Katharine Susannah Prichard

“ His skin was the gingery colour of his hair, and though he grinned feebly, looking everywhere but at Davey, there was not a man who did not see he was trembling. Thad McNab was a coward, everybody knew that. There was nothing in the world he feared more than the vengeance which might wreak itself on his miserable body. As Young Davey stamped out of the bar there was a rustle of movement, smothered oaths of surprise and amusement, a swinging of eyes after him with something of admiration and applause in them; but McNab was recovering himself. ”

“ Flames went up from the new weatherboard corner of the house.
"It's like watching someone you love die slowly," she cried.
A breath of wind brought a shower of blackened and burning leaves. By a flank movement the fire was sweeping towards them. The wind springing up gave it zest; it sprang in long brilliant leaps over the quivering tops of the trees. Davey and the Schoolmaster dropped from their horses. Mrs. Cameron, Deirdre and Jenny crouched in the water till the fury of the flames had passed over their heads. Davey had his hands full to keep the cows from breaking away, mad with terror. ”

“ Conal and Davey spent few words on each other. They went their separate ways by mutual consent, avoiding the occasions that mean association or talking.
On the road during the first days, when the cattle were fresh, they had swung their stock-whips, keeping the mob going, like one man. There had been headlong gallops after breakaways, the thrashing-in of stragglers, the crowding of beasts up steep, slippery hillsides with curses and yelping dogs, the watchfulness that driving a mob of wild cattle short-handed meant; nerves and muscles were stretched to the job in hand. ”

“ In her sleep Mary heard the rumble and groan of the wagon as it ground its way along the rough tracks and crashed over the undergrowth. She awakened to hear the yelping of dogs, the lowing of cattle, sounds of men's voices in the clearing. For a moment she believed that her mind was still hovering in the troubled state of dreams. Then Donald's voice calling her struck through the drowsy uncertainty. Trembling, she sprang out of bed and threw Davey's red shawl about her shoulders. She lighted the dip in a bowl of melted fat and put it on to the table. ”

“ Deirdre opened the gate and shut it when she and White Socks had passed through. She hung the chestnut's bridle over a post by the barn, and lifted his saddle.
Speckled fowls and handsome buff and yellow pullets stalked about the yard, pecking industriously even under the legs of the Ross's and Morrison's horses, which, with harness looped back on them, their noses deep in fodder bags, stood beside the carts. In the brilliant sunshine, on a wood-stack, struck against the clear blue sky, a black rooster crowed at intervals.
Mrs. Cameron's sitting-room was in semi-darkness. ”

“ She slipped from the chestnut's back in a sunny clearing and gathered a handful of freckled and golden-eyed, white honey-flowers, twisted some tendrils of creepers and blades of ferns among them, and tied them together with a long piece of grass.
When she came in sight of the weatherboard house crouching against the purple wall of the hills, Deirdre realised again what Donald Cameron had done. The cleared paddocks spread round it on every side. An orchard climbing the slope to the left showed in dark leafage against the grey and green of the forest. Cattle dappled the furthest hillside. ”

“ Davey watched them dancing, this tall slender girl with her hair knotted up on the nape of her neck and the long-limbed, bearded man who had come to the sales for Sam Maitland. He could dance. He and Deirdre were dancing as the people in Wirreeford had never seen folk dancing, and Conal's dark, handsome face was turned down to the girl's. It was not the dance he was thinking of, but her. There was a gleam in his eyes as they covered her; every movement was tender of her. ”

“ He gazed as if it were strange and wonderful to see a woman washing dishes, sweeping, and cooking at her own hearth. He saw her leg-rope and bail the cow, lead the cow and calf to the fenced paddock on the top of the hill after the milking, and carry buckets of water from the creek to the house, the sunlight touching her bare head and flashing from the water in her pails. ”

“ Deirdre's eyes sparkled with anger.
"Oh," she gasped, breathlessly, "how dare you, Davey? How dare you?"
Davey, morose anger in his eyes, stared at her.
"You're angry because he let me go out last night," she said. "Don't you know he's almost helpless, that he can just see dimly in the broad daylight. All the world's going dark to him, and it's breaking his heart—eating the strength and the soul and the courage out of him, to stand by and let others do things for him." ”

“ Deirdre watched Davey going out of Narrow Valley in the dim starlight of the early spring morning, the mob, hustled by Teddy and the dogs, a stream of red and brown and dappled hides before him. The cows lifted their heads, bellowing protestingly; their breath steamed before them in the chill air. The horses and dogs, heeling and wheeling them, and the trampling hoofs of the herd, beat a wraith-like mist from the cold, and still sleeping earth. ”

