BRITISH TALES OF THE BUSH: 5 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). E. W. Hornung
were keen on taking him yourself, were you?"
"As keen as you are, Mr. Kilbride!" owned the younger man, raising bold eyes, and looking his superior fairly and squarely in the face.
Kilbride returned the stare, and what he saw unsettled him. The other was wiry, trim, eminently alert; he had the masterful mouth and the dare-devil eye, and his horse seemed a part of himself. A more promising comrade at hot work was not to be desired: and the work would be hot if Stingaree had half a chance. After all, it was better for two to succeed than for one to fail. "Half the money and a whole skin!" said Kilbride to himself, and rapped out his decision with an oath.
The trooper's eyes lit with reckless mirth, and a soft cheer came from under his breath.
"By the bye, what's your name," said Kilbride, "before we start?"
"Bowen—Jack Bowen."
"Then I know all about you! Why on earth didn't you tell me before? It was you who took that black fellow who murdered the shepherd on Woolshed Creek, wasn't it?"
The admission was made with due modesty.
"Why, you're the very man for me!" Kilbride cried. "You show the way, Jack, and I'll make the going."
And off they went together at a canter, the slanting sun striking fire from their buttons and accoutrements, and lighting their sunburnt faces as it lit the red stems and the white that raced past them on either side. For a little they followed the path which Kilbride had taken on his way thither; then the trooper plunged into the thick bush on the left, and the game became follow-my-leader, in and out, out and in, through a maze of red stems and of white, where the pungent eucalyptus scent hung heavy as the sage-green, perpendicular leaves themselves: and so onward until the Sub-Inspector called a halt.
"How far is it now, Bowen?"
"Two or three miles, sir."
"Good! It'll be light for another hour and a half. We'd better give the mokes a breather while we can. And there'd be no harm in two draws."
"I was just thinking the same thing, sir."
So their reins dangled while they cut up a pipeful of apparent shoe-leather apiece: and presently the dull blue smoke was curling and circling against the dull green foliage, producing subtle half-tint harmonies and momentary arabesques as the horses ambled neck and neck.
"Native of this Colony?" puffed Kilbride.
"Well, no—old country originally—but I've been out some years."
"That's all right so long as you're not a New South Welshman," said Kilbride, with a chuckle. "I'll be shot if I wouldn't almost have turned you back if you had been!"
"Victoria is to have all the credit, is she, sir?"
"Anyhow they sha'n't have any on the other side, or I'll know the reason!" the Victorian swore. "I—I—by Jove, I'd as lief lose my man again as let them have a hand in taking him!"
"But why?"
"Why? Do you live so near the border, and can you ask? Did you never hear a Sydney-side drover blowing about his blooming Colony? Haven't you heard of Sydney Harbor till you're sick? And then their papers!" cried Kilbride, with columns in his tone. "But I'll have the last laugh yet! I swore I would, and I will! I swore I'd take Stingaree——"
"So I heard."
"Yes, they put it in their infernal papers! But it was true—take him I will!"
"Or die in the attempt, eh?"
"Or die and be damned to me!"
All the bitterness of previous failure, indeed of notorious and much-criticized defeat, was in the Sub-Inspector's tone; that of his subordinate, though light as air, had a touch of insolence which an outsider could not have failed—but Kilbride was too excited—to detect. The outsider might possibly have foreseen a rivalry which no longer entered Kilbride's hot head.
Meanwhile the country was changing even with their now leisurely advance. The timbered flats in the region of the river had merged into a gully which was rapidly developing into a gorge, with new luxuriant growths which added greatly to the density of the forest, suggesting its very heart. The almost neutral eucalyptian tint was splashed with the gay hues of many parrots, as though the gum-trees had burst into flower. The noise of running water stole gradually through the murmur of leaves. And suddenly an object in the grass struck the sight like a lantern flashed at dead of night: it proved to be an empty sardine tin pricked by a stray lance from the slanting sun.
"We must be near," whispered Kilbride.
"We are there! You hear the creek? He has a gunyah there—that's all. Shall we rush it on horseback or creep up on foot?"
"You know the lie of the land, Bowen; which do you recommend?"
"Rushing it."
"Then here goes."
In a few seconds they had leaped their horses into a tiny clearing on the banks of a creek as relatively minute. And the gunyah—a mere funnel of boughs and leaves, in which a man could lie at full length, but only sit upright at the funnel's mouth—seemed as empty as the space on every hand. The only other sign of Stingaree was a hank of rope flung carelessly across the gunyah roof.
"He may be watching us from among the trees," muttered Kilbride, looking sharply about him. Bowen screwed up his eyes and followed suit.
"I hardly think it, Mr. Kilbride."
"But it's possible, and here we sit for him to pot us! Let's dismount, whether or no."
They slid to the ground. The trooper found himself at the mouth of the gunyah.
"What if he were in there after all!" said he.
"He isn't," said Kilbride, stepping in front and stooping quickly. "But you might creep in, Jack, and see if he's left any sign of life behind him."
The men were standing between the horses, their revolvers cocked. Bowen's answer was to hand his weapon over to Kilbride and to creep into the gunyah on his hands and knees.
"Here's something or other," his voice cried thickly from within. "It's half buried. Wait a bit."
"As sharp as you can!"
"All right; but it's a box, and jolly heavy!"
Kilbride peered nervously to right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though they had violated a grave.
"Kick it open!" exclaimed Kilbride, excitedly.
But there was no need for that; the box was not even locked; and the lifted lid revealed an inner one of glass, protecting a brass cylinder with steel bristles in uneven growth, and a long line of lilliputian hammers.
"A musical-box!" said the staggered Sub-Inspector.
"That's it, sir. I remember hearing that he'd collared one on one of the stations he stuck up last time he was down here. It must have lain in the ground ever since. And it only shows how hard you must have pressed him, Mr. Kilbride!"
"Yes! I headed him back across the Murray—I soon had him out o' this!" rejoined the other in grim bravado. "Anything else in the gunyah?"
"All he took that trip, I fancy, if we dig a bit. You never gave him time to roll his swag!"
"I must have a look," said Kilbride, his excitement fed by his reviving vanity.
The other questioned whether it were worth while. This settled the Sub-Inspector.
"There may be something to show where he's gone," that casuist suggested, "for I don't believe he's anywhere here."
"Shall I hold the shooters, sir?"
"Thanks; and keep your eyes open, just in case. But it's my opinion that the bird's flown somewhere else, and it's for us to find out where."
Kilbride