“Coke did by turning King’s evidence. But Trevenna’s wife rode near a hundred miles on end to give Dayrell the office. He ran Trevenna down in Melbourne, just as he had taken his passage to England under a false name. He was found guilty, and hanged.”
“Then Trevenna’s wife worked the case up against her own husband? How was that?”
“Weel, aweel, I’ll no deny the case was what may be tairmed compleecated—sair mixed up. Lance Trevanion had been her sweetheart, and when she jaloused, owing to Dayrell’s wiles, that he had thrown her over, she just gave the weight o’ her evidence against him, on his trial for having a stolen horse in his possession, knowing it to be stolen. Then in rage and desperation, for she repented sair, when she saw what her treachery had brought on him, she married Trevenna, who used her like a dog, they say, and was aye jealous of Lance Trevanion. And her cousin Tessie Lawless, it was her that got him frae the hulk.”
“Oh! another woman!” murmured Blount; “as you say, Sergeant, it is a trifle mixed up. Who was she in love with?”
“Just Lance, and nae ither. She was true as steel, and never ceased working for him night and day till she got a warder in the hulk weel bribit, and persuadit twa gentlemen that lived in Fishermen’s Bend by wild-fowling to tak’ him awa’ in their dinghy and find a guide and twa horses that brought him to Omeo. A wild, uncanny spot it was then, I warrant ye. Then the young lady, his cousin that came frae England to marry him—”
“What do I hear, Sergeant? Another woman in love with the ill-fated hero; that makes three—in love with the same man at the same time. It sounds incredible. And were they really fond of him?”
“Woman’s a mysterious crea-a-tion, I’ve aye held, since she first walkit in the gairden o’ Eden,” quoth the Sergeant impressively. “Either of the Lawless girls would have died for him—and gloried in it. Kate, that was his ruin, wild and undeesciplined as she was, but for the poison that Dayrell insteeled into her, wad ha’ laid her head on the block to save his. Puir Tessie did die for him, as ye may ca’ it, for she went into Melbourne Hospital when the fever was at its fiercest, and cried that they should give her the warst cases. The puir sick diggers and sailors called her ‘The Angel of the Fever Ward,’ and there she wrought, and wrought, day after day, and night after night, until she catchit it hersel’, and so the end came. The doctors and the ither attendants said she hadna the strength to strive against it.”
“A jewel of a girl!” quoth the Englishman; “why didn’t he marry her?”
“She wouldn’t marry him,” said the Sergeant. “She kenned he was promised to his cousin, a great leddy frae the auld country, who came all the way to Australia to find him, and she said he must keep his troth.”
“Women seem to differ in Australia much as they do elsewhere,” mused the stranger.
“And what for no?” queried the old trooper; “there’s bad and good all over the world—men as weel’s women—and the more you see of this country, the more you’ll find it oot. If they’re born unlike from the start, they’re as different from one another as your cob (as ye ca’ him) frae ‘Little-River-Jack’s’ Keewah that can climb like a goat, or from Middleton’s auld ‘Slavey’ that can gallop twenty miles before breakfast, or draw a buggy sixty miles a day at a pinch. But if we get talking horse, we’ll no quit till cockcraw.”
CHAPTER III
“You will tell us about Dayrell, Sergeant?” said Mr. Blount. “Is it a tale of mystery and fear?”
“It was God’s judgment upon the shedding of innocent blood,” said the Sergeant solemnly; “they’re in their graves, the haill company, the betrayer and the betrayed. The nicht’s turned dark and eerie. To say truth, I wad as lieve lay the facts before ye, in the licht o’ day. It’s a dark walk by the river oaks, and a man may weel fancy he hears whisperings, and voices of the deid in the midnight blast. I’m at your sairvice ony day before ye leave Bunjil, but I’ll be makin’ tracks the noo, wi’ your permeession, sir, and my thanks to ye. Gude nicht!”
The veteran had made up his mind, and wrapped in a horseman’s cloak such as the paternal Government of Victoria still serves out to the Mounted Police Force, he marched forth into the night. The landlord parted from him on the verandah, while Blount walked up and down for an hour, watching a storm-cloud whelming in gathering gloom the dimly outlined range, until the rain fell with tropical volume necessitating a retreat to the parlour, where the logs still sent out a grateful warmth. “The old man must have missed that downpour,” he said. “He was wise to depart in good time.”
Another meeting was arranged. “Little-River-Jack” sent word by a “sure hand,” as was the wording of a missive in pre-postal days, that he would arrive in Bunjil on the next ensuing Saturday, ready for a daylight start on Sunday morning, if that would suit Mr. Blount’s convenience.
Pursuant to his promise, the Sergeant arrived to lunch at the Bunjil Hotel on the day specified. He did not make demand for the groom, but riding into the yard, opened the stable door and put up his ancient steed, slipping the bridle back over his ears, however, but leaving it ready to be replaced at short notice.
“It’s an auld habit o’ mine,” he said to the landlord, who now made his appearance with apologies for the absence of the groom, who was “out, getting a load of wood,” he explained. “We burn a lot here in the winter—it’s just as well we haven’t to pay for it—but it takes old George half his time drawing it in.”
“You’ve got some fresh horses here,” said the Sergeant, his keen eye resting on three well-conditioned nags at one end of the row of stalls; “are ye gaun to have races—the Bunjil Town Plate and Publican’s Purse—and are the lads that own thae flyers come to tak’ pairt? Yon grey’s a steeplechaser, by his looks, and the two bays are good enough for Flemington.”
The landlord fidgeted a little before answering.
“They’re some digging chaps that have a camp at Back Creek. They buy their beef from ‘Little-River-Jack,’ and he takes their gold at a price. They do a bit of trade in brumbie-shooting now and then, the hides sell well and the horse-hair—I’m told. Between that and digging they knock out a fair living.”
“Nae doot,” replied the Sergeant, slowly and oracularly. “If there’s aught to be won by a guid horse and a bould rider, these are the men that’ll no lose it for want of a sweater or twa. What names have they?” And here the old man fixed his eye searchingly on the host.
“Two O’Haras and a Rorke,” answered the host, haltingly. “So they tell me—‘Irish natives,’ from Gippsland way they call themselves.”
“I wadna doot,” quoth the Sergeant. “Eldest brother Jemmy O’Hara, a fell chiel. But let byganes be byganes. It’s ill raking up misdeeds of fouk that’s maybe deid or repenting, repenting in sa-ack-cloth and ashes. It’ll be one o’clock, joost chappit. I’ll awa ben.”
“Ay!” said the Sergeant, lunch being cleared away, and both men sitting before the replenished fire, which the proximity of Bunjil to the snow line, as well as the frost of the night before, rendered grateful, “it’s e’en a tale of vengeance long delayed, but the price of bluid was paid—ay, and mair than paid, when the hour cam’, and the man. I was stationed at Omeo, I mind weel, years after Larry Trevenna was hangit for the crime, as well he desairved. If one had misdooted the words of Holy Writ, there was the confirmation plain for a’ men to see. ‘Be sure thy sin will find thee out.’ They were half brithers, it was weel kenned, word came frae hame to that effect, and little thought the author of their being that the bairn o’ shame, the offspring of the reckless days of wild, ungoverned youth, was born to slay the heir of his ancient house, in a far land; to die by the hangman’s cord, amid the curses of even that strange crew amang whom his life was spent.