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<h2>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> In the yard Conal told the Schoolmaster of McNab's arrival. "Settles us," Farrel said shortly. "That's what he came to do. And we can't afford to let him think there's anything on. He's given his suspicions to M'Laughlin most likely and the delay to-night'll give them time to get the word out about us along the road. So all we can do is lie low, play civil to McNab, let him think he's on the wrong track. Then when this blows over—in a couple of months, perhaps—" Conal swore bitterly. "I could have wrung his neck when I saw him. It was all I could do to keep me hands off him," he said. "Don't be giving the game away, Conal," the Schoolmaster cautioned. "Mind, we're not taking chances." "It'll be a couple of hours to moonrise after dark," Conal said restively, glancing at the waning sky. "If you could keep him busy, playing cards and drinking—let him think we weren't upset at seeing him and he Seems to be settlin' down and looking foolish findin' we're all about—I might walk out after a bit. I could get the beasts, with Davey and that blithering half-breed. Sally's easily worth a couple of men with cattle." "Do you think I'm likely to be able to keep McNab so busy, he wouldn't notice you were walking out?" the Schoolmaster asked, impatiently. "You and Davey had better come in and hang round loose presently." He went towards the house. His greeting of McNab was as lukewarm, negligent and friendly as it always was. Deirdre saw no flicker of anxiety in his face. McNab's eyes were quick and keen on it for the first few minutes, but finding no trace of repressed excitement, not a spark of the impatience he expected, but only a whimsical smile to convey that the Schoolmaster knew why he had come, and was amused at the reason, he dropped into the chair he had taken and sought to cover the unexpectedness of his visit by unusual affability. He was sitting in Steve's chair by the fire when Farrel came into the room that was kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, and living-room in general at Steve's. Deirdre slipped out with a jug for water as the Schoolmaster came in. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw her talking to Conal in the yard. When she returned, her laughter and gaiety surprised him. She set a jug of grog between Steve and McNab on the table near NcNab's elbow. The Schoolmaster swore beneath his breath when he saw McNab's eyes on her. He trembled with rage when he heard Deirdre talking to McNab; but her eyes met his reassuringly. He caught their message, calm and purposeful. He knew that she was playing the woman to McNab, and why. The knowledge angered and humiliated him. Davey and Conal came into the long, barely-lighted room. They threw themselves on a bench near the door. Conal, taking a pipe from his belt, smoked morosely. Davey did not look at McNab, and McNab took no notice of him, enjoying his position of importance by the fireside, and chuckling over the gay chatter Deirdre threw to him. "We eat our heads off, up here, Mr. McNab," she said. "And sleep! Davey and Conal there, to see them yawning over their supper to-night you'd think they'd never seen a bed for weeks. They've been saying they're going to turn in early because they've to go off mustering first thing in the morning, and father and Steve would have sat here dozing by the fire for a while, and then gone off to bed too. I was thinking I would have to take out my sewing and talk to the cat ... till it was a decent hour to be saying my prayers. But now p'raps you'll have a game of cards with me, though I don't suppose Conal and Davey'll go to bed early now, seeing we've got company." Davey sat bolt upright against the wall. It froze the blood in his veins to hear her on such terms of easy familiarity with McNab. Conal shifted uneasily. "But we can get along without them, can't we?" Deirdre asked blithely. "There's no need for them to be sitting up trying to be polite, is there?" "None at all." McNab chuckled. He thought he was getting on very well with Deirdre and that she was playing him off against Conal and Davey in a spirit of pique. "Right. Good-night, McNab, see you in the morning," Conal said angrily. He swung out of the room. Davey followed him. "And now for the business that brought you, McNab. Mighty kind of you to have come after me with it?" The Schoolmaster sat down before Thad McNab, facing him squarely, his one eye played on McNab's shifty face. There was just the faintest ironical emphasis in his voice. McNab stirred uneasily. "Fact is," he began, his eyes shifted under the Schoolmaster's gaze. "Fact is—we're wanting a school in the Wirree," he plunged desperately. "Before you go away I thought—I thought, not knowing exactly what your plans were, I'd have a talk to you about it. The place is gettin' a bad name with the children growing up not able to make more than a mark for their names. In the hills, of course, you taught the first generation, as you might say, so the older ones can teach the others coming on, but down there it's different. We've never had any school or school teachers. The people can't pay enough—just a few of them—to make it worth your while ... but if we built a school, got 'em all together ... it might be a good thing, I'd maybe put up the money for the school—maybe—" He fidgeted in his seat. He did not want to commit himself too far, and yet he was irritably conscious of the weakness of his explanation unless he