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<h2>CHAPTER XLIII</h2> The big kitchen was very quiet. The log that had been smouldering on the open hearth all day broke. Deirdre swept back the scattered embers and thrust the broken ends of wood together. Flames leapt over them, lighting the room. They penetrated the shadows that bulked, huge and shapeless, at the end of it, revealing a hoard of store casks and boxes piled almost to the roof and half-cloaked with hessian bags sewed together. The barrel of a rifle slung on the walls glimmered for a moment; the firelight showed stirrup irons and miscellaneous harnessing gear, halters and bridles hung over a peg near the door, a couple of horse-shoes nailed to it, and two or three hams in smoke-blackened bags with bunches of herbs beside them, strung up to the rafters. A tallow dip cast a halo of garish light about Deirdre where she sat sewing; a broad gleam touched the crockery on the shelves behind her. The high-backed arm-chair in which Steve lay, slack and nodding drowsily, was drawn up before the fire. The door to the bar, reached by a step from the kitchen, was open. A dip burned on the bench there, too, giving the dingy windows of the shanty a gleam for wayfarers. It was a wild night; the wind blowing from the south-west beat against the doors and rattled the windows of the frail building. The doors were all shut though it was still early. Steve at last fell asleep in his chair. His heavy-laboured breathing had the sound of a child sobbing. Deirdre looked up from her work, again and again, troubled by it. It increased her sense of desperation to hear him. The sound became unendurable. She got up at last and awakened him. "Hadn't you better go to bed, Uncle Steve," she said, impatiently. "You'll catch your death of cold like this. It's too late for anybody to be coming our way now—and a bad night. I'll lock up." "Yes, Deirdre," he murmured sleepily; "it's a bad night and too late for anybody to be coming our way." She pulled the bolts across the doors at the front of the shanty and locked and bolted the door from the bar into the kitchen; then she took his arm, and helped him out of his chair. He had fallen back into it, nodding drowsily again. She led him over to his room, which opened off the kitchen. "I'll see the lights and the fires are out," she said, "but I want to finish a bit of mending before I go to bed." "Right," he murmured. "Right, Deirdre!" The noise of the wind carried off the droning tones of his voice; but it was only a few moments before she heard his heavy breathing again. The Schoolmaster's sock which she was darning dropped from her hand. She stared into the darkness beyond the dip-light. She did not want to go to bed—to be alone in the darkness with her thoughts. In the kitchen she heard the creaking gossip of the fire and the whisper of falling embers. Besides, she wanted to keep her hands and brain busy. In the darkness there would be only the voice of the wind in her ears, and that was like the crying of her heart. She listened to the wind now. A mournful, passionate thing, it murmured about the house, rising wildly, desperately, in blasts of sudden rage, and fell back into a thin, pitiful wailing of helplessness and despair. She was afraid to listen long, afraid of what this communicating, interpreting murmur might do with her reason. Yet the wind was with her, she thought. The wind knew her heart—the wind was the voice of her heart crying out there in the darkness. She shivered, trying to banish the strange, fantastical ideas that swarmed upon her. How to pass the night—this long night in which she must not think, or feel. To-morrow McNab would be coming. "You pays y'r money and you takes y'r choice, Deirdre," he had said. She saw his face as he had spoken, his twisted, sallow face, the glimmering of his malicious eyes, with the smile that spilled over from them. She had made her choice. She had set her mind to it. There must be no wavering. If the Schoolmaster got off, she must marry McNab; if he was sentenced to three years imprisonment there would perhaps be time to scheme and out-manoeuvre him. She would set her wits to that. But she could not think of the next day. She must think of Davey, or Dan, or Steve—any of them. There must be no shrinking, shrieking, or failing. What had to be done, had to be done, and the first thing that had to be done was to give McNab her word. She picked up the sock she had been mending again. The needle slipped backwards and forwards, across, under and over, the dark threads. She worked steadily. The voice of the wind drew her mind again. It tugged gently and then carried her away on its plaintive wailing. Her hands fell in her lap as she listened. Her heart swayed; it went out to the wind again. There was a clatter of a horse's hoofs on the road. The sound startled her; but it was not until she heard the dogs barking in the yard that she realised some late rider had come to Steve's, that there would be food and drink, and