HER BROTHER'S KEEPER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19292, 3 April 1926, Page 14 (Supplement)

HER BROTHER'S KEEPER.

A NEW ZEALAND STORY.

by jean boswell

Bonding over the low bench, with its miscellaneous collection of milking utensils, Rhoda Verran swiftly and deftly dipped each article into the copper of Scalding water, and stacked them to dry in the sun. There was a perturbed look on her usually sunny little face, and every few moments, as fragments of conversation fell on her oars, she glanced toward the gate, where her father stood talking to a long, lean man who sat carelessly on his horse, flicking idly at tho fence with his whip. Rhoda knew the subject' of their conversation, and presently, her work finished, she went over and joined her father at the gate. The lean man regarded her smilingly. " Well, Miss Rhoda," ho said, quizzically, " I expect you'll be glad to see tho last of me, especially as I have to go back admitting failure, for I must admit that I've failed to identify the destroyer 'of those trees." " I'm as sorry as you that you cannot find tho culprit," said Rhoda resent- j Ifully, " but I do think it's a shame that tho whole settlement should be under suspicion. Besides, I don't believe it is one of our settlers —they all love the kauri forest as much as I do." Tho man laughed as he gathered up liis reins. " Well, at any rate, you're not under suspicion, Miss Rhoda," he said, " and I have to thank you and your father for tho holp you've given mo in a nasty job. But you can take it from me that henceforth there'll be a very much stricter watch kept on the forest, so you can warn your settler neighbours," and, still laughing, he shook liantTs in farewell and rode swiftly away. " I hate that cruel ' kauri-bleeding '," said Rhoda's father, as they watched tho departing inquiry agent, " but I'm almost glad I knew nothing, for I'd have felt bound to uphold the law, and yet I'd be sorry to give a neighbour away, especially a poor man." Rhoda left a little earlier to round up tho cows that afternoon, and crossed the paddocks over to her married brother's section. She found Cecil in tho home paddock, taking advantage of the winter soil conditions to do a littlo stumping and logging up. With him wero Elsie, his wife, a frail, tired-looking woman, and the family of five young children. " So Markwick has gone, and with no luck, eh ? " said Cecil. " I'm jolly glad ho never caught the poor beggar, whoever he is. The Government sticks men on paltry little hundred-acre sections of hilly bush land like this, and expects them to make a living. You can't blame a man for bleeding the kauri when he sees his children wanting food and clothes." " Oh, Cecil!" burst out Rhoda. "How can you ? I think it's a wicked shame to destroy such beautiful trees. I d rather j starve than do that." " That's all very well," said Cecil, good-humouredly, " but yon wait till you're married, Miss Rhoda and see your kiddies losing tho bread-line every winter, and I reckon you'll think differently. JWhat's a few trees compared with a man's kids ? " That sentence of Cecil's, " kiddies toeing the bread-line," rang in Rhoda's ears all the way home, and there was a new line of thought puckering her brow as she proceeded mechanically with the milking and the feeding of the animals. Deeply as she resented Cecil's apparent condonation of the crime of kauri-bleed->ing, she could not help feeling that from his vievypoint such an attitude of mind was justified, for none knew better than Rhoda the soul-stupefying misery of back-block poverty. Fortunately, healthy weariness kept her from reflection on the • -subject that night, and by morning she had quite forgotten her worried thought of the previous evening. Her mother and father were going that day into " the town," as they called it, and as usual Rhoda drove the creaking old gig down to the road, so that her father might bo saved the trouble of alighting to open and close the / slip-rails. She was almost up to the house again after seeing them away, when she saw her sister-in-law running quickly toward her across the paddocks. Thinking the baby might be ill, as Elsio was seldom to be seen without a child in her arms, Rhoda ran to meet her. Elsie's face was scarlet, and she appeared almost distracted. "Oh, Rhoda!" she gasped. " Yonng Johnson has just been, and he says MarS- * wick left orders with the ranger to have the forest watched carefully every day, and he says the settlers are going to take, turns to help watch. He says his father and Reynolds are to go to-day, and oh, Rhoda! Cecil —" and Elsie burst into tears. "What about Cecil?" cried Rhoda. " Stop howling, Elsie! What has Cecil to do with it 1 " "Cecil has gone down to tho big clnmp to collect the gum," said Elsie, wildly. "He didn't bleed the trees, Rhoda. He just helps to gather the gum—" "Cecil!" cried Rhoda, in horror. "Our Cecil?" "Oh, it's all very well for yon, Rhoda," sobbed her sister-in-law, 'but you haven't had to see your children going practically naked. Cecil wouldn't have done it. Cecil is as good as you are, but we are poverty-poor, and we must get money somehow. Oh, Rhoda. help me!" "But what can I do?" asked Rhoda, / helplessly. "Cecil is down at the big clamp," replied Elsie, rapidly, "and if you ride Jinny down to the gumfiolds, you could' slip along that track we blazed years ago, and get there before tho men and warn him. The men are riding round tho road to pick up the ranger, and from the top of the bald spur they'll almost be able to hear the chopping. Oh, Rhoda, hurry! You must save him." Dazed and almost sick, Rhoda caught Jinny, who was grazing near, jumped astride her and galloped for tho house. Hastily she bridled and saddled the mare, donned her strong milking overall and sou'-wester, and then quickly mounted and raced for the bush. Never before had Jinnv so rapidly traversed that rough, muddy track. Stumbling and slipping, and snorting wildly at every cut of Rhoda's switch, she almost flew till she reached tho clearing. Here Rhoda dismounted, tied the reins securely, and sent tho marc up the homeward track again. For a moment the girl stood looking over tho gumfields and away in the distance she could see several horsemen jogging slowly down to the,.,bald spur, from which it was only a matter of ten minutes to the clump of bled trees. 1 Like an arrow Rhoda shot down tho steep razor-back, tore pantingly up the opposite ridge, and plunged into tho bush Ino old track was much overgrown but Rhoda pushed through barricading briar and festooning manfre-mange like a wild thing heedless of the scarlet fingerprints they left on her face and arms. Soon she could hear the chop! chop! of the tomahawk as it cut into the plaster of cum and she redoubled her efforts, for she knew that the ranger also must by now be within hearing of the blows. Cecil was swinging on the rope half-way up the largest tree when she burst out of the bushes, and had she been less agitated, Rhoda could have laughed at the variety of emotions in the eyes looking down at her. There was,no time for recriminations "Cocil! Quick!" she called, in an urgent ranger is on yonr track.

