Then they were again silent, and remained without exchanging more than a word or two for nearly half an hour. They took hold of each other, and every now and then went to the kitchen door that the old woman might be comforted by their presence, but they had no consolation to offer each other. The silence of the bush, and the feeling of great distances, and the dread of calamity almost crushed them. At last there was a distant sound of horse's feet. "I hear him," said Mrs. Heathcote, rushing forward toward the outer gate of the horse paddock, followed by her sister.

Her ears were true, but she was doomed to disappointment. The horseman was only a messenger from her husband--Mickey O'Dowd, the Irish boundary rider.

He had great tidings to tell, and was so long telling them that we will not attempt to give them in his own words. The purport of his story was as follows: Harry had been to Boolabong House, but had found there no one but the old man. Returning home thence toward his own fence, he had smelled the smoke of fire, and had found within a furlong of his path a long ridge of burning gra.s.s. According to Mickey's account, it could not have been lighted above a few minutes before Heathcote's presence on the spot. As it was, it had got too much ahead for him to put it out single-handed; a few yards he might have managed, but--so Mickey said, probably exaggerating the matter--there was half a quarter of a mile of flame. He had therefore ridden on before the fire, had called his own two men to him, and had at once lighted the gra.s.s himself some two hundred yards in front, making a second fire, but so keeping it down that it should be always under control. Before the hinder flames had caught him, Bender and Jacko had been with him, and they had thus managed to consume the fuel which, had it remained there, would have fed the fire which was too strong to be mastered. By watching the extremities of the line of fire, they overpowered it, and so the damage was for the moment at an end.

The method of dealing with the enemy was so well known in the bush, and had been so often canva.s.sed in the hearing of the two sisters, that it was clearly intelligible to them. The evil had been met in the proper way, and the remedy had been effective. But why did not Harry come home?

Mickey O'Dowd, after his fashion, explained that too. The ladies were not to wait dinner. The master felt himself obliged to remain out at night, and had gotten food at the German's hut. He, Mickey, was commissioned to return with a flask full of brandy, as it would be necessary that Harry, with all the men whom he could trust, should be "on the rampage" all night. This small body was to consist of Harry himself, of the German, of Jacko, and, according to the story as at present told, especially of Mickey O'Dowd. Much as she would have wished to have kept the man at the station for protection, she did not think of disobeying her husband's orders. So Mickey was fed, and then sent back with the flask--with tidings also as to the desertion of that wretched cook, Sing Sing.

"I shall sit here all night," said Mrs. Heathcote to her sister. "As things are, I shall not think of going to bed."

Kate declared that she would also sit in the veranda all night; and, as a matter of course, they were joined by Mrs. Growler. They had been so seated about an hour when Kate Daly declared that the heavens were on fire. The two young women jumped up, flew to the gate, and found that the whole western horizon was lurid with a dark red light.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BUSH FIGHT.

Harry Heathcote had on this occasion entertained no doubt whatever that the fire had been intentional and premeditated. A lighted torch must have been dragged along the gra.s.s, so as to ignite a line many yards long all at the same time. He had been luckily near enough to the spot to see almost the commencement of the burning, and was therefore aware of its form and circ.u.mstances. He almost wondered that he had not seen the figure of the man who had drawn the torch, or at any rate heard his steps. Pursuit would have been out of the question, as his work was wanted at the moment to extinguish the flames. The miscreant probably had remembered this, and had known that he might escape stealthily without the noise of a rapid retreat.

When the work was over, when he had put out the fire he had himself lighted, and had exterminated the lingering remnants of that which had been intended to destroy him, he stood still a while almost in despair. His condition seemed to be hopeless. What could he do against such a band of enemies, knowing as he did that, had he been backed even by a score of trusty followers, one foe might still suffice to ruin him? At the present moment he was very hot with the work he had done, as were also Jacko and the German. O'Dowd had also come up as they were completing their work. Their mode of extinguishing the flames had been to beat them down with branches of gum-tree loaded with leaves. By sweeping these along the burning ground the low flames would be scattered and expelled. But the work was very hard and hot. The boughs they used were heavy, and the air around them, sultry enough from its own properties, was made almost unbearable by the added heat of the fires.

The work had been so far done, but it might be begun again at any moment, either near or at a distance. No doubt the attempt would be made elsewhere along the boundary between Gangoil and Boolabong--was very probably being made at this moment. The two men whom he could trust and Jacko were now with him. They were wiping their brows with their arms and panting with their work.

