Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush

by G. Firth Scott

"Where is he? Where is he? Why doesn't he come?" she said plaintively.

"Oh, Tony, I forgot," Ailleen exclaimed, as she loosened her arms. "Let me go to her."

"And where's Slaughter?" Tony cried, coming back from the clouds of happiness to the reality of their situation to discover that he only had returned to the station.

He hurried round to the other side of the house. The ground was black, with small wisps of smoke rising here and there for a considerable distance away, while a hundred yards off he saw an undefined heap lying. The sight of it made him shudder, and he rushed over to it, fearing what he dared not think.

It was Slaughter, senseless, with blackened face and singed hair, lying where he fell when the flames swept up around him and the smoke rolled over him, shutting him off from escape and filling his lungs till he was overcome.

Tony seized him by the shoulders, and, half carrying, half dragging him, succeeded in getting him to the house. Ailleen, seeing him coming, met him with some water, and between them they bathed his head and hands until there was some sign of returning vitality. But consciousness was longer in reviving, and Slaughter still lay insensible when a rescue party from the men who were fighting the fires pressed through the lines and reached Barellan.

For many days after Slaughter lay ill, almost at death's door, to the sorrow and anxiety of Birralong; for the nightly gatherings at Marmot's temporary store had much food for reflection in the knowledge which came to them after the days of the great bush fire.

The charred ruins of the Three-mile, and the shallow waterhole beside the hut, revealed enough to put to shame the scandal that had been laid on Slaughter's shoulders, and for that alone Birralong, collectively, acknowledged the blame of a grievous fault. But there was more than mere acknowledgment of error needed to balance accounts. The fire that Tony lit in the grass at Barellan would have been of no value in saving the station had not another been lit farther away and nearer the onward rushing line of raging fury. The heat and smoke where Tony stopped nearly overpowered him, but Slaughter had dashed almost up to the oncoming line before he fired the grass; and the men of Birralong, who knew what bush fires mean, had no words to express what they thought of Slaughter's act.

"Cold-blood Slaughter, eh?" Cullen said, when he heard it; and then he stood up and took off his hat, and remained standing, with bowed head, till the others caught his meaning and followed his example; and so, while Slaughter lay nearly dying at Barellan, the men of Birralong nightly greeted the mention of his name.

But that was not all the news which came to the gossips of the town. The story that Tony had heard from the dying Barber, and which he had re-told at the Flat, was known to every one; Nuggan, anxious to cover his retreat from an awkward position, being assiduous in spreading it. Later, when rumour had it that the Lady of Barellan had claimed that Tony and not Dickson must be her son, Birralong was prepared to support her, more especially when it was known that Ailleen had never wavered in her allegiance to the champion of the district. But there was no proof of her right to make the claim till Slaughter had recovered, and even then, in a legal sense, there was not much of a case to go on. Only was there the statement that the dead McMillan lived again in the features and figure of Tony; but it satisfied Birralong, and no one came forward to dispute it. Even if the question had been raised no interest would have been served, for Mrs. Dickson willed that if Barellan could not be his, it should be Ailleen's, and with Peters's Reef a "boomer," as Palmer Billy averred, their future was assured when Tony and Ailleen were wed.