The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 1
The Tracks We Tread
Chapter I
Round the New Zealand coast-lines lie the towns, where men talk with their kind from over-seas, and put their fingers, eagerly and very ignorantly, on the throb of the great world’s pulse. Up the New Zealand mid-line—sheer into her vivid young heart—lie the townships where draw together the men she breeds and holds; men whom the Salvation Army lassies pray for on the dusty street corners, and who go away many times to endings unchronicled; men who love, who conquer and serve, on the downs, the harsh mountains, the unhandled plains, until they make touch with the Men of To-Morrow upon her shores.
Here they too feel the world’s pulse for a week, a year. Then the flutter and the drum-beat sicken them, and their feet ache for the spring of the tussock again. So the saddle takes them back, and the pick, and the call of the sheep, and the tin-roofed townships, whither all roads set as wheel-spokes set to the hub.
The roads round Argyle in Otago South slept, in their dust or their mud, six nights in the week. On Saturdays the boys from the run came in to distract Murray, who was police officer for thirty square miles of district, and to turn the five hotels inside out, putting them together again in the dawn-fog.
“Scannell’s lot” held the foremost reputation, from Binnie away north to the Shark’s Tooth, and beyond it. For Mains was a cattle station primarily, and Scannell was merciless to shirkers. And so, without any exception, were Scannell’s men.
It was on a wet Thursday in August that Mackerrow broke his leg and was sent to the hospital fifty miles away. It was on the Friday that Scannell’s teams creaked down the steep road to the township, unloaded sheep and rabbit skins at the siding through a blue-cold icy day, and filled up Blake’s bar-parlour afterwards. Tod was angry with Mackerrow, and he said so.
“I’m runnin’ couples wid Randal, now,” he said. “An’ Randal is not me pick at all. You remember what I tould ye last musterin’?”
Last mustering Tod and Randal had found a man—long dead—on the highest, cruellest peak on Mains Run. Tod had whistled his dogs off the bones, scraped a hole on the sunny side of a slope where the snow lay soft, and shoveled the ugly things in. Then he called upon Randal to say a prayer. But Randal said no more than “Rot,” and went downhill with his dogs abroad on the shingle behind him. Tod dropped on one knee, and uncovered.
“May ye sleep swater than ye smell,” he said. “An’ may your luck be better to ye than that ould boyo shankin’ away beyant there.”
Then he crossed himself, and followed downward through the loneliness.
Gordon grunted through the smoke-reek.
“I knew Randal long afore that,” he said. “He got all the bowels of an empty churn, and all the heart of a seeded cabbage. I cud tell you things of Randal———”
Randal was without in the bar. Mogger saw the square of his shoulders beyond the door- jamb, and kicked Gordon’s stool in delicate warning. For Gordon was only a sluicing hand and did not know the weight of Randal’s fist.
“Go an’ tell it top o’ Lonely Hill, then, you chunk. We knows what Randal is.”
Ted Douglas knocked out his pipe with a chuckle. He was a long, well-knit boy, and head-man to Scannell of Mains. For where power to rule is in men, age and length of tenour break before it. Besides he was strong, body and brain, and clean as the snow hills that bred him.
“Do you?” he said, dryly. “You’re clever! Do you know what Randal is? Do you know what any on us is?”
“Don’t tell it,” prayed Danny, pushing Conlon off the accordeon, and slipping his own hands into the slings. “It’s a five-day sarmon, reekin’ wi’ samples, and berginnin’ wi’ Lou———”
“Who went down to Jerusalem and fell among thieves,” clicked in Lou’s light, refined voice from the corner where he took down an outsider at Nap.
“Bedad, ye needn’t go seekin’ to Jerushlum for thim,” cried Tod—“wid th’ shirt stole off the back of me to putt on Moody when he goes to see his girl. Why don’t ye buy wan of your own wid the pennies ye take out of the Church-plate, Sundays?”
“’Twas nothin’ more’n a necktie, anyways,” said Moody, unabashed. “Not ernuff ter pin me collar to, an’ dirty at that. Does they on’y hev ha’pennies at Chapel then?”