He first resolved on sending Mickey O'Dowd to the house. The distance was great, and the man's a.s.sistance might be essential. But he could not bear to leave his wife without news from him. Then, after considering a while, he made up his mind to go back toward his own fence, making his way as he went southerly down toward the river.

They who were determined to injure him would, he thought, repeat their attempt in that direction. He hardly said a word to his two followers, but rode at a foot-pace to the spot at his fence which he had selected as the site of his bivouac for the night.

"It won't be very cheery, Bender," he said to the German; "but we shall have to make a night of it till they disturb us again."

The German made a motion with his arms intended to signify his utter indifference. One place was the same as another to him. Jacko uttered his usual e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and then, having hitched his horse to the fence, threw himself on his back upon the gra.s.s.

No doubt they all slept, but they slept as watchers sleep, with one eye open. It was Harry who first saw the light which a few minutes later made itself visible to the ladies at the home station. "Karl,"

he exclaimed, jumping up, "they're at it again--look there."

In less than half a minute, and without speaking another word, they were all on their horses and riding in the direction of the light. It came from a part of the Boolabong run somewhat nearer to the river than the place at which they had stationed themselves, where the strip of ground between Harry's fence and the acknowledged boundary of Brownbie's run was the narrowest. As they approached the fire, they became aware that it had been lighted on Boolabong. On this occasion Harry did not ride on up to the flames, knowing that the use or loss of a few minutes might save or destroy his property. He hardly spoke a word as he proceeded on his business, feeling that they upon whom he had to depend were sufficiently instructed, if only they would be sufficiently energetic.

"Keep it well under, but let it run," was all he said, as, lighting a dried bush with a match, he ran the fire along the ground in front of the coming flames.

A stranger seeing it all would have felt sure that the remedy would have been as bad as the disease, for the fire which Harry himself made every now and again seemed to get the better of those who were endeavoring to control it. There might perhaps be a quarter of a mile between the front of the advancing fire and the line at which Harry had commenced to destroy the food which would have fed the coming flames. He himself, as quickly as he lighted the gra.s.s, which in itself was the work but of a moment, would strain himself to the utmost at the much harder task of controlling his own fire, so that it should not run away from him, and get, as it were, out of his hands, and be as bad to him as that which he was thus seeking to circ.u.mvent. The German and Jacko worked like heroes, probably with intense enjoyment of the excitement, and, after a while, found a fourth figure among the flames, for Mickey had now returned.

"You saw them," Harry said, panting with his work.

"They's all right," said Mickey, flopping away with a great bough; "but that tarnation Chinese has gone off."

"My word! Sing Sing. Find him at Boolabong," said Jacko.

The German, whose gum-tree bough was a very big one, and whose every thought was intent on letting the fire run while he still held it in hand, had not breath for a syllable.

But the back fire was extending itself, so as to get round them.

Every now and then Harry extended his own line, moving always forward toward Gangoil as he did so, though he and his men were always on Brownbie's territory. He had no doubt but that where he could succeed in destroying the gra.s.s for a breadth of forty or fifty yards he would starve out the inimical flames. The trees and bushes without the herbage would not enable it to travel a yard. Wherever the gra.s.s was burned down black to the soil, the fire would stop. But should they, who were at work, once allow themselves to be outflanked, their exertions would be all in vain. And then those wretches might light a dozen fires. The work was so hard, so hot, and often so hopeless, that the unhappy young squatter was more than once tempted to bid his men desist and to return to his homestead. The flames would not follow him there. He could, at any rate, make that safe. And then, when he had repudiated this feeling as unworthy of him, he began to consider within himself whether he would not do better for his property by taking his men with him on to his run, and endeavoring to drive his sheep out of danger. But as he thought of all this, he still worked, still fired the gra.s.s, and still controlled the flames.

Presently he became aware of what seemed to him at first to be a third fire. Through the trees, in the direction of the river, he could see the glimmering of low flames and the figures of men. But it was soon apparent to him that these men were working in his cause, and that they, too, were burning the gra.s.s that would have fed the advancing flames. At first he could not spare the minute which would be necessary to find out who was his friend, but, as they drew nearer, he knew the man. It was the sugar planter from the mill and with him his foreman.

"We've been doing our best," said Medlicot, "but we've been terribly afraid that the fire would slip away from us."

