Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush

by G. Firth Scott

Suddenly the bush gave way before him as he emerged on to the Barellan road. The smoke was rolling along it in heavy volumes, but was less trying than it had been amongst the timber, and Tony again urged his horse into a gallop. The crackle and roar of the conflagration sounded on both sides, and he was marvelling that it had not yet burst out on to the road, when the sound of a horse coming towards him at break-neck speed arrested his attention. Scarcely had he heard the sound than through the haze of the smoke the horse, ridden by a girl, came into sight. Instinctively he reined up, and the thought flashed through his brain that it might be Ailleen.

The horse and its rider dashed out of the smoke, the horse with its neck stretched out, its eyes starting from its head, its tongue hanging out and blood-flecked foam on its nostrils. The rider was hatless, her clothes torn in shreds, and her hair streaming out on the wind. With one arm she was flogging her horse unmercifully; the other she was waving wildly around her head. The pace of the gallop carried her past Tony in a moment, but in that moment he recognized her—Nellie Murray.

With her eyes staring in a frenzy of madness, with her face wet and ghastly, and her voice raised in an endless mocking shriek of laughter, she dashed past him. There was no time to catch the words that seemed to blend with the laughter, there was no time to learn whether she saw him as she rode past, but there was time enough for his intuitions to work and teach him the originator of the fire and the reason of its existence. Nellie was avenging her defeat by Ailleen.

Straight down the road she raced, travelling with the smoke which, as it rolled along in great clouds of density, appealed to her as something that was humorous, as something that called for the long shouts of laughter with which she greeted it. Soon her horse, staggering in its stride, but still flogged to a gallop, emerged ahead of the heavy smoke though yet within the haze. The track which led to the Three-mile showed before her, and she turned her horse on to it from off the main road. Along its winding course she fled until the hut opened out. The horse lurched and stumbled in its stride, but mercilessly she used the switch, until, ten yards from the door, it came down on its knees, and, almost before she could spring from the saddle, rolled over, ridden to death.

She scarcely glanced at it as she rushed forward to the hut and flung the door open. On the stretcher Tap lay, his face terribly bruised and cut, moaning feebly. On one of the stools by the fireplace, sitting bunched up in a heap with his head on his hands, was Dickson. As she caught sight of him, she broke out again into her wild laugh.

"I said I'd come for you, Willy—and I've come," she shouted—"come with lots of friends for you, friends who won't let you get away any more. They're all round you, dancing and singing as they come along, nearer and nearer. Don't you hear them? Listen! Can't you smell the smoke in the air? She's part of it by this time. I've fired the grass and the bush all round the house. She can't get away. More can you," she added quickly, as Dickson rose to his feet, and, turning a haggard face towards her, shrank away to the corner of the hut.

"You devil!" he exclaimed. "You've fired the bush!"

"All over the place," she answered, with her head thrown back and her mocking laugh ringing through the place. "I told you—I told you, if you didn't come for me I'd come for you—and I've come. She can't touch you now; she's burned up like the grass, and the fences, and the trees, and the house. Oh, it burned so well!"

"It's coming this way," he cried, as his eye caught sight of the rolling clouds of smoke through the open door.

"Yes; it's coming this way," she answered, with a sudden calm—"it's coming this way for you—for you and me. Look! Look out there! See that big boomer there with the red tongues jumping up? Look on the top of it. Don't you see him? Just on the top he's floating—just as he's been on all the big smokes. He likes the big smokes. He laughs at me when he's up there like that. He's been asking for them—asking—asking—asking so long. Poor little man, they took him away, but I've found him, and he's found me."