“Buttons,” said the Blacksmith, and Danny chanted softly:
“‘We are all brothers in this land o’ dreamin.’”
The Packer woke with a snort.
“I knows what Randal is,” he said suddenly. “He’s them sort as wants a ’ole pack-’oss to hisself, and won’t balance up into a decent load wi’ ornary men. There’s lots o’ them knockin’ round. Lou’s another.”
Lou shot a swift glance across the room. No man ever saw behind the blue of his eyes or the smile of his well-cut mouth.
“Who’s going to balance up with us instead of Mackerrow, Ted?” he said.
“Jimmie Blaine,” said Ted Douglas, shortly.
All the township knew that Ted Douglas and Jimmie were mates. And all the township knew the meaning of Lossin’s remark:
“Are yer takin’ him on a chain an’ a collar fur next time yer goes after cattle?”
When the Packer was sober he attempted to shoulder every quarrel in Argyle.
“Jimmie’s bin after cattle on Behar. He won’t carry the collar-galls on his neck as long as you’re doin’.”
Randal swung through the room as Lossin sprang to his feet with an oath.
“Stop that,” he said, and struck Lossin’s arm down. “If you want to hit your grand-father, go and nose round the work-houses till you find him.”
“One degeneration’s enough fur any man,” said Danny peaceably. “Where would he find a grand-dad? I ain’t got one meself.”
“I’ll sell you a brace fur ten-pence,” offered Mogger, who wore rags the year through that he might feed his relations. “And a granny, too, ter make it up to a bob.”
“Thank ye,” said Danny; “but I’m thinkin’ o’ startin’ at the other end. Shove ’em on ter Moody. He’ll never get a wife havin’ on’y had ten gels a’ready.”
“Revoke,” said Lou, from his corner, and the outsider stammered in helpless innocence.
Conlon winked at Gordon as he cast more wood on the fire. Lou’s methods were known in the township.
Randal dropped on the form beside Derrett, and spread his long hands to the blaze. They had been a gentleman’s hands before the nails broke and the joints coarsened by work. And Randal had been a gentleman before the life he chose had made his soul even as his hands. But the blackened hands and soul had pulled Mains out of more than one tight pinch when the snow was down on the sheep-country.
The air without rang with frost, and the eternal thump of the dredges a half-mile down the river sounded close to each man as the beating of his heart. The bar-parlour was hot, and gay with the fire-blaze. It smelt of the stables, and rank tobacco, and beer. A man who came quick-foot down the street to swing the side-door open, halted on the sill to gasp and to shout:
“Who’s in there behind that reek? Any chaps who can ride?
Derrett felt the quiver of the man beside him, and saw it flick to one and another throughout the room. It was the muscles of the saddle-bred tightening unconsciously, to strike them out from loafer, and dredge-hand, and ganger.
“’Bout half on us,” said Douglas. “What’s the row, Murray?”
Murray’s blue uniform and clean-cut face showed under the door-lamp. He had left an English University for love of adventure; and, from cap-peak to spurred heel, all the district knew him for the honourable plucky gentleman the Old World breeds, and sometimes sends us.
“Young Scannell’s gone up the Changing and into the hills. I’ll want all of you I can get to find him.”
Randal sprang up with an oath as Conlon cried:
“Drunk again, is he?”
“I believe you! Rouse up, you fellows. Who’s coming?”
Tod scratched his nose, answering for them all, dubiously.
“Ah, then, man dear, wouldn’t it be betther for the boys to let him go streelin’ away to the ind of the world and beyant it, sure?”
“Come out of that, you lazy beggar, before I bring you by the scruff.”
Then, as the warmth held the men still in idleness, Murray’s voice changed, and cut with a sudden incisiveness. “Is it a pack of cowards I’m calling on in here?”
“By Gad!—come along out of this, boys, and we’ll show him! Up the Changing, is it? And I’ll give you a lead. Have you got a horse that’ll stand up on this country, Murray?”
