IN NO MAN’S LAND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XIX, 12 May 1900, Page 565

IN NO MAN’S LAND.

(An Australian Story.)

By

A. B. PATERSON (Banjo).

Author of “ The Man From Snowy River.”

CHAPTER XXI. IN THE BUFFALO CAMP. “You’re just the man I was looking for,” said Hugh, taking in the stranger with his eyes. “I want to get out to Reeves’ buffalo camp, and I hear you’re the only man that knows that country at all. Can you get time to come down with me? I’ll make It worth your while.” Hugh waited his reply with a beating heart. If this man failed him he saw nothing for it but to go back. Sampson, the storekeeper. was evidently hors de combat for the next few days and the Chinee was a minus quantity so far as any help was concerned. The stranger pulled out a match slowly, lit his pipe with the leisurely movements of a man who had never been in a real hurry in his life and gazed round at the scenery before replying. Then he snoke slowly. “Well, it’s’ this way, boss, you see. I'm just startin’ off in no end of hurry to go and take a team of bullocks to t he Oriental to draw quartz.” “Can’t you put it off for a while?” said Hugh. “It’s getting near the wet season.” “Well. I’d like to go with you, boss, but 1 couldn’t, chuck ’em over—not rightly, I couldn’t.” He stroked his beard and relapsed into thought. “Let’s us go in and get a drink,” said Hugh, pointing to the store. “I suppose theie is some square face inside.” That settled it. They had one square face and the stranger began to think less of the necessity for the trip to the Oriental. They had another and he said he didn’t suppose it’d matter much if the Oriental had to wait a bit for their stone, and the bullocks were all over the bush and very poor, and by the time he got them together the wet season would be on. They had a third, and he said the Oriental had been hanging on for six months and it wouldn’t hurt to hang on for seven, and he wouldn’t see a man like Hugh stuck. So it camle about that the Oriental Company’s contract went to the wall, w-hereby the shareholders In that valuable concern were kept tn pleasing suspense for som. -onths longer, not knowing whether there was any gold in their mine or not, and the mine manager (whose salary was going on all the time) did nothing but smoke and write reports to the effect that “a very valuable body of stone was at grass, only waiting cartage to a battery, and when once it got to the battery a splendid crushing was a certainty.” While they were waiting the man who should heve Wen carting their stone was gaily journeying with Hugh Gordon down to the buffalo camp. Of that journey there is no space to speak here. Tommy Prince, a regular typical moleskin-trousered, cottonshirted, cabbage tree-hatted bushman, soon fixed up all details. He annexed the horses belonging to the store, sagely remarking that if Hugh saved the man’s life he could afford to let him have a few horses. Also he helped himself to pack saddles, camping gear, supplies and all sorts of odds and ends, not forgetting a couple of gallons of rum, mosquito nets made of cheese cloth, blankets, and a rifle and cartridges. They rigged out the expedition in fine style, while the unconscious Sampson slept the sleep of the half drowned, and the placid Chinese cook fried great lumps of goat for them to eat, heedless of all things except his opium pipe, to which he bad recourse in the evening, the curious, dreamy odour of the opium blending strangely with the aromatic scent of the bush.’ At daylight in the morning they started, and for three days they rode through the wilderness, camping out at night, while their horses, with Wils and hobbles, grazed round the camp. Tommy Prince steered a course by instinct, guided as unerringly as the Israelites by the pillar of fire. Uy miles of trackless, worthless wilderness, by rolling open plains, by rocky rangesand stony (Kisses, they pushed on, out and ever further out,

till at last one day Tommy said, “They ought to be hereabouts some place.” So saying he dropped a lighted match into a big patch of grass and in a few seconds a line of fire, half a mile wide, was rolling across the plains, while above it rose a smoke as of a burning citv.

