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Chapter 1 Arms And A Man

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“Coooooooo-eeeee!”

The voice was very hoarse and far away. But Irralie had fancied she heard something before. And this time she felt sure enough to stop the horses in their own length, while she herself stood up to peer this way and that across the tufts of salt-bush and the spaces of pure sand.

Yet at first no sign of life intervened between the buggy and the Seven-mile Whim whose black timbers stood out like a gallows against the setting sun. The whim, however, was a league away. Irralie accordingly looked right and left; and on the right a five-wire fence ran east and west into twilit space; but on the left a clump of box-trees grew a couple of hundred paces from the track. Clearly the clump was the place; and, even as she turned her horses, the girl saw a flash and a puff on its outskirts, followed by a sharp report.

Irralie Villiers was used to firearms. A dead Riverina turkey and an empty fowling piece lay at her feet at the present moment; and the shot from the clump only made her urge her horses the harder in its direction. It was obviously a signal of distress, and a little rough driving showed Irralie who had fired it. A tall, ragged fellow stood with his back to the trees, as still as they; his wide-awake was on the ground in front of him, and the wet hair clung to his white forehead. Also on the ground, in separate heaps, lay a shrunken bay horse and a singularly shabby saddle, bridle, and valise.

The girl drove up with a single word:

“Water?”

“Have you got any?” cried the man, spitting out a leaf as he came forward.

“No; but jump up, and I’ll drive you straight to the tank. Can your horse move?”

“We’ll see.”

And the man knelt over the helpless animal, slipped on the bridle, and coaxed it to its four feet.

“Now tie him on behind,” said Irralie, “and put your saddle and valise under the seat. There’s a tank not a mile from this spot.”

“If only I’d known!”

“You couldn’t. How long have you gone without?”

“Oh, for hours; not that there’s much wrong with me; it was the poor brute knocked up, not I.”

“I should have said you were at death’s door by all that shouting and shooting!”

The man laughed, showing beneath a heavy mustache a row of teeth more than presentable. He had fallen asleep beside his horse, and awoke only just in time. Another moment, and the buggy would have been out of earshot; there was no time to give chase, but only to do as he had done. Certainly he felt queer for want of water; but that was all.

Meanwhile, Irralie was steering her horses across country to the tank, and that as fast as the bay could follow. Leaning back at her side, the man scrutinized his deliverer with a glance bold to insolence. The girl was very young, and tall and slim; yet bodily weakness was as little apparent under the close-fitting sleeves of that period as infirmity of purpose in the alert, good-tempered, sunburnt face. Her hair and eyebrows were absolutely black; the latter, indeed, a little heavy for her sex; but the eyes themselves were the blue, continual havens of a smile no lips could equal, and the girl was written fearless and frank by her mere expression. A hearty voice and a blunt way of speaking were further characteristics, duly noted by the time the tank was reached, and man and beast drinking ravenously side by side.

The former was dressed like a common stockman—with a difference in the stockman’s favor. He wore the orthodox rough shirt and baggy mole-skins; but the humble legging was replaced by a riding-boot of piratical length; and from a pocket of the dilapidated, loose coat there peeped the butt end of the revolver recently discharged. Now, revolvers were not even then in everyday use in the bush; nor were long boots often seen in the stirrups of the common stockman; and the girl felt a puzzled awe in thus encountering so new a type. She was taken, however, with her protégé’s appearance, which was quite romantically devil-may-care; and she chiefly viewed him with a very genuine curiosity as he returned to the buggy, dashing the water from his long mustache.

“Now we can push on for ourselves,” said he. “You have saved us both, and we are grateful. Allow me to relieve you of my saddle and valise.”

“But may I ask where you are going?”

“Surely; to the station”

“This station? Arran Downs?”

“Why, yes; but I really can’t think of putting you to any more trouble. I am quite well able to ride—”

“Nonsense!” said Irralie. “Your horse isn’t quite well able to carry you. What do you ride?”

“Fourteen stone or so.”

