“Not a bit in the world,” I said, “even if I had the right. I’ll back you two, as simple as you look, against any inspector of police from here to South Australia.”
After this we began to talk about other things, and I told Gracey all about our plans and intentions. She listened very quiet and steady to it all, and then she said she thought something might come of it. Anyhow, she would go whenever I sent for her to come, no matter where.
“What I’ve said to you, Dick, I’ve said for good and all. It may be in a month or two, or it may be years and years. But whenever the time comes, and we have a chance, a reasonable chance, of living peaceably and happily, you may depend upon my keeping my word if I’m alive.”
We three had a little more talk together, and Aileen and I mounted and rode home.
It was getting on dusk when we started. They wanted us to stop, but I daren’t do it. It was none too safe as it was, and it didn’t do to throw a chance away. Besides, I didn’t want to be seen hanging about George’s place. There was nobody likely to know about Aileen and me riding up together and stopping half-an-hour; but if it came to spending the evening, there was no saying who might have ears and eyes open. At home I could have my horse ready at a minute’s warning, and be off like a shot at the first whisper of danger.
So off we went. We didn’t ride very fast back. It was many a day since we had ridden over that ground together side by side. It might be many a day, years perhaps, before we did the same thing again. Perhaps never! Who was to know? In the risks of a life like mine, I might never come back—never set eyes again upon the sister that would have given her life for mine! Never watch the stars glitter through the forest-oak branches, or hear the little creek ripple over the slate bar as it did tonight.
LIII
We rode along the old track very quiet, talking about old times—or mostly saying nothing, thinking our own thoughts. Something seemed to put it into my head to watch every turn in the track—every tree and bush by the roadside—every sound in the air—every star in the sky. Aileen rode along at last with her head drooped down as if she hadn’t the heart to hold it up. How hard it must have seemed to her to think she didn’t dare even to ride with her own brother in the light of day without starting at every bush that stirred—at every footstep, horse or man, that fell on her ear!
There wasn’t a breath of air that night. Not a leaf stirred—not a bough moved of all the trees in the forest that we rode through. A ’possum might chatter or a night-owl cry out, but there wasn’t any other sound, except the ripple of the creek over the stones, that got louder and clearer as we got nearer Rocky Flat. There was nothing like a cloud in the sky even. It wasn’t an over light night, but the stars shone out like so many fireballs, and it was that silent anyone could almost have fancied they heard the people talking in the house we left, though it was miles away.
“I sometimes wonder,” Aileen says, at last, raising up her head, “if I had been a man whether I should have done the same things you and Jim have, or whether I should have lived honestly and worked steadily like George over there. I think I should have done so, I really do; that nothing would have tempted me to take what was not my own—or to—to—do other things. I don’t think it is in my nature somehow.”
“I don’t say as you would, Ailie,” I put in; “but there’s many things to be thought of when you come to reckon what a boy sees, and how he’s brought up in the bush. It’s different with girls—though I’ve known some of them that were no great shakes either, and middling handy among the clearskins too.”
“It’s hard to say,” she went on, more as if she was talking to herself than to me; “I feel that. Bad example—love of pleasure—strong temptation—evil company—all these are heavy weights to drag down men’s souls to hell. Who knows whether I should have been better than the thousands, the millions, that have fallen, that have taken the broad road that leads to destruction. Oh! how dreadful it seems to think that when once a man has sinned in some ways in this world there’s no turning back—no hope—no mercy—only long bitter years of prison life—worse than death; or, if anything can be worse, a felon’s death; a doom dark and terrible, dishonouring to those that die and to those that live. Oh that my prayers may avail—not my prayers only, but my life’s service—my life’s service.”
Next morning I was about at daybreak and had my horse fed and saddled up with the bridle on his neck, ready all but slipping the bit into his mouth, in case of a quick start. I went and helped Aileen to milk her cows, nine or ten of them there were, a fairish morning’s work for one girl; mothering the calves, bailing up, leg-roping, and all the rest of it. We could milk well, all three of us, and mother too, when she was younger. Women are used to cattle in Ireland, and England too. The men don’t milk there, I hear tell. That wouldn’t work here. Women are scarce in the regular bush, and though they’ll milk for their own good and on their