(COPYRIGHT),

The ropo sang over the b<iugh as Cecil let it run furiously through his hands, and in a flash ho was beside her. "Mover mind tho rope," she said rapidly. "You haven't time —they are almost here." "What about you?" ho asked. She motioned as though she, too, were about to fly, and without more ado, Cecil disappeared in the bush. Quick as thought, Rhoda jumped into the ropo seat, placed tho tomahawk in her belt, and grasping tho second rope, pulled herself with a few easy strokes up the tree. Furiously she chopped at the gum, so that the men might not bo diverted on to Cecil's track, as they assuredly would have been on the cessation of the chopping and 'the subsequent crash of breaking undergrowth. She stopped suddenly as a voice came from beneath her. "Well, I'm dashed !" it said. "If it ain't Rhoda Verran! What in the name o' God are you doin* at this work, Rlioda?" She let the rope run through her hands, and slipped easily to the ground, standing before them with flushed face and downcast eyes. The old ranger, life-long friend of her father, stenried up and put his hand on her shoulder. "Who's with you in this, Rhoda?" ho asked, "and what are you doing it for?" "I—l—wanted —the money," stammered Rhoda. 4' There was a pregnant pause-. "It'll break old Verran's heart." said Johnson, huskily. "He fair dotes on Rhoda," and he glanced suggestively at the ranger. "But what can I do," said the latter, helplessly. "Thero's my duty and —" The crackling and rustling of the underscrub some distance off interrupted him, and in a few minytes, as they faced expectantly in the direction of the sound, the bushes parted, and Markwick, the inquiry agent, stepped into view. Rhoda looked at him in dismay. So he had not gone, after all; ho had deceived them and played a trick. Well, she had beaten him, anyway, and for the first time she felt pleasure in the deceitful part she was playing. For a moment Markwick stared at her, surprise in every line of his face. " What is this'" he asked sternly. " Surely you an not concerned in this, Miss Verran, after all your protestations?" " Cut it out, Markwick," said Jack Reynolds, curtly. " Rhoda is in it, and she won't give her accomplices away, that is certain. The question is, what are we to do? Can't we fix it up somehow? Rhoda is only a kid and' her father is the most respected man in the district. This will break his heart." Markwick sat down at the foot of the tree and smoked meditatively, while Rhoda and the three men waited anxiously. At last he rose. " I'll do what I can to keep this a secret," he said, gravely, " if Miss Rhoda will give her solemn vow never again to participate, in any capacity, in any more lawlessness of the sort. If she will give me that assurance, I think I can promise that this will never come out, especially as the young lady is a minor. Have we your word, Miss Rhoda ?" Rhoda drew a long breath. "Oh, yes!" she said, eagerly. "It won't happen again, Mr. Markwick, I promise," and with relieved faces, the ranger and his companions prepared to go hack to their horses. " I'll walk back with you. Miss Rhoda, if you don't mind," said Markwick, as Rhoda pulled down the rope and coiled it round her arm refusing his offer of help. " Just as you like," she answered, ungraciously, and led the way along the track she had scrambled a short while before. Suddenly Markwick stopped. " I've left my cigarette case at the foot of the tree, Miss Rhoda. Will you wait a moment for me ?" and he ran hastily back. Without pausing he went a little below the kauri, and, stooping, picked up from the ground a man's cap. It was marked " C.V.," and Markwick had seen it fall from its owner's head half an hour before. With a little tender smile he stuffed the cap into his bag. " Her ' brother's keeper,' eh?" he said softly to himself. " Well, Mr. Cecil, you and I are going to have a real old palaver when I return this cap, and as for Miss Rhoda well, if I have the luck I'm hoping for, some day I'll tell her all about it," and, still smiling, Marwick hurried back to where Rhoda waited.