The Bushranger's Secret Part 4

The dog came slowly on, moving with heavy, dragging steps, very unlike its usual joyous bounds; and it was quite alone. Gray could see no other moving thing along the plains. The dog had come back, but not its master.

Gray hurried forward to meet it. He saw the dog leap up when it caught sight of him, and make a dash forwards, but before it had gone a dozen steps it slackened its pace again and began to drag itself slowly forward as if utterly worn out.

It was a pitiable object to look at. Its beautiful coat was matted with blood and dust. One of its ears was almost torn away, and its body was covered with wounds. But it dragged itself onward, moaning now and then, until it got near Gray. Then it sank down on the gra.s.s and lay there, faintly wagging its tail, and fixing its eyes on Gray with a pathetic, supplicating glance.

It was plain to see that the dog had been attacked and sorely wounded.

Gray surmised that one or more of the herd had turned savage, and in conflict with them Watch had got his wounds. He bent over the dog and unfastened its spiked collar.

"Poor old fellow, what--?"

He broke off suddenly. A sc.r.a.p of paper fastened by a string to the collar caught his eye. Some words were scrawled on it:

"_Badly hurt. Watch will show--_"

There was an attempt at another word or two but they were illegible.

Gray read the paper and let it flutter from his fingers to the ground.

The next moment he picked it up again, and crushed it between his fingers.

He had not made up his mind what to do; but the thought flashed through him as he saw the paper lying on the ground, that it might be necessary to destroy it, if--

If what? Gray hardly dared finish the thought, even in the secrecy of his own soul.

The dog followed his actions with a dumb pathetic glance, and then slowly struggled to its feet. It stood looking up at Gray, lifting one paw towards him with an indescribable air of supplication in its whole att.i.tude. Then it turned, and began to move in the direction it had come from, looking round at every painful step to see if Gray would follow.

A rush of pitiful feeling swept over Gray. He ran back towards the hut with one thought uppermost in his mind, to get his horse and go with the dog. Everything else was forgotten. When he had run a short distance he looked round at Watch and whistled. The dog was lying on the gra.s.s regarding him, but it refused to come at his whistle.

Gray stood still, and began to argue with himself. It was absurd to start at once. Watch would die on the way. It would be far better to wait for some hours till the poor creature was rested. Harding, in all probability, was already dead. Still he would go--of course he would go; but not just yet. It would be the height of absurdity to start just now. He would fetch Watch some water and food where it lay, if he could not get the dog to go back to the hut.

He whistled again, but Watch made no response. It lay with its head between its paws, and its eyes still fixed on Gray.

"Stay there, then," muttered he impatiently, and went on towards the hut. The dog was still lying in the same place when he brought the food and water for it. It ate and drank greedily, and then rose and shook itself with a glad, eager movement, and ran a few steps forward.

It was pitiful to see the change that went over the dog when on turning its head it saw that Gray was walking steadily back towards the hut.

It lay down again, and gave a series of short barks and then a long pitiful howl when it found that Gray still went steadily on.

Gray did not turn round this time. He went into the hut, and sat down to think the matter over. What was the use of going with the dog at all? he began to say to himself. Would it not be better to go over to the station at once? or, better still, go later on in the day, so as to reach the station in the evening when the men would have come in from their work? Yet--was not every moment precious? If he went at once with the dog, might he not be in time?

He sat thus, swaying to and fro between different decisions, till a violent scratching at the door roused him. He got up and flung back the door. Watch stood there with drooping tail, and eyes full of dumb entreaty. Gray shut the door sharply on him. "Lie down, sir!" he exclaimed imperatively. The sight of the dog filled him with rage.

Watch whined once or twice; but then came silence.

Gray sat down again at the table. "I will not go," he said to himself.

And he put the thought of Harding from him, and tried to plan how he would carry out his scheme. But suddenly, before he was aware, a wave of remorseful shame came over him, and he sprang to his feet as one awaking from some hideous dream. He grasped his whip and hurried to the door; but,--

The dog was gone.

CHAPTER III.

AT WARRANDILLA.

An hour after, Gray was riding swiftly across the plains on his way to the station. He was urging on his horse with voice and hand and spur, riding as if for dear life, yet even while he rode he was making up his mind to keep back from Mr. Morton all knowledge of Dearing's map. Of Dearing's death he was bound to tell him, but he would say nothing of the map. If Harding was found it would be so easy to say he had forgotten it in his anxiety; if Harding-- Gray did not finish the sentence to himself, but he determined to keep back the map.

It was not much past noon when the plains began to give place to undulating ground, richer in vegetation, and with great clumps of dark-foliaged trees here and there; and it was soon after that that Gray caught his first glimpse of the river, and saw the roofs of the station gleaming in the sunlight.

Mr. Morton had spent the morning watching the men at work on the new cottages he was building near his own house for his head shepherds and stock-keepers. They were comfortable, roomy cottages, looking down on the river, with gardens before them, which Mr. Morton intended to be as well stocked and as pretty as his own.