"It's the only thing," said Harry, too much excited at the moment to ask questions as to the cause of Medlicot's presence so far from his home at that time of the evening. "It's getting round us, I'm afraid, all the same."

"I don't know but it is. It's almost impossible to distinguish. How hot the fire makes it!"

"Hot, indeed!" said Harry. "It's killing work for men, and then all for no good! To think that men, creatures that call themselves men, should do such a thing as this! It breaks one's heart." He had paused as he spoke, leaning on the great battered bough which he held, but in an instant was at work with it again. "Do you stay here, Mr.

Medlicot, with the men, and I'll go on beyond where you began. If I find the fire growing down, I'll shout, and they can come to me." So saying, he rushed on with a lighted bush torch in his band.

Suddenly he found himself confronted in the bush by a man on horseback, whom he at once recognized as Georgie Brownbie. He forgot for a moment where he was and began to question the reprobate as to his presence at that spot.

"That's like your impudence," said Georgie. "You're not only trespa.s.sing, but you're destroying our property willfully, and you ask me what business I have here. You're a nice sort of young man."

Harry, checked for a moment by the remembrance that he was in truth upon Boolabong run, did not at once answer.

"Put that bush down, and don't burn our gra.s.s," continued Georgie, "or you shall have to answer for it. What right have you to fire our gra.s.s?"

"Who fired it first?"

"It lighted itself. That's no rule why you should light it more. You give over, or I punch your head for you."

Harry's men and Medlicot were advancing toward him, trampling out their own embers as they came; and Georgie Brownbie, who was alone, when he saw that there were four or five men against him, turned round and rode back.

"Did you ever see impudence like that?" said Harry. "He's probably the very man who set the match, and yet he comes and brazens it out with me."

"I don't think he's the man who set the match," said Medlicot, quietly; "at any rate there was another."

"Who was it?"

"My man, Nokes. I saw him with the torch in his hand."

"Heaven and earth!"

"Yes, Mr. Heathcote. I saw him put it down. You were about right, you see, and I was about wrong."

Harry had not a word to say, unless it were tell the man that he loved him for the frankness of his confession. But the moment was hardly auspicious for such a declaration. There was no excuse for them to pause in their work, for the fire was still crackling at their back, and they did no more than pause.

"Ah!" said Harry, "there it goes; we shall be done at last." For he saw that he was being outflanked by the advancing flames. But still they worked, drawing lines of fire here and there, and still they hoped that there might be ground for hope. Nokes had been seen; but, pregnant as the theme might be with words, it was almost impossible to talk. Questions could not be asked and answered without stopping in their toil. There were questions which Harry longed to ask. Could Medlicot swear to the man? Did the man know that he had been seen? If he knew that he had been watched while he lit the gra.s.s, he would soon be far away from Medlicot's Mill and Gangoil. Harry felt that it would be a consolation to him in his trouble if he could get hold of this man, and keep him, and prosecute him--and have him hung. Even in the tumult of the moment he was able to reflect about it, and to think that he remembered that the crime of arson was capital in the colony of Queensland. He had endeavored to be good to the men with whom he had dealings. He had not stinted their food, or cut them short in their wages, or been hard in exacting work from them. And this was his return! Ideas as to the excellence of absolute dominion and power flitted across his brain--such power as Abraham, no doubt, exercised. In Abraham's time the people were submissive, and the world was happy. Harry Heathcote, at least, had never heard that it was not happy. But as he thought of all this he worked away with his bush and his matches, extinguishing the flames here and lighting them there, striving to make a cordon of black bare ground between Boolabong and Gangoil. Surely Abraham had never been called on to work like this!

He and his men were in a line covering something above a quarter of a mile of ground, of which line he was himself the nearest to the river, and Medlicot and his foreman the farthest from it. The German and O'Dowd were in the middle, and Jacko was working with his master.

If Harry had just cause for anger and sorrow in regard to Nokes and Boscobel, he certainly had equal cause to be proud of the stanchness of his remaining satellites. The men worked with a will, as though the whole run had been the personal property of each of them. Nokes and Boscobel would probably have done the same had the fires come before they had quarreled with their master. It is a small and narrow point that turns the rushing train to the right or to the left. The rushing man is often turned off by a point as small and narrow.

"My word!" said Jacko, on a sudden, "here they are, all o'

horseback!" And as he spoke, there was the sound of half a dozen hors.e.m.e.n galloping up to them through the bush. "Why, there's Bos, his own self," said Jacko.