“ A weight was off the Schoolmaster's mind when Steve said that Deirdre and the black were out of sight. He knew that by taking the cattle along the narrow tracks on the ledges of the hills, she would save them. Narrow Valley scrubs would screen them from curious eyes. If M'Laughlin came, the road would tell no tales. Steve's cows had made it look as if a mob had passed in the opposite direction beyond the shanty, and he and the Schoolmaster had a story to fit the tracks. They did not think that anybody but themselves knew the way under the trees on the Valley hillsides. ”

“ Cameron hesitated.
Deirdre sprang out of the chair, her eyes blazing.
"Davey! Davey! It's all Davey with you!" she cried. "You sacrificed father to him. You sent him to that trial. I know now. And Davey—why couldn't he have gone to gaol instead? He's young and strong and it wouldn't have mattered so much to him. He's got all his life before him. But father—hadn't he done enough for you? Hasn't he given his eyes for you? Hasn't he worshipped you all these years? ”

“ A shadow had fallen on her face.
"None too terrible for the truth," he said.
"They tell me—it was a man in Melbourne told me—it is the life makes them desperate," she cried. "Men who have been sent out for quite little things, become—"
"Dead to shame," he said, "men who would kill a woman who has served them as you have served us, for fear when they'd gone she would betray them—send her men and the black bloodhounds after them, condemn them to hell and torture again. Oh, women have done it, and men like me have made other women pay."
A gleam of anger lighted Mary Cameron's eyes. ”

“ Conal's dog, Sally, alert at the first rush of the cattle's movement, leapt after them. Her long, yellow shape flashed like a streak of lightning in the wan light over the plains. She raced level with the leader's sleek shoulder and laid her teeth in his hide, wheeled him, snapping at his nose and dragging him by it, until he turned in toward the mob again. Davey lashed the cows after the leader. Sally flew round them, a yellow fury, yelping and snapping. ”

“ Donald's harness, saddle, stirrup-leathers and stock-whip hung on pegs near the back door. Among the bales and boxes, under a dingy muffling cloth, stood a spinning wheel, and, tied together with lengths of dusty yarn, the parts of a weaver's hand loom which Mary had brought from the old country. On Sundays, when a bright fire sparkled on the hearth, the mats of frayed hessian were spread on the floor, and she had put a jar filled with wild flowers on the table, her eyes brimmed with joy and tenderness as she gazed about her. ”

“ Beating became automatic, an unflagging lashing and thrashing, and watch had to be kept that the enemy was not attacking in another part of the clearing. The blackened earth smoked under a dead flame one moment, the next a spark kindled and wispish fire was running through the grass again. Far down the hillside, through the smoke mists, to Deirdre on the top, Mrs. Cameron and Jenny looked wraith-like in their white cotton dresses. ”

“ Deirdre, riding down from the hills at dawn, had seen the schooner on the dim shining screen of sea and sky. There was no wind, and like a great white bird she hovered outside the bar, waiting for the wind and tide to carry her into the quiet waters of the inlet.
It was not until midday that a breeze sprang up, sending white, curled breakers high over the bar, and the Albatross on the crest of them came sailing into the harbour. She rode, furling her sails, to the log-wood wharf on its further side. ”

“ The day seemed endless. At last night came. She closed and barred the door of the hut at sunset, glancing towards the shelf where Donald had put his gun. The firelight flickered and gleamed on its polished barrel.
Kneeling by the hearth she tried to pray. But her thoughts were flying in an incoherent flight like scattered birds. Davey slept peacefully on the bed among the grey 'possum furs she had wrapped round him. She watched him sleeping for awhile, and then undressing noiselessly, lay down beside him.
She did not sleep, but lay listening to every sound. ”

“ It's a strange, dour way a man has of loving sometimes, dear—hard to bear. It's love all the same—not love the way women love—that tries to make life easy for the dear one. It's all tenderness and sacrifice a woman's love, Deirdre...."
"Sometimes a man loves that way too," Deirdre said.
She had swung into her saddle and was looking away before her, over the mist-wreathed hills. For a moment her eyes lay on Mrs. Cameron's face with its grey-green eyes, delicate contour, exquisite line of lips, loving and lovable. ”

“ Deirdre's sobs were her only answer.
"God doesn't love you, and I don't, and Mrs. Cameron and Davey don't love you either. Nobody loves bad, wicked, naughty little girls," Jess said solemnly.
She put her head on the pillow and was sleeping, sweetly, peacefully, in a few minutes.
Deirdre crept to the open window. She gazed out of it at the dark heave of the forest that cut her off from the being she loved and the hut in the clearing behind the school. The blue night sky that spread over her was spread over the hut in the clearing and the school too, she knew. ”

