Chapter XV: The Fact of the Matter

Sergeant Harkness had his barracks to himself. To be sure, the cell was occupied; but, contrary to the usual amenities of the wilderness, such as euchre and Christian names between the sergeant and the ordinary run of prisoners, with this one Harkness would have nothing to do. It was a personal matter between them: the capital charge had divided them less. Constable and tracker had meanwhile been called out on fresh business. That was in the middle of the day. Since then the coach had passed with the mail; and Harkness had been pacing his verandah throughout the sleepiest hour of the afternoon, only pausing to read and re-read one official communication, when Moya's habit fluttered into view towards four o'clock.

"Well, I'm dished!" exclaimed the sergeant. "And alone, too, after all!"

He hastened to meet her.

"Where on earth have you been, Miss Bethune? Do you know there's another search-party out, looking for _you_ this time? My sub and the tracker were fetched this morning. I'd have gone myself only----" and he jerked a thumb towards a very small window at one end of the barracks.

"Mr. Rigden?" said Moya, lowering her voice.

"Yes."

"So you've got him still! I'm glad; but I don't want him to know I'm here. Stay--does he think I'm lost?"

"No. I thought it better not to tell him."

"That was both wise and kind of you, Sergeant Harkness! He must know nothing just yet. I want to speak to you first."

And she urged the dapple-grey, now flagging sorely, towards the other end of the building; but no face appeared at the little barred window; for Rigden was sound asleep in his cell.

"We're all right," said Moya, sliding to the ground; "we stopped at a tank and a boundary-rider's hut, but not the Eureka boundary. I didn't get out the same way I got in, you see--I mean out of the Blind Man's Block."

"Blind Man's Block! Good God! have you been there? You're lucky to have got out at all!"

"It wasn't easy. I thought we should never strike a fence, and when we did I had to follow it for miles before there was a gate or a road. But the boundary-rider was very kind; he not only gave me the best meal I ever had in my life; he set me on the road to you."

Indeed the girl was glowing, though dusty and dishevelled from head to foot. Her splendid colouring had never been more radiant, nor had the bewildered sergeant ever looked upon such brilliant eyes. But it was a feverish brilliance, and a glance would have apprised the skilled observer of a brain in the balance between endurance and suspense.

"What on earth were you doing in Blind Man's Block?" asked Harkness, suspiciously.

"I'll tell you. I'll tell you something else as well! But first you must tell me something, Sergeant Harkness."

"I believe you know where he is," quoth the sergeant, softly.

"Do _you_ know _who_ he is?" cried Moya, coming finely to her point.

Harkness stared harder than ever.

"Well, I thought I did--until this afternoon."

"Who did you think it was?"

"Well, there's no harm in saying now. Rightly or wrongly, I only told Mr. Rigden at the time. But I always thought it was Captain Bovill, the old bushranger who escaped from Pentridge two or three weeks ago."

"Then you thought wrong," said Moya, boldly.

Nevertheless she held her breath.

"So it seems," growled the sergeant.

"Why does it seem so?"

It was a new voice crying, and one so tremulous that Harkness could scarcely recognise it as Miss Bethune's.

"I've heard officially----"

"What have you heard?"

"You see we were all informed of Bovill's escape."

"Go on! Go on!"

"So in the same way we've been advised of his death."

"His--death!"

"Steady, Miss Bethune! There--allow me. We'll get in out of the sun; he won't hear us at this end of the verandah. Here's a chair. That's the ticket! Now, just one moment."

He returned with something in a glass which Moya thought sickening. But it did her good. She ceased giggling and weeping by turns and both at once.

"So he's dead--he's dead! Have you told Mr. Rigden that?"

"No; I'm not seeing much of Mr. Rigden."

"I am glad. I will tell him myself, presently. You will let me, I suppose?"

"Surely, Miss Bethune. There's no earthly reason why he should be here, except his own obstinacy, if you'll excuse my saying so. He was remanded this morning; but Mr. Cross of Strathavon, who signed the warrant yesterday, and came over for the examination this forenoon, not only wanted to take bail, but offered to find it himself. Wanted to carry him off in his own buggy, he did! But Mr. Rigden said here he was, and here he'd stick until his fate was settled. Would you like to see him now?"