It was Lou Birot’s clear voice above the grate of turning feet, and of forms that fell all ways. Lou had carried his swag into Mains last year—no man knew whence nor why, and he did not tell. But the nerve which everywhere commands respect from men was in Lou a balanced finely-tempered sword, and “Scannell’s lot” reverenced it, forgiving his other sins.
“Hold on!” cried Ted Douglas. “Who’ll take the drays home?”
“You and Moody. Head and tail. That’s easy. Where’s Blake? Can he let us have horses? Get out there, Roddy———”
“Bluff!” cried Scott. “It’s the ‘coward’ nicked you, Lou. But you ain’t playing my hand. I pass.”
“One funk among Scannell’s men,” said Randal, diving into his oilskins.
“Funk be hanged ! If young Art hadn’t got a sister you wouldn’t———”
Douglas tripped Scott headlong as Randal’s left shot out, and three more punted him into the passage and slammed the door. Then, as the tide of feet set to the stable, Steve said with a gasp:
“Fust time ever I see Randal fleshed. Is there truth in that yarn, after all?”
The boys charged out, sweeping Blake and a lantern with them. A half-dozen seized such horses and gear as he owned; more raided Phelan’s stables and Conroy’s at the corner. Jingle of steel, hoof clatter, and the volleys of chaff brought the township to stare and ask questions. A white face showed in a stray lantern-flash. Douglas gripped the shoulder below it, and said:
“Not you, Jimmie. You don’t know the country.”
“They brought me, Ted. They said I was one o’ you now———”
“You go back in the drays with Moody—take that scared look off before you show up at Mains.”
Douglas cast on his gear, and wheeled out, two lines quick and deep on his forehead. For that instinct beyond reason which joins or divides men apart from their understanding had knitted him to a mate weak in body and spirit, and he knew the unbending code of Scannell’s men.
Lou came over the fence, his feet seeking the stirrups. He had borrowed a half-broken colt from Jackson, and Jackson hobbled after, babbling uncared-for warnings.
He flung the roll-call along as he raced up where the street clanged like rock to the hoofs: and the answers came, crisp and gay, and eager, for the tingling of frost and of fight held the boys.
Murray’s eyes were bright in the dark as he rounded his troop.
“Fifteen! And all sorts of cattle and gear! Good on you, boys! Take the running, Lou. You’ve got a genius for this kind of thing.”
Steve loosed a great oath on the night.
“There ain’t no heel-taps when Lou’s shoutin’ drinks. What’s Art Scannell to pay over this, Murray?”
Murray’s brown face was suddenly hard as his voice.
“The last inch I can grind out of him. He gives more trouble than any man in the district.”
Randal caught Lou’s stirrup. He said underbreath:
“If you find him—he’s not Murray’s meat.”
Lou’s laugh was blue flame in his eyes. Here was a game to his hand; for Randal was a rider also.
“If I find him, he is. Wake up there, boys. Wheel out.”
He settled home in the leather with the light poise of one born to it, and slung the half-mad colt forward, firm-handed and easy.
The sharp air bit faces and hands, sending the blood in a gallop to the heart, and swaying fear and reluctance aside. For each type takes its pleasure in kind; and each man, the world through, would at one time or other uphold his private courage through payment forced thereby from another.
“We has my sympathy,” said Danny, plunging into the dark. “All on us ’cept that blazin’ comic in the lead. Give Lou a little bit o’ Hell-fire ter play with, an’ he’d feed himself into the flame fer the fun of it.”
“Get out,” said Steve. “Father Denis calls him the flower of the flock. I won’t deny as he’s a pretty rank bloomer when he’s set in a soil that suits him—Mogger, if that ole broken-winder o’ yours expects ter fin’ oats in my pocket———”
“He was lookin’ for suthin’ green fur a relish,” explained Mogger. But he was not there when Steve’s fist shot out.
Derrett’s shop rose at the corner, and Lou swung to the left, up a side-street where the young moon hung ahead. The creak of leather and the anger of chilled horses under the bit brought a bellow from a low cottage-door.
