CHAPTER XVIII.
When Sprague reached camp he found a visitor in the bunk above his own—the overseer of Kippara Station—and he climbed into bed without disturbing him.
In the morning a red face peered down on him from the clouds of a half-awakened brain.
“Where did you get to last night?” it demanded.
Sprague yawned and threw back the blankets.
“I went up to the hotel.”
The overseer winked comprehensively.
“What's her name?”
“Jemima Jorrocks,” said Sprague.
“Um! Sounds attractive; where did you get the clobber?”
“Didn't need any,” said Sprague, setting “light” to the fire. “I went to the fancy-dress ball as a boundary rider.”
The overseer sat on the edge of his bunk and regarded Sprague with as much surprise as he ever allowed to sit on his immobile features.
“By gad, you've got a nerve!” he commented. “There's a letter for you in my saddlebag. Seen anything of the bar-seven yearlings?”
But Sprague had gone out to the stable. It was the first letter he had received for six months, and although contained in a few lines of particularly clear writing he read it three times:
- Dear Sprague: I am back here in Sydney with my wife; please let me know where I can see you as soon as possible on important business. How goes the destiny? Yours in haste,
He thrust it into his pocket with a muttered exclamation, and went into the hut.
“Yes,” he said, as if the conversation had never been interrupted; “I found them halfway to their old run; the fence went down in the night. Do you mind telling me what day of the week this is?”
“Friday.”
“Thanks.” Sprague was scribbling a note in pencil. “Perhaps you wouldn't mind posting this as soon as possible. When will you be going back?”
The overseer pondered the matter while he warmed his hands at a roaring fire. It was nothing for a boundary rider to forget the day of the week and arrive at the station for his supply of tucker on Tuesday under the firm impression that it was Sunday; but this young man puzzled him somewhat; he had never met with a “new chum” at once so absent-minded and so competent.
“Well,” he mused, “I was out after those yearlings; but, seeing you found them, I don't see anything to keep me. I'll start when I've had breakfast.”
“Ah, yes,” said Sprague; “I forgot that.” And busied himself with the billy.
“Do you often forget breakfast?”
The overseer was following his movements with amused interest.
“I left it off with my shaving,” said Sprague; “it saves trouble.”
“I suppose it does,” the agreed. “What are you getting?”
Sprague paused in the process of mixing damper.
“Either a pound or twenty-five shillings—I forget which.”
“Oh, you forget your wages, do you? It strikes me you're getting a trifle too forgetful altogether; what do you say to working about the station for thirty?”
Sprague shook his head and clicked to the lid of the camp oven.
“No, thanks,” he said; “this is good enough for me.”
He had told Stone to come to Kippara—he had no wish to go to Sydney—and for two days the monotony of life was relieved by anticipation of the meeting. On the evening of the third he came home to find a note propped against a jam tin on the table, and as he read it the veins throbbed at his temples.
He crumpled it into a savage ball, thrust it deep into a trouser pocket, and most of the night paced the mud floor of the camp.
With the dawn he was in the saddle and riding the southeast boundary like a madman. He had eaten nothing, but by noon he felt no fatigue, and was only forced to return by the snow that fell and drifted before the wind in ceaseless clouds. His horse took him home, for now it was impossible to see a yard beyond the beast's ears; and on entering the stable he saw that he had a visitor, for the other's horse—an overfed hotel hack, was tethered in a far stall.
Sprague opened the hut door with some interest. It could hardly be Stone.
The man was sitting by the fire, his back to the door, but he turned as the chill air fanned his neck, and Sprague found himself confronting Mr. Walker—aggressively prosperous as ever.
“Good day,” he said.
Sprague nodded, and proceeded to shake the snow from his hat and boots.
“I lost my way,” volubly proceeded the land agent. “Must have got rattled, I guess. Such a country! I had no notion Australia could be like this. I've seen it in Montana worse than this—forty below zero—but this is an elegant sufficiency for me now. I tell you I was mighty glad to hit your cabin, Mr.”
