CHAPTER XXII
THE LAST STRAW
Tom sat still in his bunk.
“A licht! A licht!” whispered a voice that he knew.
“He’ll hear ye, Mac; he’s only next door.”
“What’s about it? I’ll slit his juggler if he daurs to interfere. Heard ye that?”
“I did. That’s better!”
The crafty groom was snoring where he sat, with one eye at a cranny in the rude partition between his lair and the saddle-room. In the latter there was as yet no light.
“An’ that’s better still,” muttered Macbeth, as one was struck. “Slit his juggler?” he repeated with a chuckle. “I wadna think twice o’t, the mosing blackguard! Now whaur’s thae saddles, for my hands is free?” And his teeth snapped on something that gleamed between them in the light.
“Wait a bit. I smell the oil. Aha! here’s one.”
“An’ here’s the ither. Dinna heed the bridles. Awa’ we go afore Jarman turns in.”
Jarman was the squatter on the creek; the hour was still short of midnight; and Tom, who had bounded lightly to the floor, now stood irresolute. In the end he let the rascals go. Their footsteps had already left the saddle-room; the groom listened and lost them in the night; then he felt about for his clothes.
He was thankful he had not waylaid the thieves at the saddle-room door; the field would have been too unequal, the consequences perhaps too serious for one and all. And he foresaw the neatest triumph now. Jarman’s name had given him a foregone victory, for now he knew the way to Jarman’s ramshackle hut, and the saddles should be back upon their pegs before morning: so full was Tom of confidence as he dressed himself in the dark. But the thought of betraying his comrades in captivity was as far from his heart as that of allowing his master’s saddles to be quietly stolen before his eyes. Stolen they might be, but only for the moment; he would call in Macbeth and his mate to see how nice they looked in the morning.
In a few minutes he was fully dressed, and dodging Roberts (the night-watchman) behind the convict huts. No other man among them would have found this precaution necessary; but the groom was an unpopular character, whom Roberts would have reported none the less readily after winking (as he must have done) at the theft of the saddles. With luck and ingenuity Tom managed to elude him, however, and was soon racing down the wooded slope where the timber was being felled; leaping the stumps as he ran, and steering by the Southern Cross for the southern boundary of the farm, which was, in fact, the creek on whose further bank the squatter was now encamped.
It was a perilously clear night. A white moon grizzled the peeling bark of a small forest of red gums; and the famous constellation burnt but feebly in the south. Tom kept his eye on it, however, and bearing slightly to his left, struck the creek at last out of earshot of the squatter’s hut. Here he paused to cool his feet in the delicious running water. His plan was to cross the creek and then reconnoitre the enemy’s position from the rear. And so well did it work out that Tom skipped behind a friendly trunk just as the thieves succeeded in making Jarman hear, who now appeared with his black gin in the mouth of their wigwam.
New saddles? What in thunder was the use of new saddles, or old ones either, to him? Where was he to stow them in the meanwhile? Did they want him to be landed with the swag on his hands, and lagged all over again, to oblige a pair of lubbers like them? And here Tom felt that a door would have slammed had there been one; as it was, the outraged Jarman came to a pause for want of breath, and Macbeth got in his word at last.
Tom could not hear it. But it seemed to make a difference; it made the very plainest difference in the squatter’s tone.
“What? what’s that? I don’t believe it!” cried Jarman in one breath. “Take your oaths to it, will you? Well, if it’s a fact, it’ll bear thinking about. Said all that, did he? And you think he won’t go and round on us after all? Well, then, come inside and we’ll talk it over. In you go, missus, and light up.”
Tom took a peep as the men followed the black woman into the hovel. They had left the saddles outside; but to snatch them now was impossible. The sacking that did duty for a door had been drawn aside and hitched to a nail; on the lighting of a candle stuck in a bottle within, some eager face was revealed to Tom whenever he dared to look from behind his tree. Even if he were not seen he would be heard. Besides, the party might break up at any moment.
So he stood where he was, and listened to the voices, but ceased straining after the words. Then a cork popped; the voices were raised in a minute; in less than ten he must hear every syllable, whether he would or no. But he would, for his own name was on their lips, coupled with hideous imprecations and the name of Mr. Nat.
