The two leading men were Joe and Jerry Brownbie, who, for this night only, had composed their quarrels, and close to them was Boscobel.

There were others behind, also mounted--Jack Brownbie and Georgie, and Nokes himself; but they, though their figures were seen, could not be distinguished in the gloom of the night. Nor, indeed, did Harry at first discern of how many the party consisted. It seemed that there was a whole troop of hors.e.m.e.n, whose purpose it was to interrupt him in his work, so that the flames should certainly go ahead. And it was evident that the men thought that they could do so without subjecting themselves to legal penalties. As far as Harry Heathcote could see, they were correct in their view. He could have no right to burn the gra.s.s on Boolabong. He had no claim even to be there. It was true that he could plead that he was stopping the fire which they had purposely made; but they could prove his handiwork, whereas it would be almost impossible that he should prove theirs.

The whole forest was not red, but lurid, with the fires, and the air was laden with both the smell and the heat of the conflagration. The hors.e.m.e.n were dressed, as was Harry himself, in trowsers and shirts, with old slouch hats, and each of them had a cudgel in his hand. As they came galloping up through the trees they were as uncanny and unwelcome a set of visitors as any man was ever called on to receive.

Harry necessarily stayed his work, and stood still to bear the brunt of the coming attack; but Jacko went on with his employment faster than ever, as though a troop of men in the dark were nothing to him.

Jerry Brownbie was the first to speak. "What's this you're up to, Heathcote? Firing our gra.s.s? It's arson. You shall swing for this."

"I'll take my chance of that," said Harry, turning to his work again.

"No, I'm blessed if you do. Ride over him, Bos, while I stop these other fellows."

The Brownbies had been aware that Harry's two boundary riders were with him, but had not heard of the arrival of Medlicot and the other man. Nokes was aware that some one on horseback had been near him when he was firing the gra.s.s, but had thought that it was one of the party from Gangoil. By the time that Jerry Brownbie had reached the German, Medlicot was there also.

"Who the deuce are you?" asked Jerry.

"What business is that of yours?" said Medlicot.

"No business of mine, and you firing our gra.s.s! I'll let you know my business pretty quickly."

"It's that fellow, Medlicot, from the sugar-mill," said Joe; "the man that Nokes is with."

"I thought you was a horse of another color," continued Jerry, who had been given to understand that Medlicot was Heathcote's enemy.

"Anyway, I won't have my gra.s.s fired. If G.o.d A'mighty chooses to send fires, we can't help it. But I'm not going to have incendiaries here as well. You're a new chum, and don't understand what you're about, but you must stop this."

As Medlicot still went on putting out the fire, Jerry attempted to ride him down. Medlicot caught the horse by the rein, and violently backed the brute in among the embers. The animal plunged and reared, getting his head loose, and at last came down, he and his rider together. In the mean time Joe Brownbie, seeing this, rode up behind the sugar planter, and struck him violently with his cudgel over the shoulder. Medlicot sank nearly to the ground, but at once recovered himself. He knew that some bone on the left side of his body was broken; but he could still fight with his right hand, and he did fight.

Boscobel and Georgie Brownbie both attempted to ride over Harry together, and might have succeeded had not Jacko ingeniously inserted the burning branch of gum-tree with which he had been working under the belly of the horse on which Boscobel was riding. The animal jumped immediately from the ground, bucking into the air, and Boscobel was thrown far over his head. Georgie Brownbie then turned upon Jacko, but Jacko was far too nimble to be caught, and escaped among the trees.

For a few minutes the fight was general, but the footmen had the best of it, in spite of the injury done to Medlicot. Jerry was bruised and burned about the face by his fall among the ashes, and did not much relish the work afterward. Boscobel was stunned for a few moments, and was quite ready to retreat when he came to himself. Nokes during the whole time did not show himself, alleging as a reason afterward the presence of his employer Medlicot.

"I'm blessed if your cowardice sha'n't hang you," said Joe Brownbie to him on their way home. "Do you think we're going to fight the battles of a fellow like you, who hasn't pluck to come forward himself?"

"I've as much pluck as you," answered Nokes, "and am ready to fight you any day. But I know when a man is to come forward and when he's not. Hang me! I'm not so near hanging as some folks at Boolabong." We may imagine, therefore, that the night was not spent pleasantly among the Brownbies after these adventures.

There were, of course, very much cursing and swearing, and very many threats, before the party from Boolabong did retreat. Their great point was, of coa.r.s.e, this--that Heathcote was willfully firing the gra.s.s, and was, therefore, no better than an incendiary. Of course they stoutly denied that the original fire had been intentional, and denied as stoutly that the original fire could be stopped by fires.

But at last they went, leaving Heathcote and his party masters of the battle-field. Jerry was taken away in a sad condition; and, in subsequent accounts of the transaction given from Boolabong, his fall was put forward as the reason of their flight, he having been the general on the occasion. And Boscobel had certainly lost all stomach for immediate fighting. Immediately behind the battle-field they come across Nokes, and Sing Sing, the runaway cook from Gangoil. The poor Chinaman had made the mistake of joining the party which was not successful.