“They’ll see that,” said Tommy, “without the buffaloes have got ’em.” They camped for a day under a huge banyan fig tree and waited developments. About evening, away on the horizon, there rose an answering cloud of smoke, connecting earth and sky like a water spout. “That’s them,” said Tommy. They climbed once more into their saddles and set out. Just as the sun was sexing they saw far away across the open plain a singular procession coming towards them. First of all rode two small, wiry, hard-featured, inexpressibly dirty men on two big well formed horses. These men wore dungaree trousers that had once been blue, but were now begrimed and bloodstained to a dull neutral colour. Their shirts —once coloured, but now nearly black —were worn outside the trousers, like a countryman’s smock frock, and were drawn in at the waist by broad leather belts full of cartridges. Their faces were half hidden by stubby beards, and their bright, alert eyes looked out from under the brims of two as dilapidated old hats as ever graced the heads of mankind. Each man carried a carbine under the thigh, held between the thigh and the saddle. These were the buffalo shooters. Behind them rode a tall, elderly, grizzled man, whom Hugh had no difficulty in recognising as Keogh or Considine. Behind him again came some seven or eight pack horses, each heavily laden with hides, and behind the pack horses rtrde three or four naked blacks and a Chinaman. Hugh and his guide rode up to this procession, everybody staring at everybody else. Hugh’s guide made himself welcome in his happy-go-lucky style at once. He introduced Hugh to the shooters and to Considine as Mr Lambton, of New South Wales. The two buffalo shooters made him welcome after the fashion of their kind; but old Considine was obviously uneasy and avoided Hugh and rode with Tommy Prince for a while, evidently trying to find out what Hugh had come for. That night when they got to the buffalo shooters’ camp, Hugh opened fire on Considine. It took a lot of thinking how he should handle him—whether he should try to persuade him or frighten him. The sage was in a cheerful mood after his meal, and Hugh started diplomatically, thinking he might persuade him. If that failed he would give him the summons. He must start, at the suaviter in motlo. “I’ll tell you what I’ve come up here for, Considine,” he said. “I wanted to find out from you something about your marriage with Peggy Donohoe.” "Well, if that’s what you come for, Mister,” said the veteran, pulling a fire stick out of the fire and slowly lighting his pipe, “if that’s what you come for”—puff, puff, puff—“you’ve come on a wild goose chase. I never knew no l eggy IJonohoe in my life. My wife”—puif—“was a small dark woman named Smith.” “I thought, you told my brother that you married Peggy Donohoe.” “So I might have told him,” assented the veteran. “Quite likely I did, but I must ha' made a mistake. A man might easy make a mistake

over a thing like that. What odds is it to y-ou who I married, anyhow?” “What odds?” said Hugh. “Why, look here, Considine, it means that my old mother and my sister will be turned out of their homes. All the property my uncle had will go to Leggy Donohoe. That’s some odds to me, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right enough, Mister," said tW courteous Considine; “it’s lots of odds to you, but what I asks of you is—what odds is it to me? Why should I go and saddle myself with a she-devil just when I’m coming into a bit of money? Blast her, I’d walk miles to do her a bad turn.” “Well, if you want to do her a bad turn, come down and block her getting my uncle’s estate.” “Yes, an’ put her on to meself! What next? I tell yer, Mister, straight, I wouldn’t have that woman tied to me for all the money in China. That English bloke said there was a big fortune for me in England. Well, if I have to take Peggy Donohoe with it, it. can stay. I’ll live here with the blacks and the buffalo shooters, and I’ll get my livin’ for meself same as I got it all my life; but take on Peggy again I will not. Now that’s domino —that’s the dead finish. I won’t go with yer, and I won’t give yer no information. And I’m sorry too, ’cos yer seem a good sort of a young feller—but I won’t do anything that’ll mix me up with Peggy any more. Hugh ground his teeth with mortification. Then he played his next eard. “There’s a man they call Flash Jack —do you know him?” “Perhaps I do and perhaps I don’t,” said the sage, in a surly tone. “Well, he told me to ask you to help us. ' He said to tell you that he particularly wanted you to give evidence if you can.” “Want ’ll be his master, then.” snarled the old man. “He said he would put the police or. to some job about some cattle at Cross Roads,” said Hugh. The rage fairly flashed out of the old man’s eyes. “He said that, did he?” he yelled. “The rotten informer! Well, you tell Flash Jack from me that where he can put me away for one thing I can put him away for half a dozen; and if I go into gaol for a five stretch he goes in for ten. I ain’t afraid of Flash Jack, nor you either. See that, now! ” Hugh felt that his mission had failed. He pulled out the summons as a last resource, and passed it to the old man. “What’s this?” he said. “Summons to give evidence,” said Hugh. “Victoria by the Grace of God,” read the old man, by the flickering firelight. “Victoria by the grace of God, eh? Well, see here,” he continued, solemnly putting the summons in the five and watching it blaze, “if Victoria by the grace of God wants me, she can send for me—send a. coach and six for Patrick Henry Considine, late Patrick Henry Keogh! And then I mightn’t go. There’ll only one thing make me go where I don’t want to go, and that's a policeman at each elbow and another shovin’ behind. I’d sooner do five stretch than take Peggy back again. And that’s the beginning and the end and the middle of it. And now I’ll wish you good night.” (To be continued.)