IN THE WILD OATS PATCH.

Mataura Ensign, 15 December 1911, Page 8

IN THE WILD OATS PATCH.

Faintly-pinkish stalks, succulent, waving, an empty nest of dry grasses where the plover's eggs had lain, little sheep tracks between the wild oats, black ants creeping among the pale greenish light below, crickets trimming their flutes, and once the scurry of a grey-eared wallaby. Then a heavier body moving, moving, stealthy, human, not kin to the clean, healthy beasts of the field, strange to the gentle whisperings of grasses. A man in the posture of a brute, creeping, crawling on all fours, his felt hat jambed tightly on the erect reddish hair of his remarkably small head, his eyes bloodshot and sunken, at his belt a knife, in his band a rifle.

The crickets were silent in the stems, the wallaby plunged on west to the timber, and overhead the sweet grasses nodded their heads together in a warm and tender breeze. The surface of the wild oats patch was otherwise unruffled. They were tall grasses, as high as a horse's shoulder, it was good sheep country, and the seasons had been wet. To-day the sky was cloudless and the far hills showed clear and sharp against the paler blue. A white-throated swallow flirted long black wings above the green, a hawk soared levelly overhead. Perhaps, like the ■ man hidden below, it waited for prey. - From the timber-line came the beat of hoofs, a horseman leading a pack. Down among the pinkish-green shoots the human brute heard and smiled, flattening- himself beside the sheep track that ran through the thickets of grass. He moistenoH his lips with the tip of his longue, as a dog does at sight of fresh meat. He had a score to settle with this mad Irishman riding south. He recalled with a grim delight in strengthening his own passion the little office at the station, his blustering entry, the taste of stale grog in his mouth, the fair-haired, boyish man at the desk, the argument about the fencing, his dogged persistency in claiming for that last chain, the quiet insistence of the fair man that the work was ill done and must be remodelled. His fury growing at the inner knowledge that the law—d the law!—would prove the Irishman; right, should they appeal to that. His refusal to take the .proffered cheque, his vile word, and the red mounting to the other's forehead. The quick Irish temper breaking through at lust. "Then bo hanged to you," said the Irish gentleman, and tore the cheque across. "For divil a penny you'll get at all at all!" the scraps of paper flung into the waste basket, the lunge, the slam of the office door, his own amaze at finding himself in the dust with half-a-dozen of the station hands laughing at him. ; "Didn't you know the boss was a champion lightweight ?" They were non-union men, the scurvy blacklegs; they would stand by the boss to a man; and he—well, he was the whipped cur, and his cheque was in the rubbish basket, u Back to the township to brood, fencing contract given to another—a Jbloko he had always hated ince he jested him in the wood-chop-ping contest at the local show, to the gibes of the black-browed drab from the township. Curse the Irish gentleman r Gentleman be blowed—he would "gentleman" him, all right. He went 'possum-shooting, and bought a rifle. Also a knife for skinning. They might bc\ useful later; and the old bushranger blood that fed his swelling veins made suggestions for their use. But he was going to do it quietly, with a retreat covered. . One day the Irishman came riding jauntily down tho township street when j ho was drinking at the pub. The lean, j rod-faced mailman looked, laughed, and j addressed the half-drunken shooter. "Now's your chance to pot him, Blake." Bla,ke growled and reeled into the bar. Had he been boasting in his cups of what he would do with the Irish- { man? He must be more careful. And so he was,. Weeks passed. The Christmas season was near at hand.! People seemed to have forgotten him and his grudge; but that was in his heart all +he same, black and sore. So., hiyr'ng heard accidentally last week tli:- L 'he Irish boss rode south this morninrr. ho lay among the sweetsterrr..- 1 asses and waited. A':.' • the girl with the mar's r : had taken the dogs out early. .if-, i 'vugaroo. She liked to give ! the:.-. . '>metimes, for it does not 'do "oo dogs to put on too n:uc .. tJ ■ '"'ose fellows, too, evident-! 'ly 1\- failed to bail up the old mar * -ed, and, losing him in the u.i. - - • e back with apologetic tails tongues to Alistair. She 1 d promised them no Chr■ ■ r if they went on in this V on she loosed her rein and ' ; - wander homewards. It i . -ur day. As far as one con' ; '-e softly-stirred crests of t a delicate heat shimmer ■/ veils along the horizon -es glittered in the sur. • -re pools were begin+hc roots of the wild lerr .-r • ing the dark wood. Jum, ' ze along, horse and rich • -he pure Australian "ir he Fate that had pla--. ; rnd strong in a land of !•--• :t S - rt-whole. fancy-free yon<:;; had her "fun," took 1 in sporfc, and knew hm "t-class dinner; and nor- , - horse pick his way i»t». t' 'ling grasses she was

dreaming of anything but tragedy. Snorting, pounding through the crashing wild oats came the pack-horse, to be followed a second later by his fellow ; a man crouching low on his back—a man with a felt hat rammed tightly on his curiously small head, a rifle by his side. The girl's hack swerved, shied, and the figure went by her like a flash, thudding away into the timber, coastwards. With an extraordinary prescience of what had happened, she quietened her horse and with a white face and set mouth picked up the tracks their speed had blazed amid the bruised grasses.