“Hallo, bhoys! Liftin’ cattle tu-noight?”
Murray turned in the saddle to answer, and Lou cried:
“Father Denis—say a mass for his soul if we find him.”
The hoofs passed, and the priest stood still, his fat chin shut into his hand. He knew men; by the hang of their coats, and the way they have their hair cut, and by the things that they do not do; and his religion was broad as his brogue.
“The soul that sinneth,” he said. “An’ Lou Birot afther it wid that voice tu him. Bedad! the divil will have a foine whipper-in when Lou comes tu his own. Ah, me bhoys; we’re growin’ intu men. bhut there’s plenty of the brute in us yit.”
He went back to the still little room that knew half the sin and the joy of the township; and far off, through the vivid clear night, Lou led the chase for the soul that had sinned.
Trees and clumped houses showed up and passed; planking came under-foot with a shiver; down stream and up blinked the red-eyed dredges, and from the right came the squeal of hydraulics. Beyond, tall cliffs slewed, the track at an angle, and Murray cried:
“You can get us up the Changing, Lou? We’ll lose hours if we follow the road.”
Lou chuckled. For the animal instinct of following a lead is stronger when other forces are numb.
“Yes; and at top—if you’re game.”
“Hear that!” cried Mogger. “At top—up the Changin’—hear that———”
“Stow it,” said Danny savagely. “Think we’re all deaf if we ain’t got ears the size o’ yourn? We got ter wipe that suckermantal hint o’ Murray’s out on him, an’ you can bet all your fambly we’re goin’ ter do it.”
Lou’s colt was raw and too eager. But he had been bred on the high country beyond Changing Creek where Art Scannell’s black mare ran last year.
“And it’s there she’ll go back,” said Murray. “With young Art atop of her while there’s life in him. Drunk or sane, you can’t shake him off anything with hide on.”
The air stank of mud and wet flax; the grate of shingle came under the hoof, and Tod’s gelding slipped on smooth ice where the star-reflection was faint.
Lou dropped his cheek to the mane, his blue eyes sifting the night for the dark smudge that would be the Glory’s dam-line. They missed contact by the width of a hand, and Carr said, unmoved:
“Ten fut o’ water the Glory has behind them sand-bags, now. Good fur us Lou picked ’em up.”
Tussock made evil foot-hold again; then a nigger-head swamp, sharp with ice, and foul with water that splashed to the eye-brows. All around rose black swan, wide-winged and crying to the night like spirits turned back from the world beyond. The horses took their own way, headlong; and with loose rein. Tod was crossing himself. For ghost-lights played games in the water that was too sinfully black to reflect God’s own light.
On the hill-top they rose the Lion lamps, and caught the air from mountains that the breath of no living thing warmed. Lou came of the breed that loves the asphalt-track on the edge of the great world’s grass-plot, and he handled his men with cunning and delight. Round the curved knolls over the Lion where the nozzle-flash climbed to the stars; slow-foot through the running shingle beyond, and into the place where the silence of all the world lived. Here he turned in the saddle.
“You said Ormond saw him on the track?”
“Yes,” said Murray; “he was going———”
The boys’ deep-chested growl drowned the words. The old crumbling track, beaten out a lifetime ago by the feet of men seeking gold, held the sky-line ten miles off as the bullet flies, and well Scannell’s men knew the land in between. For they drew cattle from it in the season, and horses; taking the underway carefully, with daylight to guide.
“Then we’ll make a bee-line,” said Lou. “It’s going to be rough.”
Lou lied when it so pleased him, but he spoke less than the truth this night. With hands low and light on the rein, they charged down the slope that was made of frozen creeklets and stones, and rounded off by a brawling little stream with soft bottom, Each man’s breath made a winding-sheet round him, and the sting of frost was live in the air. The track rose by twists and grades, with a great purple sky widening as the earth dropped away. Flax-leaves slashed their faces, blinding the paths that the horses took with strong shoulder-heaves and chest-breathing. The flung-out breast of a hill above jagged the star-clusters. They swung round the curve of it where late snow lay yet in the hollows, and took clear country again, with sparse tussock and slag. A wire fence, like a dewed spider-web, cut the black scarp beyond, and Murray cheered as a schoolboy when it sung behind to the touch of one hoof only.
