Читать книгу Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch - Brian Penton - Страница 26

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One evolves a straightforward story from events that were twisted and darkened by the cunning of men. This gives the impression that Cabell acted with a conscious and ruthless foresight. Yet he always believed that he blundered through that night under the merciful hand of Heaven.

He galloped a long way down the river before he pulled up to attend to his own and the horse's wounds. Only then did he find that the pistols were gone. He was shocked. It was a curious thing that he should not have realized, till this moment, that the pistols were in the coat which he threw at the dog, that he never doubted for an instant that the convicts would find them.

Blood was pouring over the mare's rump. He did what he could for her, but that was not much, then washed his own wounds, which were deep and painful. By this time his excitement had cooled off a little and he sat down to think. But his brain was clogged and weary. His thoughts wandered. He began trying to recall what Mrs Peppiott looked like; whether the mole was on the right or left side of her mouth. Such a homely and pleasant face. A homely and pleasant woman. A good woman. Then it was old Sam, the Owerbury fisherman, with his row of medals; but that thought was irritating, though as persistent as the sound of the river with which its emotional overtones seemed to war. He jumped to his feet and limped to and fro under the trees. Why this heaviness in his heart, this feeling of guilt and dishonour?

At this point of his story old Cabell used to fall into a long silence, which ended with an explosive outburst against, of all things, Socialists. "They called me Fighting Cabell," he said, frowning at us with intense annoyance. "Raddled it up on the sheds for miles around, confound their impudence. 'Beware of Fighting Cabell.' That was in 'Eighty-seven, when the shearers wanted more money. Why, you'd think I was a monster to hear them talk. Fighting Cabell . . . huh . . . 'thinks we're dirt' . . . 'do anything, anything' . . ." he mumbled irritably.

He became silent again, still frowning. After a while his eyebrows lifted and he sighed. "Time, time," he said in a rather melancholy voice. "It's like a mad dog. If it only let up for a minute or two men would be decent enough, decent enough." He had a look which went with that tone of voice, a doubtful sideways glance that contrasted oddly with his customary fierce and defiant effort to stare you out of countenance. He seemed to be peering round to make sure you were doing him justice. He believed so much in justice, believed that all could be vindicated in the eyes of the just--all.

He recovered himself soon and glared at us twice as sternly as usual, as he always did after one of these lapses.

"But that's neither here nor there," he would grumble, forbidding us to draw any conclusions. "What I was telling you about was that night--McGovern. A dog of a man. The way he'd treated that poor fellow Gursey--well, I could have murdered him myself when I thought about it." He turned his head away for another moment or two, then went on hastily with his story.

He had been walking about under the trees for some time when he realized suddenly that the noise of the river was dying away. That could mean only that a heavy downpour farther along the range had started it rising again quickly, so that already it was over the snags and rocks which had previously broken its surface into a white foam. Like a sheet of asphalt, it flowed smoothly through the darkness.

An hour later he rode in to the homestead yard.

McGovern was sitting up, expecting him. He told his story simply. He had seen the sheep penned up, had reconnoitred, thinking it might merely mean that the hands were sick. He said nothing of the pistols, little about the convicts, stressing the fact that the sheep were in danger of being drowned.

McGovern listened attentively but without surprise. His whole body seemed to relax. He took a deep breath and stretched his arms. His eyes positively danced as he gazed at Cabell with grateful, almost kindly, satisfaction and the complacency of one who has foreseen everything. Then he became serious, hmn-hmned for a while, tore a splinter from the table with his thumbnail and picked his teeth with it. Well, as for those sods in the humpy, they could wait, he said. They'd be there for the ironing-up any time. But the sheep. . . . The river was getting up quick, did he say? Hmn!

They looked at each other impenetrably.

"Think we ought to move them, do you?"

"They're not my sheep," Cabell muttered.

"Hmn. It's a long way." He stared out doubtfully at the night.

"Only telling you they'll be drowned by morning," Cabell said.

"Hmn."