probably a shakedown, to get ready. She waited for the sound of footsteps on the verandah and a rap on the door of the bar. The back-door flung open, and on a gust of wind and rain, a tall, gaunt figure swung into the kitchen. "Conal!" Deirdre cried, and flew to him. In her gladness at seeing him the past was a blurred page. She forgot it when she saw him in the doorway, his weather-beaten face turned to her. Her confidence in him, all the old joyous affection, rushed over her. His face was shining with rain, his hair and beard wet. From the way his breath came and went, and the muscles were whipped out from his neck, she knew that he had been riding hard. "They tell me Davey and Dan are on trial in Melbourne," he said. "Yes." "What happened? What's been doing, Deirdre?" he gasped. "I've only just heard of it. It's taken me a couple of days to get here. I don't know anything but what I've told you. Thought p'raps you could tell me something before I go up to them. And give me something to eat and drink.... I haven't had anything since yesterday morning." He wrenched off his wet coat and dropped into Steve's chair. He had a gauntness that Conal used not to have. But his eyes, those eyes of fierce tenderness, were the eyes of the big brotherly man who had been the companion of so many of her and the Schoolmaster's wanderings. She quickly put some food on the table for him, set the kettle on the bar over the fire, and while he was eating told him what she knew of Davey's arrest and Dan's going to swear Davey's innocence of the charge brought against him. "Why did he do that? Davey was more in it than he was," Conal asked savagely. "I don't know," Deirdre hesitated. "Yes, I do, Conal. It was because Mrs. Cameron—" "Oh, that was it, was it?" Conal went on eating, hungrily. "What do they say about here? Do they think Davey'll get off and Dan'll have to pay?" "You've heard of Mr. Cameron's death, Conal?" Deirdre asked. "They say that'll make all the difference. Davey can't very well be accused of stealing his own cattle, and McNab—" "What has he got to say about it? Of course it's his hand in it all." "He says ... I'm the cause...." Her voice faltered. "What's that?" Conal's knife and fork clattered to the table. "Did you know ..." she asked, "did you know, Conal, Steve and father came from the Island over there?" He moved, uneasily. "No," he said, but uncertainly. "Who says so?" "McNab. He did the chain trick here on Steve—scared him to death when he was by himself one afternoon. Seems he wasn't quite sure before, but Steve in his fright gave him all the proofs he wanted. And McNab's promised to use all he knows against father and Steve unless—Says he only put the troopers on to this cattle business to get you and Davey out of the way, though he had another score to work off against Mr. Cameron, too. But he says he always suspected ... about Steve and father, and was only waiting for a chance to be sure of it to make me ... make me marry him." "By God—" Conal spun from his chair. His oaths startled the birds from their night perches under the roof. "He'll not do that, Deirdre!" he cried. "Not while there's life in me. Rot him—the crawler! To come here scaring the wits out of you. I'll screw the last breath out of him, before—" He made for the door. Deirdre went after him. She put her hand on his arm. "You'll do no good now, Conal," she said. "You're done yourself. Rest till morning. Then you can go to McNab. If he knows there's a man about to stand by me, p'raps he won't dare to do what he said." Conal jerked himself away from her. "No, I'll swear he won't!" "But you'll do nothing at all if you go now," she urged, "and I'll have nobody without you. If you'll only rest and sleep now and go in the morning, it'll be better. You'll be able to put the fear of God into McNab perhaps if he sees you strong and ready to make him do what you want." "Sleep?" He cursed under his breath. "Do you think there's any sleep'll come to me when I think that McNab—a filthy, damned swine like McNab—could come near you. I'd kill him—kill him if he touched a hair of your head." Her hands fell from him. Conal's face was distorted with rage. His words brought back memory of the shot that had almost killed Davey. Conal guessed what her movement meant. "Do you still believe"—he lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. "Do you still believe I fired that shot in the dark, Deirdre?" "Did you, Conal?" she asked simply. He turned from her with a gesture of disappointment. "Oh, it was in anger, and when you weren't sure of what you were doing, I know," she cried. He opened the door. "You're not going to-night?" she asked. "No. You're right. It'll be better to wait till the morning," he said, with, for Conal, a strange quietude. "I want to give the mare a rub down and a feed. Are there any bones for Sally? Throw a shakedown by the fire for me. I'll be in directly." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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