"They will be finished in another week," he said to his wife. He had come back to the house across the garden, and found her sitting in the shady verandah. "And I have made up my mind, Minnie, who's to have the one we meant for Murray."

Mrs. Morton put down her needle-work, and looked eagerly at her husband. Murray had lately left them to start a run of his own, and Mr. Morton had been undecided who should take his post.

"I shall give it to Harding," he said. "I'll ride over and tell him so to-morrow. You'll like having him on the station, won't you?"

"I am very glad indeed," said little Mrs. Morton with energy. "And how delighted he will be. He will be able to get everything ready before his wife and boys get here. They don't leave England till next week.

He was telling me all about them when last he was over here."

"Oh, I knew he was a great favourite of yours, my dear," said her husband with a well-pleased look. "And if he isn't as sharp as some, he is as true as steel. I thought it all over this morning, and I believe he's my best man."

Mrs. Morton was called into the house at that moment, and her husband strolled into the garden to await his summons to the mid-day meal. He had not been there many moments when his quick ear caught the sound of rapid hoof-beats on the road below the house. A gate from the garden led into the road, and Mr. Morton hurried towards it. Gray had intended to ride up to the other side of the house, but when he saw Mr.

Morton at the gate he checked his horse and flung himself off. There was no need for him to speak for Mr. Morton to know he brought bad news. His whole frame was trembling as he stood steadying himself by his horse; his lips were white as death.

"Something has happened to Harding, is that it?" exclaimed Mr. Morton when Gray had twice tried to make his voice audible and failed.

"I fear so," Gray gasped out. "He has not come back. He started yesterday morning for Big Creek, and he has not come back."

Gray had determined beforehand what to say, but he had not known it would be so difficult. His eyes fell before Mr. Morton's glance, as if that glance could read his soul. But Mr. Morton had never felt so warmly towards Gray as he did at that moment. He was a better fellow than he had thought him, he said to himself, to feel Harding's disappearance so keenly.

"Look here, my lad," he said kindly, "you go into the house and ask Mrs. Morton to give you something to eat. You're just tired out, you know, and won't be fit for anything till you've had a rest. Oh, you shall go with us," he added as he saw Gray's hesitating look. "But we can't start for another hour. I must send over to Billoora for a man or two. Don't be so downhearted about it, Gray. We shall find him, never fear."

But Mr. Morton's cheerful prophecy was not destined to be verified.

The search for Harding was long and thorough--and fruitless. His horse was found lying dead, with an ugly wound in its neck from the horn of a bull; but Harding and his dog were gone.

Gray grew very worn and haggard in those weeks of waiting. His youth went from him. They attributed his changed looks at the station to his grief for Harding. It was enough to unhinge any man, they said--that mysterious loss of his mate. And in this explanation they were partly right. At first, Gray's remorse was almost more than he could bear.

He was one of the most eager in the search-party. He rode day after day across those barren wastes of back-country, and spared no effort to find some sign of the missing man. But when the search was at last given up as hopeless, when those on the station began to take Harding's death for granted, and life began to flow on in the ordinary channel, then Gray's mind went back to the map he had destroyed, and the treasure hidden in Deadman's Gully.

He was thinking of it one afternoon as he was riding across to Billoora on an errand for Mr. Morton. It was a clear beautiful afternoon, and the air on the gra.s.sy uplands was fresh and bracing. Gray might have taken the river road, which was a mile or two nearer, but it would have led him past the cottages, and he could not bear to look at them--the remembrance that Harding was to have had one of them was too exquisitely painful. But on the uplands there was nothing to remind him of Harding--the richly-green rolling wooded pastures were altogether unlike the gray plains round the hut.

Gray gazed about him and thought of England. If he got that money he would go back there; his mind was fully made up on that point. And though he had not yet said so in so many words to himself, he knew he intended to get the money. Only the day before he had refused a new post offered to him by Mr. Morton, and said that he wished to leave the station in a week or two. And this afternoon, for the first time since Harding's disappearance, he allowed himself to dwell on the great and wonderful change the finding of the treasure would make in his life.

Absorbed in these thoughts he did not notice the approach of a man along the gra.s.sy track. The man was walking slowly and painfully, carrying a bundle over his shoulder. He was a small, wiry, narrow-shouldered man, with a thin peaked face, from which a pair of small eyes looked keenly out from under thick reddish eyebrows. He had caught sight of Gray long before Gray saw him, and after walking some distance towards him, he sat down on the bank and waited for him to come up. Gray checked his horse to speak.

"You look tired, my man."

Gray's tone of cool superiority was not resented by the wayfarer. He got up and came nearer.

"I've had a longish tramp," he said in a thin, not unpleasant voice.

"I'm bound for Warrandilla, Mr. Morton's place. I've begun to fear as how I've missed my road."