"Let's go in and get a drink," said Hugh. "I suppose there is some square-face inside."

The square-face settled it. They had one drink, and the stranger began to think less of the needs of the Oriental. They had another, and he said he didn't suppose it'd matter much if the Oriental had to wait a bit for their stone, and the bullocks were all over the bush and very poor, and by the time he got them together the wet season would be on.

They had a third, and he said that the Oriental had been hanging on for six months, and it wouldn't hurt it to hang on for seven, and he wouldn't see a man like Hugh stuck.

So the shareholders in that valuable concern, the Oriental Mine, were kept in pleasing suspense for some months longer, while the mine-manager (whose salary was going on all the time) did nothing but smoke, and write reports to the effect that "a very valuable body of stone was at gra.s.s, awaiting cartage to the battery, when a splendid crushing was a certainty." Meanwhile Tommy Prince was gaily journeying with Hugh down to the buffalo camp.

Prince, a typical moleskin-trousered, cotton-shirted, cabbage-tree-hatted bushman, soon fixed up all details. He annexed the horses belonging to the store, sagely remarking that, as Hugh had saved their owner's life, he could afford to let him have a few horses. He also helped himself to pack-saddles, camping gear, supplies, and all sorts of odds and ends--not forgetting a couple of gallons of rum, mosquito-nets made of cheese cloth, blankets, and a rifle and cartridges. They fitted out the expedition in fine style, while unconscious Sampson slept the sleep of the half-drowned. The placid Chinese cook fried great lumps of goat for them to eat, heedless of all things except his opium-pipe, to which he had recourse in the evening, the curious dreamy odour of the opium blending strangely with the aromatic scent of the bush.

At daylight they started, and for three days rode through the wilderness, camping out at night, while the horses with bells and hobbles grazed round the camp. Tommy Prince steered a course by instinct, guided as unerringly as the Israelites by their pillar of fire.

By miles of trackless, worthless wilderness, by rolling open plains, by rocky ranges and stony pa.s.ses, they pushed out and ever further out, till at last, one day, Tommy said, "They ought to be hereabouts, some place." So saying, he dropped a lighted match into a big patch of gra.s.s, and in a few seconds a line of fire half a mile wide was roaring across the plain; above it rose smoke as of a burning city.

"They'll see that," said Tommy, "without the buff'loes have got 'em."

So they camped for the day under a huge banyan-fig tree and awaited developments. About evening, away on the horizon, there arose an answering cloud of smoke, connecting earth and sky, like a waterspout.

"That's them," said Tommy. They climbed once more into their saddles, and set out. Just as the sun was setting, they saw a singular procession coming towards them. In front rode two small, wiry, hard-featured, inexpressibly dirty men on big well-formed horses. They wore dungaree trousers, which had once been blue, but were now begrimed and bloodstained to a dull neutral colour. Their shirts--once coloured, but now nearly black--were worn outside the trousers, like a countryman's smock frock, and were drawn in at the waist by broad leathern belts full of cartridges. Their faces were half-hidden by stubbly beards, and their bright alert eyes looked out from under the brims of two as dilapidated felt hats as ever graced head of man. Each carried a carbine between thigh and saddle. These were the buffalo shooters.

Behind them rode an elderly, grizzled man, whom Hugh had no difficulty in recognising as Keogh, or Considine. Following him were some seven or eight packhorses, all heavily laden with hides. And behind the packhorses rode three or four naked blacks and a Chinaman.

Hugh's guide at once made himself welcome in his happy-go-lucky style.

He introduced Hugh as Mr. Lambton, from New South Wales. The buffalo shooters made him welcome after the fashion of their kind; but Considine was obviously uneasy, and avoided him, riding with Tommy Prince for a while, and evidently trying to find out what Hugh had come for.

That night, when they got to the buffalo shooters' camp, Hugh opened fire on Considine. The veteran was in a cheerful mood after his meal, and Hugh wanted to start diplomatically, thinking he might persuade him.

If that failed he would give him the summons; but he would start with the suaviter in modo. When it came to the point, however, he forgot his diplomacy, and plunged straight into trouble.

"I'll tell you what I've come up here for, Considine," he said. "My name's Hugh Gordon, and I want to find out something about your marriage with Peggy Donohoe."

"Well, if that's what you come for, Mister," said the veteran, pulling a firestick out of the fire, and slowly lighting his pipe, "if that's what you come for"--puff, puff, puff--"you've come on a wild goose chase. I never knew no Peggy Donohoe in my life. My wife"--puff--"was a small, dark woman, named Smith."

"I thought you told my brother that you married Peggy Donohoe."

"So I might have told him," a.s.sented the veteran. "Quite likely I did, but I must ha' made a mistake. A man might easy make a mistake over a thing like that. What odds is it to you who I married, anyhow?"

"What odds? Why look here, Considine, it means that my old mother will be turned out of her home. That's some odds to me, isn't it?"

"Yairs, that's right enough, Mister," said the courteous Considine; "it's lots of odds to you, but what I ask you is--what odds is it to me?

Why should I go and saddle myself with a she-devil just when I'm coming into a bit of money? I'd walk miles to do her a bad turn."

"Well, if you want to do her a bad turn, come down and block her getting Mr. Grant's estate."

