Harry Heathcote of Gangoil Part 6

BOSCOBEL.

Two days and two nights pa.s.sed without fear of fire, and then Harry Heathcote was again on the alert. The earth was parched as though no drop of rain had fallen. The fences were dry as tinder, and the ground was strewed with broken atoms of timber from the trees, each of which a spark would ignite. Two nights Harry slept in his bed, but on the third he was on horseback about the run, watching, thinking, endeavoring to make provision, directing others, and hoping to make it believed that his eyes were every where. In this way an entire week was pa.s.sed, and now it wanted but four days to Christmas. He would come home to breakfast about seven in the morning, very tired, but never owning that he was tired, and then sleep heavily for an hour or two in a chair. After that he would go out again on the run, would sleep perhaps for another hour after dinner, and then would start for his night's patrol. During this week he saw nothing of Medlicot, and never mentioned his name but once. On that occasion his wife told him that during his absence Medlicot had been at the station.

"What brought him here?" Harry asked, fiercely.

Mrs. Heathcote explained that he had called in a friendly way, and had said that if there were any fear of fire he would be happy himself to lend a.s.sistance.

Then the young squatter forgot himself in his wrath. "Confound his hypocrisy!" said Harry, aloud. "I don't think he's a hypocrite," said the wife.

"I'm sure he's not," said Kate Daly.

Not a word more was spoken, and Harry immediately left the house. The two women did not as usual go to the gate to see him mount his horse, not refraining from doing so in any anger, or as wis.h.i.+ng to exhibit displeasure at Harry's violence, but because they were afraid of him.

They had found themselves compelled to differ from him, but were oppressed at finding themselves in opposition to him.

The feeling that his wife should in any way take part against him added greatly to Heathcote's trouble. It produced in his mind a terrible feeling of loneliness in his sorrow. He bore a brave outside to all his men, and to any stranger whom in these days he met about the run--to his wife and sister also, and to the old woman at home.

He forced upon them all an idea that he was not only autocratic, but self-sufficient also--that he wanted neither help nor sympathy. He never cried out in his pain, being heartily ashamed even of the appeal which he had made to Medlicot. He spoke aloud and laughed with the men, and never acknowledged that his trials were almost too much for him. But he was painfully conscious of his own weakness. He sometimes felt, when alone in the bush, that he would fain get off his horse, and lie upon the ground and weep till he slept. It was not that he trusted no one. He suspected no one with a positive suspicion, except Nokes, and Medlicot as the supporter of Nokes. But he had no one with whom he could converse freely--none whom he had not been accustomed to treat as the mere ministers of his will--except his wife and his wife's sister; and now he was disjoined from them by their sympathy with Medlicot! He had chosen to manage every thing himself without contradiction and almost without counsel; but, like other such imperious masters, he now found that when trouble came the privilege of dictators.h.i.+p brought with it an almost unsupportable burden.

Old Bates was an excellent man, of whose fidelity the young squatter was quite a.s.sured. No one understood foot-rot better than Old Bates, or was less sparing of himself in curing it. He was a second mother to all the lambs, and when shearing came watched with the eyes of Argus to see that the sheep were not wounded by the shearers, or the wool left on their backs. But he had no conversation, none of that imagination which in such a time as this might have a.s.sisted in devising safeguards, and but little enthusiasm. Shepherds, so called, Harry kept none upon the run; and would have felt himself insulted had any one suggested that he was so backward in his ways as to employ men of that denomination. He had fenced his run, and dispensed with shepherds and shepherding as old-fas.h.i.+oned and unprofitable. He had two mounted men, whom he called boundary riders, one an Irishman and the other a German--and them he trusted fully, the German altogether, and the Irishman equally as regarded his honesty. But he could not explain to them the thoughts that loaded his brain. He could instigate them to eagerness; but he could not condescend to tell Karl Bender, the German, that if his fences were destroyed neither his means nor his credit would be sufficient to put them up again, and that if the scanty herbage were burned off any large proportion of his run, he must sell his flocks at a great sacrifice.

Nor could he explain to Mickey O'Dowd, the Irishman, that his peace of mind was destroyed by his fear of one man. He had to bear it all alone. And there was heavy on him also the great misery of feeling that every thing might depend on own exertions, and that yet he did not know how or where to exert himself. When he had ridden about all night and discovered nothing, he might just as well have been in bed.

And he was continually riding about all night and discovering nothing.

After leaving the station on the evening of the day on which he had expressed himself to the women so vehemently respecting Medlicot, he met Bates coming home from his day's work. It was then past eight o'clock, and the old man was sitting wearily on his horse, with his head low down between his shoulders, and the reins hardly held within his grasp.

"You're late, Mr. Bates," said Harry; "you take too much out of yourself this hot weather."