“You savvy?” said the Scotchman’s mate, a young convict known as Brummy. “He wants to get the bloke his fifty, if not his spell in the crawlers too!”
“An’ sairves him richt!” cried Macbeth, with an oath. “Didna’ he squeak and get me my fifty for you screw-hammer? Man, but he’ll be squeakin’ fine the noo!”
“You’ve only to say Erichsen brought ’em,” added Brummy, “and you were too drunk to see what they were, or you’d never have taken them in.”
“He’ll know different!”
“Ay, but he’s going to pretend,” explained the Scot, “an’ you’ve just to do the same.”
“Then I’m to lug them back myself, ami?”
“First thing in the morning; and the cove’ll tip you the stumpy himself.”
“The young cove?”
“Yes.”
“Dinna we keep tellin’ ye it’s Nat’s idee? He thairsts for that man’s blood as much as I do mysel’. An’ I’d slit’s juggler if I got the chance!”
The villains went on talking for another hour. But the foul truth clogged Tom’s mind, and he took in but little more of what he heard.
So it was not a theft, but a conspiracy; and the archconspirator was the beast that Tom had cared for in his cups; the petty tyrant whose property he was even now risking his life to rescue—from his own confederates! Tom ground his teeth. He would rescue it still. And not only Macbeth and Brummy, but Mr. Nat himself, should see the saddles on their pegs in the morning.
The villains went on drinking as they talked. Another cork popped; yet the moon was still high in the lucid heavens when the two convicts staggered off. Jarman at once put out his light; and, in a little, all was still but the leaves, the locusts, and the tiny tributary of the Hunter in which Tom had laved his feet.
He came from behind his tree. The saddles were still outside.
He stole near: nearer yet: near enough to hear Jarman and his gin already breathing heavily in their sleep.
But they might not be sleeping heavily; and what if they awoke? The stirrup-irons might ring together. Tom knelt down and crossed the leathers over the top of each saddle. The new pigskin might creak, for all the oil it had absorbed; in fact, it did, as Tom lifted the saddles; and he stood there with one on each arm, ready to fling them down and to fight for them still. But nothing happened. So he crept away.
This time he crossed the creek without dallying, and only halted within a few hundred yards of the farm buildings. Here he sat on a stump, mopped his forehead, and wondered whether he should take the trouble to elude the night-watchman a second time; and as he sat the moon twinkled in the four stirrup-irons, which shone like silver, they were so beautifully clean; and as he was admiring them it suddenly came home to Tom the groom that he had cleaned those stirrup-irons himself.
Yes! in spite of all, he had taken a sort of involuntary pride in his work. And that was another thing for which his fellow-convicts had cursed and hated him. But tonight he scorned and cursed himself for it, with twice their bitterness, and an oath broke into a sob as he caught up the saddles and started to his feet.
In a word, the sight of his own honest handiwork, so cruelly thrown away, drew blood from a heart that had remained adamant under studied provocation, and cool, but a minute since, in the face of monstrous treachery. To have done a hand’s-turn for such wretches! That was the intolerable thought. It awoke the reckless rebel that had slept so long in this tortured bosom. Not another stroke of willing work would he do; he would be as his fellows from that moment; only, beginning there and then, he would condescend to hide and dodge no more. So the groom marched boldly upon the gate across which Mr. Nat had pointed with his whip to the lights of Castle Sullivan, and would have slammed the gate behind him, but for one circumstance. Mr. Nat was leaning against it now.
Nor was he alone. The girl O’Brien was at his side. Tom was upon them before he could check his steps; but he did not try. He strode up to his enemy and stood before him without a word, but with a saddle speaking for itself on either arm.
“Well—well?” cried Mr. Nat. “What are you doing out of your room? And what—what—what have you got there?”
“The new saddles.”
“So I see. My saddles. What have you been doing with them? Where did you find them, eh?”
The tone was loud and blustering, but uncertain and surprised. In the moonlight Tom looked his enemy coolly and steadily in the face. And the girl drew away from her companion and gazed at Tom, who never so much as glanced at her as he replied:—
“They were stolen. Thieves broke into the saddle-room and stole your saddles. I heard them and followed them, but I never saw their faces close to, and I wouldn’t swear to a voice. I followed them to Jarmant hut; and, you see, I’ve brought you your saddles back.”