did. He had a suspicion than Dan Farrel was laughing at him up his sleeve too. An ill-humour was rising in him. There was an ominous silence—a moment of suspicion and suspense. A word from either might have been a spark to the long-hidden train of enmity between them. Deirdre broke the silence. She threw down a pack of cards and pulled her chair up to the table. "All that'll keep till to-morrow, Mr. McNab, won't it?" she asked. "Have a game of euchre with Steve and me, now. Let's play cut-throat—it's more exciting. Father can think over what you've said and tell you in the morning." "Yes ... yes ... you think it over, Farrel," McNab said eagerly. He was glad enough to shelve discussion of this urgent matter which had brought him from the Wirree to talk to the Schoolmaster, seeing that it was not at all urgent and did not look like it. Deirdre pushed the bottle of rum between him and Steve. She sat opposite to them, the broad yellow glare of the dip on her face. The liquor was already beginning to warm McNab's brain. His head was steady enough on his shoulders; but there was a glow within him. He watched the face of the girl before him as in a dream. Farrel saw the arabesques of red and blue the cards made under the light as she threw them on the table. He heard her gleeful and triumphant exclamations. He realised what she was doing for him, was sore and angry, but there was nothing to do but to play up to her. He sat at the far end of the table just out of the light: after a while his head drooped. Deirdre's laughter flashed. "Look at father," she cried, "he's dead with sleep!" Farrel started and stared at her, sleepily. "It's no good your blinking like an owl and pretending you weren't taking forty winks. You'd better go to bed and have done with it," she said. He struggled to his feet. "I'm dog-weary," he muttered. "Think I will." "Good-night," he added after a moment. "And be sure you see the fires are out before you turn in, Deirdre. You're not to be staying up late, either! I won't have her getting too fond of the cards, Steve." He stumbled across the room to the far end where a screen of brushwood and bagging against the back of the shanty made another small room. Deirdre laughed again. "I'm winning all the time," she said gaily, "so they won't want to play long." The cards went backwards and forwards across the table to the tune of her exclamations and the chime of her laughter, the muttered oaths and exclamations of Steve and McNab. Steve was soggy with drink; but McNab was not as drunk as he seemed. His eyes caught hers with a curious expression when the Schoolmaster had gone from the room. "And who's the man Conal's going to kill for comin' between you, Deirdre?" he asked. "How do I know?" she said, a little nervously. "P'raps it's the man sent you the gold chain," McNab murmured. His eyes glimmered at her out of the darkness. "They tell me Conal went round like a madman looking for Pat Glynn to tell him who it was, threatening to break the last bone in Pat's body if he wouldn't speak." "Yes, I think it was him," Deirdre said, meeting his eyes. "Conal said if ever he found him, he'd—" "Conal's a hot head doesn't mean half he says," McNab muttered. "But he means that, I'm sure," Deirdre said. "And Conal's so strong. Look at his hands. He could put them round a man's throat and wring the life out of it—just as easily as you wring a bird's neck, Mr. McNab. And he's a dead shot, too, Conal—they say." "Eh, then it's somebody's neck he'll be wringing, or somebody he'll be shooting, for sure," McNab said. "For it's not him you'll be marrin', and it's not him your heart's set on. It's the other." The quivering of her face, a dilating of the pupils of her eyes that were wells of darkness, told him that he had scored. He leant forward, following up his advantage, eagerly. "And it's not Conal, for all his blustering, I'm afraid of, my pretty," he whispered. His eyes were narrowed, the smile in them leaping across his face. "It's not Conal, for all his blustering, though I dursay y' think he'd kill me for love of you. And you'd break his heart for love of somebody else—by way of reward. But it's me all the same that'll get you." Deirdre pushed back her chair. Then she remembered the part she had been playing all the evening. She steadied herself, putting her hands on the edge of the table, and looked down into McNab's eyes, laughing. "Why," she cried, "you're as drunk as drunk, Mr. McNab! And so is Steve; you'd better see each other to bed. I'm going myself." She went across to the corner-room next the Schoolmaster's, where she slept. When she had heard Steve shambling before NcNab to the room off the bar where occasional visitors were put, she went back to the kitchen, raked over the embers of the fire, and put out a flare that was burning low in its tin of rancid fat and belching forth streams of heavy black smoke. She opened the door of the Schoolmaster's room. The bunk against the wall on which he slept was empty, the window open. She entered, closed the door and sat down by the open window. The moonlight was waning. The silver light in which the forest had been bathed an hour before, was dimmer, the shadows the house and sheds cast black against it. Where the light struck dead trees they stood out wraith-like from the dark wave of the forest. Listening intently, she heard the distant cracking of whips, the long lowing, belched and terrified cries of cattle. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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