But Harry, though the victory was with him, was hardly in a mood for triumph. He soon found that Medlicot's collar-bone was broken, and it would be necessary, therefore, that he should return with the wounded man to the station. And the flames, as he feared, had altogether got ahead of him during the fight. As far as they had gone, they had stopped the fire, having made a black wilderness a mile and a half in length, which, during the whole distance, ceased suddenly at the line at which the subsidiary fire had been extinguished. But while the attack was being made upon them the flames had crept on to the southward, and had now got beyond their reach. It had seemed, however, that the ma.s.s of fire which had got away from them was small, and already the damp of the night was on the gra.s.s; and Harry felt himself justified in hoping not that there might be no loss, but that the loss might not be ruinous.

Medlicot consented to be taken back to Gangoil instead of to the mill. Perhaps he thought that Kate Daly might be a better nurse than his mother, or that the quiet of the sheep station might be better for him than the clatter of his own mill-wheels. It was midnight, and they had a ride of fourteen miles, which was hard enough upon a man with a broken collarbone. The whole party also was thoroughly fatigued. The work they had been doing was about as hard as could fall to a man's lot, and they had now been many hours without food.

Before they started Mickey produced his flask, the contents of which were divided equally among them all, including Jacko.

As they were preparing to start home Medlicot explained that it had struck him by degrees that Heathcote might be right in regard to Nokes, and that he had determined to watch the man himself whenever he should leave the mill. On that Monday he had given up work somewhat earlier than usual, saying that, as the following day was Christmas, he should not come to the mill. From that time Medlicot and his foreman had watched him.

"Yes," said he, in answer to a question from Heathcote, "I can swear that I saw him with the lighted torch in his hand, and that he placed it among the gra.s.s. There were two others from Boolabong with him, and they must have seen him too."

CHAPTER X.

HARRY HEATHCOTE RETURNS IN TRIUMPH.

When the fight was quite over, and Heathcote's party had returned to their horses, Medlicot for a few minutes was faint and sick, but he revived after a while, and declared himself able to sit on his horse.

There was a difficulty in getting him up, but when there he made no further complaint. "This," said he, as he settled himself in his saddle, "is my first Christmas-day in Australia. I landed early in January, and last year I was on my way home to fetch my mother."

"It's not much like an English Christmas," said Harry.

"Nor yet as in Hanover," said the German.

"It's Cork you should go to, or Galway, bedad, if you want to see Christmas kep' after the ould fashion," said Mickey.

"I think we used to do it pretty well in c.u.mberland," said Medlicot.

"There are things which can't be transplanted. They may have roast beef, and all that, but you should have cold weather to make you feel that it is Christmas indeed."

"We do it as well as we can," Harry pleaded. "I've seen a great pudding come into the room all afire--just to remind one of the old country--when it has been so hot that one could hardly bear a shirt on one's shoulders. But yet there's something in it. One likes to think of the old place, though one is so far away. How do you feel now? Does the jolting hurt you much? If your horse is rough, change with me. This fellow goes as smooth as a lady." Medlicot declared that the pain did not trouble him much. "They'd have ridden over us, only for you," continued Harry.

"My word! wouldn't they?" said Jacko, who was very proud of his own part in the battle. "I say, Mr. Medlicot, did you see Bos and his horse part company? You did, Mr. Harry. Didn't he fly like a bird, all in among the bushes! I owed Bos one; I did, my word! And now I've paid him."

"I saw it," said Harry. "He was riding at me as hard as he could come. I can't understand Boscobel. Nokes is a sly, bad, slinking follow, whom I never liked. But I was always good to Bos; and when he cheated me, as he did, about his time, I never even threatened to stop his money."

"You told him of it too plain," said the German.

"I did tell him--of course--as I should you. It has come to that now, that if a man robs you--your own man--you are not to dare to tell him of it! What would you think of me, Karl, if I were to find you out, and was to be afraid of speaking to you, lest you should turn against me and burn my fences?" Karl Bender shrugged his shoulders, holding his reins up to his eyes. "I know what you ought to think! And I wish that every man about Gangoil should be sure that I will always say what I think right. I don't know that I ever was hard upon any man. I try not to be."

"Thrue for you, Mr. Harry," said the Irishman.

"I'm not going to pick my words because men like Nokes and Boscobel have the power of injuring me. I'm not going to truckle to rascals because I'm afraid of them. I'd sooner be burned out of house and home, and go and work on the wharves in Brisbane, than that."

"My word! yes," said Jacko, "and I too."

"If the devil is to get ahead, he must, but I won't hold a candle to him. You fellows may tell every man about the place what I say. As long as I'm master of Gangoil I'll be master; and when I come across a swindle I'll tell the man who does it he's a swindler. I told Bos to his face; but I didn't tell any body else, and I shouldn't if he'd taken it right and mended his ways."

They all understood him very well--the German, the Irishman, Medlicot's foreman, Medlicot himself, and even Jacko; and though, no doubt, there was a feeling within the hearts of the men that Harry Heathcote was imperious, still they respected him, and they believed him.

"The masther should be the masther, no doubt," said the Irishman.

"A man that is a man vill not sell hisself body and soul," said the German, slowly.

"Do I want dominion over your soul, Karl Bender?" asked the squatter, with energy. "You know I don't, nor over your body, except so far as it suits you to sell your services. What you sell you part with readily--like a man; and it's not likely that you and I shall quarrel. But all this row about nothing can't be very pleasant to a man with a broken shoulder."

"I like to hear you," said Medlicot. "I'm always a good listener when men have something really to say."

"Well, then, I've something to say," cried Harry. "There never was a man came to my house whom I'd sooner see as a Christmas guest than yourself."

"Thankee, Sir."