Mr. Nat never said a word. His blue eyes glared fixedly at Tom, out of a white face, from which the girl O’Brien edged further and further away.
“No; I can’t tell you who the men were,” continued Tom. “But I can tell you who put them up to it. It was not a convict, Mr. Sullivan, but a meaner hound than any convict on your farm. One who has a special spite against me— the Lord knows why! So he bribed these men to take the saddles, simply in order to get me into trouble. What do you think of that? I overheard all about it out at Jarman’s hut. I heard his name, too. Would you like to know what it is?”
“Sure it’s himself—the dhirty divil!”
And Peggy O’Brien was at Tom’s side, with one hand clutching his arm, and the other pointing scornfully at the baleful blue eye and the vile, quivering lips of the younger Sullivan.
What followed was the affair of a moment. It was as if a mad bull had made a rush, though whether at the girl, or Tom, or both, it was impossible to say. Tom thought the first, dropped the saddles, and his right arm flew out from the shoulder. A sharp smack, a heavy thud, and Nat Sullivan lay in a heap on the ground, with a livid mark between the ear and the eye that lay upturned to the moon.
“Ye’ve kilt’m—ye’ve kilt’m!” cried the girl, clinging in terror to Tom’s arm.
“I hope I have,” he answered. “It will be a good thing done for all concerned.”
“Whisht! They’ll be afther hearin’ ye—look behind!”
Even as he turned, the gate swung open, and there was Dr. Sullivan himself, with his frogged coat flying, and his night-shirt flapping outside his nankeen breeches. The watchman Roberts was at his master’s naked heels, closely followed by Ginger the overseer, in similar dishabille. These two seized Tom, who showed no semblance of resistance, while the doctor knelt over the fallen man, and felt his heart.
“Only stunned,” said he, looking up. “But you shall smart for this, you miscreant, if you don’t hang yet! The very man he warned me against—the very man whose part I took against him! What have you to say for yourself, you ruffian, before I have you put in irons and locked up?”
“You saw the blow, Dr. Sullivan?”
“You dare to ask me? With my own eyes, you villain!”
“Then you also saw the cause.”
“Cause? What cause? As if there could be any!”
“He would have struck a woman if I hadn’t struck him first.”
“It’s a lie,” said a hollow voice from the ground. And a bloodthirsty eye covered Tom.
“Ha, my boy! Thank God you are no worse; but sit still and leave this dog to me. A woman, do you say? An impudent slut who’s at the bottom of the whole mischief, and shall go back to Government to-morrow! Be off, you hussy! Be off to your bed before I have you taken there by force!”
Peggy glanced at Tom, and only went at his nod; the tacit interchange brought Nat to a sitting posture with doubled fists.
“I was ordering her there myself,” he vowed. “I had found her prowling about.”
“A brazen baggage!” cried Dr. Sullivan. “Not another female will I ever apply for; they are ten times worse than the men. So you thought he was going to strike her, did you? Anything else, I wonder?”
“Nothing that you will believe. But he was at the bottom of a plot to get me flogged for nothing: he had bribed two of the men to steal those saddles that you see, and put it on me; but I followed them and had got your property back, when at the gate here—”
“I’ll stop his lies!” said Nat, and staggered to his feet, but the doctor pinned him by the arm.
“You will not! You will leave him to me,” said the father, sternly. He was the stronger man; the son stood quelled. “We know they’re lies,” the doctor added; “all convicts are liars. Have any two men been out of the huts to-night, Roberts?”
“Not one, sir—out of the huts. I can swear to that. How this one escaped me—”
“It makes no matter,” said Dr. Sullivan, gripping his son’s arm still. “The saddles are not the point. I saw the blow, and shall inquire into nothing else. The blow, you ruffian, you shall answer for tomorrow before the nearest magistrate. Now take him away. Clap him in the heaviest irons we’ve got. Come, make haste: let me see him in front of me!”
So Tom was led off, unresisting still, but scornfully silent now, between watchman and overseer; and the father stalked, and the son slouched, behind.