“Sprague,” said that gentleman, seating himself on a-packing case and struggling with a riding boot.
Mr. Walker's mouth opened slightly, and remained open; then he rose from his seat and advanced with a fat hand outstretched.
Sprague appeared not to notice it; he had been wondering where the smell of whisky was coming from, but as the land agent moved nearer the light he ceased to speculate.
“Why, I'm mighty glad to see you, Mr. Sprague,” he said; then, apparently seized with an inspiration: “Have a drink.” He drew a heavy flask from his hip pocket.
“No, thanks,” said Sprague.
“Come, man; it'll warm you up.”
The other shook his head.
“On the water wagon?” queried the land agent lightly.
“No.”
“Then what's the matter? It's the right stuff.”
“I don't want to drink with you,” said Sprague.
“Why?”
“Because I don't like you.”
Mr. Walker stood looking down on him for a moment; then he laughed and turned to the fire.
“Well, that's plain, anyway,” he said, addressing a sputtering ironbark log; he nodded at it with the air of one exercising a generous tolerance. “And I can hardly wonder at it; I knew you were number two, Mr. Sprague, and I”
But there he stopped. For a paralyzing moment he thought that the tall man with the beard was going to strike him.
“Don't talk about it!” snapped Sprague. “D'you hear? Talk about money! Oh, you must stop here till the blizzard's over,” he added as the other waddled to the door; “but don't talk about that, or—I'll kick you as you kicked my dog!”
A second later he could have bitten his tongue out for the words. The land agent revived like a drooping flower after a shower of rain.
“Oh,” he said, “so you've seen my wife!” And, receiving no answer, he returned to his seat by the fire. “Queer!” he mused aloud. “She never told me about it.”
Sprague's gaze was centered on the white square of window. It was now quite dark, and the cold had increased, for the snow clung to the glass without melting. Presently he turned from it to the fire.
“Look here, Mr. Walker,” he said deliberately, “we dislike each other for our own particular reasons; we're thrown together as long as this storm lasts; let's make the best of an uncomfortable position. Avoid personalities; if you must talk, as I've said, talk about money. For instance, how is Walker's Forest progressing?”
The land agent bridled.
“And supposing I choose to use personalities? I want to give you a hint for your own good, Mr. Sprague; you may remember what I said to you one night on Queenscliff”
“Then I shall be forced to pitch you out into the snow,” said Sprague.
Mr. Walker seemed to digest this ultimatum, and came to the conclusion that the other meant it; also that it is a distressing thing to meet people who mean things when they say them in a twelve-by-fifteen hut, five miles from anywhere. He fell to pondering an entirely new problem, namely, how to “crush” a man who has no money and less respect for it.
So the strangely assorted pair passed the evening, and in the morning the storm was still raging.
“A three days' blizzard,” Sprague commented at the breakfast table; “straight from the worst quarter.”
Mr. Walker pushed back his packing case with a grunt, and consulted his watch as if it supplied an indication of the weather.
“I'm going,” he said shortly. “How long would it take me to get to the hotel?”
“Five miles—against this?” reflected Sprague. “And with a livery-stable horse? About five hours if you got there at all.”
The land agent buttoned his coat deliberately.
“I've ridden against worse than this in Montana,” he said.
“So have I,” Sprague answered, lighting his pipe; “but you'll find it quite bad enough. Don't go on my account; I assure you I am as happy as the flowers in May, and I warn you it is madness.”
His words had an unlooked-for effect. It was not a very striking effect—it might have escaped some people, but Sprague noticed, through a cloud of tobacco smoke, that the other's eyes narrowed, after a manner of their own, and became momentarily fixed.
“So you've been in Montana?” he said, forgetting his rôle of offended dignity.
“Yes,” said Sprague, “I've been in Montana.” He blew a thin column of smoke toward the roof. “But you needn't disturb yourself; I know nothing about it.”
With his head bowed to the blizzard, Mr. Walker muttered into his collar: “I thought we had a corner on bluff. I wonder”
And he continued to wonder for several hours after he had left the little hut behind him.