The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 18
Chapter XVIII
“I ain’t goin’ ter hev no contagious best man,” said Danny, stolidly. “The boys’ll most on ’em be down ter see us spliced; but I don’t want ’em hoppin’ round wi’ me. We got the stage ter ourselfs on Wednesday, Suse.”
Suse slid her arm round his neck. For twilight was over the bridge spanning Changing Creek, and there were none but the red-eyed dredges upstream to see.
“I don’t care about all the boys,” she said. “But Maiden is to be bridesmaid, an’ so Steve must be best man, Danny.”
“She’d sooner hev Lou, I guess, old lady. They’ve bin pretty thick lately.”
Suse pulled the carefully twisted curl on his forehead.
“I was beginnin’ ter think as I’d taught you somethin’, lad,” she said, “but you got a good long way to go ’fore you pick up the common sense as a gel has by nature.”
“Then I’ll pick up an armful now, while I got the chanst! But Suse—Randal an’ Miss Effie didn’t hev no best man or no bridesmaid.”
Suse twisted a little in his hold and kissed him.
“That weren’t quite the same, you dear ole chump. An’ you’ll ask Steve ter-morrow, Danny?”
“We-ell,” said Danny, resignedly; and then puckered his forehead as a slim boy shape ran past them in the dusk.
“Roddy Duncan,” said Suse, flushing. “Take yer arm away, Danny! I———”
“What’s the odds? He’s gone now, anyways. An’ runnin’ like ole Nick were arter him, too.”
There was that in Roddy’s face confirmed Danny’s words. He was white-lipped, and a desperate terror sat in the back of his eyes. He ran fleetly with his head down, breasting the tussock hill, swinging to the right, and taking the little winding sheep track that led the way to Pipi Wepeha’s whare. The cabbage trees were moaning in the evening wind, and the brushing flax at his feet seemed to whisper words, tossing them on the night. Pipi’s whare was dark and very silent where it sat by the track, and Roddy pulled up, shaking with something that was not exhaustion.
Any man can overcome fear of all that may be put into bald words—that may be set down clear to the understanding. But that fear which is elusive, intangible; which belongs only to the winds and the untrod earth and the wide night with its throbbing stars, holds the soul in a dread that cannot be crushed down, because cause it cannot be explained. That dread had been with Roddy since Murray spoke to Ormond on the Lion hilltop. Six times he had held his courage between his teeth and taken the track to Pipi’s whare. Six times it had failed him, and sent him back. Last night he had crept to the window and watched Pipi a half-hour by the fire blaze. This night Pipi had gone to the township, and Roddy had come up in the added knowledge gained by that watching.
Slowly he pushed the door open. It creaked, and a smell of rancid fish came out. Roddy struck a match, and went in and dropped the latch behind him. The whare was low and very dirty. It sloped from a ridge pole, and roof and sides were of split twisted flax and raupo. Pipi’s sleeping mat lay by the fireplace which he had built of kerosene tins, and a carved Maori head with a greenstone tiki slung round the neck stood on a pole. Round the forehead where the tattoo lines were set in spirals was bound Murray’s red necktie.
Roddy stood still and looked at it. To tear the thing off and run away home with it seemed simple utterly—when the township lights and noise were round him. But the lonely Fighting Hill with its traditions of blood and hate; the rub of the flax leaves without the door; the unexplainable sense of living and seeing that crowded the dark silent whare, knit a power too strong for the sensitive boy. Roddy’s match went out, burning his fingers, and in the blackness something surely breathed. The sweat was wet on his face as he made another spurt of flame to flare over the grinning tiki that writhed its limbs with the shake of the match.
“I—must do it!” said Roddy in his throat. “I must—I must!”
He pulled the red faded necktie away from the wood, stuffed it in his breast pocket, brought out another—chosen from the same stock at Derrett’s shop, and worn to shabbiness—in haste, and twisted it on the head in place of the first. Then he trod the match underfoot, and groped for the door.
It pushed open suddenly, shutting him behind it, and someone came in with heavy steps. Roddy’s breath died in his throat, and from the raupo walls behind hands were surely stretching to hold him. He could feel the man searching, silently, yet with system and determination. All that Lou had told him of the tohunga power; all that the night had taught him of mystery chilled his heart and held him motionless. The moving hands came nearer. Roddy knew that they would presently touch his face. And the spirits of horror and of evil were about him when a hand brushed his cheek, slid to his shoulder and clenched there.
Then came the crackle of a match up a trouser leg, and the hold loosed on the boy as Murray said:
“Roddy! You young imp! What the devil are you doing here?”
“Murray—Murray—Murray!” Roddy held him tight. “I thought you was Pipi———”
“Pipi is down in the township. I saw him as I was going over to Cardigan’s. That is why I was certain I was after a burglar when I spotted the light up here. And I’m not sure that I wasn’t right, either, Roddy.”
“You—got pluck ter come up here,” said Roddy, very low.
Murray laughed shortly.
“There’s very much in the world that we don’t understand, Roddy. But we can fight it, all the same. Evil is a tangible thing, in whatever form it comes—tangible enough to stand up to, anyway.”
“But you believe that Pipi—that Pipi———”
Murray turned, lighting a tallow dip that stood within three nails on a board.
“I was dog-tired that night Pipi started his yarns,” he said, “and I was afraid—I was dead afraid that he might do some foolery. That’s what gave him the hold, do you see? You take my tip, Roddy: When a fellow begins to funk, morally or physically, he is bound to fall in somehow. He’s melting the wax for anything to cast the impression on. It’s a thing that is done more often than you know—in one way or another. But if you’ve got pluck enough to stand the fire that will melt the wax again you lose the impression, Roddy.”
“I—don’t think I quite understand,” said Roddy.
“I don’t think you understand at all. Never mind. Just remember that neither Pipi nor the Devil himself can get hold of you unless you let him—by Jove!”
Movement had brought him before the carved head with the necktie bound on the forehead. A new sternness came over the thin face with the deep eyes.
“I’m not sure that you don’t deserve smacking. you immoral young imp!” he said. Then he whipped the rag off, and tore it in half with a twist such as is used to wring a chicken’s neck.
“Don’t!” cried Roddy. “Oh, I tried so hard to make it like! Oh, Murray!”
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” said Murray, and took him by the shoulders. “Do you want me to leave it there for the old brute to curse over?”
“It’s not yours. This is yours.” Roddy drew it out and Murray stared.
“Whose is this, then?”
“Mine! I—I came to put it there.”
Murray was silent a minute—a long minute. Then he said:
“Give it to me. Now, you just come along home, young ’un. And please to understand that the power of evil isn’t the greatest power in the world. You’re proof positive to the contrary, if you only knew it.”
“But—if Pipi curses you still—if he gets something else?” whispered Roddy out in the starlight, where the tussocks of Fighting Hill muttered round their feet.
Murray tucked the boy’s cold hand close to the warmth of his own body and trudged forward.
“Roddy,” he said, “we’re all of us ready to remember that there is a Devil. Sometimes we are so busy remembering it that we forget that there is a God. If we inverted our beliefs occasionally we’d get along better. I don’t understand this, and I never shall, I think. It’s sweated a good deal of nerve out of me. But I’ve stuck my toes up against something at last, and I’m not going out on the undertow any more.”
“W-what is it?” whispered Roddy.
“You young ass!” said Murray, looking away to the stars. “Haven’t I just told you?”