Hal Stainer.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 17, Issue 17, 19 April 1895, Page 2

Hal Stainer.

By Lynettjg. i " That ought xo be Hal Staioer, if my sight is what ifc used to be." . " What, the man who did his wooing in a mud-house 1 " Wo were driving over that noble phin between Tocumwal and Jerilderie. A dense warmth wrapped the land. A lukewarm rain was falling, and everything neetned to have resolved itself into an odour of wet oilskins and steaming horses, uatil the equattei* spoke and pointed with his whip to a buggy j some distance in advance?. I wanted ( to have a look at Stainer. We over- ; hauled his buggy at the public gates, i He jumped out, opsned them, and stood i waiting till we should pass. Closing ; gatea is one of ti-e finite ideas of the I lUverina creed. There was no time but for an exchange of greetings between the two men as our horses slowed through, Stainer bared a round, close-cropped head to us and the rain — a clean-shavon, well-featured fac?, bright blue eyes, and very white teeth showing in a pleaßant smile above the rim cf up-turned coat-collar. The hand that raised his cap was of the leg-of-mutton type; the voice that spoke us well-wishes might be heard above a rivet's iv flood lima. There was no space to note further, and I turned to hear tho equatter'a story. " I had jußt married and got properly settled at my piece when Hal Stainer cumo from England, and bought the run »exfc mine. That's about ten years ago. He was a splendid-looking youngster, and took easily to a hard life. Hie father was an officer in the Guards, and when ho died not worth his funeral expenses, Hal borrowed L 14,000 from an old friend of the family, to start life here. He was pledged to pay back the money within a certain time, and worked harder than any three men I know put together. As soon as hi 3 house was finished, Staiuer sent for a girl to whom he was engaged. She was a distant cousin, very pretty and nice, and dependent on relative?. I never understood why they became engaged. It may have been a family arrangement or the gill's dependence, for they were iiob in the leaßt in love with each other. I saw that directly they were together at my house. Miss Allen — that was her name — came to stay with us till Christmas, ,the time fixed for the wedding. Ifc was then early December. Christmas came, but we couldn't think of orange- blossoms with bush fires sweeping the country. 1 had been out three days and Steiner five when our parties joined. Gad ! how he worked. Night was as hot as day, but brighter, and both were a curse.' Ifc was not until I gave in and the big fellow working by my eide dragged me under a dray, that I recognised Stainer. Then ifc was only by a sort of instinct. He waa black as a charred log, wi fc h a bandage round his forehead, h's eyebrows gone, and his voice cracked. He steadied himself against the wheel after splashing water over me, then pointed to where the twenty-fifth of December sun was rising out of a sea of smoke, and said, l Merry Christmas, old man. J ought to be on roy honeymoon.' "I went to sleep, and when I woke rain was falling. " The day after I got home I heard that wild dogs were amongst Stainer's sheep up at PuoVs Eyea. " When the fires began, Hal'a Etock had been driven up to Puck's Eyee, and Stainer himself was there fighting the dogi We got no news of him for nearly ten days. His sweetheart was ilirling with tho township doctor, and seemingly never wanted to hear of plainer again. The marriago was indefinitely postponed pending disposal of the dingoes. " Everyone else had gone to bed, and I was writing in my den, when someone knocked at the door. I opened it, and Sfcainer came iv ahead of a volley of dead laaves and twigs, for there was a furious wind-storm blowing- I put him on th's sofa and gave him champagne, till the awful look went out of his eyes. As true as I sit here, the man had a wild-dog look about him — « wi'd dog at bay that's going to die fighting. He told me he was aick for want; of sleep and the memory of that borrowed money. " ' In fifteen nights I've only had a few hours' fileep. We've killed the dogs ; now, when I've time to sleep, I don't krjow how. I got home early tbis evening, had a bath, clean clothes, and here I am.' " He took a pencil and tried to write something that looked liko ' • fourteen thousand,' on the cuff of his shirt.' It was a silk one. He had no coat or j waistcoat. j "I got his mind, off the money and dingoes by other talk, and when he got up to leave be asked in such a rational manner for a loan of the rug on which be hnd been lyine; tint I waa not bo surprised at tha request; as I might have been. Now, tbis rug — we called ifc that for want of a better word — had boon given me by an Indian merchant. It wa3 a composition of wool and eilfr, buff colored, with my monogram in the centre, and a fringe nearly two feet wide made of knotte.il silk. Stainer rolled it up tightly and fastened it round his waist. He promirffid me ho would go home and sleep, p.nd I saw him on to hipj horse, and watched him ride out of Bight. " It couldn't have been more than twenty minute later I whs fixing up the den before going to bed, when I heard HOMiething outsido. My mouth got sv-s dry aa if I had been holding ib opsn toahotair blaafc.and my heart ticked louder than tho dock. It was a longdrawn how', no liko a dingo's cry that it would luve boon answered by ding-oca had there bef.-n any in tho neighbor, hood. But. ther» never had been, to my knowledge. Brides, I felt it waa not a boast's cry. Someone run round thy verand-ih and down (o the lagoon. -. Then came Iho overseer's whistle, folliweJ by nn auawerin^ whittle from th'j meu'a quarters. I tell you I onion'/; mi?« tiil thnn. I went out, iinJ mot; Uio ov<hm(J't coming to o ill m>. Tho night was clear but the wind