They prodded each other along like this for some time, till McGovern rose, yawned, and began to pull on his boots. "No sort of a life for a man," he grumbled.

Oh, they were cunning, both of them!

When they were running-in the horses Cabell said, "I suppose I better take the bay gelding."

"Yes," McGovern chuckled. "It swims like a duck."

"Is he going to murder me in the scrub, then?" Cabell wondered fearfully as he rode out of the yard behind McGovern.

But McGovern jogged on easily without once turning to see if Cabell was there. He understood. It was all open and above board to him now--it was action. His pipe threw a glow on the brim of his hat, and after a while he burst into song:

"''Pon my conscience, dear Larry,' says I, 'I'm sorry to see you in trouble, Your life's cheerful noggin run dry, Yourself going off like its bubble.' 'Hold your tongue in the matter,' says he, 'For the Neckcloth I don't care a button, And by this time tomorrow you'll see Your Larry will be dead as mutton.'"

It was long past midnight when they came out on to the downs, but the lamp was still burning in the humpy. The ghostly footsteps of rain shadowed them along the river bank, the horses stumbled and snorted, the sheep bleated pitifully at terrifying phantoms of darkness.

Fifty yards from the humpy they dismounted. McGovern's damp beard brushed across Cabell's cheek. "Tie the nags up and follow me close," he ordered, then splashed forward on clumsy feet. A dog flew out at him, but he sent it limping away with one swift kick.

The light in the humpy wavered as somebody rushed past it to the door.

Cabell stopped between the horses, which tossed their heads against the tug of his nervous hands.

With a gigantic bound McGovern leapt through the door and collided with a man coming out. The man went down with a soft thud and lay still, huddled against the wall. . . .

Gursey, Pete and Robins jumped out of their bunks. They saw Red lying on the ground, blood gushing from his nose, McGovern, with hands tucked in the tops of his trousers and legs wide apart, grinning in the doorway. Gursey stood near the window, Pete at the farthest end of the table. Their faces expanded, contracted, puffed out lopsidedly with dancing shadows. A pistol lay on the table. The brass bands round the barrel, the chasings on the butt shone in the light. The air of the room became stagnant again and the slush-lamp burned without a quiver.

Robins, standing between Pete and Red, was the first to speak. He jerked his head in and out for several seconds, trying to dislodge his tongue from gummy spittle. It came loose all at once and ran away with him. "I--I--I. . . . It ain't me, master. They jist comed round 'ere. That's 'ow it was, master, s'elp me God." He ran forward with this petition, pressing McGovern for immediate reassurance.

McGovern pushed him aside. His fat back padded against the wall, bringing the axe down with a clatter. He remained there, panting heavily.

"Well, boys," McGovern said, "it's worth turning out in a dirty night to set eyes on you again. And no throats cut, either!" He leant against the door-post and crossed his legs. Idly he pointed his beard between cross-grained thumb and forefinger.

"They was going to cut my throat, yer Honour," Robins said. "Because I wouldn't do the guy on you, that's why."

McGovern smacked his lips. "All necks soft and sound for the squeezer."

"Hang 'em, hang "em!" The parrot voice of Davy screeched with insane mirth from one of the bunks and eagerly repeated, "Hang 'em! Hang 'em at once! Hang 'em up the chimbley!" His haggard grey features came out from the bundle of stinking rags that made his bed, and looked around. At the sight of Robins he winked slyly. "Murder and rob ye, he would," he told McGovern, pointing at his mate. "I'm on to his racket."

"Liar!" screamed Robins. "I ain't!"

"I heard yer," Davy nodded. "And you know what I heared."

McGovern negligently pushed Robins back to the wall. "A damn fine crop of murderers you are," he taunted them. "A good pistol like that"--he winked sideways at Cabell--"and you don't fire a shot at a man." He threw back his head and laughed. The light penetrated the high vault of his mouth, gleamed on his tongue and white teeth.

Cabell, in the doorway, saw with sinking heart their despairing eyes, their loosely hanging arms.

