterfuge that Cabell would pass over as a freak of drunken humour. But why close the door--now--tonight? Because he knew the vague idea that had been forming in Cabell's mind since his trip to Moreton Bay? But the stories and the advice contradicted this. They could only excite Cabell to do something--immediately. There was also the ironing-up of Gursey and Red and McGovern's determination that Cabell should leave with them for Moreton Bay in the morning, his persistently exasperating behaviour since Cabell's return, all tending in the same way--to force Cabell to act. Ah, to force him to act.

He had not to look far to understand that. He found the same desire in his own feeling that any violence, any horror was better than waiting another week, another day in suspense. But was it possible that McGovern could feel the same? Hopefully he projected a new estimate of McGovern's character, not as a man superhumanly courageous, but even, perhaps, dogged by incessant fear of the brooding characters around him, never knowing what insane and secret revenge they might be plotting, and always trying to bring them to action. Always on the watch for a conspiracy, might he not--as his words had suggested last night, as Gursey's had suggested this morning--might he not really believe that there was something between them? Misinterpreting his timidity as cunning, McGovern had become more and more truculent--yes, in the hope of forcing a crisis.

A strange, exalted mood descended on Cabell. It would seem that McGovern's tactics were a mistake, then, for seeing himself for the first time as the attacker Cabell discovered an energy and courage he had never known before.

But were they? He checked himself on the brink of a rash act. He was taking from under his bunk two bundles which he had prepared that afternoon before McGovern's return. A doubt came to him that there might perhaps be more in McGovern's artful dodge than he had seen. He sat down and thought about it again, and, becoming cooler, he undid the bundles and extracted from each a pistol, powder and shot, which he put away under his palliasse where they were usually kept. Then, having made sure that McGovern was still asleep, he slipped out into the sultry darkness and took a cautious detour along the edge of the scrub to the smithy.

Clouds were rising swiftly, ribbed with lightning that burned for seconds long on the air--like eagles flying up into the stars. It lit the country for miles around, showed Red asleep and Gursey still sitting with his chin on his chest.

Cabell threw one of the bundles on to Gursey's knees, shook Red and gave him the other.

"Good-bye, Joe. Good luck," he whispered.

Gursey jerked his head up. His eyes glittered malignantly in the lightning. He flung the bundle from him and muttered, but his words were lost in the thunder that rumbled like a soft bouncing ball rolling about among the hills.

Cabell hesitated, looking down at Gursey with a suddenly heavy heart.

Red was already eating the food. Feeling about in the bundle, he stopped chewing, turned to Joe, and whispered.

Gursey jumped to his feet and ran to the length of his chain after the retreating figure of Cabell. A stone whistled past Cabell's head and thudded against the wall of the humpy. He turned and looked back. His blood had begun to beat like a hammer.

A feeling of guilt overpowered him. He shivered, glanced round uneasily at the nervous, twitching night, and flattened himself against the wall. The thunder grumbled, died away, came again, nearer. The sheep clustered together, began to bleat. A voice moaned in the gullies, far away, then close at hand. The door of the harness shed banged viciously; something seized him by the throat, the hair, the chest and shook him. Wind. On the roof of the smithy a piece of bark flapped like a bird in a trap, tore itself free and whirled away overhead. Dry and brittle branches crashed in the scrub. The clouds pressed on the earth and the darkness was like a jelly. He ran into the house and barred the door. His head and limbs ached. Blinding light penetrated the gloom of the humpy through every crack in walls and roof, pressed his eyeballs back into his head. Then the thunder rattled the dishes in the safe and the clouds burst in a solid sheet of water that poured into the room, extinguishing the candle, and left him groping under his palliasse with his eyes fixed on the momentarily lighted window and McGovern's door.

It rained cats and dogs all night, but the thunder and lightning soon passed and he felt calmer. Towards dawn he fell asleep.

He started awake and found McGovern leaning over him.

"What's the matter?"

"Our two canaries have flown." McGovern spoke with his usual air of ridiculing the world in general, but he looked worried, as though he had overlooked something. Also, he found it necessary to add, "My bunk's awash. That's why I'm out early."

Cabell trusted his voice to ask, a shade incredulously: "Escaped? But how could they?"

McGovern turned away and went to the door. "They must've had a file," he grumbled.

Cabell grew bolder and followed him. "Have I got to ride down to Moreton Bay for soldiers, then?"

"No need to." McGovern glanced at him quickly. "They'll come back."

"Why should they?"

"You know why."

"I?"

"Look here." McGovern pointed to the bush. "There's this here jailyard a few miles wide. And all round blacks and nothing else." He laughed in Cabell's face. "Blood's what they're after now. My blood." He moved back into the humpy, as though he did not want to talk, and began getting things out for a meal.

The sheep in the yard were muddy and forlorn. The clearing was one vast puddle. Above the drip, drip of water from the trees the wash of the rising river could be heard. It told Cabell that today or at latest tomorrow everything must be decided. He put his coat on and splashed through the rain to awaken the lags. Neither said any more about the escapees. This created a strained and artificial silence in the humpy. When Mickey had patched up the roof, McGovern got dry blankets from the store and retired with a bottle of rum, remarking that he had sleep to make up. After fretting impatiently about the yard for an hour, Cabell announced to Mickey in a loud voice outside McGovern's window that he was going over to the Five Mile to see how his sheep were after the rain.

Out of sight of the humpy, he turned off the track to the Five Mile and plunged into the sodden scrub towards Winjee Creek. The gloomy and mysterious twilight under the trees played on his nerves and made him stop and listen for the sound of voices and footsteps to be repeated. Two hours later he rode out on to an open downland where Winjee Creek, now a yellow torrent, joined the main river, from the far bank of which the foothills of the range rose in steep granite cliffs. The sun was shining on the mountains. Deep gashes of blue shadow cut the surface of grey bush, marking the course of gullies which crisscrossed like a maze. Cabell studied these for some minutes, then turned his attention to the out-station hut at the junction of river and creek, and, having assured himself that the two convicts in charge there were safely out of sight, he cantered down to the river. It was already swollen enough to make crossing unpleasant, and he was soaked to the skin when he rode out on the opposite bank. Twenty minutes later he disappeared into the scrub. . . .

When he rode into the yard of the homestead late that night he was wet and tired, with hands cut about and bruised. But his eyes were on fire and great projects were stirring in his brain. There was much still to be done--much still to be done, he reminded himself, as he paused outside the humpy to take a grip on himself. First, there was the river. He turned his head and listened to the sound of the water coming down from the range. And there was McGovern. He thrust his hands out of sight in his pockets and strolled into the room.

McGovern effaced a querulous look with a smile. He was sitting at the table, drunk, or pretended to be drunk, cleaning a pair of pistols.

"You're still safe?" he said, casting a quick, suspicious look into the darkness behind Cabell.

"Of course. Why not?"

"No reason I know of--up to the present." McGovern smiled again.

"What d'you mean?"

McGovern squinted down the barrel of one of the pistols. "Your old mate and his offsider come back here this afternoon."

"I suppose you mean Gursey?"

McGovern held the pistols up to the light. "Ain't they little beauties!" he said. "They've killed better men."

Cabell turned away to his bunk.

"Pete's gone," McGovern said.

"Escaped?"

"Not on your life! They dragged him off by the scruff, squealing like a stuck pig. What, you didn't know?"

"You mean I helped to murder him?" Cabell asked angrily

"Why not?"

"Why?"

"Ah, why?" McGovern winked. "Once a whiddler always a whiddler, and you've got brains."

Before Cabell could think of a reply he had disappeared into his room.

So he knew!