"I've got to move slower, Mr. Heathcote, as I grow older. That's about it. And the beast I'm on is not much good." Now Mr. Bates was always complaining of his horse, and yet was allowed to choose any on the run for his own use.

"If you don't like him, why don't you take another?"

"There ain't much difference in 'em, Mr. Heathcote. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. It's getting uncommon close shaving for them wethers in the new paddock. They're down upon the roots pretty well already."

"There's gra.s.s along the bush on the north side."

"They won't go there; it's rank and sour. They won't feed up there as long as they can live lower down and nearer the water. Weather like this, they'd sooner die near the water than travel to fill their bellies. It's about the hottest day we've had, and the nights a'most hotter. Are you going to be out, Mr. Heathcote?"

"I think so."

"What's the good of it, Mr. Heathcote? There is no use in it. Lord love you, what can yon do? You can't be every side at once."

"Fire can only travel with the wind, Mr. Bates."

"And there isn't any wind, and so there can't be any fire. I never did think, and I don't think now, there ever was any use in a man fas.h.i.+ng himself as you fash yourself. You can't alter things, Mr.

Heathcote."

"But that's just what I can do--what a man has to do. If a match were thrown there at your feet, and the gra.s.s was aflame, couldn't you alter that by putting your foot on it? If you find a ewe on her back, can't you alter that by putting her on her legs?"

"Yes, I can do that, I suppose."

"What does a man live for except to alter things? When a man clears the forest and sows corn, does he not alter things?"

"That's not your line, Mr. Heathcote," said the cunning old man.

"If I send wool to market, I alter things."

"You'll excuse me, Mr. Heathcote. Of course I'm old, but I just give you my experience."

"I'm much obliged to you; though we can't always agree, you know.

Good-night. Go in and say a word to my wife, and tell them you saw me all right."

"I'll have a crack with 'em, Mr. Heathcote, before I turn in."

"And tell Mary I sent my love."

"I will, Mr. Heathcote; I will."

He was thinking always of his wife during his solitary rides, and of her fear and deep anxiety. It was for her sake and for the children that he was so care-worn, not for his own. Had he been alone in the world he would not have fretted himself in this fas.h.i.+on because of the malice of any man. But how would it be with her should he be forced to move her from Gangoil? And yet, with all his love, they had parted almost in anger. Surely she would understand the tenderness of the message he had just sent her.

Of a sudden, as he was riding, he stopped his horse and listened attentively. From a great distance there fell upon his accustomed ear a sound which he recognized, though he was aware that the place from whence it came was at least two miles distant. It was the thud of an axe against a tree. He listened still, and was sure that it was so, and turned at once toward the sound, though in doing so he left his course at a right angle. He had been going directly away from the river, with his back to the wool-shed; but now he changed his course, riding in the direction of the spot at which Jacko had nearly fallen in jumping over the fence. As he continued on, the sounds became plainer, till at last, reining in his horse, he could see the form of the woodman, who was still at work ringing the trees. This was a job which the man did by contract, receiving so much an acre for the depopulation of the timber. It was now bright moonlight, almost as clear as day--a very different night, indeed, from that on which the rain had come--and Harry could see at a glance that it was the man called Boscobel still at work. Now there were, as he thought, very good reasons why Boscobel at the present moment should not be so employed. Boscobel was receiving wages for work of another kind.

"Bos," said the squatter, riding up, and addressing the man by the customary abbreviation of his nickname, "I thought you were watching at Brownbie's boundary?" Boscobel lowered his axe, and stood for a while contemplating the proposition made to him. "You are drawing three s.h.i.+llings a night for watching; isn't that so?"

"Yes, that's so. Anyways, I shall draw it."

"Then why ain't you watching?"

"There's nothing to watch that I knows on--not just now."

"Then why should I pay you for it? I'm to pay you for ringing these trees, ain't I?"

"Certainly, Mr. Heathcote."

"Then you're to make double use of your time, and sell it twice over, are you? Don't try to look like a fool, as though you didn't understand. You know that what you're doing isn't honest."

"n.o.body ever said as I wasn't honest before."

"I tell you so now. You're robbing me of the time you've sold to me, and for which I'm to pay you."

"There ain't nothing to watch while the wind's as it is now, and that chap ain't any where about to-night."

"What chap?"

"Oh, I know. I'm all right. What's the use of dawdling about up there in the broad moonlight, and the wind like this?"

"That's for me to judge. If you engage to do my work and take my money, you're swindling me when you go about another job as you are now. You needn't scratch your head. You understand it all as well as I do."

"I never was told I swindled before, and I ain't a-going to put up with it. You may ring your own trees, and watch your own fences, and the whole place may be burned for me. I ain't a-going to do another turn in Gangoil. Swindle, indeed!" So Boscobel shouldered his axe, and marched off through the forest, visible in the moonlight till the trees hid him.