The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 9
Chapter IX
In the deep gully six miles from the homestead Randal and Moggers were stumping. It was three years since Randal had helped there at the felling of slim birch and great totara and matai, and afterwards put a firestick through the raffle of broken tree-ferns and earth-laid branches. A few dead writhed spars lay over the gully-sides yet, although the most had been drawn for the fencing; and all along the bottom, stumps raised their venomous heads in derision for the men who wrought with them.
Mogger had worked on a dredge once. He came out of the six-foot hole round a birch-root and made comparisons.
“...which it carried the old complicated ’and machinery, too. But it was a fool ter this bloomin’ kind o’ organ’sm. An’ sech a waste of a hole, when as the brute is out,” he added, spitting into it thoughtfully, “Cud bury lots o’ folk in there. Yer cud so.”
“Two grandads and a granny?” suggested Randal, changing his hands on the axe-shaft, and descending with a slide into the pit again.
“An’ a step-mother,” agreed Mogger, tucking the tatters of his shirt inside his waist-belt; “an’ here’s Buck wi’ the tackle at last. Think she’s loose enough, Randal?”
“There’s one yet—look out!”
Mogger stood back while the chips flew, whirring out of the depths with a nasty hum. Randal was stripped to singlet and gungarees, and the muscles ran on his hairy arms and bared chest. The dust of the earth was thick on him before his time, and the sweat dripped down his lean face. Above the bark of the blade his breaths sounded distinct as the throb from an engine-room, and Mogger guessed in some dim way that the whole strength of the man was meeting something beyond the singing creaking root. But because, to his belief, Randal had no relatives the wide world through, his guesswork could carry him no further.
The last root snapped with an upward curl. Randal climbed out of the open grave and lay flat whilst his breath came back. And the roar of quick blood through his ears and his heart beat out one tune as it had beat it these three days past: “Effie and Kiliat. Effie and Kiliat.”
All the station was saying it. All the station looked at Randal to hear what he was saying. And Randal kept shut lips, and believed and disbelieved and believed again, and could get no speech with her day by day, nor any answer to his letter, posted, as of old, in the dead laurel beside her window.
Down the gully-side, among the white naked bones of dead bush Buck was coming with his team and his cheerful unmusical song. The sky was ruled hard along the gully-top; green-black, with angry red to westward, and Randal came to his feet in weary haste.
“Pass along the hauling-tackle, Mogger. Back ’em. Buck. Back ’em, you idiot. We’re going to get a storm out of this directly———”
Then he swore as a cast chain flicked skin from his ear in its spinning, caught the hook at end of it, and forced it into the horse-shoe driven deep into the stump. Mogger wrestled on the far side shouting directions as Buck brought his team up to the collar.
“Get the bar,” said Randal, sliding the jack under the root in the only possible place, and Mogger took up position with the unerring exactness of one who has done the same thing many, many times.
With soft voice and hands Buck drew from the horses each last inch they could give. But always, not being built on ratchet lines, the purchase broke under struggle of straining hoofs, and the stump jammed on the nose of the jack, flaying Randal’s hands until he cast the thing aside in disgust.
“Where are those extra pulleys?” he demanded. “And I want the reins.”
He squeezed the thick rope through the sheave, took the side-strain with a rooted matai and two pulleys added, and began the game anew with the fall-rope shrieking above the tense hum of quivering chains. The stump rocked and groaned, moved an inch, settled back. Mogger beat out a place for his bar and stood on the end of it for leverage. He escaped a broken neck by methods best known to himself when he came up headlong from the pit to grasp Buck about the middle and bring him to earth. Randal was tired to his heart, and the argument that scattered in sputtering laughter did not interest him. He sat on the jack, staring down the grey length of the gully where a thousand little fires from the root-piles built through the weeks fluttered and winked wicked eyes. They were telling Randal that there were a thousand more fires to make before his work was done, and that, until that day, there would be no peace for him. Because it is required of every man that he bring his duties full tale to the Judgment Seat.
Then Art Scannell came break-neck down the gully, sitting loose and graceful as the black mare took the burning raffle with little sideway jumps and flirtings and great full-extended leaps. Beside the team Art wrenched her back on her haunches, and the very poise of his head hurt Randal in its dear familiarity.
“That the stump you started last week, Randal? Don’t wonder my father’s complaining about the work here if this is the way you go at it! Pick up that jack and shove it in. Buck; get those brutes going and look sharp. Get them going, I tell you.”
Randal’s bleeding hands shut on the grip of the jack. Mogger handled the bar in a new carefulness. Up in the closing night sounded the chain-clank, and the thunder of beating hoofs, and of labouring breaths. And just so easily might three horses have pulled the earth out of position in the sky. Art Scannell came down from his mare.
“What are you doing with all that foolery? Get a straight pull, I tell———”
Randal climbed up to explain the value of the side-pull.
“It gives you a sixty-horse power ’stead of three———”
Art Scannell turned on his heel. Somewhere in his sodden brain he connected Randal with that week of horror in the whare by Lonely Hill, and he did not love him therefor.
