An Outback Marriage, Banjo Paterson [top ten books of all time .TXT] 📗

of loving protestations; and now it had come to this⁠—she had been asked as if it were merely a matter of avoiding scandal. It was too great a shock. She lay silently crying, while Hugh, his castles in the air having crumbled around him, was trying in a dazed way to frame a letter to Mr. Grant.

His thoughts were anything but pleasant. What a fool he had been, talking to her like that! Making it look as if he had only proposed to her because he ought to protect her good name! Why hadn’t he spoken to her before⁠—in the tree, on the ride home, any other time? Why hadn’t he spoken differently? To him the refusal seemed the end of all things. He thought of asking Mr. Grant to give him the management of the most outback place he had, so that he could go away and bury himself. He even thought of resigning his position altogether and going to the goldfields. Red Mick and his delinquencies seemed but small matters now; and, after what had passed, he must, of course, see that Miss Grant was not dragged into the business. So he sat down and began to write.

The letter took a good deal of thinking over. It had got about the station that Red Mick had at last been caught in flagrante delicto; the house-cook had told the cook at the men’s hut, and he had told the mailman, who stopped on the road to tell the teamsters ploughing along with their huge wagons to Kiley’s Crossing; they told the publican at Kiley’s, and he told everybody he saw. The children made a sort of play out of it, the eldest boy personating Red Mick, while two of the younger ones hid in a fallen tree, and were routed out by Thomas Carlyle. The station-hands were all excitement; the prospect of a big law-case was a real godsend to them. To drop the matter would be equivalent to a confession of defeat, but, after what had passed, Hugh had no option. So he told Mr. Grant that, on thinking it over, he did not consider it advisable to go on with the case against Red Mick; Miss Grant would have to go into the box to give evidence, which would be very unpleasant for her.

Poor Hugh! He was too honourable to give any false reason, and too shy to tell the whole truth. If he had said that there was no hope of a conviction, it would have been all right. But consideration for the feelings of anyone, even his own daughter, was to Billy the Bully quite incomprehensible, and he wrote back, on a letter-card, “Go on with the prosecution.”

This put Hugh in a frightful dilemma. He had no trouble whatever in making up his mind to disobey the order, as he was bound to stand by his promise to Miss Grant. But what answer should he send to her father? He was in a reckless mood, but he knew well enough that Grant would order him off the place, neck and crop, if he dared to disobey; and he owed it to his mother and sister to avoid such a thing. The more he looked at the position of affairs, the less he liked it. He wrote a dozen letters, and tore them up again.

He thought of making Red Mick a sporting offer of, say, a couple of hundred pounds, to disappear altogether⁠—Mick could have arranged that easily enough. Then he thought of going down to see Mr. Grant to explain; but the more he thought of that the less he liked it. He worried and worried over it, and when he went to bed lay awake thinking about it. He fell into dozes, and dreamt that Mr. Grant had turned him off the place, and had made Red Mick manager, and that Miss Grant was going to marry Red Mick; then he woke with a start, and heard through the darkness the rapid hoof-beats of a horse ridden at speed up the road from Kiley’s, and the barking of dogs that announced the arrival of a stranger.

He went out and found in the yard one of the telegraph operators from Kiley’s, on a smoking horse. “Very important telegram, Mr. Gordon,” he said. “I borrowed the horse, and brought it over as fast as I could.”

Hugh opened the envelope hurriedly. The operator struck a match and held it up while he read. The message was from the secretary of Grant’s club, and ran as follows:

“William Grant died suddenly this morning. Pinnock taking charge of affairs; am making arrangements funeral. Better come down at once.”

Her father dead! The question of Red Mick and his prosecution became at once a matter of no moment. How absurd his worry and vexation now seemed. On the other hand, what new complications might arise? All these years the Gordons had lived on the assumption that Mr. Grant would provide for them, without having any promise or agreement from him; and, owing to the old man’s violent temper, they had been in daily risk of being ordered off the place. They had got used to this as people get used to living on the side of a volcano. But now⁠—?

Her father dead! He could not bear to see her grief, and the thought of it made him determined to get away as quickly as possible. Quietly he awoke his mother, and told her what had happened, and by dawn was well on his way to Tarrong to catch the train to Sydney.

XVI The Road to No Man’s Land

Now we must follow for a time the adventures of Charlie Gordon and the new chum, whom we left just starting out for “far back,” Charlie to take over a cattle-station for Old Man Grant, and Carew to search for Patrick Henry Considine. After a short sea-journey they took train to a dusty back-blocks township, where Gordon picked up one of the many outfits