'Might be better--might be worse, missus. Can't complain,' said the man civilly.
'Wasn't this Ballarat Harry's claim?' she inquired, with an assumption of carelessness, though her voice trembled and her cheek paled. 'You bought him out?'
'That's so. Sold it to Yorkey Dickson and me. Yorkey's below. We very nigh had to fight for it, after that. Some of the "Tips" tried to bluff us out of it. Harry was a-comin' to see us through. Leastways he told a young man as we sent to him. But he never turned up. That was queer, wasn't it?'
'And you never seen him after?'
'Not a sign of him. Yorkey was for goin' into Omeo after him. Only we heard he was off for Melbourne. So we didn't bother, and the jumpers gave us best next day.'
'It _was_ strange!' she said musingly. 'He was never the man to say he'd do a thing and then change his mind. No; good or bad, he'd stick to it, poor Lance! Well, I must be going. So 'long.'
Slowly the woman rode forward--rode along lost in thought, while the mare, keeping to the track instinctively, like most bush hackneys, shuffled along at her fast amble till they came to the Mountain Ash Flat, which lay between this reef and Omeo.
Here the mare made as if to follow an old cattle track, at right angles to the road, of which she possibly had previous knowledge.
'Won't do, old woman,' said Kate, aroused from her reverie by the slight change of direction; 'what road's this, I wonder? More tracks than one along it--one would think it led somewhere.' She stooped low from her horse, scanning with keen and practised vision the footmarks upon the pathway. 'God in heaven!' she suddenly exclaimed, 'how did that come there?'
In an instant she was off her horse and eagerly grasping at a glittering speck amid the grass. It was a chain--a gold watch-chain with a curious coin attached, which she knew well. She had often playfully noticed the female face upon it. Here it was. She held it to the light. A part was dimmed and mud-encrusted. It had been trodden into the earth, but since washed by the rain. And what was the stain, dark red across the gold?
'_His_ chain--Lance Trevanion's chain!' she murmured to herself. 'How did it come here? Of course he may have dropped it. I'll run these tracks a bit. It looks as if--as if--but no! surely, it can't--_can't have been_. Oh, my God! they never could have _murdered him_!' As she muttered to herself, in disjointed and broken sentences, she led her horse along the narrow track, searching eagerly for the signs of passage or conflict--tokens that lie clearer than the printed page to the vision of the Children of the Waste. Yes! there _were_ footmarks, deeply indented in places, as of men that bore a burden. Here was a fragment of a check shirt of the pattern the bush labourer mostly wears, there a scrap of paper; and at a turn in the thicket-bordered path a long-abandoned shaft came into view. Lower she bent, and lower still, scanned yet more earnestly the slight mark of impress, invisible save to eyesight keen as those of the wild tribes which had been wont to roam these lonely wastes.
'The grass is longer here,' she whispered to herself in low and ghastly tones. 'Something's been _dragged_ this way; the edge of the shaft looks broken down. Oh, my God! poor Lance, poor fellow, is this what you've come to after all?'
With stern set lips and eyes dry yet burning with deep unsparing hate, she secured her horse to a sapling. Then lying flat upon the earth, leaned over the edge of the dark unfathomed pit, and gazed into its depths, half dreading what her boding fears had shaped. She called too, at first brokenly, then loudly on him by name--'but none answered.' The tree limbs they had cast down had been lately dragged a few paces. The recent mark did not escape her watchful eye. As she looked heavenward in her despair she caught sight of a soaring eagle. On an adjacent tree sat a detachment of crows; she knew too well what their presence portended.
She drew herself upward, then walked slowly, almost totteringly, toward the patient mare. But before reaching her she dropped suddenly on her knees, and raising her clasped hands cried aloud, 'As God Almighty hears me this day, I swear that I will take neither rest nor food until I've got the tracks of the murdering dogs that killed the man I loved. Oh, Lance, Lance! It was a bad day for you when we met first. But I'll have revenge on your murderers--revenge--blood for blood--cowards and thieves that they are. They had him crooked, I'll take my oath. And now, Lawrence Trevenna,' she said, rising from her knees, 'it's you or I for it--my life against yours to the bitter end,' she continued, in the same broken, muttering monologue which she had half unconsciously used since she had commenced to follow the trail of blood. Half mechanically she loosed the mare and remounted. Then, giving the reins a shake, the tireless animal dashed off at half speed--a pace from which her rider never slackened until she reined up, after the darkening eve had dimmed the outlines of forest and mountain, within sight of the lights of Omeo.
She had covered nearly seventy miles since daylight. Yet the fast gliding pace at which she rode up the main street indicated no trace of fatigue on the part of her hackney. For herself, every nerve seemed at fullest tension; she felt as if she could have ridden day and night for a week.
Attaching the bridle-rein to one of the iron staples with which the verandah of the chief hostelry was supplied, she went at once to the principal store, never very far from the hotel in country townships.