“Take that rigging off—now, make ’em pull. Make them pull, will you? Here; let me get at them———”
He came with a stirrup-iron, and Buck blocked him desperately.
“Don’t! Don’t go ter touch ’em. I’ll git every sweatin’ drop o’ pull outer them—I kin do it. Oh, darn ye! if they won’t do it fur me, d’yer think as you kin———”
At the thud of the iron on her flank the off-sider sprang, and staggered back, half-choked by the collar. Randal held Buck by the grip on his shoulder.
“You’ll get fired if you hammer your boss,” he said contemptuously. “Let him kill the brutes if he’s fool enough. They’re his own.”
“They’re mine,” sobbed Buck. “Mine! Aren’t I looked arter them—oh!”
It was the cry of a mother for her first-born. But the writhing shoulder was still under Randal’s hands.
“Don’t look then. Oh, by Jingo, he’ll muck things directly. Mogger———”
Mogger’s great body was stiff with a new sternness. He was weighing the chances of providing for his relatives on any new billet that might fall to him after he had slain Art Scannell with the fist. He glanced at Randal. Randal’s dark face was unmoving, and his eyes told nothing at all.
“He cud do it,” said Mogger in his throat. “He ain’t got a fambly same as I got. He cud do it. But he ain’t got the feelings o’ a dead black-beetle, Randal ain’t.”
Some passion unknown to the other held Art. He beat the team from end to end and back again. The stump rocked forward in obedience to the maddened force, and rocked back, smashing the lever and Buck’s foot, and bringing the black colt over in the chains with the other two atop. Buck twisted free with a cry thin with pain, and mixed himself up in the tackle and the great heaving bodies and the flurry of beating hoofs.
“Come out of that,” shouted Art. “Come out, you———! I’ll get the brutes up.”
“I never,” yelled Buck in defiance. “You leave me ’lone. G-get out.”
His white desperate face showed an instant in the raw flame of a little fire near by. Then a straining head with wild eyes blocked it out. Mogger hesitated. He had all the courage of an ordinary man; but none could tell what might be in the half-seen hell of iron hoofs and chains if Art Scannell struck again. And Art Scannell did strike.
Mogger saw Randal’s long-armed swoop into the ruck. He saw him again in the fire-light with a face unknown, and Buck carried by the nape exactly as a man holds a rabbit. Then he saw Art Scannell go down before a straight cut between the eyebrows, and heard Randal’s voice, sharp-edged.
“Get round and uncouple the off-sider if you can. I’ll see to the others.”
Swiftly, cunningly, Randal cast off hooks, and gentled and raised the struggling bulks. Buck wept over the bleeding flanks, and forgot that his own foot swung helpless. Randal bound it with all the rags at command, and knotted the bandage with flax-strips. But his hands and his heart were numbed by more than the chill of the night, and the crash of his knuckles on the young smooth forehead was loud yet in his ears.
“Best wallop some water over that chap, I reckon,” remarked Mogger, making investigation, and he brought a capful from the first spring.
Art Scannell had been half-killed too often to submit to unconsciousness long. At the third repeat he sat up, came to his feet, and said just one sentence:
“You’ll come up to the house for your cheque to-night, Randal.”
Randal said nothing. He was wondering what comes after the end of all things, and he walked out into the dark of the gully as a man walks in an unknown land.
“Does he mean it?” cried Mogger, as the black mare tore past him with Art Scannell kicking for the stirrups. “Does he mean ter sack yer true, Randal? Why didn’t yer kill him, then, an’ hev done with it?”
Randal’s boots brushed the little flames battening on the dug-out stumps, and each red eye brought back memory of that which he would not see any more. The boys marvelled that Randal took always the end bunk in the whare, no matter how many lay to his choice. For the end bunk headed to the sou’west and the fierce sleet and rain that sifted through unfound cracks and thundered on the wall. And Randal did not tell that through one crack whereof he alone knew showed a faint fleck of light beyond the pine avenue which had its beginning in Effie Scannell’s window. On that light he had fed love and desire and hope for a year past. But he would not do it any more.
At the gully-top he turned and looked back. A cold wind soughed restlessly in the dead branches and the flax, striking the flames to passing gleams, and spinning little whirls of smoke to the empty sky. Pale afterglow held up the dark to show the gathering clouds rushing down wind, and Randal dropped his head, tramping on unspeaking.
Buck, perched on the black colt, talked in undertone to his team, and Mogger whistled fitfully until the fury of pelting rain caught them in the length of the sullen miles. Randal turned up his collar and cared not though the clay underfoot squelched to mud and to running water; but Mogger spoke unkindly to the black thing that rose up at the wool-shed gate.
“Git out of the tide-way, yer lumpin’ galloot! Think we come home ter stan’ here an’ watch you?”
“Boss was jes’ sendin’ out a search party,” said Moody, creaking the gates back on the hinges. “Young Art’s bin lettin’ some queer kind o’ yarns fly———”
“Shouldn’t wonder. Did he come in, then?”
