CHAPTER XVI.
Snow lay on Monaro; and still drifted down from a leaden sky. Gum-tree branches in full leaf creaked and snapped under the burden of it, and the roar of Snowy River was muffled to a low murmur by the tunnel of ice that hemmed it in.
Somewhere up in the white silence of the hill a bell tinkled faintly, and, growing in volume, burst into a loud jangling, as a band of yearling horses, with streaming, untrimmed manes and tails, broke from the bush and came to a sudden halt on the open plain.
A rider followed at a gallop, and, reining in his steaming horse, dismounted to tighten a girth. Seemingly his work was done, for, after casting a backward glance at the horses, he rode slowly back the way he had come.
At a break in the boundary fence, where an overtaxed bloodwood had crashed through rails and wire, he dismounted again, and roughly repaired them, while the yearlings he had left on the plain half an hour before stole back to watch his final efforts with pricked ears and distended nostrils.
When he had strained the last wire the man shook his fist at them defiantly.
“How now, my braves?” he quoted. “Methinks I have thee on the hip!” After which extraordinary pronouncement, he mounted and cantered easily down the stock route to camp.
It was the same as five other boundary riders' camps on Kippara Station twelve by fifteen, built of ironbark slabs, papered with full-page illustrations from the Worker, the Sydney Mail, and the ubiquitous Bulletin, and furnished with an open fireplace of water-worn river cobbles, a table, a couple of packing cases, and bunks made of chaff bags slung on saplings. Sprague had come to know each of the five as only a man can who lives alone, and had reached the conclusion that they differed solely in the number and virility of the cockroaches that played hide and seek on their walls.
Small things had always interested him, and now he had developed an almost unwholesome eye for detail. There were ten sheets of iron on the roof of the camp, and fifty corrugations on each sheet. There were three Norman Lindsay cartoons on the walls of camp No. 2, and five in camp No. 4; seventy-five river cobbles in the fireplace of camp No. 3, and eighty-two in camp No. 5. All these things he knew without knowing that he knew them, until one evening he caught himself recalling Stone's minute calculations in the Cascade lumbering camp, and realized, with something of a shock, that he was inclining toward a like proficiency. Was he, too, becoming a “mechanical contrivance for doing some crude work”? Perhaps; and, if so, what of it? Better an efficient machine than a human failure.
To-night, after the inevitable damper, tea, corned beef, and pickles, he stood in the doorway, smoking and thinking, as he had smoked and thought every night for the past three months. The sun was sinking below the distant edge of the plain, and the glory of its dying rays touched with magic, rose-tipped fingers the vast snow plains of Mount Kosciusko. The majestic beauty of the scene had often brought balm to his soul, but to-night, for some reason, its spell was lacking; he was conscious of a vague unrest, as if the twin devils of doubt and discontent that he had conquered were rising again to torture him. Was it possible that this life was to be his destiny? Was it possible, when the plots of three excellent plays and numberless stories ran riot in his brain, shouting to be written?
Suddenly he looked up. So faintly as to be almost inaudible, he heard the strains of a waltz—one—two bars before it died away as magically as it had come; of course, the wind had veered, and the string orchestra was playing on the rink of the Kosciusko Hotel.
The tiny snatch of music had a strange effect on Sprague. It was as if a voice from the outside world had called—and he must obey. For perhaps half an hour he fought the inclination; then, on an impulse, he saddled his horse and set out, at first picking circuitous ways around newly formed snowdrifts, then plunging recklessly through them, until at the end of an hour's hard riding he reined in on an eminence, to breathe his horse, and looked across a snow-clad valley to where a constellation of twinkling lights picked out the hotel.
He gave his horse to one of the stable hands, and, ignoring the mild interrogation of the man's look, strode around to the hall.