Hands were numb on the rein; the breath of the eternal snows was too near and too pure; the iron chill of the stirrup made the feet tingle and throb. The smell of bush blew across them; caught and ripped them with a thousand damp hands. It was blind and savage, and sensuous with its rich heavy odours; and the ferny rottenness was dank under-foot.
“How much more o’ this is there?” growled Carr, when the way tilted up a bare hill with a sprinkling of snow on the flint. And Tod answered:
“Divil knows—an’ Lou, if they’re two. But, be all things, I misdoubt it this night.”
Talk dulled in the men; but the horses had the great glad hearts that tire not, and Lou’s colt strained the rein still. Then, as buckets climb the dredge-ladder, they came one by one to the broken hill-track and paused. Randal dropped from the saddle, and slacked the mare’s girths. Murray’s face was alight as he followed.
“By Jingo, Lou,” he cried, “you’ve given me something to remember. And I’ve got my own horse! How the devil do you fellows do it!”
But Lou did not hear. He was watching Randal, and his eyes were shining. Randal’s neck was bloody where branches had torn it, and there was mud on his collar. His long hands fumbled stiffly with the buckles, and his pipe was dead between his teeth. But in the clear starlight his lean body moved untired, and his strong face showed hard and more resolute.
“You’re a man,” said Lou, underbreath. “But if it’s you and I for him, Randal, I’ll make you sit up.”
The men talked amid the clink of harness, and Moody swore as he tried to strike a match. But Murray stood aside with every nerve tingling, and a sudden marvelling at these sons of the hills who knew not exhaustion nor fear.
All God’s world is wise and terrible by night. But the hills, that through the centuries bare their breasts to the secrets that the stars tell them, receive an awful majesty which the plains and the downs never know. For neither beast nor bird break the eternal stillness, nor mark the eternal snow. Flint and red granite, the little grey cotton-plant and the swaying snow-grass held the wastes for their own, and at Murray’s elbow one long-dead black pine creaked in the frost-grip. The white spurs were naked in the moonlight; but the gullies were dark as waiting graves. Danny chuckled as he climbed to the saddle again.
“The squad will now perceed ter investigatin’ on its own bloomin’ ’ook,” he said. “I hope it ain’t me ter find him, that’s all. Young Art’s apt ter be lively.”
Lou dropped away on Randal’s quarter. For him it was to stalk the stalker; and for two fierce hours he played a waiting game, by gully-top and shingle-slope and green spring-heads that the frost had made into skating-rinks. And ever, through the stem white silences, he kept touch of the black shadow that sought and called and sought for hoof-prints again on the frozen snow. By a warm spring in the toi-toi Randal found the hoof-prints. They headed straight for the Big Bush beyond. His teeth shut with a snap, and the mare sprang as the heels slapped her sides. Rotten slag slid away from the hoof; crisp tussock and crackling white spray. The mare’s feet made fierce red writing on the flint, and the underway was suddenly slippery with the little round leaves of loose birch-bush. Great boles and tree-tops closed the earth into shadows, and a sound woke that sent the blood to Randal’s throat. For it was the snickering gasp of a winded horse, and a laugh that might be a child’s.
Randal sat down to ride; with cunning that swung him unhurt between the trees and the snatching vines; with speed because ahead the bush was cleft by a gully that would audit Art Scannell’s accounts for Eternity; and with a brain that said:
“You brute! Oh, you brute! Why don’t you let him go! You’ve no right to hold her by that or by anything else.”
Scrub crashed at his shoulder, and Lou’s light figure rode as his shadow beside him. Randal was blind for an instant. Then he said:
“I want him—myself.”
“Of course,” said Lou, gaily; “so do I.”
Then the laugh ahead filled the night, and words broke before it.