McGovern took off his hat, shook the water out of it, and threw it on the table. It overbalanced and fell to the floor. Robins darted forward, picked it up, brushed it, and laid it carefully on the table again.

Gursey was looking at the pistol. He crammed his beard between his teeth and let it slide out again. One step, reach out, pull the hammer back, fire. . . . Three seconds. . . . One side of his face twitched violently from its nervous tic, the other was chalk-white and impassive.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," McGovern offered. "I'll race you for that pistol."

They did not raise their heads. Feeny's mouth hung open, his pink-rimmed eyes blinked, he seemed not to hear or see or understand.

"Come, boys," McGovern rallied them, friendly, persuasive. "You're not thinking you'll get another chance?" He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "They might give you the present first and hang you after. Or they'll just hang you, maybe. In a month's time--just think of it. No more Gursey, no more Pete, no more Red--or Robins," he added aside to the collapsed bundle of fat cringing in the shadows.

Robins gasped, clawed at the collar of his jacket, made formless sounds.

McGovern picked up the pistol, winked again at Cabell, examined the flint, the powder. He laid it down, butt towards them. "Have a go, lads," he tempted them, spreading his arms.

They stared at the pistol, fascinated by the light on its shining barrel. Cabell had come right into the room now. In his agitation he had almost brought the horses with him. Irritated by the grip he kept on them, their skinny heads tossed up and down. The jingle of their bits was the only sound for a moment.

"You're gonners, anyway," McGovern reasoned, and pushed the pistol gently towards them. "You just try and think what I'll do when I get the irons on." He swaggered up and down the room, one hand on his hip, the other lightly caressing his silky beard. "That last flogging, Pete," he said confidentially, "forget it. There's worse coming. Then a little spell in the chain-gang perhaps. How'll you like that, eh? Hungry! My God, you'll be hungry. And you, Joe. Well, you'll be topped and no mistake."

His bravado seemed to crush the spirit out of them. Cabell, however, it brought to such a pitch of hysterical exasperation that a gesture of disgust and impatience broke from him. McGovern spun round as though it was from this point and not from the other side of the table that he had expected a movement, thrust his hand in his shirt, then laughed, a trifle nervously. He covered a slip by pretending to scratch his chest and turned away, but his eyes kept glancing towards the doorway watchfully. What did he expect?

What worried Cabell most at the moment was how McGovern would act if Gursey did fire the pistol and missed. Would he shoot Gursey and the boy and Red, then kill him as their accomplice? And what if Gursey fired and didn't miss? Would Gursey try to kill him then? He saw all these possibilities quite clearly in sudden, illuminating waves of terror which brought the chilly sweat out in his hair, but he could not tear himself away.

A blubber of silence enclosed the room. Dingoes howled far away, somewhere near the river a curlew kept up an interminable, broken-hearted piping, the horses stamped, the dogs sniffed suspiciously round their heels; but none of these sounds came into the humpy. McGovern lounged against the wall and sucked his teeth.

Cabell's gesture pulled Gursey back to consciousness. He was leaning forward with one hand on the table, the other in his beard, staring at the pistol. Suddenly aware of Cabell, he glanced up and their eyes met. They exchanged a long look. He rubbed his hands on the seams of his trousers, half smiled, half frowned, turned away abruptly and went back to the window.

Cabell cleared his throat huskily.

McGovern stirred and hitched up his trousers. "Well, boys," he said cheerfully, "time's up. You've had your turn, now it's mine." He reached round to the back of his belt and brought out a pair of handcuffs.

Pete lifted his head for the first time. His eyes were glazed. His teeth began to chatter.

McGovern went towards him with an amiable laugh, waving the handcuffs. "Put your mitts in this, lad, and you'll feel more comfortable."

Pete backed round the table, stumbled over Red, ran blindly towards the door, collided with Cabell, doubled back to the table. McGovern followed with clumsy patience, guffawing merrily, but paying even closer attention to Cabell. He faced the boy across the table, leaning on it with the handcuffs clutched in his fists. Pete glanced rapidly from side to side, then grabbed blindly at the pistol that lay between them.