'Mr. Barker in?' she inquired of a tall slouching youth who was gravely engaged in selling matches to a Chinaman. Economical of speech, like most of his countrymen, he silently pointed to a stout man in a check shirt standing before a desk. To him Kate walked.
'You're Mr. Barker?' He nodded. 'Well, I'm Mrs.
Trevenna! Has my husband, Lawrence Trevenna, been here lately?'
'I don't know as I remember,' said the trader cautiously; 'what sort of looking man is he, missus?'
'Tall and dark; what most men and all fools of women call handsome. He _said_ he was going to Monaro, but he's working a "cross," it seems to me. I shouldn't wonder if he's gone to Melbourne.'
'There's no one left here for Melbourne, or indeed for anywheres, lately, except Ballarat Harry,' answered Barker. 'We know him well enough, and your description fits him to a hair. There's been a young lady as come from England all the way to marry him. It was quite pretty to see 'em together.'
'So he's gone to Melbourne--Ballarat Harry, I mean?' she asked. 'Did he talk of being back soon?'
'Well, didn't say much one way or t'other. Rather short and grumpy he was lately, was Harry. I hardly knowed him, he seemed so different. He'd had a row with some chap too, and got his face pasted a bit. P'raps that made him cut up rough like.'
'Was he badly cut, then,' asked the woman, gazing earnestly in the trader's face, 'or just a bit of a rally like--half in joke, half in earnest?'
'Not it. A regular hard-fought battle. A fight to a finish, if ever there was one. First time I didn't notice it so much. Next time I saw he'd had a fearful pounding. But I expect he's all right now.'
'All right--very likely,' assented the woman absently. 'Can you tell me where the police barracks are?'
'There's the place, near that big fallen tree, but there's no one in it.
Tracy went away home to White Rock yesterday. The other chap went away with the gold escort.'
'How far to White Rock?'
'A good thirty mile. There's a straight road; you can't miss it. It starts south as soon as you cross the bridge over the creek.'
'All right,' she answered, 'there's no turn off?'
'No; half-way you come to a shepherd's hut. There's no one living there now. Keep it on your left, and the track gets plain again.'
'Thanks; good-night. I must see Tracy on business. I shall be there by bedtime, I expect.'
Then fared she forth into the night. No rest, no food for steed or rider till her errand should be done. The game, bright-eyed mountain mare, as much refreshed by the halt as a less high-caste steed would have been by a feed of corn, started away as if just mounted. Kate patted the smooth arching neck. 'Carry me well to-night, Wallaroo, and you'll never have another hard day's work as long as you live. Not if I own you, anyhow.
And it'll have to be bad times when we're parted.'
Away through the darksome close-ranked forest groves--away through the rocky defiles where the mare's bare hoofs rang from time to time as on metal--away through sedgy morass and water-laden plain--away through the long gray tussac grass, which rustled wiry and dry in the hoar-frost.
The stars burned and scintillated in the dark blue cloudless sky. The low moon rose and stared--redly, weird, and witch-like--upon the solitary woman threading alone the dim desolate waste. All silently, yet surely, the slow hours sped. Still wound the forest path, serpent-like, amid untouched primeval giants. Still clattered the fleet mare's hoofs along the uneven trail. The great constellation of the southern heavens had changed the aspect of its cross when a chorus of barking dogs disclosed the outpost of law and order. A couple of huts, a slab stable, a small but securely fenced paddock, made up the establishment. She rode up to the gate of the little garden, and throwing down her reins as she slipped from the saddle, walked stiffly to the door of the cottage. She rapped sharply with the end of her riding-whip.
'Who's there?' a man called out.
'It's me--Kate Trevenna. Police work. Look alive.'
'All right, Mrs. Trevenna,' replied a cheery voice. 'Wait till I strike a light. Here we are. Walk in and sit down.'
'Oh, it's you, Tracy; I'm glad of that. Look here, is your horse in the stable and fit?'
'Fit as a fiddle; what's up?'
'Hell's up--murder--robbery--the devil's turned out, or something like it. You'll have to ride, I tell you. Where's Dayrell?'
'At Warrandorf, fifty miles off.'
'That's all right,' she answered; 'he'll do it yet, if he's sharp. Can you start in half an hour and take a letter to him?'
'Yes; in a quarter. Where's your letter?'
'You go and saddle your horse. You'll have to ride harder than ever you did since you were in the force, and I'll tell you what to write. Is your paddock all right?'
'Yes.'
'Then I'll turn my mare out while you're saddling and make the fire up a bit. I see there's a back log. I must have a cup of tea and a bite before I go to bed.'
In ten minutes the trooper was back, whistling to himself and apparently as cheerful as if a fifty mile night ride over a bad road was an adventure calculated to raise any man's spirits.