Tripping scrub and vines barred the way; lawyer ripped flesh from faces and necks; creeping lichens were moist on the branches that hit them, and the thick wild smell of bush clogged their breathing. The lust of capture was heavy on horses and men, and Randal’s sweating hands slipped on the reins as he lifted his mare forward by the spurs. The bush thinned, showing the thing that they sought; and beyond lay the gully. Randal caught the frozen flash of a waterfall across it as Lou said:
“Leave him. That will settle all things for ever.”
Three paces, and the black mare slung round to the grip on her bit. Art Scannell’s laugh shut off with a shriek.
“Randal!” he cried, and his whip cut across the face opposite.
Randal jerked the silver-set thing down to the creek far below.
“You’ll follow if you play up with me. Art,” he said.
Lou laughed.
“Go it. Art,” he cried, and slapped the boy’s knee.
Art stooped with a snarl, meeting his teeth in the thick of the hand; and Lou came out of the saddle with the brute that lives in every man quick on his face.
“Lou—don’t———” The girlish treble voice was over-dear to Randal. He made peace by such wit as he had, and Lou looked at him, grinning.
“I think you’ve done more harm than you know, to-night, Randal,” he said. “Take the young beggar where you like. I don’t want to be bothered with him.”
No mood held Lou for long, and he was whistling cheerily when the keas on Lonely Hill heard Art Scannell crying down the ways, and answered with a long glad challenge. Lou looked through the gloom at the red of Randal’s pipe.
“Taking him down to the hut, then?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Murray will come after him.”
“Let him!”
“And the boys will say———”
“What?”
The word hit like a bullet, and Lou laughed, low and soft.
“More than Art Scannell’s sister would like to hear,” he muttered.
A musterer’s hut squatted at foot of a siding. Randal led the horses down, hooked the reins to a ring, and said sharply:
“Come off there. Art.”
The boy’s hands were helpless with cold, and his tears were ice on the mane. But Lou lent his lithe strength to Randal’s before the door shut on the three and Randal struck a match to the slush-lamp. Then Art fell on the bunk exhausted; and Lou grinned, dabbing a cut on his lip.
“What are you going to do with him?” he asked.
“Keep him here till he’s through with it. You can go down and tell Murray to-morrow. And tell him he needn’t come up. He won’t get Art.”
Randal kicked some sticks together in the open chimney, and set them ablaze. Then he sat on the chopping-block, his chin in the heel of his hands, and his strong muscles loosed. He had given months of loneliness to this hut in the last sheep-season, and his cast blankets were in the bunk yet. Lou asked no questions. It was not needful. He yawned. Then he grinned again.
“Oh, you fool,” he said softly, and glanced at the bunk.
Art Scannell lay across the grey blankets with his smooth pretty face thrown back. The small black head and short upper lip were too like a girl’s—too like the girl for whom Randal would have paid away his soul, and who was far above his reach, as men count things in this world. The flames bobbed and fluttered in the chimney; outside the horses dozed under warmth of the bag-covers, and a mopoke called, once and again.
Art Scannell shot up in his bunk, and his eyes were suddenly awful.
“Hear that chap crying,” he said. “See him? There . . . through the hole in the thatch!”
Lou leapt for him with his eternal light laugh.
“Now we’re in for it, Randal,” he said, and brought the boy down by the leg. When a man treads a track of his own free-will he has no pity for those bruising their feet alongside. Too many times had Lou been down the path Art led them to find shame therein. But, because of a girl, the boy’s feet trod through Randal’s heart.
A scarlet morning was on the hill-tops, and the dark of the gullies gave before it when Randal cast wide the door, clearing his half-blinded eyes with his shirt-sleeve. Behind him Lou, unbroken still, sang in his careless tenor:
“Beloved! It is morn.
A redder berry on the thorn, a brighter yellow on the corn,
For this good day, new-born . . .”
“Don’t,” said Randal with his heart in his throat, and both men looked to the bunk where Art Scannell lay bound with three towels and a belt.
Lou lifted his eyebrows. Then he said lightly:
“It’s a noble thing to save a man’s life, isn’t it, Randal?”