Under ordinary circumstances, the appearance of a tall, bearded man in work-worn moleskins might have created something of a sensation in Australia's haunt of winter fashion; but to-night a fancy-dress ball was in progress, and in the press Sprague went unnoticed,
Up and down the stairs passed endless streams of Gretchens, Pierrots, and what not, filling the great hall with a restless sea of heterogeneous humanity; and Sprague had almost persuaded himself that he was back at a Swiss winter resort of his acquaintance when a youth with a slightly flushed face and an irresponsible manner flung himself on the next seat and dispelled the illusion by addressing him in unadulterated Australian:
“By cripes, this costume'll be the death of me!” His body and legs were incased in genuine kangaroo skin—which perhaps accounted for the perspiration that streamed down his face—and the “property” head of the animal dangled in dislocated abandon over his left shoulder.
“They told me in there,” he continued, pointing an accusing finger in the direction of the dining room, “that kangaroos can't dance; but I showed 'em. I hopped through a waltz and half through the lancers, but they chucked me out. Said kangaroos couldn't dance.”
“Too bad,” murmured Sprague sympathetically.
“That's right. I told 'em they were scared of me getting away with the first prize, and they said I was drunk. I asked 'em how a kangaroo could get drunk if it couldn't dance—or how it could get drunk and not dance—or something—and they chucked me out. Rotten lot! Absolutely rotten lot! What'er you supposed to be?”
“A boundary rider,” said Sprague.
“Bonzer; absolutely bonzer! Where did you rake up the beard?”
“I grew it.”
“Then, my oath, you've got the prize. Help!”
For a moment the kangaroo seemed in danger of succumbing to the mirth provoked by this pleasantry, but rallied sufficiently to lean back in his chair and shake an aggressive fist at a knot of men gathered about the dining-room door.
“Rotten lot!” he murmured. “Absolutely rotten lot! And the women—wouldn't have 'em on me mind! They're women, all right, down in Sydney; but give 'em climate à la Kosciusko, and watch the pedestal act. It's wonderful what climate will do.”
The kangaroo sighed.
“There's one blessing about it, though,” he added pensively. “None of 'em are fit to look at, anyway—except her.” His eyes snapped at the mention of the magic pronoun. “You know who I mean; half the hotel's chipping me about it, but, my troubles, she's bonzer!”
Sprague was constrained to admit that “she” was.
“She's open air, and she's Australian—but she's got ankles—I've been to Europe, and know what I'm talking about; if there's one in this hotel can hold a candle to her—I'll eat my shirt; and it's a shrieking, sickening sin to see her wasting herself on that potbellied American who wears his hair 'basin' cut and eats soup like a suction pump.”
The kangaroo leaned back, simmering in righteous indignation.
“I took 'em for father and daughter till she told me; never got such a shock in me life. Not that it made much difference, because nothing can get within cooee of her but that mangy black pup of hers. Says it's a cocker spaniel—looks to me more like a cross between a hearthrug and a coal shovel. What's that?”
“I only asked her name.”
Sprague was leaning over the arm of his chair.
“Name! Don't you know little Mrs. Walker? How long have you been here?”
Sprague glanced at the clock.
“About half an hour,” he said; “and I must be going.”
“Then you're not staying here? Who the devil are you?”
“I told you,” said Sprague; “I'm a boundary rider. Good night.”
He was halfway to the stables when something ran between his legs, almost upsetting him, and by the time he had regained his balance Robert was on him like a thing demented.
For a moment Sprague hesitated—and was lost.
“Hullo, you old blackguard!” he whispered, and administered a hurried, old-time salute on the dog's ribs; but Robert cringed from him with a yelp of pain.
Afterward—long afterward—Sprague told himself that he had intended to go; it was that unaccustomed yelp that detained him. He knelt at the dog's side in the snow, and saw by the light from a window that its left foreleg was stiff and useless. He touched it gingerly, and Robert licked his hand.
“Don't do that!” came a peremptory voice from somewhere above him. “He's lame; he” Then a hand descended on his shoulder. “You!” said Meg.