"Presently," repeated Moya. "I want to hear more; then I may have something to tell you. When and where did this death occur, and what made you so sure that it was the dead man who came to Eureka? You will understand my questions in a minute."

"Only I must answer them first," said the sergeant, smiling. "I am to give myself clean away, am I?"

"We must all do that sometimes, Sergeant Harkness. It will be my turn directly. Let us trust each other."

Harkness looked into her candid eyes, calmer and more steadfast for their recent tears, and his mind was made up.

"I'll trust you," he said; "you may do as you like about me. Perhaps you yourself have had the wish that's father to the thought, or rather the thought that comes of the wish and nothing else? Well, then, that's what's been the matter with me. The moment I heard of that old rascal's escape, like every other fellow in the force, I yearned to have the taking of him. Of course it wasn't on the cards, hundreds of miles up-country as we are here, besides being across the border; yet when they got clear away, and headed for the Murray, there was no saying where they might or might not cast up. Well, it seems they never reached the Murray at all; but last week down in Balranald I heard a rum yarn about a stowaway aboard one of the Echuca river-steamers; they never knew he was aboard until they heard him go overboard just the other side of Balranald. Then they thought it was one of themselves, until they mustered and found none missing; and then they all swore it was a log, except the man at the wheel who'd seen it; so I pretended to think with the rest--but you bet I didn't! I went down the river on the off-chance, but I never let on who I hoped it might be. And what with a swaggy whose swag had been stolen, and his description of the man who he swore had stolen it, I at last got on the tracks of the man I've lost. He was said to be an oldish man; that seemed good enough; they were both of them oldish men, the two that had escaped."

"The two!" cried Moya in high excitement. "The two! I keep forgetting there were two of them; you see you never said so when you came to the station."

"I wanted to keep it all to myself," confessed the crest-fallen sergeant. "I only told two living men who I thought it was that I was after. One was my sub--who guessed--and the other was Mr. Rigden."

"Were the two men who escaped anything like each other?"

"Well, they were both old lags from the _Success_, and both superior men at one time; old particulars who'd been chained together, as you might say, for years; and I suppose that sort of thing does beat a man down into a type. However, their friendship didn't go for much when they got outside; for Gipsy Marks murdered Captain Bovill as sure as emu's eggs are emu's eggs!"

"Murdered him!" gasped Moya; and her brain reeled to think of the hours she had spent with the murderer. But all was clear to her now, from the way in which Rigden had been imposed upon in the beginning, to the impostor's obstinate and terrified refusal to own himself as such to the very end.

"Yes, murdered him on the other side of the Murray; the body's only just been found; and meanwhile the murderer's slipped through my fingers," said the sergeant, sourly; "for if it wasn't poor old Bovill I was after, at all events it was Gipsy Marks."

Moya sprang to her feet.

"It was," she cried; "but he hasn't slipped through your fingers at all, unless he's dead. He wasn't when I left him two or three hours ago."

"When you _left_ him?"

"Yes, I found him, and was with him all the morning."

"In Blind Man's Block--with that ruffian?"

"He took my horse and my water-bag, and left me there to die of thirst; but the dear horse turned the tables on him--poor wretch!"

"And you never told me!"

"I am trying to tell you now."

And he let her finish.

But she would not let him go.

"Dear Sergeant Harkness, I can't pretend to have an ounce of pity left for that dreadful being in Blind Man's Block. A murderer, too! At least I have more pity for some one else, and you must let me take him away before you go."

"Impossible, my dear young lady--that is, before communicating with Mr. Cross."

"About bail?"

"Yes."

"What was the amount named this morning?"

"Fifty pounds."

"Give me a sheet of paper and a stamp, and I'll write a cheque myself."

Harkness considered.

"Certainly that could be done," he said at length.

"Then quickly--quickly!"

Yet even when it was done she detained him; even when he put a big key into her hand.

"_Must_ this go further--before the magistrates--after you have found him?"

Harkness hardened.

"The offence is the same. I'm afraid it must."