He lay on his side, one arm crumpled under him, his cabbage straw at a little distance, his hunting crop still clenched in his right hand. The cheek turned to her as she slid from her saddle and, looping her bridle-rein over her arm, knelt beside him, was smooth and untouched; but when she raised his head a trifle there was blood on the other cheek—blood streaming from a buleltwound in the brow.

For the first time in her life she knew fear. Fear that chills the marrow and freezes the hands and feet on a warm midsummer day. Fear that turns the heart to water and spreads in a million little horror-quivers over the shrinking body; and she sank sickly and shaking into a sitting position, holding his head in her lap, where an ugly stain grew on to the crushed holland of her habit. Suppose the murderer returned? Would he leave the horses and come creepingback through the grass ? Surely something crackled near her, as though a human knee pressed lightly—surely. Her hack was nonchalantly nibbling at the tops of the wild oats; the dogs sat round on their haunches. The one who had last left puppyland whimpered a little. He did not like the smell of men's, blood, new spilt. She' pulled herself together. Here was a man bleeding horribly, and apparently unconscious, perhaps dying, and she was coward .enough to consider her own safety. She dabbled at his hurt with her scrap of handkerchief, felt in his coat pocket, drew out his ample one and with steady fingers and some skill made a bandage.

Then slipping her pretty nngless hand under his shirt felt for the throb, tin 00, that would mean so much. It was there. All praise to his protecting saint f Did not the eyelids flicker? Yes! quivered—opened. What intensely blue eyes! It was as though the skies had fallen through. "The holy virgin, herself sure," said tlie man, and the blue disappeared behind tho lids notioeably white against the sunburn on his face.

She could not sit here all way with an unknown man's wounded head in her lap, even though she be mistaken for the Virgin Mary, and to "coo-ee" on the chance of a passing paddockrider might bring the would-be murderer hot-foot to finish what he had so well began.

She cogitated, the sun slipping through the tall reeds and falling on her riding hat with the parrot's feather in the band, on her stained skirt, and upon the fair head at- her knee. Investigating ants began to climb about her. The dogs started a bush rat, and disappeared with a rush, anxious to retrieve their damaged reputation for fleetness, and made a kill on the edge of the grassy acres, with much excitement and slavering. The hack became bored with the juicy wild oats, and stamped an impatient, unshod hoof. He suspected there might be horse-flies in this place. The girl on the ground had arrived at no definite conclusions. The man- breathed quietly. He wasn't going to die yet, any way. The paddock rider from Brolga Pocket saw the dogs showing off over the dead rat's body, and wondered where their mistress was. He had seen her pass that way early. One so seldom saw a woman, and the boss's daughter was a pretty picture to gaze upon. Even a sensible, middle-aged bushman, who had spent most of his life splicing wire fences, and hustling dingoes, will make a detour to see a "pretty picture," so he kept his quick eyes open, and presently marked her horse's head among the grass billows. He cantered through. It looked like an accident, though, may be, she was botanising among the stalks. She was quite capable of it. That she screamed when she saw 'him, being ovor-wrought, and thinking the man with the small head had returned to make a dual butchery, scarcely surprised him. He had a notion that women wero inclined to lie "screechin' bodies," but he- was full of resource as soon as he grasped the situation, his only trouble that he could not divide himself into two, one to pick up the trail of that "An', saving your presence, miss, blanky cairt" (tho'boundary rider was from Aberdeen, with a good deal of colonialism grafted on), the other to help to lift the wounded Irishman on to his horse, and to support him, walking by the nag's side, while she rode on the other with the fair head arrainst 'her breast —the only way to manage.

The dogs, somewhat offended that their doings seemed no longer of import, sniffed contemptuously as they followed, but later they gained their aplomb, took an interest in matters, and rollicked in at the bottom gate to announce an unexpected cavalcade.

The paddock rider has recognised the stranger at once as the new boss from Walloongar—whom the girl had never met—and there were many willing hands to help to carry him into her father's house.

The police and tlie doctor—the names so often tragically linked in the backn'ocka—had to be notified, and the hue and cry raised for tho man whokhau««h- th'> horses wandered home from t;ho boundary of tho run—was never to he captured'. Well had the old bush'•angrr blond served to make his plan retreat a serviceable one. Far away in the Aniprican States "hero ioj a shanty of evil repute presided over by a red-haired man, with :i remarkably small head, who feels that -hp world has not treated him well. 1:i his more thsu \isixal!y drunken hours ho boasts that he novor forgot to repay '.!) injury with interest, and tells talcs if what* "we" do.in -Australia. When ■a is sobw lio allows he lied, and the •••s!RO of lSlake is merged forever in ' h:>K of Billy the Liar. It really suits him just as well. And the Irishman? He was the

proudest man in the district when, a few months later, she drew the handsome scarred head into her fair young arms for better or for worse.

The kangaroo dogs were the only ones who were not pleased about that wed-

ding. She is always pottering about her new home, and rarely comes across to see them. When slhe does, they don't get the early morning scampers they used to. S'he seems to have her hands full now, with her husband and baby. They take some pleasure in the baby's society; but for all that they have time to feel neglected. Sometimes, on warm, bright days, nearing Christmas, something in the air reminds them of it all, but even the one who last left puppyhood sits on 'his haunches in the wild oats patch, and wonders why the finding of a. man lying among the grass stems, instead of sitting sensibly erect on a horse, as did the others who came and went, changed everything so sadly. For the dogs know nothing of love.— M. Forrest, in 'Australasian.'