The Pioneers by Katharine Susannah Prichard

  CHAPTER VI

  In her sleep Mary heard the rumble and groan of the wagon as it groundits way along the rough tracks and crashed over the undergrowth. Sheawakened to hear the yelping of dogs, the lowing of cattle, sounds ofmen's voices in the clearing. For a moment she believed that her mindwas still hovering in the troubled state of dreams. Then Donald's voicecalling her struck through the drowsy uncertainty. Trembling, she sprangout of bed and threw Davey's red shawl about her shoulders. She lightedthe dip in a bowl of melted fat and put it on to the table.

  "Mary!"

  Again his voice, hoarse and impatient, came from the darkness on theedge of the clearing.

  She pulled back the bolts and threw open the door.

  "Yes," she called.

  Donald loomed out of the darkness. Across the clearing, by the swinginglight of a lantern before the wagon, she dimly saw its white shape, andthe moving backs of cattle.

  Her arms went out to Donald when he stood before her.

  "Where's the dog?" he asked.

  "Dead," she said quietly.

  From her eyes and her face as she fell back, he learnt that somethingunusual had happened.

  "Then there has been trouble?" he said.

  She nodded.

  He swept his hat off with a great sigh.

  "But you're all right, you and the bairn?"

  "Yes."

  "When the dog did not fly out as we got near the house I thoughtsomething had happened. There are tales in the Port of two men fromHobart Town, escaped convicts, having taken to the hills. Their boat wasfound in the Wirree. I tried to get back sooner, fearing they might comethis way, but the roads were bad and then there were the cattle. Ihaven't had an easy minute since I've been away. But we can talk later.There's a boy come with me, drivin' the cattle. I got a mob, cheap, froma man whose stockmen had cleared out and left them on his hands. Get ussomething to eat ready, I'll bring the wagon up to the shed now. You canget what you want from it. There's corned meat and oatmeal and flour fora year. We'll put the cattle into the fenced paddock and then come down.You can clear out the wagon enough to put a sheepskin or two and ablanket in it for Johnson."

  He turned away and went back into the night.

  Mary threw more wood on the fire. As she put on her skirt and bodice,she heard the wagon labouring, forward.

  She was out getting the flour and bacon she wanted from it by the lightof a lantern, when, with a rattling of horns and a thunder of hoofs, thecattle beat past her along the track behind the sheds. The lantern lightgave a vision of fierce, bloodshot eyes of terror in a sea of tossingbacks, of moving flanks, and branching horns. She heard her husband'svoice, hoarse and yelling, the voice of the strange youth, and thecracking of whips and yelping of dogs for nearly an hour afterwards asthey tried to get the beasts into the fenced paddock on the hill-top.

  It was nearly dawn before Donald and the slight, insignificant-lookingyoung man he had brought with him from Port Southern had finished theirmeal. Then the stockman went to sleep in the wagon, and Donald Cameronturned to his wife.

  "Tell me what happened," he said.

  She did so very simply.

  "They must have been the same men I heard of in the Port," he said,breathing hard. "M'Laughlin, the trooper, told me about them ... andthat I had best look out for them up here. There was no telling whatthey might do, he said--a desperate pair--would stop at nothing. I amnot sure that I'd better not send Johnson back to tell him that they'vebeen here and that--"

  "You would not do that, Donald?"

  "Why not?"

  His voice, the suppressed rage of it, was a shock to her.

  "A man cannot leave his home in safety with these sort of men about ...and it is the duty of every honest man to deal as he would be dealt by.You're a clever woman, and no harm has come to you by them ... but thereare other women who might not be so clever."

  "But they were not bad men, Donald; one of them was sick, and theother--"

  "It would be a good thing too, being new in the district, to stand wellwith the police," he continued doggedly, "and if they were here, thosetwo, they would either make back for the Port, or the Wirree, or try toget to Middleton's. If they're on foot, as ye say, they could not gofast, and M'Laughlin with horses could catch them up in a day or two.Which way did they go?"

  Mary turned her head away. A sick feeling of grief and disappointmentovercame her. His eyes covered the averted curve of her face and theline of her neck.

  "Which way did they go?" he asked, thickly.

  "Donald," she turned to him. "I promised not to send anyone after them.You know, and I know, that lots of men have been sent out for thingsthat were not crimes at all, and--"

  "You know and you will not tell me?" he asked harshly, as though he hadnot heard.

  "Yes," she cried.

  He took her by the shoulder. His arm trembled.

  "I have stood this sort of thing long enough," he said. "On the ship andin Melbourne it was the same. You were always doing such things,feeding, or giving your clothes to filthy, ailing gaol-birds andwhiners. I have told you, you could not afford to do it. No respectablewoman can afford to, in a country where every second woman has theprison mark on her. Show sympathy with lags, and what'll be said next?You're a lag yourself and that's why your sympathy's with them. Y're mywife, the wife of a decent man and free settler, I'd have y'r rememberthat, and I'll not have it said of you!"

  He threw her off from him.

  "Which way did they go?"

  Keen and compelling, the deep-set eyes, those in-dwelling places of hiswill, met hers.

  "It was my word I gave, Donald," his wife said, "and I can't tell you."