“ She was out getting the flour and bacon she wanted from it by the light of a lantern, when, with a rattling of horns and a thunder of hoofs, the cattle beat past her along the track behind the sheds. The lantern light gave a vision of fierce, bloodshot eyes of terror in a sea of tossing backs, of moving flanks, and branching horns. She heard her husband's voice, hoarse and yelling, the voice of the strange youth, and the cracking of whips and yelping of dogs for nearly an hour afterwards as they tried to get the beasts into the fenced paddock on the hill-top. ”

“ Every beat of the chestnut's hoofs on the soft roadside drove what he had said into her brain. She knew no more now than she did a week ago what was going to happen to Davey and the Schoolmaster, or how the case was going. Perhaps less, since Donald Cameron's death. But her mind was made up as to what McNab's answer would be. She had never really had any doubt as to what it must be, and had asked for time as one asks to have the window open before settling down to passing the day in a dark and airless room. ”

“ She had toiled all the summer out of doors with her husband to make their home, timber-cutting with him, grubbing stumps from the land, laying twigs and leaves in the stumps and lighting them so that the slow fires eating the wood left only charred shells to clear away. She had driven Lassie, the grey, backwards and forwards, drawing logs and tree trunks from the slope to the stack behind the house, and when the frames of the wagon shed, cow sheds and stable were up, had laced the brushwood to them. ”

“ Cameron was saying for awhile. Her tired, bright eyes wandered restlessly up and down the room. The pain in her head prevented her thinking.
"Deirdre darling," Mrs. Cameron said, her voice trembling, "there's not a man or woman in the country would not say you were justified. And no woman is better able to understand than I am. I'm not afraid for you ... and there's no one I'd rather have for Davey's wife than you. You were willing to sacrifice yourself. But when treachery had been proved against you, there was that within you would not let evil come near you." ”

“ Donald had said no fires were to be lit in the stumps because the smoke might attract wayfarers on the road, or wandering natives to the clearing. She sang to the child, fitfully, softly. Then, remembering the spinning wheel which stood in its muffling cloths against the wall in the hut, she brought it into the sunshine and laid Davey down on a shawl at her feet.
When she had a slender thread of yarn going and the spinning wheel began its familiar, communicative little click-clatter, her mind was set to old themes. She forgot place and time as her fingers pursued their familiar track. ”

“ All day a premonition of trouble haunted her. She urged the chestnut on. When they splashed through a creek at midday, she let him stand for a few minutes in the middle of it, dip his patchy white nose into the clear, cold water, and sough it up noisily. A little further on, near a gully in which the mists were unfathomable, the trees, grey as sea lichen in its depths, she sat down by the roadside and ate her sandwich of bread and cheese and had a drink from her bottle of milk.
Davey and she had often made excursions to Long Gully when they were children to hear the bell-birds. ”

“ No idea of the terms McNab was likely to have made with her occurred to him.
"If only there'd been someone here to help us," she cried passionately. "If only father, or Davey, or even Conal, had been here! But to have had to meet it alone."
Her voice broke. She began to cry, finding relief in utter abandonment. Steve put his arms round her, trying to comfort her.
"Deirdre! Deirdre!" he muttered distressfully. "Don't cry! It's your father's own girl you are. So brave! Meetin' the devil himself with your clear eyes, 'n me no more than a shiverin' old corpse where he is!"
Deirdre lifted her eyes. ”

“ There was a spark in her eyes. "I've got to say what I'm thinking, now, Donald Cameron. I've held my tongue long enough. You've had your way, and I've hardly dared to breathe when you spoke, for years. Your always laying your will on people crushes the spirit in them! The dominating way you have wants to lay down everything before it. But I'm glad you've not crushed Davey—though it's breaking my heart to think of his going away from us. I'd rather have it than see him grow into the creeping, crawling thing Nat Johnson is. Davey's got in him what brought you and me here. ”

“ When she saw Steve in the doorway, she ran to him and threw her arms around him.
"Oh, it's good to be here again, Uncle Stevie," she-cried.
He chuckled delightedly.
"There's a woman you are, Deirdre. A woman y've grown!"
"What else would I grow?" she asked gaily.
"It's good to be anywhere you are, Deirdre!" Conal said, coming up and standing beside them, all his love in his eyes.
She laughed, glancing up at him, and Steve laughed to see the way the wind blew. Davey by the open door, watched them; but Deirdre did not see him. ”

“ Cameron were always those of a woman occupied with her home, her husband and son. Deirdre wondered how her father came to be in Mrs. Cameron's debt, as he had said he was, how it was he owed her anything at all. She seemed to owe him so much.
The cows had gathered up to the fence near the bails for the milking. They were lowing quietly, the sunshine making a luminous mist behind them; the birds were laughing and hooting among the trees.
Deirdre rose to go and do the milking, but Steve burst open the door from the tap-room.
A moment before there had been a clatter of hoofs on the shingle. ”