The British Mysteries Edition: 14 Novels & 70+ Short Stories. Sapper
night up by one of the smelting furnaces he'd heard someone screaming with fear. He'd crept a bit nearer, and a man with staring blue eyes had passed him in the dusk. The furnace was still alight when the black told his yarn—hadn't been let out for seven months—and there ain't much trace left after that time of anything or anybody that might have fallen in. Well—here's fortune, pard."
He lifted his glass and nodded to Jim.
"All I say to you is: Keep your gun handy as you drive over Lone Gully to- morrow. There's fifteen miles there where lots of things might happen."
With another nod and a quick handshake he turned and strolled out of the bar, and after a short while we followed him. We meant getting off early the next day, and we still had our final packing to do. And it was as we were walking down the street towards our shanty that I happened to glance up at a house we were passing. Whether it was purely accidental, or whether indeed some strange outside force was at work, I don't know. But in that momentary glance I saw quite distinctly a pair of light-blue eyes staring at us with a look of such malevolent hatred that I paused involuntarily. Then they disappeared, and I walked on at Jim's side. But I couldn't help wishing, as I blew out my candle that night, that civilisation in the shape of a railway train had extended to Bull Mine Creek. The prospect of driving over Lone Gully failed to appeal to me.
We were away by four next morning. One-eyed Mike—not at his best at that hour—was there to see us off, divided between real, genuine regret that we were going, and joy that he was now the sole and undisputed owner of our claim. Poor devil! he little knew that it was the last time he was going to see that pitiless sun rise: that before the end of the day he was to be shot without mercy by that cold-blooded murderer Cornish. Rough, honest sportsman—he came after Jim and me to save our lives, and in doing so he lost his own. But perhaps he knows that it wasn't altogether in vain: perhaps he knows that his murderer followed him not long after.
I'm getting on too fast. But sometimes even now I dream of that half-hour when death stared us in the face at the old mine-shaft in Lone Gully, and I wake—dripping with sweat. What Jim must have gone through is beyond my comprehension: in fact, he once confessed to me that if he ever had a nightmare it was always the same. He dreams that his hand—the one he had hurt the preceding night—failed him as he swung for over a minute, with certain death as the result if he let go.
But, as I said, I'm getting on too fast. Except for Mike there wasn't a soul stirring when, without much regret, we said farewell to Bull Mine Creek. Our idea was to push on till about ten o'clock, and then to call a halt until four that afternoon. We reckoned on reaching the beginning of the deserted stretch of country known as Lone Gully in the morning, and getting across it in the evening. And then the next day would see us on the railway. So we calculated, as we drove steadily along the flat, dusty road.
The sun was not too powerful, and Jim's jaw had sufficiently recovered to allow him to sing. The air was like wine, and after a while, under the influence of the, at any rate, powerful concert from the seat beside me, I forgot Pete Cornish. Certainly there had been no sign, of him or his pal that morning, and every mile between us and Bull Mine Creek seemed to render the likelihood of trouble less probable. If only I'd been able to get rid of the memory of those eyes as I'd seen them the previous evening, with their look of unwinking, implacable hatred...
* * * * *
Half-past nine found us at the place where we had decided to stop for the midday halt, and it was none too soon. Already the sun was uncomfortably hot, and the buggy we were driving would not have won a prize for springing.
"Grub first," said Jim, "and then I think a little sleep, Dick. And perhaps, in view of everything, it would be as well if we took it in turns to watch."
We scanned the country in the direction from which we had come, but there was no sign of movement. The shimmering heat haze blurred and contorted the ground, but of life there seemed no sign.
"I can't help feeling sorry we've got no rifle," remarked Jim thoughtfully, a little later. "A revolver is all very well in its way, but it ain't much use against a man with a gun. However, I don't believe myself that we're going to have any trouble at all. They've made a bogy man of Mister Pete Cornish, and all the fellow is is just a low-down swine and bully."
And sure enough, when we harnessed up again at four o'clock, there had been no sign of him. Once about noon, while Jim was asleep, I thought I saw a little cloud of dust moving two or three miles away, but I had no field- glasses, and in the glare and haze it was quite possibly my imagination. And it very soon disappeared again.
The track began to rise almost at once towards Lone Gully, and assuredly the place deserved its name. On each side of the road there ran a line of low, broken hills covered with huge boulders and scrub, while here and there disused sheds and the remains of old furnaces showed the positions of worked-out mines. For gold had once been found in Lone Gully, but only in deep placer deposits, requiring shaft-sinking. And the venture had not been a success financially; the seams had proved poor and given out, and nearly live years previously the last of the mines had closed down.
But it wasn't of derelict mining ventures that either Jim were thinking, as the mare picked her leisurely way up the hill. And after a while he looked at me a trifle thoughtfully.
"I can't say I like it, Dick," he said. "If one deliberately set out to find a place suited for trouble, you couldn't beat this. We're simply two slow-travelling bull's-eyes for any man with a gun lying up hidden in that stuff."
He waved the whip at the monotonous expanse of rock and bush which stretched as far as the eye could see on each side of us, and involuntarily I thought of that little cloud of dust. What if my eyes had not deceived me? What if that cloud had been a man, or perhaps two, on horseback, making a detour to get in front of us? The idea was not a pleasant one. No man bent on lawful business would have travelled by any other track save the one we had come by. And no man bent on lawful business would have been likely to travel at all during the heat of the day.
I peered ahead, trying to see some sign of movement, but it was hopeless. An army could have hidden concealed in that country, and I soon gave it up. If my vague forebodings were correct, if that cloud of dust had indeed been a man—well, that man was in front of us by now. Somewhere in the fifteen miles we still had to go he could hide himself, so that it would be absolutely impossible to see him until—For the first time I told Jim about what I thought I had seen, and his face grew graver.
"I don't like it, Dick," he repeated, "not one little bit. And I'll never forgive myself, old man, if anything happens. We should have gone yesterday, and it was only my wretched bravado that prevented it. Though, to tell you the truth, I'd really forgotten that this place was quite so unpleasant as it is."
We had reached the top of the rise as he spoke, and he whipped up the mare. For the next ten miles the road was level, running almost straight between the two lines of low hills on each side. We could see it stretching away like a long white ribbon into the distance, flanked on each side by that interminable grey-brown scrub. At the rate we were going, it would take us an hour and a half to get through to the descent the other side and safety. Jim's revolver lay on the seat beside him, while I held mine in my hand, though in our hearts we knew it was a perfectly useless precaution. A revolver is no good at a hundred yards, and we formed a sitting shot at two hundred to a man with a rifle.
We had been driving perhaps for a quarter of an hour when suddenly Jim stiffened in his seat, and then looked round over his shoulder.
"There's a horse galloping somewhere, Dick," he muttered.
The next instant we saw it. Away back along the dusty road we had just covered, a man was following us at full gallop.
"Seems a foolish way of doing the trick," said Jim, watching the approaching rider through narrowed eyes. "I think we'll dismount for a while, and await this gentleman on foot."
The mare stood placidly nibbling at some short rank grass by the road, while the horseman, still at the same furious rate, came nearer. And suddenly Jim, who had been holding his revolver in his hand, slipped it into his pocket with a surprised exclamation.
"The devil!" he cried. "It's