“It just shows the need of writin’ things down,” he said severely. “An’ if Mrs. Wilson’s by when she says anything, ye needn’t mention to her about writin’ down. Just slip away an’....”
“I’ll not get Mrs. Wilson,” said his wife, quickly. “There’s not a soul will come nigh or near her till the doctor comes. An’ who can say there’s anyone better fitted to nurse a sick woman an’ take her evidence down than the constable’s wife?”
“’Tis yersilf that’s the treasure, jewell o’ me heart,” said Trooper Dan, kissing her warmly. “An’ who knows but that atween us—but it’s black enough an’ clear enough the case looks, widout any swearin’ from you or me, I doubt, I doubt.”
He went out, and Mrs. Mulcahy went softly into the bedroom where the woman lay, moaning and twisting her fingers and plucking at the coverlet. “He’s dead,” she whispered.
“Hush, dearie,” said Mrs. Mulcahy, soothingly. “Lie still and forget everything. Think only on the baby that’s comin’.” “He’s dead—he’s killed, killed, killed.” Mrs. Dan Mulcahy hushed her again and laid gentle fingers on her lips. Then she went and fetched a slip of paper and the pencil. “I ought to write it down,” she said, and wrote carefully “He is dead. He is dead, dead, dead.” She looked at the writing a moment and then thoughtfully crossed it out. “The baby is dead, dead, dead,” she wrote again. “It was the baby we were talking about. She must be clean crazed, for how could she say the baby was dead? Any court would see that,” and Mrs. Trooper Dan Mulcahy carefully folded the paper and slipped it in her bodice.
Up and down the track across the hills a string of men clambered and bumped and pounded, the stones rattling under the horses’ hoofs and the sand whirling behind them.
Some of the men rode swaying in the saddle, and some with drowsy heads hanging, but Aleck Gault and Whip Thompson sat with their shoulders hunched and their heads crouched forward, and keen eyes set on the difficult track. They plunged down the stony dips, the horses at times sitting back almost on their haunches, and sliding down with the loose rocks and dirt rolling and cascading around them; they drove headlong across the patches of open, picking their way amongst the rabbit burrows and paddy-melon holes without checking their stride; they spurred up the rises, the horses’ heads outstretched and their sides heaving, swept over the crests, and went swooping down the hills again. Far behind them came Darby the Bull, his simple mind in a whirl of dismay and anger with himself. He couldn’t rightly understand what it was all about, or how he had said anything that betrayed Steve, but Whip and the others had assured him with vituperative emphasis that he had “blown the whole show,” had laid the hounds straight on the scent, had given Trooper Dan no choice of thought or action but against Steve Knight. Darby the Bull couldn’t understand all this, but he could understand the simple fact that his mates were riding to help Steve and to defeat the police, and that his (Darby’s) help might be useful and his bull strength most acceptable. So Darby pounded along over rock and ridge and hollow, his heels banging his horse’s flanks and his knees gripped tight to the saddle. It seemed to him that it was madness to be galloping the horses this way, besides being cruel to them. But Aleck Gault and Whip were ahead of him, and they had told him to keep up if he could. That was plain enough, and any man could understand. All he had to do was follow and keep as near as his horse would take him; so he wrenched the brute’s head up when he stumbled and flung himself recklessly down the steep drops. He lost sight of them when they dived into the Axe-Cut—the steep bit of track that drove straight into the face of the “Wall-of-a-House” cliff, and made a narrow gorge, which offered the only way up the cliff for three or four hours’ ride round either way.
When Darby got to the top of the Axe-Cut a loud coo-ee made him look round, and he saw Gault and Whip Thompson hard at work lifting rocks and carrying them to the edge of the gorge and piling them in a heap there. He swung his horse round and joined them, and Whip called to him to hurry up and put his back into it. Darby didn’t trouble to ask questions, but merely set himself to lift and carry the biggest rocks he could move. One by one the other men joined them, and as soon as the last man was through Gault set them to rolling the stones over. There was a drop of about thirty to forty feet down to the path at the spot they had chosen, and although some of the boulders they flung over smashed to fragments, they gradually piled up till they formed a barrier utterly impassable to a horse and difficult to a footman.
“That’ll do, boys, I reckon,” said Aleck Gault at last, and Darby the Bull sat down and mopped his streaming brow.
“What’s the notion?” he asked, with a puzzled frown. “We’ll never be able to take the short cut to the township till we’ve shifted that. An’ there’s no other way for miles roun’.”