“Then tie him on again, and jump up at once.”

It was done with a shrug—and subsequent alacrity.

“Then you belong to this station?” said the man, reseating himself in the failing light. But Irralie preferred to regain the track in safety before replying; and the question was put again.

“Oh, yes! I’m the manager’s daughter. I beg your pardon; now it’s all right, we’re in the straight.”

“You are, then, a Miss Villiers?”

“I am.”

“And you think nothing of driving about alone with a buggy and pair?”

“Nothing in the world. The gates are the only drawback. Do you mind opening this one?”

“Not in the least.”

She waited for him in the farther paddock. “You’re not coming for work, I suppose?”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

“To stay?”

“Yes, if I can be put up.”

“No doubt it can be done. But you’re a parlor man?”

“A parlor man!”

“I mean to say you’re for the house, not for the hut?” said Irralie, judging him by the ear rather than the eye, and not very certain of him yet. “You see, we put up everybody; only the men go to the traveller’s hut, and the—the—”

“Exactly! Well, I had thought of the house; still, if you’re full—”

“We are fuller than usual; but of course there’ll be room. And you will be welcome to it. But I wish you would tell me one thing: why on earth do you carry about a loaded revolver?”

In the buggy there was silence. Irralie glanced over her left shoulder, but now there was darkness too.

“Isn’t it the proper thing to do?” he asked at length.

“Far from it,” replied Irralie, severely.

“But what about bushrangers?”

“Bushrangers! There are none. They are all dead and gone.”

“What about—Stingaree?”

“Stingaree! I forgot him. He’s the man who stuck up the Mount Brown gold-escort. Oh, yes, I’ve heard a lot about Stingaree.”

“I wonder what you have heard.”

“That he’s a bit of a duke—in fact, an Oxford man!”

“Would you know him by sight?”

“I shouldn’t; but, as it happens, we have a man here who would.”

“A man I shall meet to-night?”

“Oh, no! a whim-driver—the whim-driver at the far end of the last paddock—our Seven-mile. ‘Deaf Dawson’ the men call him. He once knew Stingaree, he says; but he hardly ever comes into the home-station. You must go out to the Seven-mile if you want to interview him, and you’ve got to do that through his ear-trumpet! He’ll tell you Stingaree never came so far south as this in his life; and I tell you he’d better not.”

“You would give him a pretty bad time, eh, Miss Villiers?”

“My word!” said Irralie.

“I’m glad to hear it,” replied the other devoutly, “for I carry that pistol solely on account of Stingaree! I wasn’t to know he drew the line at a given degree of latitude.”

“I don’t say he does,” returned the girl. “I only say he better had!”

Again they drove in silence into the night; then the moon got up in their teeth, and licked the barrels of Irralie’s fowling-piece.

“Why, you carry firearms yourself! I’d forgotten that, Miss Villiers.”

“I do; but not revolvers,” said Irralie, “and not because of Stingaree.”

“I see!”

“But to shoot fair game,” concluded Irralie, severely. “Today it was a fatted turkey for the great occasion of tomorrow’s Sunday dinner.”

“It is to be a great occasion, then?”

“You bet it is!” cried Irralie Villiers. “You mayn’t have heard that this station has been bought by a new chum of an Englishman with a handle to his name? But it has, though; and much we care about the handle! A beggarly younger son, that’s all he is; but if he was a lord and a duke in one it would make no difference to us! He’ll make a fine mess of it, that’s one thing sure. Fullarton his name is—the Honorable Grevilie Fullarton! Put that in your pipe and light it.”

“And—and what do you expect him to be like?”

“Don’t ask,” replied the girl, warmly. “Nice words couldn’t tell you. However, we shall find him at the homestead when we get in; and there are the lights.”

Her companion looked sidelong at Irralie; then, hesitating, at the constellation of lights which had burst upon them unawares; and so made up his mind.

“We shall not find him there,” said he, with a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry to confirm your worst suspicions, but the fact is, Miss Villiers, I’m the man himself!”