j was terrific. We ccu ] d scarcely hear i each other speak. Siainer was riding <to and fro on (he edge of a lagoon, ! howltyig and trying to forca . his. horse into th.B water. It was one of the best bred and 'cutest horses in the country, and from the w<»y it kept its head, must have known that the man on its back had lost his. A lot of tbe hands had come up, so we made a ling round Stainer, then closed suddenly. He just rode us down, yelping at us like a savage cur. Tae overseev and myself hung on to the bridle, shouting entreaties through the roaring wind. j Me he knocked out with a blow on the chio, wrenched free from the overseer, : and galloped up that hi'lock where the < flagstaff is now. That brought him I facing the full force of the wind, and a | curious thing resulted. His Bhirt i which was tied to his waist by the rug, filled with -wind, and pressed out at the back, tense as a drum. Then with an explosion like the ripping up of a sail, it split from neck to waist. Tba r . terrified the horse. It dashed down tbe slope and into the lagoon. Stainer threw himself level on the saddle, lowered his head, and lapped at the water like a dog ! In a minute be was climbing the opposite bank. In five, wo were on our horses and full pelt after him— a madman riding a bolting horse. " It was forty-eight hours later before the black tracker picked up Stainer'a trail in the dry bed of a creek, a few miles from Puck's Eyes. All the morning we followed the tracks, and at noon came on Stainer'a horse — dead. " ' White fellow vfry sick now,' said the tracker, as we rustled forward through the long, grey grass; walk like this, 1 imitating the swaying of a drunken man. At nightfall we loat the trial. Heavy stock had just goue over the ground, and the blackfellow never failed to distinguish it. We were weary mcc, I tell you, and sad ones, when we doubled back to Puck's Eyes that night. " Next morning, while we were heading for home across somebody's land, one of my men shouted— " ' There's a calf chasing the sheep.' " Iv the paddock towards which he pointed a mob of sheep was rushiag about helter-skelter, trying to get away from a curious, tawny-looking animal that followed them. In certainly looked at that distance like a calf. We waited outside the fence until it should circle abreast of us. On it came at the tail of a lot of terrified bleating ewes. It passed — a ram with its horns through my Indian rug, its forefeet and one of its hind ones through the long fringe, and my monogran fair on its back. " We could only conjecture how the beast got the thing over him, but we didn't stop to do it just then. By a water-hole in the next paddock we found Stainer lying under a patch of scrub. A dead sheep and a live snake were bis nearest neighbors. He stayed in a kind of stupor till we got him home, when he became unmanageable. The expert we fetched up pronounced him temporarily insane, through exhaustion and brain fever, so poor Hal went to an asylum, and Miss Allen became engaged to the local doctor. " Stainer was in the asylum three months. He told me he might hava been out a little sooner had he wished, but he had a score to pay off against two warders who had treated him with indignity. He by low, and waited for bis turn. It came. Stainer had no weapon bui; his fiats, and if you saw them you'd know he didn't need one. After he had fixed up the warders so that their own mothers wouldn't know them, he locked them in a cell, and walked off to tell someone in authority what he ' had done. He found the doctor's apartments, and knocked at the door cf a room where the piano was being played. A young lady answered the knock, and told the well-dressed smiling inquirer with the bunch of keys that " Papa would be in presently ! '' Ib seems she mistook him for a visiting doctor. Stainer was good company.': The girl was pretty, and both were musical. Consequently, while the greater part of the staff and a lot of mild lunatics were racing over the house and grounds looking for the " dangerous maniac, who had broken loose," Sfcainer was singing duets with the doctor's daugher. And when the doctor himaelf came into the room nearly an hour later, he noticed that his daughter did not look very p'eased to see him. 11 Some months afterwards Hal acted as best man where he was to have been bridegroom. Miss Allen married her country doctor. "For the next two years Stiiner spent all the holidays he could afford as a guest in the place where he had berm a patient, wooing the girl who san£ duels with him; She sings them with him yet."