I

"Too dange-rous now … bush-rangin'."

"Not when it is done for pleasure."

Henny pushed back her great bonnet to peer through the twilight at the man sitting by the table. "Yer voice has changed sence yer uster come here tattooin' the boys, Robert Snow."

"Probably. I have changed."

"Well. Gimme a good safe job as shepherd 'n I'd stick to it."

"Probably."

She moved uneasily, rubbing her sinewy hands up her wrinkled face…. Somethin' about the feller, she thought. Settin' there with his little smile. "Well. What yer want to go bush-rangin' fur?"

"I have told you. Pleasure."

"'Tain't so pop'lar as it was. The tavern-keepers likely won't help a outlaw now. Too smug. Yer'll have every man's hand agin yer."

"As it should be. My hand is against every man."

From him it somehow did not sound ridiculous. It sounded almost like a fair deal.

"Want to git a bit o' yer own back?" she suggested.

"Your notion of pleasure too? Yes."

"Well. If yer git caught, whar do I come in?"

"You don't come in, any more than you ever did."

"Collins wouldn't of larsted so long wi'out me behind him. Or Rocky Wheelan. Or Wingy."

"All men have cause for gratitude to some woman." Snow laid a purse on the table. "There will be three of us. And horses. You can show me the caves?"

"To-night?"

"That is why I am here."

"His voice is dif'runt," muttered Henny, uneasily. But she rose and took a lantern from a dirty shelf. Her witch face showed page 247in the gleam from the sputtering yellow lucifer; and then she swung the lantern up suddenly before him. "You're goin' killin', Robert Snow!"

"Do you really think so?"

The dark thin face with its small smile did not change. The narrowed eyes met hers steadily. She wavered; shot a glance at the purse on the table; gave a slight shiver. "Well, there's some likes a high death, apparently. Come."

He followed her into the night. Aromatic scents of the bush, its complete darkness rose about him in an instant. A broken ripple ran on the polished leaves as the lantern swung and the track climbed steadily. Burnt trees advanced in black masses among the grey rocks; retired; left only the rocks in a steep dried water-course. Snow followed Henny up it with cat steps under tall thick tree-ferns that met overhead and gleamed here and there with the pin-prick eyes of opossums. They left the stones and his feet rustled on fallen gum leaves with their acrid smell. Henny swept aside an armful of hanging creepers against the hillside. "'Ware snakes," she said mechanically, and vanished. Within, a stream ran down a narrow gut. They followed it up for perhaps ten minutes, stepped aside, and Henny swung the lantern round as Snow smelt sudden dryness and old horse dung.

"Here they kep' the horses," said Henny. "They lived beyond, A heap o' caves beyond." Her face showed sudden greed. "Collins left a heap o' stuff buried off there somewheres. I ain't never found it."

"Inconsiderate of Collins," said Snow. He glanced round, lifting his thin shoulders, drawing a long, contented breath. Here, below the earth where men trod, away from men's eyes, he felt himself once more a man. Outside he was an "old lag"; a man from the triple-sentence prison of Port Arthur. Give a dog a bad name … that was what it meant. Ostracism among the virtuous ticket-of-leavers, the still more virtuous freed men. An old lag. No getting over that. No use talking.

Get a bit of his own back? Ah, and so he would, on the world as well as on Mab Comyn who had destroyed him at his pleasure and put him back in an alien world at his pleasure. Yes, he would get a bit of his own back there.

page 248

Accustomed to darkness—he had spent much time here and there in the Model Prison—he moved round the walls, feeling the rough mangers, the rusty piles of hay. His feet came among corn-husks. Rats, that, and 'possums. Here was the smell and feel of leather: saddles with the stuffing eaten out of them, gnawed bridles. Collins had gone off in a hurry, as bush-rangers always did go … as Snow would, in the end. As he would go, with every man's hand against him and every woman's. Yes, even that of the girl whose baby face he had painted. It had something of the baby look still: clear forehead, soft contours, the flush of youth. But her eyes and mouth were a woman's.

From the inner caves Henny returned, grumbling in her prison slang. The lantern-light struck a pointed gleam from a silver teaspoon in her hand. "Collins et well. Crested silver, eh? I carn't find no more."

Now the moon was up, turning the drooping fern fronds, the smooth white tree boles into splendour. The warm night drew the flavour of the bush, of some crushed plant poignantly sweet. There were delicate stirrings in the air; a peaceful sense of those great forests, untrod, untroubled, lying at rest along the hills. Near by, a magpie sent out one full-throated call, tucked his head under his wing with a sleepy chuckle. Moths like frail spirits bewitched out of nothingness by the night showed a delicate wing and were gone again. Snow stood, savouring the wonder, shaken by the beauty into an artist's passion. This only was life; this unearthly mystery pouring from the heavens; this utter calm whereby man attained communion with the unreachable gods.

Henny turned her witch face under the grotesque bonnet; beckoned with a horny finger.

With a faint sigh, Snow tramped on, his thin twisted lips smiling.