第25章 No Place for a Woman(4)

I went down in the hollow and stooped down to get the gap agen the sky, so's I could see if anyone was comin' over. . . . I'd get on the horse and gallop along towards the town for five miles, but something would drag me back, and then I'd race for fear she'd die before I got to the hut.

I expected the doctor every five minutes.

"It come on about daylight next morning. I ran back'ards and for'ards between the hut and the road like a madman. And no one come.

I was running amongst the logs and stumps, and fallin' over them, when I saw a cloud of dust agen sunrise. It was her mother an' sister in the spring-cart, an' just catchin' up to them was the doctor in his buggy with the woman I'd arranged with in town. The mother and sister was staying at the town for the night, when they heard of the black boy.

It took him a day to ride there. I'd 'a shot him if I'd 'a caught him ever after. The doctor'd been on the drunk. If I'd had the gun and known she was gone I'd have shot him in the buggy. They said she was dead.

And the child was dead, too.

"They blamed me, but I didn't want her to come; it was no place for a woman.

I never saw them again after the funeral. I didn't want to see them any more."

He moved his head wearily against the tree, and presently drifted on again in a softer tone -- his eyes and voice were growing more absent and dreamy and far away.

"About a month after -- or a year, I lost count of the time long ago -- she came back to me. At first she'd come in the night, then sometimes when I was at work -- and she had the baby -- it was a girl -- in her arms.

And by-and-bye she came to stay altogether. . . . I didn't blame her for going away that time -- it was no place for a woman. . . .

She was a good wife to me. She was a jolly girl when I married her.

The little girl grew up like her. I was going to send her down country to be educated -- it was no place for a girl.

"But a month, or a year, ago, Mary left me, and took the daughter, and never came back till last night -- this morning, I think it was.

I thought at first it was the girl with her hair done up, and her mother's skirt on, to surprise her old dad. But it was Mary, my wife -- as she was when I married her. She said she couldn't stay, but she'd wait for me on the road; on -- the road. . . ."

His arms fell, and his face went white. I got the water-bag.

"Another turn like that and you'll be gone," I thought, as he came to again.

Then I suddenly thought of a shanty that had been started, when I came that way last, ten or twelve miles along the road, towards the town. There was nothing for it but to leave him and ride on for help, and a cart of some kind.

"You wait here till I come back," I said. "I'm going for the doctor."

He roused himself a little. "Best come up to the hut and get some grub.

The wife'll be waiting. . . ." He was off the track again.

"Will you wait while I take the horse down to the creek?"

"Yes -- I'll wait by the road."

"Look!" I said, "I'll leave the water-bag handy. Don't move till I come back."

"I won't move -- I'll wait by the road," he said.

I took the packhorse, which was the freshest and best, threw the pack-saddle and bags into a bush, left the other horse to take care of itself, and started for the shanty, leaving the old man with his back to the tree, his arms folded, and his eyes on the horizon.

One of the chaps at the shanty rode on for the doctor at once, while the other came back with me in a spring-cart. He told me that old Howlett's wife had died in child-birth the first year on the selection -- "she was a fine girl he'd heered!" He told me the story as the old man had told it, and in pretty well the same words, even to giving it as his opinion that it was no place for a woman.

"And he `hatted' and brooded over it till he went ratty."

I knew the rest. He not only thought that his wife, or the ghost of his wife, had been with him all those years, but that the child had lived and grown up, and that the wife did the housework; which, of course, he must have done himself.

When we reached him his knotted hands had fallen for the last time, and they were at rest. I only took one quick look at his face, but could have sworn that he was gazing at the blue fin of the range on the horizon of the bush.

Up at the hut the table was set as on the first day I saw it, and breakfast in the camp-oven by the fire.