"It will make it very unpleasant for me," sighed Moya, "when I come up here. And when I've found him for you--and undone anything that was done--though I don't admit that anything was--I--well, I really think you _might_!"

"Might what?"

"Withdraw the charge!"

"But those tracks weren't his. Mr. Rigden made them. He shouldn't have done that."

"Of course he shouldn't--if he did."

"But of course he _did_, Miss Bethune. I've known Mr. Rigden for years; we used to be very good friends. I shouldn't speak as I do unless I spoke by the book. But--why on earth did he go and do a thing like that?"

Moya paused.

"If I tell you will you never tell a soul?"

"Never," said the rash sergeant.

"Then he was imposed upon. The wretch pretended he--had some claim--I cannot tell you what. I can tell you no more."

It was provokingly little to have to keep secret for lifetime; yet Harkness was glad to hear even this.

"It was the only possible sort of explanation," said he.

"But it won't explain enough for the world," sighed Moya, so meaningly that the sergeant asked her what she did mean.

"I must really get off," he added.

"Then I'll be plain with you," cried the girl. "Either you must withdraw this charge, and pretend that those tracks were genuine, or I can never come up here to live!"

And she looked her loveliest to emphasise the threat.

"I must see Mr. Rigden about that," was, however, all that Harkness would vouchsafe.

"Very well! That's only fair. Meanwhile--I--_trust you_, Sergeant Harkness. And I never yet trusted the wrong man!"

That was Moya's last word.

It is therefore a pity that it was not strictly true.

* * * * *

It was a wonderful ride they had together, that ride between the police-barracks and the station, and from drowsy afternoon into cool sweet night. The crickets chirped their welcome on the very boundary, and the same stars came out that Moya had seen swept away in the morning, one by one again. Then the moon came up with a bound, but hung a little as though caught in some pine-trees on the horizon, that seemed scratched upon its disc. And Moya remarked that they were very near home, with such a wealth of tenderness in the supreme word that a mist came over Rigden's eyes.

"Thank God," said he, "that I have lived to hear you call it so, even if it never is to be."

"But it is--it is. Our own dear home!"

"We shall see."

"What do you mean, darling?"

"I am going to tell Theodore the whole thing."

"After I've taken such pains to make it certain that none of them need ever know a word?"

"Yes; he shall know; he can do what he thinks fit about letting it go any further."

Moya was silent for a little.

"You're right," she said at last. "I know Theodore. He'll never breathe it; but he'll think all the more of you, dearest."

"I owe it to him. I owe it to you all, and to myself. I am not naturally a fraud, Moya."

"On the other hand, it was very natural not to speak of such a thing."

"But it was wrong. I knew it at the time. Only I _could_ not risk----"

Moya touched his lips with her switch.

"Hush, sir! That's the one part I shall never--quite--forgive."

"But you have taught me a lesson. I shall never keep another thing back from you in all my life!"

"And I will never be horrid to you again, darling! But of course there will be exceptions to both rules; to yours because there are some things which wouldn't be my business (but this wasn't one of them); to mine, because--well--we none of us have the tempers of angels."

"But you have been my good angel already--and more--so much more!"

They came to the home-paddock gate. The moon was high above the pines. Underneath there were the lesser lights, the earthly lights, but all else was celestial peace.

"I hope they're not looking for me still," said Moya.

"If they are I must go and look for them."

"I won't let you. It's too sweet--the pines--the moonlight--everything."

They rode up to the homestead, with each roof beaming to the moon.

"Not much of a place for the belle of Toorak," sighed Rigden.

"Perhaps not. But, of all places, the place for me!"

"You're as keen as Ives," laughed Rigden as he helped her to dismount. "And I was so afraid the place would choke you off!"

* * * * *

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* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:
All apparent printer's errors retained.
Page 23, "blackfellow" and "black fellow" both present in text
Page 45, "succesful" retained from original text
Page 48, "its" retained from original text
Page 175, "outry" retained from original text
Some inconsistency in hyphenating words:
bare-back and bareback both present in text
coo-ee and cooee both present in text
foot-print and footprint both present in text
salt-bush and saltbush both present