"Yes, an' put her on to meself What next? I tell you, Mister, straight, I wouldn't have that woman tied to me for all the money in China. That English bloke said there was a big fortune for me in England. Well, if I have to take Peggy Donohoe with it, it can stay. I'll live here with the blacks and the buffalo shooters, and I'll get my livin' for meself, same as I got it all my life; but take on Peggy again I will not. Now, that's Domino--that's the dead finish. I won't go with you, and I won't give you no information. And I'm sorry too, 'cause you seem a good sort of a young feller--but I won't do anything that'll mix me up with Peggy any more."

Hugh ground his teeth with mortification. Then he played his next card.

"There's a man they call Flash Jack--do you know him?"

"Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't," said the sage in a surly tone.

"Well, he told me to ask you to help us. He said to tell you that he particularly wanted you to give evidence if you can."

"Want'll be his master, then," snarled the old man.

"He said he would put the police on to a job about some cattle at Cross-roads," said Hugh.

The rage fairly flashed out of Considine's eyes.

"He said that, did he?" he yelled. "The rotten informer! Well, you tell Flash Jack from me that where he can put me away for one thing I can put him away for half-a-dozen; and if I go into gaol for a five-stretch he goes in for ten. I ain't afraid of Flash Jack, nor you either. See that, now!"

Hugh felt that his mission had failed. He pulled out the summons as a last resource, and pa.s.sed it to the old man.

"What's this?" he said.

"Summons to give evidence," said Hugh.

"Victoria by the Grace of G.o.d," read the old man, by the flickering firelight. "Victoria by the Grace of G.o.d, eh? Well, see here," he continued, solemnly putting the summons in the fire and watching it blaze, "if Victoria by the Grace of G.o.d wants me, she can send for me--send a coach and six for Patrick Henry Considine, late Patrick Henry Keogh! And then I mightn't go! There'll be only one thing make me go where I don't want to go, and that's a policeman at each elbow and another shovin' behind. I'd sooner do a five-stretch than take Peggy back again. And that's the beginning and the end and the middle of it.

And now I'll wish you good night."

CHAPTER XXVI. THE SAVING OF CONSIDINE.

At grey dawn all the camp was astir. Hugh looked from under his mosquito-net, and saw old Considine over the fire, earnestly frying a large hunk of buffalo meat. He was without a trouble in the world as he turned the hissing steak in the pan. Two black gins in brief garments--a loin cloth and a villainously dirty pyjama-jacket each--were sitting near him, languidly killing the mosquitoes which settled on their bare legs. These were Maggie and Lucy, but they had degenerated with their surroundings. Tommy Prince was oiling a carbine, and one of the shooters was washing his face at a basin formed by scratching a small hole in the ground and pressing a square of canvas into the depression.

The Chinese skinner was sitting on a log, rubbing a huge butcher's knife on a sharpening stone. Away up the plain the horses, about thirty or forty in number, were slowly trooping into camp, hunted by a couple of blackfellows, naked except for little gra.s.s armlets worn above the elbow, and sticks stuck through their noses. When the horses reached the camp they formed a squadron under the shade of some trees, and pushed and shoved and circled about, trying to keep the flies off themselves and each other.

Hugh walked over to Tommy Prince at his rifle-oiling, and watched him for a while. That worthy, who was evidently a true sportsman at heart, was liberally baptising with Rangoon oil an old and much rusted Martini carbine, whose ejector refused to work. Every now and then, when he thought he had got it ship-shape, Tommy would put in a fresh cartridge, hold the carbine tightly to his shoulder, shut his eyes, and fire it into s.p.a.ce. The rusty old weapon kicked frightfully, after each discharge the ejector jammed, and Tommy ruefully poked the exploded cartridge out with a rod and poured on more oil.

"Blast the carbine!" said Tommy. "It kicks upwards like; it's kicking my nose all skewwhiff."

"Don't put it to your shoulder, you fool," said one of the shooters; "it'll kick your head off. Hold it out in one hand."

"Then it'll kick my arm off," said Tommy.

"No, it won't; you won t feel it at all," said the shooter. "Your arm will give to the recoil. Blaze away!"

"What are you up to with the carbine?" said Hugh.

"I'm going to have a blaze at some of these 'ere buff'loes," said Tommy gaily. "Bill's lent me a horse. They's got a rifle for you, and one for the old man. "We'll give them buff'loes h.e.l.l to-day. Five rifles--they'll think the French is after them." "Well, but I want to get back," said Hugh. "We mustn't waste any time. What about the store-keeper's horses?"

"Ho! it'd never do to take them straight back again," said Tommy. "Never do. They must have a spell. Besides, what's the hurry?"

And Hugh, recognising that for all the good he could do he might just as well not hurry back again, resigned himself to the inevitable, picked up his bridle, went into the shuffling herd of horses, and caught the one pointed out to him. It was a big, raw-boned, ragged-hipped bay, a horse that would have been a gentleman under any other conditions, but from long buffalo-hunting had become a careless-going, loose-jointed ruffian, taking his life in his hands every day. He bit savagely at Hugh as he saddled him, and altogether proclaimed himself devoid of self-respect and the finer instincts.

Breakfast was despatched almost in silence. The shooters knew vaguely that Hugh's visit was in some way connected with Considine, and that Considine had refused to do what Hugh wanted. But the hospitality of the buffalo camp is as the hospitality of the Arabs of old--the stranger is made welcome whatever his business, and may come and go unquestioned.