Cabell shouted. The cry came involuntarily, triumphantly from his dry throat.

For an interminable second they all seemed to be paralysed. Pete stood hunched up, fumbling with both hands for the trigger; McGovern leaned back with one hand in his shirt. Then--crack--a pistol exploded. McGovern staggered as though his leg had been wrenched away from under him. The table heaved as his hands, clawing for support, fastened their nails in the crack between the slabs of bark. A look of utter, naive amazement overflowed his features.

Pete still stood before him with the pistol at arm's length in a hand gone suddenly limp. Wild noises came from the boy's puffed-up lips, flecked with bubbles of spittle. His body was erect and stiff.

A fit, Cabell grasped in an instant. In the next he saw with a shock that the hammer was still up on the pistol.

McGovern had gone purple in the face. He was wrenching his hand out of his shirt. He got it free at last and pulled into the light his long, black-barrelled pistol. He fired it point-blank into Pete's face. The boy spun half-round, dropped flat on to the sticky mud of the floor.

At the same instant Red lifted himself to his knees and took a deliberate aim at McGovern's heart with the second barrel of the pistol he had fallen with.

McGovern roared and dived backwards out of the light, staggered on his broken knee, and collapsed among the bunks in the corner.

Unsteadily Red rose to his feet, laid the barrel on his forearm and aimed.

Robins bent down stealthily, picked up the axe and raised it.

Cabell turned his head away with an automatic reflex of horror. A moment of silence in which two strained shadows blackened the wall, motionless. Then a brittle, crushing noise. He looked round. The body of Red was crumbling up slowly against the table, slowly settling on to the floor, with a deliberate, uncanny movement, as of life. Robins stood by watching, the axe across his shoulder. Tears welled from his melancholy eyes. He turned and stared at Cabell, sniffed violently. "There," he said. "That just shows yer."

A haze lifted from Cabell's sight, and, peering into the corner, he saw the collapsed figure of McGovern and traced to it the incessant thunder of abuse that had shattered suddenly the febrile silence. He was trying to scramble up, but his knee kept giving way under him.

Robins came to and rushed across the room to help him.

A burst of laughter from Davy distracted Cabell's attention. "Diddled ye! Ha, ha, ha! That's one ye won't stretch. Ha, ha, ha! Out the winder he went. That's one saved his windpipe till tomorrer."

Cabell looked for Gursey. He was gone--through the window. The discovery pulled him together. "Diddled us!" he found himself shouting after Davy. "Gursey's gone."

McGovern was leaning on Robins's shoulder and trying to wrench a second pistol from under his shirt.

Cabell flattened himself against the wall, raised his hand as though to ward off a blow, then turned and dived between the horses, wrenching them around behind him.

A figure rushed down the slope towards the river. Gursey.

Cabell came to his senses. He threw the reins of McGovern's mare over her neck, savagely kicked her in the ribs, picked up stones and shied them at her till the sounds of her hoofs galloping towards the scrub had died away, leapt into his saddle, and urged the gelding after Gursey.

How automatic these actions had been he realized when he found himself faced, at the river bank, by the wide stretch of rushing waters. He pressed his heels into the horse and galloped along the bank in pursuit of running feet. McGovern had staggered to the door and was shouting into the darkness for him, calling on all the devils in hell to blast and blind him. The dogs followed with an incessant whining and barking.

He ran alongside Gursey. "Up! Up!" he shouted, pulling the gelding back, "and hang on when she jumps! Grab the stirrup! Quick!"

Gursey hesitated a moment, white face lifted, backed away a pace or two, then scrambled up feverishly behind him.

Cabell turned the horse back to the land, spun it round and put it to the bank. It went in with a splash like glass breaking. The water flowed over their heads, gurgled in their ears. He slipped off the saddle, got a hold on the gelding's tail with one hand, on Gursey with the other. He could feel the horse's feet working. The darkness pressed upon them. From far away came the wild halloo of voices cursing them.