“Did he come in? Did he come like a bloomin’ torn Ida wi’ no frills lef’ ter him? Yes; he’s comed in. An’ what guv him the emu’s egg fresh laid atween his eyes?”
“Randal,” said Buck, stooping his head as the colt passed to its stall. Moody whistled in three-tiered admiration.
“Must ’a’ put some body-weight inter that,” he remarked. Then the flash of the lantern across the faces gave him sudden wisdom. “Don’t git tellin’ the boss too much about it, Randal, fur yer like ter be tellin’ him wi’ the aidge o’ yer fist too, be the look o’ yer.”
Randal’s feet crunched the gravel on the house-track, and Mogger’s voice rang after him:
“Randal—shall I come along an’ lend a hand?”
“No, thanks,” said Randal, speaking for the first time. And the dark dripping shadows of the pines took him.
Though a strong man must draw on himself only; now and again, slicing away the Present with the knife of the Years Between, comes the sharp over-mastering longing to take his trouble with child-hands back to his mother’s knee, and to leave it there. Randal was weaker than he knew when the blink from the office-window called him over the verandah to the door. Art flung it open at his knock, and Randal noticed, with a workman’s merciless pride, that both eyes were swelling under the bandage.
Scannell looked up from his desk, and Randal straightened, meeting the look defiantly. But neither man spoke. From the chair where he lay with both legs flung over the arm, Art Scannell was laughing.
“Go on, pater. Pitch it straight—then I will———”
“Hold your tongue,” said Scannell, unmoving, and his eyes ran, keen-searching, over the length of the man before him.
Randal’s coat and shirt were open in the cold night, and rain had beat the dust of them to mud. His dark hair was rough on the tanned forehead, and sweat and earth grimed each hard line that coarse living and soul-suffering had scored on the flesh. But, apart from the knotted hands drawn with corns, apart from the shoulder-stoop of the yoke-bound, and the restless-eyed sullenness that will take neither pity nor help, was the race-mark that no man may lose. Scannell felt for it, saying:
“You are not a liar, I think, Randal?”
“I never heard a man call me so,” said Randal, suggestively, and his hands shut up.
“Then,” said Scannell slowly, “I ask you—what is my daughter to you?”
All the blood in Randal’s body was leaping in his throat. That was surely why his head felt so very cold, and why his hand was numb and dead on the unseen thing that he was gripping. Somewhere Art Scannell was laughing; and, without doubt, it was the laugh of a demon sent straight from the Pit.
“You’ve taken him on the hop, pater, and he hasn’t got his lies ready. Let me wake him up. See here, you Randal; half the station’s betting it’s Kiliat, and the other half’s betting it’s you. The odds are on Kiliat down on the township, and I’m sweet on him myself. But if Effie’s sweet on you———”
Scannell’s voice broke the laugh, and Randal raised his head to meet it.
“Will you answer me? What is my daughter—my daughter—to you?”
It did not need the emphasis that cut like a whip-lash over the face.
“She is more to me than I will tell you,” said Randal, deliberately. “And I am to her—just as any other station-hand might be.”
“That’s a lie, anyway,” cried Art, beating his pipe-bowl on his knee. “Effie is a little fool, and she’s all school-girly sentiment yet. And you’ve taken advantage of it. Look at him, pater. Ask him if he ever kissed her!”
“Arthur———” Then Scannell’s eye caught Randal’s, and he stood up; and the silence between the two men was tense and dangerous as a drawn wire-rope.
“Well?” said Scannell at last.
Randal would not lie for himself.
“I have kissed her—against her will.”
“By Jove, but we’ll have to have her in to settle that,” cried Art, springing up.
Randal’s back was to the shut door, and his drawn face flamed.
“Haven’t you insulted your sister enough already, you young brute?” he said.
Scannell looked on the two, and the man in him felt sudden strong pity for the other man.
“Go back to your seat, Arthur,” he said. “You at least do not know what is due to your sister. Randal, you leave Mains to-night, and the district to-morrow. I think I can expect so much of you. You were a gentleman once.”
“Once,” said Randal, and laughed. “That’s a thing a man can’t get back, you know.”
“It depends on the man. You can prove the contrary now.”
Randal knew his limitations. He had beaten them out through too many nights and days.
“I can’t,” he said.
”That means———?”
“It means that I will not leave the district,” said Randal.
Scannell sat down and wrote a cheque with hands that shook. He ripped out the leaf, and tossed it across the table, “If I see you on Mains again I’ll set the dogs on you,” he said. “You may go.”
Art pushed back the bandage as Randal passed to the outer door.
“Think I’ve got good interest for this, Randal,” he cried. “Randal—you’ve forgotten your cheque.”
But only a spatter of wet wind and torn leaves licked over the verandah in answer.
“And that’s done with,” said Art Scannell then. “Ship Effie down to town for a month or two, pater, and give her plenty of rope, and I’ll guarantee Randal will find his hash settled for keeps.”
“You will hold your tongue about this matter, Arthur,” said Scannell, looking straightly at his son.
Art paused with his hand on the door-knob.
“My dear pater,” he said cheerfully, “don’t you fret. I know a thing or two.”